Improving the Town-House Parlor 
THE FORMAL ROOMS IN CITY-HOUSES MAY BE MADE BEAUTIFUL AND LIVABLE EVEN THOUGH THEIR 
PLAN IS BAD AND THE FINISH UGLY—VALUABLE SUGGESTIONS FOR REDECORATION AND FURNISHING 
by Lucy Abbot Throop 
Illustrated from Interiors Decorated by Elsie de Wolf 
T HERE seems to be no word to take the place of the out-of- 
date “parlor,” which unfortunately has fallen into dis¬ 
repute through ill usage. Its origin is an extremely pleasant one, 
for it stands for ease and leisure to talk and enjoy life, but 
nothing could survive the hard times of the "best parlor" of 
rural districts, that acme of dreariness, and the hideous black 
walnut affairs of early Victorian days, and so the word has slowly 
dropped out of our vocabulary, though in many city houses 
the room with its ills of con¬ 
struction still remains. No 
one has yet found a substi¬ 
tute which exactly fills the 
void. Living-room does not, 
for it lacks the suggestion of 
dignity which a parlor needs; 
and drawing-room, though 
better, is inadequate, for to 
many it seems to suggest too 
much dignity. Although 
none of us has a parlor nowa¬ 
days that is the kind of by¬ 
gone days, yet many of us 
have the improved and 
charming modern kind which 
I shall call parlor, and per¬ 
haps we can help bring the 
word as well as the room back 
to their oldtime honor. 
Every house, to my mind, 
should contain, if possible, a 
formal and informal living- 
room — that is to say, a draw¬ 
ing-room or parlor, besides a 
regular living-room. The liv¬ 
ing-room should be comfort¬ 
able and roomy; with easy 
chairs and sofas, and big 
tables and bookcases, and 
plenty of both daylight and 
lamplight — a room which 
makes one feel that life is 
pleasant and where there is no 
sound of its grinding wheels. 
The drawing-room should 
have all this livable charm 
and, in addition, the gala or 
holiday touch. This is the 
stumbling block to many; the room becomes cold, formal, dead, 
one to flee from instead of being happy in. The French say it is 
because we are fundamentally an unhappy nation that so many 
of our homes lack this delightful touch, but of course no true 
American will accept such a far-fetched and false explanation. 
It is rather that there is a lack of knowledge and also a certain 
timidity and indifference toward the great subject of home making. 
Many women prefer to have certain kinds of furnishing simply be¬ 
cause Mrs. A or Mrs. B has them, and because it is easier to copy 
than to sit down and seriously study out one’s own problems. This 
is the cause; of the monotony of furnishing in so many houses. 
The failure in beauty in a house is not always entirely due to 
the furnishing; for often the room itself is of such poor pro¬ 
portions and the woodwork so bad that it seems almost impossible 
to bring any charm at all out of such chaos. 
The average house in large cities is one of a block, long and 
narrow and lighted at back and front, with a skylight 
letting a little light filter 
down through the halls. In 
the smaller cities this difficult 
plan is not so often met with, 
but even there it sometimes 
casts its blight. There are 
two general plans: one with 
the entrance door on the 
ground floor and a hall on the 
floor above between the par¬ 
lor and dining-room, which 
allows the rooms to be the 
full width of the house. The 
other plan has a long, narrow 
hall running the length of 
the house with the rooms 
opening from it. This lat¬ 
ter plan is the uglier of 
the two, and more difficult 
to arrange, for the rooms are 
apt to seem like a wide hall 
and the light is often poor. 
There is a room of this de¬ 
scription which I did over for 
its owner which may serve as 
an example, and perhaps be 
a little help to others. 
The room as I found it had 
walls covered with a cold 
dark blue paper with a large 
two-toned design which ab¬ 
sorbed all the light that man¬ 
aged to come through the not 
over large windows. Some 
of the furniture was very 
good, nearly all Jacobean, 
but the upholstery of the dif¬ 
ferent pieces was of every 
possible tone of blue. The carpet was a bright and hard blue, 
and the curtains still another shade, but luckily a beautiful one. 
In front of the mantel facing the wide door into the hall was a 
sofa which was perfectly useless because of its position. The 
other furniture also seemed placed without rhyme or reason. 
There were some good pictures and mirrors, but the whole room 
was a failure and gloomy to an extreme. The first thing was to 
outline a plan whereby we could use the curtains and portieres 
and some of the furniture without re-covering. I*or the walls 
Simplicity and restraint yield dignity; fussiness destroys it. An example of the suc¬ 
cessful use of a single picture above a mantel of beautiful lines which are not 
spoiled by the usual litter of ornaments 
