Volume XX 
July, 1911 
Number i 
A Little Home in a Peach Orchard 
AN ARGUMENT FOR THE EARLY BUILDING OF A HOME OF THEIR OWN BY 
EVERY YOUNG COUPLE—WHAT HAS BEEN SECURED IN PENNSYLVANIA FOR $2800 
by Louise Taylor Davis 
Photographs by the Author and H. H. S. 
O NCE the building of a house seemed to me a grave and 
weighty matter, by no means to be undertaken until the 
“parties of the second part” were quite settled in life and well on 
their way to affluence. Now I think that every young couple 
should, at the first possible moment, build them a house, be it ever 
so humble. Our own experience in house-building has brought 
about in me this change 
of mind. 
Three years ago the 
time arrived, which comes 
to most married people 
sooner or later, when we 
felt that we couldn't stand 
boa rding, we couldn’t 
stand apartments, we 
couldn't stand hideous 
rented houses — in fact, 
we couldn’t be happy un¬ 
less we had a house of 
our own, built according 
to our own ideas. It was 
then we began seriously to 
consider building. The 
result is our home, small, 
but attractive, and exactly 
suited to our needs. The 
entire cost of the house 
was $2,800, a price for 
which I knew a summer 
bungalow could be built, but which 
I had never realized would be suffi¬ 
cient for the building of a real 
house. 
Our first idea, in fact, had been 
a bungalow in which we might live 
for seven or eight months of the 
year. It was at this juncture that 
the architect proved himself a 
benefactor. Lie advised us to 
build a comfortable, all-the-year- 
round house, and in reply to our 
solemn warnings promised to keep 
the price down to a bungalow fig¬ 
ure. We were fortunate enough 
already to have a lot, which in it¬ 
self was a great incentive to us to 
build. It was situated on the outskirts of the village, in the midst 
of a young peach orchard, which had been set out on the gentle 
slope of a hill covering about three acres. To my doubting mind, 
the middle of a peach orchard seemed a queer place to build a 
house, particularly as the trees were only two years old, and 
rather scraggly. I sugested that we remove those on our own 
property, and plant in 
their stead the more con¬ 
ventional shade trees and 
shrubs. As I met with 
firm protests from my 
husband and the architect, 
I gave in, and today will 
gladly admit the superi¬ 
ority of the masculine 
judgment. The trees are 
now well grown and 
healthy, and furnish an 
amount of foliage around 
the house which it would 
have been impossible to 
obtain otherwise in the 
same length of time. As 
for the peaches they bear 
—well, those trees could 
only be removed now over 
my dead body. 
This was not to be the 
onlv unconventional thing 
about the placing of the house. 
One end of the lot adjoins the 
street, or rather the country road 
on which is the trolley line con¬ 
necting us with civilization. From 
the other end is a beautiful view 
of rolling farm country, with hills 
in the distance. The architect 
promptly decided that the house 
should turn ( its back to the street. 
The amount of ground which we 
really own is small, the lot being 
50 by 200 feet, but with the wide 
landscape stretching for miles 
around us, and peach trees for 
our only near neighbors, we feel 
as if we owned an estate. 
One end of the lot, 50 x 200 feet, adjoins the street, to which the house 
turns its back, giving the porch the splendid view over miles of country 
The location of the stairs is an unusual feature of the plan; 
they were not in evidence from the living-room 
(II) 
