HOUSE AND GARDEN 
December, 1911 
At Villa Nova, C. Barton Keen, architect; crowning the spur of a hill, its long roof-lines appear almost as a con¬ 
tinuation of the hill-slope a successful solution of that most difficult of architectural problems, an encircling ve¬ 
randa. This view shows what is offered by this type in the way of natural embellishment 
was designing in 
“Gothic,” or the early 
settler that he was do¬ 
ing “Dutch Colonial.” 
Let us beg the ques¬ 
tion then, and argue 
for a certain type, 
rather. “Grayeyres,” 
“Two Stacks,” “Strat¬ 
ford Lodge” or the 
Villa Nova or Wood- 
mere houses are pure 
examples, but what 
can they be called 
more than “Northern 
Tradition?” As far 
as I can see- there is 
nothing in them, not 
a natural expression 
of construction. The 
stout stone columns 
were doubtless taken 
from the old barns 
near Philadelphia, the 
pergola surely from 
Italy, the porch about 
the Villa Nova house 
from nowhere at all, 
but each is perfectly 
( Continued, on page 
4H) 
One enters a certain suburb of New York. All the houses 
are new; no buildings were there a year or two ago; it was a 
clear field for architects to do what they could, for the promoters 
were anxious to make it an ideal suburb; yet its general im¬ 
pression is discordant in the extreme. Houses are individually 
most interesting, far above those of the average town in char¬ 
acter, yet it is one of the most unpleasant towns one ever sees. 
One leaves it with discouragement, with the impression that our 
country architecture is resulting in a condition worse than the 
much-despised mid-nineteenth century, when at least there was a 
certain harmony; that our study, our familiarity with the best 
work in the world has resulted in nothing; that “the mountain has 
labored and brought forth a mouse.” 
One passes “Colonial, “half-timber,” “modern English plaster,” 
“thatched shingle roofs,” “Italian adaptions”—all seriously 
studied too, and most of the houses distinctly good according to 
their several ideals—and the result is wildest discord. Each house 
strives to assert its independence and drown its fellow. It is as 
if in an opera Briinhilde and Carmen, Yum-Yum and Aida, 
Thais and the Runaway Girl were all on the stage together, 
answering each to each in her own song, some serious, some 
frivolous, each admirable, and the result diabolical. 
An English or a German town never gives this impression. 
Is it possible that there they have a clearer conception of the 
basic type ? One house may have the orderly arrangement of the 
Georges and the next a Tudor-arched doorway and mullioned 
windows, but the difference seems rather interesting. Is it be¬ 
cause they are all perfectly natural in their use of materials and 
roof forms, members of the same family, so to speak, all examples 
of the same traditional type, nearer, perhaps, than their builders 
realized or that one can recognize at present on account of his 
Laving befogged his wits with much reading of the characteris¬ 
tics of these “styles?” 
But this was to be an article upholding a certain “style!” 
Until a style is past and done with, it has no name. The medi¬ 
eval architect would have been much surprised to learn that he 
An old example of irregular, clustered gables, by the Mianus River, 
Connecticut 
At Lake Mahopac, J. H. Phillips, architect; altogether irregular but 
unmistakable in type; relying on naivete and picturesqueness rather 
than on studied composition 
