July, 1917 
31 
The general finish calls for occasional stretches of plaster between the 
brick or stone edges. The windows, as shown in this dining room bay 
detail, are metal English casement windows set in stone or wood casings 
T HE assumed site is a long narrow lot falling 
off at the back to a wooded ravine. The 
house is, therefore, crowded out directly 
upon the street line, and as the available level and 
open land widens to the southeast and narrows 
to the northwest, a small garden space is available 
beyond the living room, which is made suitable 
for such use by the shielding wall along the street 
line. Such are the chief features of the location. 
T HE plan of the house itself is influenced by 
the orientation of the building—suggesting 
that the kitchen and service portion be turned to 
the north; the dining room obtaining its requisite 
eastern exposure with the minimum of northern 
frontage. A staircase hall and two principal bed¬ 
rooms both have an eastern front, and the ex¬ 
posed portion of the living room is so retired 
behind the service portion as to be partially pro¬ 
tected from the northern exposure at the same 
time that it is the more opened to the eastern 
sunshine. The small forecourt resulting from 
this arrangement is left with a minimum amount 
of required planting of rhododendrons, laurel and 
similar plants. This arrangement reserves all the 
southern and eastern exposures of the building 
to the porches, living room and other bedrooms. 
W ITH the exception of the master’s dressing 
room, the plumbing is all concentrated in 
one place and—following a hint of English prece¬ 
dent—the sink is placed in the scullery, which also 
provides a location for the laundry tubs, leaving 
either the kitchen or the scullery always clear of 
confusion at one time or the other, and available 
for servants’ rest or sitting room purposes. 
If it is necessary or desirable, this plan is ex¬ 
cellently adapted to omitting the cellar under the 
living room, living porch and hall; requiring ex¬ 
cavation only under the dining room and service 
ell,—in which case, however, it would probably 
be better to make the living room floor of tile 
and use the oak floor that is there suggested in 
the dining room instead. For a small family, it 
would also be possible to save some expense by 
omitting the service stairs, thus narrowing the 
service ell and reducing the roof area over, and 
height, accordingly. 
'\X7’HILE the exterior of the building could 
v * best and most appropriately be constructed 
of a rough ledge stone, such as is generally found 
in the vicinity of Philadelphia, for instance,— 
when the trim around doors and windows, with 
the sills and lintels, could be roughly cut from the 
same material—the plan is equally capable of 
being constructed along the modern up-to-date 
lines of any fireproof house, using terra cotta tile 
or brick for the partitions, finish plastered on 
both exterior and interior. 
T HE corners are built up with larger size stone 
roughly cut and squared, so showing more or 
less in outline against the rough surface of mor¬ 
tar that chinks up to them. The eaves are of two 
projecting courses of brick overhung with a flat 
built-out tile soffit. Some of the windows have 
a label molding cut on a circle that arches up 
over them, enclosing a recessed plaster face, 2" 
or 3" back from the main face of the wall. The 
entrance door is shown with a similar tympanum. 
The stone face also shows in the fence posts, and 
the fence itself exposes more of the Philadelphia 
ledge-stone character, with occasional irregular 
stretches of plaster facing,—as is also the case 
with the stonework of the lower story of the 
entrance hall and vestibule, and the walls under 
the oak living room and stone dining room bays. 
The tops of the chimneys are finished in brick, 
and the rear gable and upper portions of the 
staircase hall bay are left plastered in rough slap¬ 
dash on the exterior. The outdoor room has a 
big arched ceiling, and a cement brick and tile 
pattern floor is shown. 
The windows are of the casement type and 
small in size. Many of the sash are English metal 
sash, set in metal frames in the stonework (or 
into oak frames where shown). 
The roof is covered with heavy rough stone 
slate of random widths, and mixed and mottled 
coloring—although green and grays predominate 
■—and laid in graduated courses, and with the 
slate laid around the angles at the valleys in the 
Cotswold fashion, and showing their edges ex¬ 
posed in the gable faces. 
The house, with its surroundings, should be 
well embowered in shrubbery and vines, espe¬ 
cially the chimney stack, thus providing the 
natural surroundings without which any house of 
English type appears ill at ease and incomplete. 
T HE entire living room is finished with a sim¬ 
ple rough trowel-worked mortar wall, with 
a wooden paneled frame placed at each end, 
around the garden doorway and windows and the 
double doors to the living porch. The living 
room ceiling is rough plastered in a segment of 
an arch and is ornamented with flat modeled 
plaster, set flush with the surface of the plaster 
arch. The bay on the front is of oak timbered 
frame. The fireplace opposite is made of three 
simple stones set flush with the plaster wall. The 
living room floor is oak plank, 10" and 12" wide, 
with an %" dark narrow strip between, and 
fastened with surface dowels. The dining room 
walls are finished in a similar fashion, and the 
door from the porch to the living room. The 
walls have no dado, and the oak dresser and 
simple paneled oak frame around the fire open¬ 
ings are the principal elements of color on the 
walls which, with the heavy adzed beams in the 
ceiling overhead, provide a sufficient setting for 
the Cromwellian oak fittings. 
All the fitments of the hall are oak, paneled 
around the back of the seat which forms the rail 
and the enclosing vestibule—of which the doors 
themselves are an inconspicuous part. A rough 
heavy-oak rail, with a gallery board and heavy 
turned balusters spaced 6" apart, encloses the 
staircase well upon the second floor. 
The kitchen, scullery and butler’s pantry have 
tile floors, 6" squares of red, with an Ys" white 
strip between set on cement. The kitchen walls 
are smooth plastered with cement, like the bath¬ 
room and the other service portions of the first 
and second floor, covered with enamel paint tinted 
a sage blue-green. 
T HE second story rooms are all equally simply 
finished, in narrow ash trim, with plastered 
walls. To avoid the additional expense of fire¬ 
proof construction, and to obtain greater con¬ 
venience, cupboards of ash are substituted for 
built-in closets in the principal rooms. The doors 
are plain six-panel ash doors, with the smallest 
possible width of wooden trim, and merely an 
enclosing molding mitred around the fireplace 
openings. The dressing room has a floor of 6" 
vitrified white tiles, and the walls are finished with 
cement, painted with enamel tinted with a warm 
tan color. 
The total area of the house is 1,450 sq. ft., in¬ 
cluding 190 sq. ft. utilized for the porch, and it is 
intended to be of the simplest and most logical— 
and at the same time most permanent and durable 
—form of construction. 
Above the entrance door would be a 
recessed plaster tympanum with a 
stone facing. The door itself is 
made of heavy oak planks fitted 
with wrought iron hardware. This 
detail shows the treatment of the 
exposed stone or brick corners 
