44 
House & Garden 
The architect , bent on idealizing the apartment house , detached its apartments, laid them open to the sun, dressed 
them in windoio boxes and vines, and named them “Courts." They were Liliputian houses for play housekeeping 
THE 
WAY 
CALIFORNIA 
D I D 
I T 
How a Problem Was Solved by the Apartment That Is a 
House, and a Ship O’ Dreams Came Safely Into Port 
MAUD M. KECK 
The houses have no backyards. Not a mop. not a garbage pail, 
not ever, a casual dish towel is in sight; flowers everywhere 
I N a climate perpetually that of late 
spring or early autumn, people think 
much of the out-of-doors. In Southern 
California, where most of us are immi¬ 
grants, the taste is heightened by contrast. 
We are greedy for gardens and porches— 
we cherish these things far more than 
Chesterfields by the fire, and there is just 
enough of the dolce far niente spirit here 
to make that domicile the most attractive 
which gives the least care. One would 
think apartment houses might flourish— 
and they do, and people live in 
them. But they are no solu¬ 
tion. They deny ownership of 
a bit of the world outside, they 
shut out the wide vistas, the 
long road and the conviction 
that at heart we really are all 
gypsy brothers. 
Liliputian Homes 
So a Southern California 
architect, bent on idealizing the 
apartment house, detached its 
apartments, laid them open to 
the air and sun, dressed them 
in window boxes and vines, 
and named them “courts.” In¬ 
stead of tall buildings on dusty 
streets he planned quaint little 
houses set around a green. 
Houses of three or four or 
sometimes five rooms, conveni¬ 
ent to the least detail—to the 
coolest cooler, the newest type 
of ash pit, the latest electrical 
device. Liliputian houses in 
which to play at housekeeping; 
with growing vines and gar¬ 
dens, but no care of them; with 
a fig tree in front and grape¬ 
fruit hanging beside bedroom 
windows in the rear. Could 
carefree life go further? 
Any undertaking has in its 
inception that tenuous moment 
when the vision flags, when 
there is only the hard road 
ahead with Fear blocking the 
path while one waits and quails 
and doubts one’s judgment. 
We had these moments when 
we decided to build a court. In the first 
place our bit of land was some distance 
from a car line. It was a lot triangular in 
shape. This meant two sides facing two 
streets, of necessity presentable from either. 
It meant the most pitiless, the most bare¬ 
faced publicity, with not a mop, not a garb¬ 
age pail, not even a casual dish towel in 
the backyard. 
“There are no backyards!” I cried, dis¬ 
mayed. And this was true. Now, much 
of the world's business is still conducted 
by way of the backyard. Of the two en¬ 
trances to the house, the tradesman’s could 
be dispensed with the less easily. How 
then were six families to live in six houses 
with no backyards? 
“How?” with questioning, anxious eyes 
we inquired of the architect. 
"God knows!” he responded gloomily. 
That was the tenuous moment. 
There was our ship o' dreams about to 
be wrecked on a reef the most gross, 
the most realistic imaginable! Not only 
had the vision flagged, it 
had most ignominiously failed. 
What made it the more dis¬ 
tressing was the fact that ours 
had not been a strictly com¬ 
mercial enterprise. We had 
been wanderers, and after 
years of traveling from place 
to place, of living in dark, in¬ 
convenient little houses, we 
had conceived the bewitching 
thought that some day we 
would build houses as charm¬ 
ingly complete as these others 
had been ugly and inconvenient. 
They would be small delightful 
places with casement windows 
and- vistas and fireplaces. 
Houses so seductive that people 
coming three thousand miles 
would still not feel that they 
were a long way from home! 
So it was the dream we 
mourned—our ship o’ dreams 
wrecked now on a reef. 
We persisted in mourning to 
such effect that obstacles 
melted; alleys undreamed of 
opened; courage and ingenuity 
were somehow born of that 
singular parent defeat. 
The Scheme Developed 
Down below the golf links of 
a well-known hotel, snuggled 
into a shallow green bowd 
rimmed by the dark blue Sierra 
Madres, stand six white, low 
and flat houses. They face two 
streets, yet there is not a visible 
garbage pail or clothesline 
