HOUSE AND GARDEN 
December, 1911 
Farmhouse at Cornish, New Hampshire, showing the alteration of an old house without the 
destruction of its original character of roof lines 
limits indeed — enough, it seems, to form 
a dominant character. 
If this argument is just, then the con¬ 
clusions must have been reached long 
ago. They should be found chrystalized 
as a type in use ever since building with 
these materials began. Fads and fash¬ 
ions might assert themselves for awhile, 
but after each there should be a recur¬ 
rence to the type. 
If we follow the history of country 
houses in a northern country, England 
for example, as it is best known, we find 
striking proofs of this surmise. The 
builder of the Middle Ages knew noth¬ 
ing of distant lands, had nothing to copy, 
and therefore his houses should obey 
this natural law as to slope without at¬ 
tempt at concealment, and so they do; 
so do the later houses without exception 
down to Elizabeth’s time, when certain 
men masked their roofs with high para¬ 
pets as at Hatfield or Bramshill; a few 
years, and under King James the fad is 
forgotten and the true tradition revives. 
tell whether it be “Gothic” or “Colonial,” 
still it never fails to show the roof-slope. 
Perhaps the roof should be the standard 
of classification, that just as a fossil- 
hunter ignores at first all other struc¬ 
ture and broadly classifies his skeletons 
by the tooth formation, so the philoso¬ 
pher-architect should look to his roofs 
for guidance, the teeth of the house as 
it were. 
Roof-slope seemingly should be de¬ 
termined by the materials used. Tin we 
have apparently discarded; interlocking 
tile is so expensive that for the immedi¬ 
ate future it will not be common enough 
to count in the average ; so the slope must 
be determined by slate and shingles. 
Build the roof flatter than thirty degrees, 
and rain and snow will drift in; steeper 
than forty-five degrees or fifty, and space 
is wasted and money with it; narrow 
A house at Mianus, Connecticut; an early example of the forerunner and inspiration of much 
that is evidenced and delineated in the Woodmere type below 
. • . “ 1 - -• ■ 7- - - • - - - - - • - -- - • —- - - 
At Woodmere, Long Island, C. Barton Keen, architect; and Grayeyres, at New Rochelle, Wilson Eyre, architect; two totally diffeient 
American developments of the Northern Tradition, but the photographs show that the houses would not be inharmonious if juxtaposed, 
and show further the variations of this architectural style 
