Seventeenth Century Houses 
PLANS OF A HOUSE AT RADNOR, PA. 
Designed by Du firing, Okie Ziegler 
body—the portion comprised by the hall— 
was built in 1700 as the farmhouse for eight 
hundred acres. In 1792 it was extended by 
the part now including the library and recep¬ 
tion-room. The house has felt tor the first 
time the hand of an architect by the addi¬ 
tion of the large fireplace in the hall, the 
dining-room and the kitchen wing. This 
work has been done not only with the con¬ 
venience of the interior in view, but with 
an eye to matching in the new work the 
color of the old external walls. Directions 
to this effect were impressed upon the 
amazed masons; and it was but a time¬ 
ly visit of the architect that prevented 
some precious field-stones from being 
disfigured with false joints by a conscien¬ 
tious workman, who after setting them in 
place was endeavoring to match the old 
walls. 
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HOUSES 
STILL OCCUPIED IN GREATER NEW YORK 
By HENRY WYSHAM LANIER 
O NE of the numberless trolley-line tent¬ 
acles which the octopus city flings out 
in every direction dashes tortuously through 
mile upon mile of suburbs, hurls itself in a 
long straight line across a wide-spreading 
marsh, and then creeps slowly over the arched 
back of the bridge spanning a little tide¬ 
water river. Here one branch swings off' to 
the left, bound for a “ beach ” where Sunday 
excursionists take their pleasure in “ shoot¬ 
ing the chutes ”—in their mad career actually 
passing over the gravestones of an ancient 
burying ground. To the right of the fork 
is a car stable; to the left an Italian fruit 
and candy seller; everywhere dust, and 
hurrying cars and people, and electric poles 
and wires. But a hundred feet beyond lies 
the Old House. 
Screened as it is by oaks and pines and 
shrubbery, many a careless passer-by might 
altogether fail to discover it. But no lover 
of the antique can resist the magic of its 
direct gaze. From the gate by the pave¬ 
ment a graveled path leads up half a dozen 
steps to a higher terrace, then presently up 
another flight and between two tall, arching 
box-trees that actually meet over it. It is 
an invitation writ large. 
To walk beneath that rich glossy-green 
arch is to step back a century and a half. 
Just as the sight of something motionless is 
necessary to gauge one’s own speed, so the 
enduring calm behind this hedge makes the 
feverish race back there in the city seem like 
a nightmare of driving, rowelling hurry. 
Life had a broader margin in the first half 
of the eighteenth century, and there is a 
peculiar quality in a box hedge preserva¬ 
tive of quiet ease and of flavor; haste and 
hustle can no more pass its green bastions 
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