HOUSE AND GARDEN 
July, 1911 
Modern half-timbered houses in a group at Port Sunlight, one of the model English vil¬ 
lages. The pins holding the timber ends together form a very decorative detail 
suffices to observe that the style did then receive a great impetus 
resulting in numerous beautiful examples that our American 
architects have not been slow to avail themselves of. 
The half-timbered house must be regarded not merely as afford¬ 
ing a variety of applied wall surface treatment, but as forming a 
definite system of construction with fixed characteristics peculiar 
to itself. In the framework, which really constitutes “the carcass 
of the house,’’ the “resistance of the timber, serving in turn as 
brace, or support, or belting course, is greatly increased by the 
multiple combinations of the joinery.” Plaster or bricks are used 
to “pug” or stop up the spaces left between the timbers, so as to 
present a solid surface. It is unfortunately true that modern half- 
timbered work has sometimes degenerated into a mere applied sur¬ 
face treatment, and in such cases it is, to put it plainly, nothing 
but a detestable 
sham. The w a y 
in which brumag- 
em walls of ma¬ 
sonry or frame¬ 
work are occasion¬ 
ally slicked over 
with stucco divided 
into panels by half- 
inch pine strips, 
tacked to the flim¬ 
sy background and 
stained to look like 
w e a thered hard¬ 
wood timbers, sug¬ 
gests an incident 
mentioned by an 
English writer. 
Passing down a 
tack street in Lon¬ 
don, he noticed a 
card in a grocer's 
w i 11 dow bearing 
the legend, “Fine 
Jam, good straw¬ 
berry flavor, 4d. a lb.” He goes on to re¬ 
mark that it is not the “flavor of archi¬ 
tecture” we want, but the real thing. 
Houses with a “half-timber flavor” are 
just as bad as glucose jam with fruit ex¬ 
tract "added to taste,” as the cook-books 
say. 
A real half-timbered house is a source 
of lasting delight. It is not fireproof, of 
course, nor is it half a dozen other things 
that some folk think a house ought to be, 
but it is picturesque and human and home¬ 
like, and as to the fire, surely it is not 
amiss to trust a little bit to Providence 
and leave the fire insurance companies a 
chance to exist. Our insistence on fire¬ 
proofing has become almost a mania to live 
in fireproof vaults. What we gain in safe¬ 
ty we often lost in artistic merit and home¬ 
likeness, and certainly these features are 
worth considering as well as more utili¬ 
tarian merits. Besides, a properly built 
half-timbered house can be made so slow- 
burning that there is but little danger of a 
conflagration, and that is really as much 
as can be said truthfully of many so-called 
fireproof structures. Then too, to the half- 
timbered house belongs a remarkable de¬ 
gree of virility and vitality, coupled with a strong element of 
spontaneity that impresses one with the conviction that this type 
of dwelling is entirely in harmony with its natural surroundings. 
We realize also that the builders who perfected this style of 
architecture fully comprehended the qualities and properties of 
wood and applied methods appropriate to the material used. 
Limitations there are, one must admit, but then what kind of 
dwelling has not its defects? Such a house would be just as un¬ 
interesting, as repellent, as cold, as hard as a person without any 
faults or foibles. We love our friends the better for a reasonable 
share of shortcomings, and so it is with our houses. If they were 
absolutely perfect we should doubtless not be really happy in 
them. 
On the score of durability we may point with satisfaction to 
numerous examples dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth cen¬ 
turies that are still whole and sound and apparently good for 
centuries to come. 
A usual modification of the half-timbered style, in fact an 
Another group in old Chester. Half-timbered work loses all its 
charm when carried to such elaboration and with such meaningless 
forms 
Stanley House, Chester. The carved tim¬ 
bering in the gable ends and the carved 
posts are noteworthy 
