The stable group of to-day should echo the architectural character of the house. Alfred Hopkins, architect 
Harmonizing the Outbuildings 
SUGGESTIONS FOR BRINGING THE WHOLE HOMESTEAD GROUP INTO HARMONY, 
WHETHER IT CONSIST OF NUMEROUS UNITS OR MERELY OF A HOUSE AND A GARAGE 
by William Allen 
T HE initial impression received by a traveler making his first 
tour in foreign lands is a sense of the architectural harmony 
to be found in the relation, one to another, of the different build¬ 
ings of every group he comes across, in town or in country, on 
mountainside or on plain. It is this harmonious relationship 
of building to building, especially of the lesser buildings dependent 
upon the main edifice, that forms the very backbone of structural 
picturesqueness, and makes us forget the squalor of the peasant’s 
surroundings in the artistic impression made by an arrangement 
of thatched cottages and outbuildings. 
Our Colonial ancestors brought to America a very strong sense 
of the value of harmonizing the outbuildings to their surround¬ 
ings, making both the house and the garden units of a complete 
scheme. Mt. Vernon is a notable example of this, and, so long as 
some style-purity survived, there were many other examples of 
early American architecture to illustrate the point. 
Even in some of the shingle-side cottages that have survived 
the vicissitudes of a century or two are to be found indications 
of just how strongly early American home-builders sought for 
picturesque effects, and their strong sense of consistency in the 
grouping of buildings of any sort. 
In the dark ages of the Fifties, and the Eighty-eights, public 
taste in architecture had called forth the never-to-be-forgotten 
reproach of Oueen Anne fronts andrMary Ann backs. These 
were eras where every known architectural style joined protest- 
ingly in a mad architectural melee all in one house, which was 
apt to have a Gothic balcony, a Colonial porch, a chalet porte- 
cochere, a Pompeian terrace, Louis XVI windows, Tudor turrets. 
Garages are springing up like mushrooms—why not build them 
to harmonize with the house 
and Italian chimneys, all at one and the same time, with a jumble 
of as many odds and ends for the outbuildings. Indeed the 
stables, the storehouses, the tool-houses and garden houses, the 
fuel houses and all outbuildings seemed to vie one with another 
for fantastic supremacy. 
Fortunately such things do not last 
long, and one remembers, with a smile, 
the remark of a worthy Quaker, who, 
amazed at the bad taste shown by his 
neighbor in the sort of a house he chose 
to build, remarked “John, if architec¬ 
ture be frozen music then thy house is 
truly a frost!” Everyone who plans 
to build now stops to take into con¬ 
sideration every fence, post, curb, shed, 
stable, and outbuilding, and its final 
relation to the whole scheme of house 
and grounds. 
In harmonizing the ^outbuildings 
there are^three’things to consider, so 
Mt. Vernon is a striking example of the harmonious grouping of all outbuildings 
(M) 
