74 
House & Garden 
TN selecting your revolver 
A remember that precision, 
security and reliability are ab¬ 
solutely essential. It is because 
they excel in those very quali¬ 
ties that Smith & Wesson 
revolvers have won the title 
“superior.” 
yX?— 
Smith Wesson 
c ^Manufacturers of Superior ‘If vo/vers 
SPRINGFIELD 
MASSACHUSETTS 
No arms are genu¬ 
ine Smith & Wesson 
Arms unless they 
bear plainly marked 
on the barrel, the 
name smith&wesson, 
SPRINGFIELD. MASS. 
When You Inherit a Brownstone House 
( Continued, from page 38) 
originally dark and dismal doorway. 
Small rugs adroitly placed to reduce 
length are among the many little 
things” which all help in the final result. 
Another bit of decorator’s lore is made 
the most of in using, where possible, a 
balanced arrangement of furniture and 
ornaments, thus reducing to a minimum 
the “uneasiness” produced by lack of 
proportion. 
Following the usual arrangement of 
these old houses, there is a reception 
room directly off the hall near the en¬ 
trance door, with openings on two sides 
into the hall itself. Here again the most 
has been made of the existing floor 
plan. The chimney-piece once more re¬ 
calls the Directoirate, with ingeniously 
inserted panels of etched mirror glass 
set in a framing of red lacquer and 
marbleized columns. A charming man¬ 
tel garniture of old tole adds a distin¬ 
guished note. The walls here are a 
lighter tone of green with moldings and 
wood trim to match, and form a charm¬ 
ing background for a collection of fine 
old prints with black glass mats and 
frames of delicate gold molding. 
Below-Stairs Rooms 
Below stairs, the kitchen and laundry 
were due for sweeping changes. Since 
structural alterations were taboo, and 
a breakfast room essential, why not 
have the breakfast room at one end of 
the kitchen? Fortunately, the range 
and sink were already located at the 
end of the room furthest from the win¬ 
dows, leaving only the laundry tubs 
directly in view. The unsightly tubs 
were boarded in, to form an excellent 
service table. When needed, the hinged 
top lifted up. and below a storage space 
is found in shallow closets set in such 
a manner that they clear the sloping 
edges of the tubs. When the breakfast 
room is in use a wall paper screen shuts 
off a too intimate view of the range and 
sink. The painted gate-leg table and 
ladder-back chairs with rush seats have 
a gay background of red tile floor, clear 
yellow paint and smartly varnished wall 
paper. Casement curtains of checked 
gingham are tied back to reveal a 
glimpse of greenery in the tiny garden 
beyond. 
Almost all the houses of the type of 
this one have to be quite thoroughly re¬ 
painted or papered before they are even 
habitable, and the slight additional ex¬ 
penditure involved in this thorough 
transformation is really negligible when 
the results are so entirely satisfactory. 
Needless to say work of this sort re¬ 
quires the supervision of an experienced 
interior decorator, and represents a far 
more difficult problem for that individ¬ 
ual to solve than any new house could 
offer.' 
The present delightfully livable qual¬ 
ity is directly due to the skilful manage¬ 
ment of color to offset bad proportions, 
and the equally experienced arrange¬ 
ment of lighting to give the best pos¬ 
sible effect. Wall brackets and lamps 
help in this artful conspiracy by throw¬ 
ing the far-up ceilings into shadow, 
and graceful, appropriate curtains please 
the eye before the attention reaches the 
fact that the windows are ugly in them¬ 
selves. 
Hidden Excellence 
While this particular house offers a 
complete solution of what to do with a 
Mid-Victorian town house, there is 
much to be learned from it which can 
be applied to almost any dwelling of 
the period, the general arrangement of 
architectural detail being much the 
same in all of them. Often underneath 
the distressing gimcrack ornament a 
genuinely graceful outline will be found, 
and in almost every case the construc¬ 
tion is strong and honest beneath the 
tawdry ornament. 
Before utterly condemming these old¬ 
er houses to destruction or complete 
reconstruction, strip off the gimcracks 
and there is always the chance of be¬ 
ing well repaid for the effort. Not so 
long ago a country house, inherited with 
all the trappings of Mid-Victorian imi¬ 
tation brown sandstone and black wal¬ 
nut, developed under the hand of its 
present owner into a charming villa of 
the type familiar to travelers in North¬ 
ern Italy. Of course, exterior changes 
had to be included in this transforma¬ 
tion, for a country house has no moral 
support from nearby neighbors in its 
unpleasant brownstone smugness. The 
emaciated columns of the verandah, 
however, proved stronger than they 
looked, and on this framing it was a 
simple matter to develop a charming 
Italian loggia with graceful arches—the 
material, concrete toned to a creamy 
yellow color. Here again paint helped 
to work wonders, once distressing and 
meaningless trimmings had been elimi¬ 
nated both within and without, and 
the formal original spaces made a most 
gracious background for a collection of 
really fine Italian furniture. A few deft 
touches from a good landscape gar¬ 
dener brought the original setting into 
line with this Italian villa, and again an 
ancestral blunder in architecture was 
cleverly and inexpensively brought into 
line with present day ideas of what a 
house should be. 
This, then is the moral of our story—- 
when you come by ,a late Victorian 
house, be it great or small, do not con¬ 
demn it as utterly hopeless for this en¬ 
lightened age to live in, but take ad¬ 
vantage of its good points in sincere 
workmanship, hardwood trims (how¬ 
ever hideous in existing detail) and de¬ 
velop a new setting for these worth¬ 
while features, totally in keeping with 
the better trained taste of our own time. 
Using Gray in Decoration 
(Continued, from page 45) 
proportions are kept right. As for car¬ 
pets, those of gray are so charming and 
so altogether satisfactory in use that 
one is almost tempted to write: when 
in doubt, choose gray. Certainly a 
plain pile carpet is an invaluable help 
in determining the gray room and giving 
the basis for lesser features. 
The introduction of color is a matter 
of taste, and the success of the room is 
largely dependent on it. Rich yellow 
would accord with a mole gray paper, 
where lemon yellow might be over¬ 
whelmed into feebleness; the grayness 
must be balanced, kept in place. Where 
light blues would be stupid, a blue 
verging on royal would be entirely 
charming. Green with gray is quite 
pretty, though a little inclined to be 
commonplace; Chinese pink in this con¬ 
nection forms one of the loveliest and 
the rarest schemes imaginable. Gold 
and gray combine admirably; with a 
gold ceiling the difficulty of creating 
the gray room is cut in half. The 
scheme will evolve almost of itself—• 
gray velvet for curtains and for cover¬ 
ing a few chairs; a gray striped paper, 
yellow lampshades, and rugs in which 
yellows predominate. 
