4 8 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
February, 1910 
The Mitchell cottage, East Orange, N. J., has a gambrel roof of 
pleasing proportions. Joy Wheeler Dow was the architect 
The gable ends were usually built of stone, since they were 
difficult to protect from the weather, but the front and rear walls, 
covered by the wide roof, could be covered with plaster much 
more cheaply and with a maximum of effect. Yet while stone 
for the ends and plaster for the front and rear was the usual 
method of construction, it was by no means the only one. Any 
or all of the materials above mentioned were used in the same 
house, and it is by no means uncommon to see four or even five 
in combination even in a very small building; the charm of the 
free design which was the inevitable result cannot be approached 
in any more stereotyped architecture. 
The moldings and details employed were as individual as 
the design. We find many of the porch columns, for example, 
hexagonal or octagonal in shape and crowned with capitals the 
moldings of which are suggestive of both Greek and Gothic 
origin. Other houses have the same varieties of Renaissance 
columns which were used by the designers of the New England 
and Southern Colonial. There was nothing forced, nothing 
strained anywhere apparent, and the result was the creation of an 
independent architectural style; and the only one which has 
been developed in the United States. 
Mr. Jackson in his article on half-timber houses has well 
The Board house at Paramus, N. J., is one of the finest old Dutch 
examples that remains to inspire modern work 
A Pasadena, Cal., home—the Spier house—shows the freedom of 
Dutch Colonial lines. Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, architects 
stated that the proper style to employ is that developed by the 
race which uses it, and he believes that we should therefore design 
our work following the English traditions. Yet the proportion 
of the American people whose ancestry is English is a compara¬ 
tively small one, and English half-timber architecture is distinctly 
an importation in this country and not a development. Mr. 
Wallis, like Mr. Jackson, also insists that the native style is the 
one which absolutely must be employed. 1 thoroughly agree 
with both of them, and, if we are all three right, the style to use is 
Dutch or nothing. 
Colonial architecture is formal while the half-timber work is 
informal; both have advantages, the former in its dignity, and 
the latter in its llexibility. The Dutch work has the advantages 
of both without the disadvantages of either. If the symmetry 
of the Colonial house is disturbed its agreeable qualities are lost, 
while the half-timber house executed symmetrically becomes dry 
and tiresome in the extreme. A house can be executed in any way 
you please in the Dutch style. The central mass of the house may 
be flanked with wings of equal size and similar fenestration, or the 
house may ramble about, following the slopes of the ground and 
avoiding big trees without any loss of charm. 1 he first-story 
rooms can be high, square and simple, or they can be low and 
broken with deep-set windows, should that be the type desired, 
and the “company” rooms can be of one kind and the living- 
rooms of the other; and, best of all, both can be combined into 
a single and harmonious whole without a discordant note. 
Dutch architecture even in its most conventional form is 
The old tavern at Tappan, N. Y., in which Major Andre was 
confined the night before his execution 
