House & Garden 
LONG ISLAND COUNTRY PLACES 
Designed by McKim, Mead & White 
(concluded) 
III.—MR. STANFORD WHITE’S HOME AT ST. JAMES 
'■Text by John A. Gade Photographs by Henry 'Troth 
P HYSICIANS never practice in their 
own home. Architects differ from them 
decidedly. Every experimental artistic cure 
the architect tries on his own family, and 
every pet idea never previously demonstrated 
he embodies somewhere or other in his own 
home. 
Mr. White has thus built his own place. 
The square, homely, gable and clapboard 
farmhouse, which originally formed the 
house, is now quite impossible to recog¬ 
nize. It is hidden somewhere, revised and 
pulled to pieces, in the center of the present 
building. Here, as in two out of three 
cases when an old house has been retained, 
the plan of the altered one has suffered 
much by the old conditions hampering the 
new and larger exigencies. I believe the 
case is rare where the saving in cost of alter¬ 
ing the old, rather than building entirely 
new, is not greatly outweighed by the far 
better plan of an entire new start. Senti¬ 
ment, of course, is a potent factor. Espe¬ 
cially can Americans well afford to cling to the 
firesides of their grandfathers, though grand¬ 
children’s wants may be of very different 
dimensions. Mr. White, as I have said, 
retained the old house (now consisting, on 
the ground floor, of dining-room and hall) 
and Segan extension by minor alterations. To 
these came more and more radical changes; 
gables, bay-windows, piazzas, extensive plant¬ 
ing, grading and leveling, and this will con¬ 
tinue as long as the owner’s restless activity. 
In one of his busiest days he seven times 
returned from intermediary stages of state- 
houses, parks and equestrian statues to the 
sheds around his own chickenyard. 
The situation of the house and gardens is 
well worth the care and affection that has 
been spent upon it. Trees and shrubs have 
been planted and uprooted, avenues raised, 
only to be cut again and regraded the fol¬ 
lowing season. The house itself has become 
merely a mass of illogically successive ram¬ 
bling rooms, but in the total effect the 
master’s charm has inevitably penetrated. 
The position of the place is almost ideal. It 
stretches out fairly absorbed with sunshine 
on the broad back of a grassy slope. Below, 
at the foot of a broad sweep of grass, comes 
a second small hillock closely covered with 
gloriously blossoming laurel, in the middle 
of which shines a small pergola, circular in 
plan, with ten slender Doric columns sup¬ 
porting the entablature and beams. Beyond, 
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