ESTHETIC EFFECTS 
GAINED BY SIMPLE 
SURFACES AND 
STRAIGHT LINES IN 
THE H'OME OF 
I T would seem that 
there are moral as 
well as esthetic qualities 
in good building, and the 
Pattison house is, first of 
all, good and sincere in 
its construction. It is of 
unstained cedar shingles 
that grow soft-toned with 
age. The beams of the 
There is no fancy detail about the porches or the roof. The beams are left to show and are 
uncut and untrimmed 
overhanging roof are left 
to show and are uncut and 
untrimmed. The door and 
window casings are as sim¬ 
ple as they can be. The 
sashes are filled with small 
panes of ordinary glass. 
There is no fancy detail 
about the porch cornices, 
only the 2-inch strips on 
the post casings might be 
called decorative. Inside 
all the door and window 
trim all the mullions and 
transoms are made up of 
straight wooden strips, and, 
continued along the walls; 
they give them 
their sole deco¬ 
rative treat¬ 
ment. 
Some people 
have come to 
misunderstand 
the virtues of 
simplicity. 
They try to 
make a virtue 
out of mere 
L T gly plainness is just as bad as ugly 
over-ornamentation. The vital thing is to have an 
intelligent understanding and feeling for the funda¬ 
mental laws of design, and then to use them to ex¬ 
press your conception of a home idealistically. All 
that is praiseworthy and interesting in this house has 
been attained through an esthetic appreciation of the 
possibilities inherent in simple surfaces and straight 
lines. That is, after all, the secret of good design 
in building. No amount of ornamentation, no 
amount of labor and expenditure, can make up for 
FRANK A. PATTISON 
AT COLONIA, N. J. 
Antoinette Reh- 
MANN PERRETT 
its lack, while, on the 
other hand, with it you 
can make brilliant use of 
the humblest materials. 
The Pattison house has 
a low, broad-stretched 
look. Part of this is due 
to its general dimensions, 
but it has also used other 
means to obtain this ef¬ 
fect, which may well be 
suggestive to much smaller houses that are often hard-put to 
discover ways and means of looking low and in good proportion 
within the scope of their arbitrarily-fixed dimensions. One of the 
chief ways of getting this low appearance, aside from the general 
dimensions, is to have a simple, unbroken roof line without 
dormers and with deep eaves, as here, where the roof lines come 
down to a level with the window tops and where the gable ends 
extend well out. A second way is to have broad and simple 
fenestration, and still a third is to have a terrace about the house. 
Here the front terrace is broad and low, like the house itself, but 
if a simple terrace is not sufficient for a house, a well, a deco¬ 
rative balustrade or low piers connected by hedge plantings will 
often have an almost delusive way of enlarging and broadening it. 
The low, unornamented terrace here is in excellent taste and 
proportion. It is some 15 feet wide with a path across it, and it 
is just three low steps above the driveway. The steps are as 
broad as the entrance porch, which adds to the feeling of lowness. 
1 he trellised walls of the reception room 
show the decorative possibilities of the 
straight and vertical line in that treatment 
plainness. 
Straight lines give the living-hall an air of simplicity. Here the woodwork is stained brown and 
the panels are filled with a dull, deep gold, Japanese burlap 
416 
