HOUSE AND GARDEN 
December, 1911 
The high renaissance comes with its arti¬ 
ficiality and the type is banished to the 
simpler houses of the countryside or 
the colonies. These recognize the clas¬ 
sic revival by veneering a pilaster each 
side the entrance door, by inventing a 
sort of pediment to put over them, by 
elaborating the eaves into a cornice and 
perhaps adopting a more orderly ar¬ 
rangement of windows, but otherwise 
the type is little altered. 
Then why not this for the answer to 
the question — this nameless basic type 
which one writer calls the “English 
Tradition,” though it was the tradition 
equally of Scotland, of Ireland, of the 
American colonies and it seems most 
northern countries ? Its characteristics 
are its roof-pitch, its gables (for gables 
are simpler than hipped roofs framed 
to slope back at the ends of the house), 
the moderate overhang of roof (for 
broad eaves shut out the sunlight which 
in the north we need), and the impor¬ 
tance given to chimneys. Examples of 
In the Midlands, England. An early type-example of the Northern Tradition in its simplest 
form, depending for its interest on strong mass and vigorous outline rather than on detail 
Stratford Lodge, near Philadelphia, C, Barton Keen, architect; a type of the true tradition, but 
showing the possibilities of an adaptation of the Italian pergola-enclosed garden 
it are the Tudor country houses, the 
simpler of the Georgian, the Colonial 
of the northern states, barring those of 
them showing the worst artificialties; the 
Dutch Colonial, with its thrifty gambrel 
roof, framed to get most with least ex¬ 
pense, and purest of all the farmhouses 
and barns here and in Northern Europe. 
Just now the type seems undergoing a 
curious development in England, a com¬ 
plication of many gables, of strange and 
restless oddities of contorted, half-devel¬ 
oped forms, the picturesque run wild. 
In America, Procrustes-like, we stretch 
it to fit a repertoire of “styles” — loaded 
with false half-timber to wear its ap¬ 
pearance of some centuries ago; decked 
with pilasters in the fond hope that it 
will appear “classic” or what is called 
“Colonial”; shorn of its gables, with roof 
depressed and wide eaves, it is “Italian.” 
“Two Stacks” near Philadelphia, Charles Z. Klauder, architect; Garden and Entrance fronts; the first informal with irregular gables and 
low eaves, the entrance front with lofty walls, severely symmetrical but not at all montonous, as life is injected by choosing the stones 
'• for their color and texture, which makes unnecessary and superfluous all exterior decoration. 
