HIGH COURT 
By Helen W. Henderson 
r I 'HE situation of “High Court” inevi- 
tably suggests its architect’s conception 
of what is one of the most picturesque of 
Cornish homes. Built upon the summit 
of a high hill, looking over the Connecticut 
Valley, with the river winding ribbon-wise 
between the slopes, and the whole culminating 
gloriously in Mount Ascutney—Nature’s 
scheme has been simply crowned with this 
villa of rare architectural beauty which com¬ 
mands the view and gives to the landscape 
that touch of human interest and opulent 
cultivation at once suggestive of an Italian 
landscape. 
High Court is in Cornish, New Hampshire, 
four miles from Windsor, Vermont—the 
nearest base of supplies and railway station. 
The original house was built by Miss Annie 
Lazarus, now Mrs. Humphreys-Johnston, 
somewhere about 1890. Mr. Charles A. 
Platt, of New York, was the architect. It 
was of stucco, two storeyed and was razed 
to the ground by a memorable fire which 
alarmed the countryside about 1894. It is 
still a current story in Cornish that the only 
thing which escaped the general conflagration 
was the ice in the well-hlled ice-house, which 
lay—so the story goes—cool and compact 
under the charred ruins of its domicile. 
Miss Lazarus immediately set about the 
reconstruction of her home, with the same 
plan and the same architect, making many 
changes in detail but few in arrangement. 
After the hitter experience of the fire, her 
ASCUTNEY AND THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY 
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