July, 1917 
45 
among them. Sunk into the floor 
of the rear cement porches there 
are galvanized iron boxes which 
might contain anything—there is 
no olfactory evidence to betray 
them. On the screen porches, 
also in the rear, green awnings 
hang like curtains, and here the 
casual dish towel blows in the 
wind. It blows unheralded, un¬ 
sung, unseen! 
There are the casement win¬ 
dows, the vistas we dreamed of, 
the houses with their white, 
sunny, cheerful interiors. All is 
quaintly diminutive with a re¬ 
served yet picturesque quality as 
artfully unreal as a well-set 
theater stage. 
Perhaps the greatest charm of 
the court to me lies in the fact 
that other wanderers like it; 
that it coaxes them to forget the 
distance of this far country; that 
long afterwards in their journey- 
ings they look back and remem¬ 
ber it with a certain keen nostal¬ 
gia and regret. 
The Possibilities of the 
Court 
Although it is by no means 
feasible for all climates, it 
serves its purpose excellently in 
California where the bungalow 
court has received the successful 
attention of architects for some 
years. In other regions the 
grouping of small houses around 
a court has served to make com¬ 
munity centers which are at once 
intimate and individual. Such 
courts have infinite possibilities 
where the price of land does not 
restrict the work of the archi¬ 
tect. They lend themselves to 
any number of different types of 
architecture, although, in the in¬ 
terests of appearance, there 
should be but one type used to a 
court, and that one should be 
carried through consistently, 
ihe Norman farmhouse, the 
English cottage and even the 
smaller French chateau types are 
capable of being introduced into 
a court grouping. The houses 
can be separate, as in the Cali¬ 
fornia court, or linked together 
in a group. 
Here, in any event, is one 
solution of the housing problem 
for a suburban community. It 
reduces domestic work to a mini¬ 
mum by reducing the house to 
the size actually needed. It re¬ 
quires no separate heating or 
lighting plant, for a central plant 
can take care of the entire group. 
At the same time it affords suffi¬ 
cient of the home atmosphere 
which each of us wants, and suf¬ 
ficient privacy to develop an in¬ 
dividuality in each house. 
The cost of such a venture de¬ 
pends, of course, on the mate¬ 
rials chosen for the houses. 
Stucco is perhaps the most rea¬ 
sonable, with clapboard, shingle, 
brick and stone in the respective 
order of their prices. 
Furnishings are reduced to the necessary minimum. They are mainly of wicker which 
suits the environment and at the same time is easily handled during the few moments of 
necessary housekeeping. The rooms are as full of sunshine as the gardens outside 
The houses are of three or four or sometimes five rooms, fitted with the most modern de¬ 
vices to make housework play. Each has a little bricked porch with box trees in pots and 
each has its lattice decorations ivith a little vine crawling up 
