1850. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
30? 
The roof of this dwelling being large and hipped, 
gives a spacious and convenient garret, which is of 
great value in any country house, and especially to 
the farmer. Three good bed-rooms for workmen 
can be finished off in this attic, or four—if a gable 
like that in front is formed on the rear roof. 
The porch, as will be seen by trying the scale, 
is 9 by 20 feet. 
A cellar is intended to be built under the whole 
house—and there should be a back porch, which 
may be large enough to contain a wood-house (in 
which this plan is deficient,) or, at least, to com¬ 
municate with one. 
Construction. This house may be built, with 
good effect, either of stone, brick, rough-cast, or 
wood. We suppose it, in the elevation, for the 
sake of economy, to be built of wood, in the vertical 
boarding manner. 
The first story is eleven feet in the clear, the 
second story nine feet. The house is to be finished 
with brown walls for whitewashing, the windows to 
have rising sashes, and both these and the doors to 
be finished with plain architraves with simple back 
mouldings; the doors in the first and second story to 
have four panels each; the hand-rail and balusters 
to be of oak or black walnut, and the whole to be 
executed in a very simple and plain, but substantial 
manner. 
Estimate. To build this house here in the manner 
we have indicated, with planed and matched 
weather-boarding, and the whole filled-in with 
brick, would cost about $2000. At Rochester, 
where lumber may be taken at the average price, 
it is placed as low as $1477, but this estimate is with¬ 
out filling-in of any kind, and without outside blinds 
or shutters.” 
We close our extracts with a few' scraps, pointing 
out some errors, often fallen into, though to a less 
glaring extent than here exhibited :— 
“ It may appear singular to one not accustomed to 
dwell on this subject, that it should be necessary to 
insist on the value of so obvious a truth as that a 
dwelling-house should look like a dwelling-house. 
But, strange to say, men who are blinded by fashion 
or false taste are as likely to commit this violation 
of Architectural truth as any other. We recall a 
villa on the banks of the Hudson, built in the form 
of a Doric temple, all the chimneys of which are 
studiously collected together in the centre of the 
roof, and are hidden from even a suspicion of their 
existence, by a sort of mask that resembles nothing 
unless it be a classic w’ell-curb set on the top of the 
house. Now, as chimneys, in a northern climate, 
are particularly expressive of human habitation and 
domestic life, any concealment of them is a violation 
of general truth, and one might w T ell be puzzled to 
know what sort of edifice was intended, in the villa 
in question. So, too, in the neighborhood of some 
of our cities, we still occasionally see houses which 
are pretty close imitations of Greek temples; and 
which, as they have sometimes as much space 
devoted to porticoes and colonnades as to rooms, 
one may w r ell be pardoned for doubting exactly for 
w'hat purpose they w r ere designed. 
Local truth in Architecture is one which can 
never be neglected without greatly injuring the 
effect of country-houses. And yet, such is the in¬ 
fluence of fashion and false taste, and so little do 
the majority of citizens trouble themselves to think 
on this subject, that nothing is more common in 
some parts of the country, than to see the cockney- 
ism of three story town-houses violating the beauty 
and simplicity of country life. In our own neighbor¬ 
hood, there is a brick house standing in the midst 
of gardens and orchard, which has a front and rear 
pierced w'ith windows, but only blank wall at the 
sides; looking, in fact, precisely as if lifted out of 
a three story row in a well-packed city street, and 
suddenly dropped in the midst of a green field in the 
country, full of wonder and contempt, like a true 
cockney, at the strangeness and dullness of all 
around it. During a drive on Long Island, last 
autumn, we saw with pain and mortification, the 
suburban villa of a wealthy citizen, a narrow, un- 
mistakable “ six story brick,” which seemed, in its 
forlornners and utter want of harmony with all 
about it, as if it had strayed out of town, in a fit of 
insanity, and had lost the power of getting back 
again.” 
A too frequent defect in cottages is strongly 
shown 
11 The cottage is not made to express, as much as 
possible, the simplicity of cottage life, joined with 
the greatest comfort, intelligence and taste of w'hich 
that life is capable, but to imitate as closely as cheap 
and flimsy materials and a few hundred dollars will 
permit, the style and elaborate ornament of the villa, 
with its expenditure of thousands. 
There are two striking illustrations of this false 
taste to be found in various parts of the country at 
the present moment—what may be called the temple 
cottage and the cocked-hat cottage. 
The temple cottage is an imitation of the Temples 
of Theseus or Minerva, in thin pine boards, with a 
wonderfully fine and classical portico of wooden 
columns in front. The dimensions of the whole 
building may be 20 by 30 feet. The grand portico 
covers, perhaps, a third of the space and the means 
consumed by the whole dwelling. It is not of the 
least utility, because it is too high for shade, nor is 
it in the least satisfactory, for it is entirely destitute 
of truthfulness—it is only a caricature of a temple— 
not a beautiful cottage. 
The cocked-hat cottage is, perhaps, a little better, 
for it is an imitative exaggeration, not a downright 
caricature. This species of cottage has grown out 
of an admiration for the real and intrinsic beauty of 
the rural-Gothic cottage, of which gables are strong¬ 
ly characteristic features. But some uneducated 
builders, imagining that the whole secret of design¬ 
ing a cottage in the Gothic style, lies in providing 
gables, have so overdone the matter, that, turn to 
which side of their houses we will, nothing but 
gables salute our eyes. A great many gables in the 
front of a Gothic villa of large size, may have a 
good effect; but to stick them in the front of a cot¬ 
tage of 25 feet front, and, not content with this, to 
repeat them everywhere else upon the roof where a 
gable can possibly be perched, is only to give the 
cottage the appearance, as the familiar saying goes, 
of having been “knocked into a cocked hat.” A 
journey among the attic sleeping rooms of such a 
cottage is like that geographical exploration of the 
peaks of all the highest mountains, made by 
beginners, in the corner of a map of the world. 
All ornaments which are not simple, and cannot 
be executed in a substantial and appropriate manner, 
should be at once rejected; all flimsy and meagre 
decorations which have a pasteboard effect, are as 
unworthy of, and unbecoming for the house of him 
who understands the true beauty of a cottage life, 
as glass breastpins or gilt-pewter spoons would be 
for his personal ornaments or family service of plate. 
The most worthless of all family treasures are 
indolent females. If a wife knows nothing of 
domestic duties, she is not a help-mate, but an 
incumbrance. 
