10 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
Duhring, Okie & Ziegler, architects 
What has been accomplished by the Pennsylvania architects on the basis of their own wonderful old-stone work is 
among the most distinguished achievements in modern architecture 
by so many hands and in so many so-called styles, that they 
mark the caste, establish the type and the argument, and re¬ 
buke the scoffer, the pessimist and the prophet. 
For my own part I can write with frankness, not unmixed 
with envy, for clients have determined (fallaciously, I am per¬ 
suaded) that my own activities should lie elsewhere and that 
I should not be permitted to have any hand in this excellent 
work. Necessarily, therefore, I am impelled to add the criti¬ 
cism of the outsider (the critic 
is always this) to the testimony 
of the admiring witness, and I 
very gladly avail myself of the 
dual opportunity that is offered 
by House & Garden. 
It is rather a fine thing, when 
you come to think of it, that own¬ 
er and architect should have been 
able to work together as they have 
in this direction: a great thing 
that here at least their work 
should be so uniformly good. 
Charity and art begin at home, or 
nowhere; the church, the school 
and the dwelling represent three 
of the stable and admirable ele¬ 
ments in a life long since horribly 
messed up with all manner of in¬ 
ferior things that have assumed 
and achieved an indispensable pri¬ 
ority, and here, at least, architec¬ 
ture is dealing with real things. 
Neither owner nor architect could 
have wrought the great transfor¬ 
mation alone. That the former 
should have desired, and the lat¬ 
ter have offered, the increas¬ 
ingly good things that crowd the 
landscape and the professional 
magazines, is a fact very heart¬ 
ening at a time when the world 
is hungrily in need of such en¬ 
couragement. The house build¬ 
ing of the last twenty years 
means this in any case: that 
there is a fine and vital and noble 
impulse in society that may, in the end, mean its salvation. 
Art for the People's Sake 
Another point that seems to me of especial value is that 
this good work is not only not confined to “high life” owners 
and headline architects; it is quite as conspicuous in the little 
houses of the less opulent and ostentatious, and at the hands 
of architects whose fame is being slowly and modestly built 
up on the basis of their good 
work, rather than vice versa. In¬ 
deed, it would be interesting, 
profitable and none too difficult 
to defend the thesis that the less 
costly the house and the less 
prominent the architect, the bet¬ 
ter it is as art. Money and fame 
are the most highly prized wea¬ 
pons of the devil and many a man 
rises from a good cottage to a bad 
palace: many an architect slips 
from the hard basis of good art to 
the ease and plenty of a bad fash¬ 
ion. Art never begins at the top 
and filters down—at least, this is 
true of the art that lasts. It be¬ 
gins amongst the people them¬ 
selves and they, for their own bet¬ 
ter expression, nurture the great 
geniuses that finally lift art to its 
highest levels: men like Phidias, 
Dante, Leonardo, Robert de 
Coucy, Bach, Browning. We, of 
late, have thought otherwise and 
have acted accordingly, but the 
best promises lie not in the inten¬ 
sive products of a highly special¬ 
ized and Brahministic education, 
but rather in such instances as 
this where the foundations are be¬ 
ing laid surely and true. 
Of course there is in it all noth¬ 
ing approaching unity of stylistic 
method or local and racial and 
contemporary originality; this is 
Courtesy of the Architectural Record 
The seashore cottage type of the more elaborate de¬ 
sign-the residence of W. S. and J. T. Spaulding, 
Prides Crossing, Mass. Little and Brown, architects 
