The House from the Street 
THE UTILIZATION OF A SMALL SUBURBAN LOT 
AT LONG WOOD, MASSACHUSETTS 
Kilham & Hopkins, Architects 
I T often happens that the owner of a 
small suburban place contents himself with 
merely rounding up the soil of his lot and 
sowing grass seed on the rolled surface, after 
his house is completed. The space is too 
small, he says, to do anything else with it; 
and if he goes so far as to 
have a few Japanese bar¬ 
berry plants arranged 
around the steps, his 
bosom swells with con¬ 
scious pride at his efforts 
to beautify his neighbor¬ 
hood. Fences or high 
hedges he generally dis¬ 
cards as interfering with 
the free view through the 
block, so dear to the 
present-day American 
heart. 
The fact that on the first 
approach of warm weather 
his family incontinently 
flees to the seaside or 
country, and remains there 
until the first frosts nip all 
but the hardiest plants, 
causes the wife to say, 
quite naturally, that as she 
is to remain away all summer there is no oc¬ 
casion to start a flower garden for the benefit 
of the stray tramp or idle chore-man or, most 
unfortunate of all, the deserted American 
husband who sleeps in the empty house. 
This theory has caused one of the most de¬ 
sirable suburbs of Boston 
to be converted into a sort 
of summer desert of dull 
green lawns, shade trees 
and glaring macadamized 
roads, along which one will 
search in vain for flowers 
or any evidence of an in¬ 
terest in gardening. 
That the theory is falla¬ 
cious may be shown by 
the accompanying illustra¬ 
tions of a house and gar¬ 
den in Longwood, Massa¬ 
chusetts. The house faces 
north upon an interior lot 
87X110 feet in size. Re¬ 
strictions and other con¬ 
siderations caused the 
building to be placed 27 
feet back from the street. 
Owing to the difficulty of 
raising any flowers in the 
THE PLAN OF THE LOT 
Property of Mrs. Richard Briggs 
300 
