28 
House & Garden 
The long sweep of the roof is carried down to form the rear porch. A Colonial entrance dignifies this 
piazza. Balanced windows and settles at either end of the porch give a nice symmetry. The service 
wing is complete in itself. At the other end is a piazza with trellis side and a stone , brick or tile floor 
A BOW DUTCH COTTAGE IN SHINGLE OR CLAPBOARD 
Designed for HOUSE & GARDEN 
T HESE drawings show a house which is a 
cross between a Dutch farmhouse and a bow 
window and ought to be named “Bow Dutch” 
because of these two things. It probably isn’t a 
name that very many people will like, but it is, 
I believe, a house that very many people will like. 
It has many of the faults that an architect 
commits -when he is left to himself, without the 
guiding hand of a client to lead him in the way 
he should go—and I am glad that it has them all. 
W HEN House & Garden asked me to make 
these drawings, I tried, to do another neat 
little cottage with all the rooms on corners and 
all of proper sizes, with a big hall and a fine 
staircase, and good kitchen, and everything else 
that everybody ought to have; but I found that 
I had done so many neat, tidy, comfortable, 
pretty-pretty cottages, that I was sick of them. So 
I made up my mind to do what I would like to 
do, if I had a little house like this to build for 
my own occupancy. 
I N the first place you say it hasn’t rooms 
enough. The bedrooms are not enough for 
a house of this size. There is no room for a 
large family of growing children, nor for a 
great number of week-end guests, both of which 
By A Y M A R EMBURY, II 
everybody wants, or at least, is supposed to 
want, in the country. There is only one maid’s 
room and there are three bathrooms; that may 
seem too many for such a small house. You 
enter from the front door into a little cubby-hole 
and go upstairs between walls. It isn’t the light, 
airy, gracious and picturesque entrance that we 
want to show our guests. More than that, the 
ceiling of the hall probably isn’t over seven feet 
high. You have to go up steps to get into the 
dining room and living room. There is no con¬ 
nection from the maid’s room part of the second 
floor to the owner’s part, and if the maid has 
to answer the door bell she has to go all the w ay 
around through the pantry and the dining room 
to get there. It is all wrong, and I know it and 
I admit it before I am told. 
N OW let us see if there is any reasonable 
excuse for so foolish a performance or at 
least why the house was designed in so absurd 
and illogical a way. 
In the first place, take the entrance. One 
comes into a little narrow hall, very low ceilinged 
and probably arched, and steps up into the din¬ 
ing room in front or into the living room on the 
left. So far it’s simple enough. 
The stairs are tucked away opposite to the 
living room. It is just as inconvenient as many 
of the New England farmhouses or old English 
cottages and would probably be just as charm¬ 
ing. And if you do go up the stairs you find 
yourself on the second floor in a great bow win¬ 
dow with glass extending almost to the floor— 
but what a place that would be to sit and sew, 
and to grow potted plants (probably geraniums), 
and what a delightful surprise to emerge upon 
this great, light, airy space from the narrow en¬ 
closed stairway. 
T HE living room is not entered by an open 
arch, but through a little door. It is a long 
low room, probably with rough hewn beams in 
the ceiling and a low white wainscot at the level 
of the sills of the windows. The fireplace is big 
for the room. French windows lead to a stone 
paved porch, and windows at each end, right in 
the center, light it admirably without interfering 
with probable furniture spaces. The dining room 
has a glass door with side light opening on to 
the paved loggia which in turn leads to the gar¬ 
den, and from the dining room a small door 
opens to the study, corresponding to a similar 
door to the pantry, with a china closet in the 
middle. It ought to be very pleasant—that din¬ 
ing room. 
