HOUSE AND GARDEN 
January, 1910 
This house at Radnor, Pa., Horace Trumbauer, architect, illustrates 
the possibility of using stone in conjunction with the half-timber 
plaster work 
closets may come next to chapels, pantries under boudoir, yet 
each have every requirement of light and space exactly fulfilled, 
with their proper and fitting exterior expression. There is the 
best possible understanding between the plan and elevation, the 
understanding that the plan is master and the other must honor 
and obey. 
The results in England, where it is best studied, are those soft, 
beautiful houses, which affect us by their perfect repose and har¬ 
mony, rest and simplicity; no stress or striving here, only peace 
and quiet. They take their place in the landscape more like some 
work of Nature than of man, nestling among the verdure almost 
like some larger plant, more as if they grew than as if they were 
made. Rules of the books, recipes from the schools, seem very 
thin and profitless in their presence. 
These buildings are not dependent on the paint shop or the 
planing-mill; they are brothers to the soil—what else are the brick 
and mortar and rough-hewn timber? They are not designed under 
an artificial rule derived from nothing in nature. Then the adorn¬ 
ment of these English houses does not consist of motives invented 
for use on Greek temples five hundred years before Christ. What 
detail and ornament they have were invented painfully, lovingly, 
and slowly through the centuries by the people themselves, im¬ 
proving and bettering as they came up out of their darkness of 
ignorance and poverty. Eloquent of a people’s history, those who 
live in these houses own them in a very real sense. 
As for their use in this country, the utilitarian has no com¬ 
plaint on that score, as they are perfectly suited to our climate. 
The plaster makes a warmer wall in winter and a cooler one in 
summer than can be had with only wood. When properly done 
it is very durable and there is no cost of upkeep. It can be made 
thoroughly charming in color itself and wonderfully harmonious 
among the surrounding vegetation. 
Of course in considering the modern work one must not expect 
to find in it the charm and fascination which so delight us in the 
old English crofts and manors. It is an exceedingly difficult 
thing to judge architecture per se, that is to separate the architec¬ 
ture, the conscious design, entirely from its setting, and pass 
judgment on it solely as an artistic composition, without regard 
to the accidental or fortuitous in its surroundings, or to those 
caressing marks by which we may know that Father Time has 
passed that way. This added beauty begins where the architect 
left off, but he is too often given credit for the beauty that is of 
Nature and not of man—the perfect result that neither may obtain 
alone. The English cathedrals—were they so beautiful, so noble, 
so satisfying, when the architect stood off and looked at his 
finished work, their future history unborn and timid Nature look¬ 
ing on from afar, not yet ready to run up and cling about its base 
and storm its walls and find a foothold in every cranny? 1 fear 
they were not so good then, for every picture is helped by its frame. 
Your architect prefers the cathedrals of France, standing in 
the midst of squalid villages, with the old houses circling thick 
about the base, clinging to its very skirts. These buildings are 
Much of the charm of old half-timber houses results from the use of 
various materials in combination and in the looseness of construc¬ 
tion — notice for instance the uneven spacing of the gable-end timbers 
In comparing modern efforts with the old work it is well to bear in 
mind the latter’s great advantage in the mellowing influences of time 
Half-timber work admits of great freedom in the design of chimneys. 
A house near Philadelphia, Lindley Johnson, architect 
