The Annual Building Number 
of House & Garden 
Number. For 
been practically 
A MAN wrote in to us 
the other day and 
asked whether we 
couldn’t possibly postpone 
for six months the appear¬ 
ance of our next Building 
nearly three years he had 
ready to start work on a new home. Each 
January he had found so many new ideas in 
the Building Number that he revised all his 
plans. If we could only hold back this coming Janu¬ 
ary’s issue until he could get a spade into the ground 
in early spring, his troubles would be over, he hoped; 
otherwise he feared he would rent a house and revise 
plans all his life. 
We were extremely sorry not to be able to oblige 
him, but for the sake of the thousands who can make 
up their minds more quickly and who also will build 
next spring, perhaps, we cannot longer hold back the 
deluge of information, suggestions, clever ideas that 
other builders have evolved, plans, cost data, and 
pictures that tell a thousand and one stories. We had 
an idea that last year’s Building Number was a good 
one—a man happened to write us that he had started 
his new home soon after receiving it, and that for 
every knotty problem he met, that Building Number 
pointed out a solution. However, here’s a better one 
this year. It covers its subject like a blanket—not a 
wet one, and if you fail to find it crammed full and 
running over with brand-new ideas that you can 
snatch out to adapt to your own problems, why — we’ll 
throw up our hands. 
Ready Dec. 23rd 
K 
NOTHER thing—you 
mayhavehad an idea 
that there is an in¬ 
finite number of permuta¬ 
tions and combinations in 
the arrangement of a first floor plan. Wrong. 
A writer on Typical Floor Plans demon¬ 
strates that most houses may be grouped 
under two or three type plans, and in these 
there are but minor variations. Simplifies 
the planning problem immensely. 
Then there are articles—with pictures that fairly 
make your mouth water — on lighting fixtures, hard¬ 
ware, rough or smooth plaster walls, casement win¬ 
dows, how to keep a cellar from getting wet or how 
to make it dry if it has that bad habit. There is 
another article on that vital question of choosing an 
architectural style, one on tiling for use and decora¬ 
tion, one showing some valuable short-cuts in 
achieving paneled effects. Professor Ogden of Cornell 
clears up, once for all, the sewage disposal problem. A 
young woman tells how she and her husband bought 
a piece of land and lived on it in a tent during the 
summer, working out the fascinating problems of 
locating and planting for the permanent home right 
on the spot. The controversy over the choice of a 
heating system is continued, and grows hotter each 
month. Another installment of “The Naturalization 
of a City Man” follows, in which the narrative “gets 
down to brass tacks” and gives you a whole lot of 
incidental information. 
Which would you rather do—build a new house 
that expressess your own tastes and ideas of arrange¬ 
ment throughout—spic and span in its modern mate¬ 
rials, or take one of the homes our ancestors built a 
hundred years ago and remodel it to suit your present- 
day needs as far as possible ? That question is the 
subject of a debate in the January Building Number, 
and the pleaders for both sides have their war 
paint on. 
Do you know that if you change your mind and 
decide to build that house of yours with stucco out¬ 
side instead of clapboards or shin¬ 
gles it will cost you about ten per¬ 
cent more ? There’s a lot more of 
such information in an article on 
Comparative Costs of Building 
Materials. 
But here, we can’t tell you about everything in 
the whole number—some of the many good things 
will remain prize packages, in the original wrappers, 
which may be opened on December 23 rd. 
By the way, last year’s Building Number was out 
of print soon after publication. We re printing a big 
pile of the 1912 one ; but if your subscription expires 
with December, or you are planning to buy it on the 
news-stands, you’d better fill out the coupon on the 
next page right now and make sure you will not 
miss it. 
In writing to advertisers please mention House and Garden. 
