THE HOUSE AND ITS SITE 
By William C. Hazlett 
T HE highest authority we possess upon methods, 
morals and manners has advised us to count 
the cost of a tower before beginning to build. This 
is, of course, but another way of suggesting the 
advisability of taking heed at the beginning that the 
result be worth the cost. If this applies to towers, 
mere marks of power or vantage ground for watch¬ 
fulness, how much more should it apply to the house, 
the man’s Home—his castle and his family’s fold. 
And of the parts of the cost of this to-be-well-con¬ 
sidered result—this home the most important in 
their order, taking it for granted that healthfulness, 
strength and durability have been provided—is the 
fitting of the home to its occupant, and the house to 
its site. The first of these, though pregnant with 
suggestion, is not the subject of this present inquiry. 
Many men of well-ordered domestic habits have 
had it long in mind to become the owner and pos¬ 
sessor of a home, the temple of the family altar and 
the household gods; the locus of his own vine and 
fig tree. In course of time, with the exercise of such 
care and prudence in its selection as may be, he has 
in his possession a site for this home. A stately 
spread of ground perhaps, wooded, with hill and 
valley, forest, stream and distant view of sea or 
mountain. Maybe, a modest portion of the earth 
with little of intrinsic worth. Whatever it is, it is 
his own and is to receive, in the ordering of his home, 
his best care and attention. 
This site, large or small, stately or modest - and 
the small and modest requires greater thought and 
care than the other has certain inherent conditions 
of prospect and aspect; certain individualities of 
view, a tree here, a boulder there; a stream, a slope; 
an ugly thing to be hidden, an unpleasant prospect 
to be masked; 
whatever you 
w i 11—w h ic h 
differentiates it 
from another, 
making it a 
thing apart and 
to be treated by 
itself. Given 
this site, with 
whatever con¬ 
ditions m a y 
surround or be 
a part of it, his 
house must 
adapt itself to 
these, not they 
to it; must bend 
itself, with due 
consideration for his mode and habit of life, to its 
environment; must lit him, his site and its con¬ 
ditions, as does his glove, his coat, or anything that 
by long use has become almost a part and parcel of 
himself. 
And this condition of adaptability, this necessity 
for so planning that every advantage that nature has 
given to the site may be made the most of; this 
bending and shifting of plan so as to obtain the 
maximum of goods and minimum of ills, is a func¬ 
tion of each site and a condition precedent to the 
act of building. It is not intended that this fitting 
of house to site should mean to advocate the forcing 
of plan, the bizarre and extravagant bending of it 
merely for the sake of acquiring a fancied condition of 
individuality or for the sake of being unusual; but 
rather the sober, thoughtf ul placing of room, or door, 
or window where the special need requires, the care¬ 
ful weighing and balancing of demands and the 
quiet refinement that necessarily goes with a studied 
and well digested whole. I he individuality of plan 
will follow of itself. 1 he differences that mark the 
house of X. and Y. come from the careful and sys¬ 
tematic following of the programme and of the par¬ 
ticular conditions that obtain in the one and not in 
the other; and they will differ only as the habit of 
life of their occupants vary and the surrounding 
conditions are unlike; hut one will be the house of 
X., the other that of Y., and no more alike than X. 
and Y. themselves. 
There is no site so small, none so crooked, no con¬ 
dition so bad, but that by taking care, help may come. 
Possibly the long and narrow plot, owned and sold by 
speculative land companies and common in suburban 
towns, may be thought to be without the pale, but 
it may be shown 
that even with 
this condition, 
bad as it is, 
something of 
interest and in- 
dividualitymay 
he made to ob¬ 
tain. 
'Poo much in¬ 
sistence can¬ 
not be laid upon 
this matter of 
fitness. It 
should be, and 
is, of trifling 
importance 
whether the 
convention is 
FIGURE i 
228 
