The home of B. F. Pitman, Longwood, Mass. — Kilam & Hopkins, architects. The straight lines of the fence are broken by the vine-covered 
posts and gateway; the white wall is shaded by three great trees 
A Colonial House and Its Garden 
A HOME WHERE THE OWNERS ENDEAVORED TO REPRODUCE THE SPIRIT OF 
COLONIAL TIMES IF NOT THE LETTER-THEIR GARDEN OF RECTANGLES 
BY Arthur W . Dean 
Photographs and measured plan by Thomas W. Sears 
T HERE once was a fine Colo¬ 
nial house wedged in be¬ 
tween its “Mission” stucco neigh¬ 
bors on a busy suburban street. 
It was an exact and faithful re¬ 
production of the old Massachu¬ 
setts home of Miles Alden or John 
Standish or some such historical 
figure. On the square patch of 
ground behind it was the finest of 
Japanese gardens, which might 
have been dug out of Nippon and 
carried over bodily. The people 
who lived in this house had de¬ 
cided Empire tendencies, so that 
one was always wondering if they 
might not grow like those mythi¬ 
cal monsters with lion heads, 
women’s bodies and tails like 
fishes. Many people came to re¬ 
vel in that house, but it always 
seemed to me a pathetic sight. 
Here is a Colonial house that 
The entrance gateway swings a double gate with slender 
baluster grille 
the “Empire” owners of the afore¬ 
mentioned place might call hoax, 
but in my twisted way of thinking 
it is genuine fourteen karat. This 
house, the home of B. F. Pitman, 
is in Longwood, a residential sec¬ 
tion, near Brookline and not many 
minutes from Boston. As is true 
of so many of this city’s suburbs, 
it is blessed with fine old trees and 
many of them, and the spirit of 
Colonial New England seems fair¬ 
ly tangible, or at least audible, in 
the whisperings of the elm tree 
foliage overhanging its shaded 
streets. When it came to build 
here, the owners felt that there 
w'as no choice of a style; it simplv 
demanded something Colonial. 
Instead of following slavishly 
the disputed canons of this style, 
or making an exact reproduction 
of some uncomfortable house that 
(17) 
