18 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
E ventually each man „ _ _ _ _ 
must decide on which WHICH SIDE OF THE DOOR? 
side of the door he will live. 
Men have been deciding this cjuestion ever since they took to living 
in houses, and will continue, so long as the door stands between 
them and the world. And it is necessary to know on which side 
a man wants to live, for by his desires can you know him. 
Two kinds of people are interested in this matter of doors: 
those who live in their own and those who live in other people’s 
houses. Jones has a house of his own, and he is concerned with 
the thing'he possesses. Smith, who owns no house, is concerned 
with something he lacks. Jones is homesick only when he is away 
from home. Smith can never be homesick in any place other than 
his home. Jones is an owner, a master, a liege lord of lands and 
all that is therein. Smith is a tenant, a payer of rent, a slave of 
tribute. Jones dwells on the right side of the door. Smith is 
eternally wishing that he did. 
I’ WISH you knew my friend 
O WNERSHIP, like faith, affords a sense of security—and the 
whole conception of home is based on a feeling of security. 
You can close the door and the world is shut out. You can go 
away from it, and it will be there when you come back. 
Now the tenant, the man who lives in other people’s houses, can 
never be sure that it will be there when he comes back. In fact, 
that is one of the reasons why he lives in another man’s house— 
he doesn’t want it there when he comes back. And he sets forth 
on an eternal quest after an elustive, visionary something whose 
absence makes this present dwelling a whited sepulchre. 
What am I getting at? This— 
Hyper-idealists are wont to make a distinction between a house 
and a home. They speak of a house as though it were a mere 
heap of bricks, stone and mortar; and in the same breath they 
define a home as an intangible, indescribable atmosphere built on 
idealistic lines. In theory this is excellent; in practice it is very 
bad. Until the day comes when we can comprehend music apart 
from tone, form apart from contour, Divinity apart from its man¬ 
ifestations and a sacrament apart from its outward and visible sign, 
we will have to jog along with our wholly inadequate view of a 
home as a place of gross materials—roofs, windows, walls and 
floors. In short, it is a mighty poor home that isn’t a house. And 
it is no home at all that is not based on the sense of ownership, 
ownership of very tangible things. 
So then when Smith says that the height of his desire is to 
have a home, he doesn’t yearn for an atmosphere; he wants a 
house—a house with a door that he can live behind. When lovers 
dream of building up a home together, they 
dream of building up a house together—a house 
with a door that they may open to the sunshine 
of the world. The sum of most men’s desires 
is to dwell on the right side of the door—a door 
that they planned for, picked out and purchased 
with some very real money. 
R EAMS have been written on the decay of 
home life in America. In turn, the bicycle, 
the narrow skirt, the motor, the movies and 
Georgette crepe waists have borne the brunt of 
the blame. In each successive generation the 
real issue is dodged. Home life in America is 
decaying because our houses are decaying. 
Home life is just as permanent as the house 
that it graces. In the age when men built homes 
that would last, they cultivated a home life that 
would last as long and longer. The reverse of 
the rule applies to-day. Divorce is twin sister to flimsy construc¬ 
tion. Houses built of shoddy materials, thrown together for a 
short ten years’ existence—these are the marks of our decay. The 
builder is not to blame, nor is the architect nor the state of the 
market. Lasting materials aplenty are available, good architects 
are readily found, nor is the honest builder a rara avis. The fault 
lies with the man who first dreams of the house. The fault lies 
with his plans for living: whether the house is to last or not. 
This is the lesson of the man who built his house upon the 
sands. He could not have helped knowing that it could not with¬ 
stand the wind and wave. In like measure we are building houses 
with placid disregard for the wind and wave of our complex life. 
We are planning them as homes to abandon, building them as 
homes to forget. The door hangs loose, follows the whim of 
every passing breeze. But plan an honest house, and you are on 
the high road to planning an honest life. Build an honest house, 
and you’ll soon know on which side the door you want to live. 
Lowder. He's the man I 
had in mind when I wrote 
those words about an honest house plan being the high road to an 
honest life. Lowder is well past sixty, and when he goes upstairs 
now he has to stop half way for breath. But that hasn’t dimmed 
his ardor for the house he is going to build. 
The idea seized him when be was a young man. “Some day,” 
he promised himself, “I'll build a house.” Then he married and 
the children came, and that meant more mouths to feed and more 
shoes to buy and more school bills to pay. It was discouraging, 
but he kept the idea in the back of his head, and every time an 
odd moment presented itself, he worked on it. He subscribed 
to architectural and gardening papers, clipped out pictures here 
and there and pasted them carefully in a scrap book. A dozen 
times or more he changed his idea on what type of house it should 
be, but whatever the style, it was going to be a good house—good 
timbers, good stone, good windows, good doors and floors—the 
best of everything, as he put it. 
Lowder has been planning that house now for thirty-eight years. 
It has been his anchor when the wind and wave hit him, for he 
knew the sort of home life he wanted to make in that house and 
he kept on making it. He still speaks of the house. He still 
takes out his scrap books—and the dream is real to him. He 
burns with zeal for it. It is his hobby, that house. 
The other day he mentioned the fact that he had bought some 
cemetery lots. Then it began to dawn on me that Lowder might 
never live to build that house. The thought was distressing. I 
changed the subject. “Well, what’s new?” I asked. “Come up¬ 
stairs and I'll show you,” he said confidentially; “I’ve just found 
a plan for a living-room that I’m going to put in that house.” 
But I never got to look at that plan for a living-room. Half 
way up we met Lowder’s boy coming down—a big chap, Junior 
in college, just back from Plattsburg. He had a clear eye and a 
pair of shoulders that any man would envy. As I looked at him 
I saw what Lowder’s life-long house planning had done for him 
—it was the way he had satisfied his desire for ownership of 
very tangible things while he was at work building up a home 
life. The boy was a product of the plan—“everything of the best.” 
All this time he was going to build a house that would last, and 
he had built a home that had lasted. He had always lived on 
the right side of the door. 
B 
UT there is still another angle to the problem. A house may 
be honestly built, it may be a home of noble ideals, and yet 
fail in an important part of its mission. Lor 
every house is a part of the community, and the 
mission of every house is to enhance, with its 
contribution, the fine appearance of that com¬ 
munity. Bad architecture, eccentric architec¬ 
ture, plays the same havoc in the town that the 
bad repute or eccentricity of one person will play 
in a family circle. Ruskin put the matter aptly 
when he wrote, “All good architecture is the 
expression of life and character.” 
Houses are people with very definite expres¬ 
sions of character. They must conform to what 
the environment and the age conceive to be good 
character. An Arizona ranch house, suitable in 
character to Arizona, would be an esthetic and 
architectural crime on Commonwealth Avenue, 
Boston or Lifth Avenue, New York. 
This is where the architect enters upon his 
work. He is trained to recognize and create 
character in houses just as a priest is trained to recognize and 
create character in men. The priest, builds up souls; the architect 
builds up houses. Once men of Lowder’s stamp have conceived 
the idea of an honest house, it is for the architect to crystallize 
those ideas in tangible form. Lowder makes the home, the archi¬ 
tect gives it definite form, a form that complies with what the 
age and the environment deem suitable. 
T HESE then, are the three steps in making a home: deciding 
whether you want to live in your own or in other people’s 
houses; deciding what sort of home you want to build; and finally 
building it on honest lines that conform to the principles of good 
architect as the age and community demand. 
To the furthering of these principles the pages of this issue are 
devoted. Look them over, and then sit down and try to think 
of a home apart from a house, or a home apart from a sense of 
ownership, or a house apart from the community. It can’t be done. 
