RETROSPECT TT OUSE & GARDEN is twelve years 
AND FORECAST El old with this issue; not such a great 
age, but nowadays, at least, an age of ma¬ 
jority—or better, a coming of age. Yes, the magazine after a 
dozen years of development and growth assumes its toga virilis. 
It is now out of the uncertain days of childhood, but not approach¬ 
ing for a long while yet the dried up old age and feeble minded¬ 
ness which comes to magazines as well as to human beings. And 
we do not expect such a senectitude, for we believe that in the sub¬ 
jects to which House & Garden is dedicated there is the germ 
and essence of never-ending youth. To the earnest-hearted man 
the betterment of house and of garden will have perpetual appeal. 
Long after he is wearied of the transient attraction of things of 
temporary moment, he will continue to be interested in making 
his home more attractive, in perfecting the environment of his 
family. A truer satisfaction comes to him who has succeeded in 
creating beautiful surroundings for his domestic life, in produc¬ 
ing an atmosphere of charm and simplicity wherein grows an ap¬ 
preciation for the finer things than can ever be attained by the 
mere amassing of money. Perhaps he has fulfilled his duty to his 
country in a better way by this accomplishment. We think he has. 
Changes have come since that June of 1901. The weakling 
whose career was so solicitously started by Wilson Eyre and 
Frank Miles Day is not just the infant he was then. His features 
have altered somewhat but his heart is the same. Those who 
fostered his early life have given over their attention to the crea¬ 
tion of houses and gardens exemplifying the ideals they taught 
him to speak, but even though not directly under their guidance, 
he still tries to be true to his early training. 
Perhaps in this retrospective mood the salutatory expression 
with which House & Garden greeted the world under the direc¬ 
tion of Mr. Eyre and Mr. Day might well be quoted. It is as 
apropos in 1913 as in 1901. The prophecy of a reviving interest 
in domestic architecture and in more intelligent gardening has 
been well substantiated. We will try to bear the torch lighted at the 
time this forecast was made, and keep its brilliancy undimmed. 
“The lively interest in gardens that has shown itself in this 
country within the last few years is but another proof of the truth 
of Bacon's oft quoted words, ‘a man shall ever see, that, when 
ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, 
sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater 
perfection.’ The latter half of the eighteenth century was, as far 
as this country is concerned, the period during which civility and 
elegancy reached their finest development; and the stately colonial 
mansion was thought incomplete without a suitable setting of 
formal gardening. As taste declined with the growing years of 
the nineteenth century, the reasonable unity between the house 
and its surroundings, formerly so well considered, fell almost out 
of sight. If any attempt at it were made it generally resulted in 
the case of the larger houses, in an expanse of cropped lawn, 
dotted with crescent or star-shaped flower beds between which 
and the front gate an Apollo Belvedere made cast-iron eyes across 
the driveway at a chaste and unresponsive (because equally cast- 
iron) Diana. As for the smaller house the ideas of the naturalis¬ 
tic school have been inculcated for so many years with such ardor 
that its owner even to-day can scarcely see the absurdity of treat¬ 
ing its half-acre in imitation of a rolling landscape.” 
“Whether our own age be one of civility and elegancy, it might 
be profitless to inquire; but certainly, though we have come in 
many instances to build stately, the art of our gardens has not kept 
pace with that of our buildings. The thought of the fine garden 
as the natural accompaniment of the stately house has too seldom 
presented itself to have been realized in many instances. But now 
we are by way of changing all that; and though the examples of 
how the thing ought to be done are still all too few, we are not 
without them. Just now they are more easily found in connection 
with houses of great cost than about more modest homes; but 
signs show that better things are at hand, even where the grounds 
are small and the amount to be spent very'- limited.” 
THE MISCONCEIVED T F anyone were sufficiently inspired 
BUNGALOW with the passion for research 
and classification to desire the most 
difficult field in which to exploit his accomplishments, we would 
assign him the labor of classifying bungalows. The undertak¬ 
ing really is more than a task; it is a sentence. Imagine the 
classification of the “yaller dog;” it is simplicity compared with 
the work of arranging in classes all sorts of bungalows. Perhaps 
this is because there is a very hazy idea of what the word bunga¬ 
low means, — perhaps there is no definite object that the term calls 
forth; at any rate it is a good catholic field, but a confusing one. 
There was a man who accepted an invitation to “our forest 
bungalow Wald — something or other.” He loved the woods, was 
fond of hunting and looked forward to a glorious time spent in 
the open wearing a flannel shirt, sleeping on a bed that smelt of 
balsam. What he found when the six-cylinder whirled him 
through the stone gates over about ten miles of smooth, broad road 
that should have entitled its engineer and constructor to perpetual 
honors, was a fine Colonial house. The forest was there; big 
trees, suggestions of soft, swampy land near the lake outlet, tumb¬ 
ling streams in rocky gorges, — all ideal, but when he looked at the 
white symmetrical building, walked over its red tile porch or 
noted the shadows from the graceful, Corinthian capitals, he lost 
heart. He didn’t hunt, he didn’t fish. He chose the one respect¬ 
able suit in his wardrobe, donned tennis shoes and claimed he was 
too tired to move from the veranda. He had the awful fear that 
he might shoot a buck if he went out, and then discover upon the 
body a beribboned collar engraved in Spencerian script with the 
name Rollo. 
The fault that suggests itself to 11s lies not in the interpretation 
of what a bungalow shall be, nor in the immense variety of build¬ 
ings bearing the name. The mistake is to build any summer home 
in a type of architecture chosen merely for its attractiveness, call 
it a bungalow and dedicate it to uses utterly foreign to its pur¬ 
poses, or place it where it is so blatantly out of harmony that it 
casts an artificial light over its surroundings. This tendency 
on the part of individuals is part of the cross architects carry. 
On the other hand the bungalow, that is, any form of summer 
home given over to informal uses and placed in a natural or wild 
and rugged situation, is not given the attention of architects in 
general. Probably this is because it may not be a flexible subject 
on which to work. In another part of this magazine is mentioned 
what certain Scandinavian architects are doing with a type of 
summer house. It seemed to us that it showed two things: one, 
the potentiality of elementary building forms for architectural 
treatment; the other, a way of meeting the summer house problem 
in a manner pleasing and most fitting to certain large sections of 
this country. 
The first suggestion need not be limited to the log house. In 
the West it would apply equally as well to the type of building 
that the Spanish missionaries erected following the lines of the 
native adobe structures which they found. In the East the same 
is true of certain Colonial forms. But if you choose the pleasure 
of reviving original styles, see that they are in the right atmos¬ 
phere and do not equip them with the interior accommodations 
demanded by the most complex society. Such a course is as arti¬ 
ficial and deceptive as that pursued by the owner of Wald— 
something or other. 
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