House and Garden 
Vol. VIII October, 1905 No. 3 
THE VALUE AND USE OF SIMPLE MATERIALS 
IN HOUSE BUILDING 
By William L. Price 
GpHE advantages of the use of common 
and rough local materials seem to me 
to be threefold. First, they are cheap; 
second, they are easily obtainable; and 
third, they are beautiful. Burroughs says 
somewhere that a house should be built of 
materials picked up at hand, and in large 
degree he seems to me to be right. Not 
only for sentimental and practical reasons 
but because it tends 
to produce types—- 
tends towards a 
pleasing homogeneity 
in local style that is 
altogether good. 
If you walk through 
the counties of Eng¬ 
land, you will find 
just such varied yet 
typical local color. 
Pile-roofed timbered 
houses here, thatched 
whitewashed houses 
there, stone and slate 
or brick houses in 
another section; and 
these cottages, simple 
in t h e m s e Ives and 
devoid of ornament 
in most part, make 
together that world¬ 
charming Rural Eng¬ 
land that is without 
peer. 
We have boxed the 
compass architectur¬ 
ally, raking over the 
world’s scrap heap of 
styles and the supply man’s scrap heap of 
materials and, as a consequence, urban and 
rural districts alike are for the most part 
marred not only by a total lack of local 
significance in architecture, but by a lack of 
any homogeneity of style, material, or color, 
and the result is an unrestful hodgepodge, 
blatantly declaring its crudities, instead of 
adding an air of brooding homeliness to 
Nature’s beauties. 
Our homes should 
nestle among the 
trees and fields, not 
ramp upon the high¬ 
ways. 
Now almost all 
localities offer in 
their stone, wood or 
brick clays, sand and 
pebbles, some domi¬ 
nant note of color or 
texture that, used 
intelligently, would 
give us just the fit¬ 
ness that the bird 
nest has—just the 
local color that would 
always harmonize. 
But some one has 
seen and admired a 
boulder house in its 
fit home among the 
boulders, and must 
import boulders to 
sandy flat or rolling 
sward. 
So it is with archi¬ 
tecture. You cannot 
OLD ROUND JAMB WINDOWS IN THE 
ROSE VALLEY GUEST HOUSE 
I0 3 
Copyright, IQ05, by The ffohn C. Winston Co 
