November, 1917 
21 
Gillies 
The residence of C. A. Briggs, the well- 
known cartoonist, is another example 
of sincere and genuine architectural 
craftsmanship in modern work. It is 
located at New Rochelle, N. Y. Henry 
G. Morse was the architect 
A touch of the rare old spirit can be 
caught in the rude gate, the heavy gar¬ 
den wall and the ship that sails the 
sky as weather vane 
The overhanging story is an inheri¬ 
tance from old times. So are the leaded 
windows and the towering chimney 
t)ots above 
colors of all building materials were made to 
appear strangely other than themselves. 
Technique as understood in the architecture 
of today is a reversal of this, and natural tex¬ 
tures are, if not allowed to remain natural, 
even exaggerated. This is especially true of 
modern brickwork, wherein the texture of the 
brick as a unit has been developed to an inter¬ 
esting roughness and its entity as a brick has 
been emphasized by raked joints and even by 
the projection of occasional brick-ends from 
the face of the wall. 
Half-timber work in which the nogging is 
of exposed brickwork offers infinite scope for 
the finest kind of technique in brick building; 
each space between timbers, indeed, may be a 
work of art, and there is no limit to the diver¬ 
sity of patterns which may be devised in a 
single gable-end. 
Equal opportunity for technique and virile 
craftsmanship is afforded by the timber work 
itself. Here the natural grain and structure 
of the wood is left to effect its own expression, 
Stone on the first floor gives a solid 
basis for the house. It crops out nat¬ 
urally as stone crops out on a hillside 
rough-hewn, with visible adze-marks which 
will disassociate it from milled lumber. Rude, 
strong, outdoor carving may find its place here 
and there, in brackets and beam-ends, and the 
whole will bespeak in its honest appearance 
the honesty of workmanship which half-timber 
work demands. 
Architecture and Romance 
Architecturally the half-timber house is a 
unique fabric for the reason that it is dually 
expressive—making i no secret of its structural 
facts, or of the materials which underlie these. 
Essentially, it must be “made by hand,” and 
so must possess, inherently, all the charm and 
personality of things which are rare and un¬ 
common and so of peculiar appeal. 
Of its picturesque and romantic aspect, little 
need be said, and we may each read best the 
story that is there for the appreciative eye and 
receptive mind. Certainly the half-timber 
house cannot be built in a hurry, and so it 
must have much of the charm of the antique, 
of the beautiful old things that were fashioned 
by men’s hands before the age of machines 
robbed the craftsman of his birthright and his 
livelihood, and us of the fruits thereof. 
The revival of genuine craftsmanship in 
building has lately produced some examples of 
half-timbered work that compare more than fa¬ 
vorably with the original houses of Elizabethan 
times. The two illustrated here are of this 
character. The larger shows brick nogging, 
the smaller plaster. In the latter stone has also 
been successfully introduced for the chimney 
stacks and parts of stories. The same charac¬ 
ter of windows that graced the original work 
has been defined in the windows and general 
fenestration of these two houses. They repre¬ 
sent both the spirit and the sincerity of the 
original half timber types. 
