House and Garden 
FARMHOUSE AT STANTON, GLOUCESTERSHIRE 
well-marked historic styles. The 
minor English buildings, the farm 
houses of Normandy, even our own 
Colonial houses offer starting points 
for such a case. But granted that 
the man be a millionaire, with an 
established position in society, or 
even with aspirations for it, his 
house must be a far different affair, 
suitably planned for entertaining 
many people, and expressed in some 
formal, well digested style such as 
that of Louis XVI. Indeed the 
selection of a style suitable for a 
million dollar “cottage” at Newport 
is far less difficult than the finding 
of the right expression for a subur¬ 
ban house of moderate size. The 
owner’s training, his inclinations, too, 
must not he forgotten. A man with 
a well marked bias in favor of all 
French things, for example Mr. 
James Hazen Hyde, would naturally choose one of 
the French styles for his house. One so full of 
enthusiasm for all things Italian as Mrs. Edith 
Wharton, might well be pardoned for giving her 
house a distinctly Italian form. 
But these are exceptions. Not one in a thousand 
of us has any intellectual bias so strongly marked as 
to justify its expression in the style of his house. It 
is obvious that the architect’s training and predi¬ 
lections for certain styles will, in the main, exercise 
a far greater influence on the house than will those of 
the owner. The men who achieve most by work¬ 
ing in definite styles are those who entertain the most 
positive convictions that the style of their choice is 
without question the only right, the only logical style 
for our times. It is Mr. 
Ralph Adam Cram’s 
firm conviction that the 
abandonment of the 
Gothic style brought 
about the ruin of all 
that was noblest in the 
art of architecture. It is 
his almost religious zeal 
for a revivification of 
that style that gives to 
his designs their absorb¬ 
ing interest. It is be¬ 
cause Thomas Hastings 
believes we will achieve 
no worthy end unless 
we succeed in making 
our work an evolution 
from the French styles 
of the eighteenth cen- angle post, pattenden, 
tury, and it is because kent 
For were we willing to pay the cost incident to shaping 
the timbers by hand, we would not tolerate a leaky 
wall. Yet, more’s the pity, we are forever making 
the attempt to have the semblance without the reality. 
We build an honest brick wall, nail strips of wood 
against it and plaster the space between them. What 
a preposterous imitation of a once reasonable con¬ 
struction ! 
Thus, I say, where a traditional style of building 
existed, it was modified, its evolution was assisted 
by the’ limitations imposed by the use of local mate¬ 
rials. But how is it with us who lack a local tradi¬ 
tion and who are no longer bound to the use of 
materials at hand ? Modern facilities of transpor¬ 
tation have actually made it, in many cases, difficult 
and expensive to employ the material at hand, so 
that the place where the building is to be erected has 
but little influence on the choice of materials and 
consequent development of style. To-day it is 
cheaper to build a house in Maine of wood from 
Oregon than of granite quarried within a mile, 
or to finish the rooms with cypress from the Gulf of 
Mexico than with white pine from the Pine Tree 
State. Such are the anomalies of the exhaustion of 
natural resources, of the use of machinery, of high- 
priced labor and of cheap transportation. 
the owner’s individuality and the architect’s 
PREDILECTIONS 
The owner’s personality and his mode of life 
should, of course, exercise an influence on the style of 
his house. If he be a man of quiet tastes, fond of 
home life, not given to lavish entertainment, those 
qualities should be expressed by a restrained, a 
modest domestic feeling in the treatment of the house, 
that it is almost impossible to express in certain 
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