October, 19 2 2 
73 
IF YOU ARE GOING TO BUILD 
Consider What the Interior Door Contributes to the 
Comfort , Peace and Dignity of the House 
MARY FANTON ROBERTS 
W HAT would be left of dignity, 
peace and comfort in life if some 
malicious little fairy were to wave 
a wand that caused all the doors in all our 
homes suddenly to disappear! Can one 
picture this desolate doorless world, every 
sound, motion and odor shared by the en¬ 
tire household, and all sorrows and joys 
public property! The very elements of the 
most exquisite phases of modern civiliza¬ 
tion would promptly disintegrate. 
No wonder that all truly great period 
architects specialized on the door, so much 
so that it was frequently the very center of 
ornamentation of the entire facade of 
cathedral or palace; or that it was the one 
note of elaborate decoration for otherwise 
plain public buildings and dwellings. 
So important did doors become after we 
advanced from caves and tents, both in¬ 
doors and out, that the magnificence of 
interior decoration, the most gorgeous carv¬ 
ing and painting, the most imposing fres¬ 
cos centered about the doorway. 1 his is 
true in the Italian palaces of the Renais¬ 
sance, where the most elegant of classic 
interiors were developed, styles that were 
afterward copied in France, England and 
Spain; it was true in French period archi¬ 
tecture, especially in the time of the Louis 
and the Empire. As for England, the glory 
of her doors in the Elizabethan and later 
in the Adam period was only equalled by 
the sumptuous fireplaces that ran from 
floor to ceiling, the unsurpassed decoration 
of the stairways that were carved and 
sculptured and painted from the great ban¬ 
queting rooms to the roof of the house. 
But with all the beauty and 
splendor of stairways and fire¬ 
places, somehow the doors of a 
house seem the most fundamental 
detail, the first aid, as it were, to 
civilization. And because of this, 
the idea of the door and what it 
stands for has crept into the liter¬ 
ature of practically all countries. 
Shakespeare used it over and over 
again. An idea of size he explains 
as “Not so deep as a well, nor so 
wide as a church door, but ’tis 
enough, ’twill serve.” The very in¬ 
terior of the house from cellar to 
garret we now speak of as indoors; 
while all of Nature, two hemi¬ 
spheres and both mighty oceans are 
merely out-of-doors. A more wide¬ 
spread symbol than the door has 
perhaps never entered the language 
of any race or people. 
It is quite characteristic of our 
modern architecture in America 
that the interior door especially is 
greatly simplified. There are so 
many of us in this country who want homes 
and who think if a house “were well done, 
it were well ’twere well done quickly” that 
we do not stop to have great doorways with 
figures of East Indian rajahs carved for 
our living rooms, nor can we wait to have 
beautiful doors painted with fine land¬ 
scapes or picturesque figures. We cannot 
even have elaborate panels cut and set in 
carved frames, nor fluted columns as in the 
Italian Renaissance—that is, in the main, 
we cannot do these things. 
Most of us plan our houses in February, 
argue with our architects through March 
and April and have spirited conferences 
with our builders through the summer 
months, expecting to have homes charm¬ 
ingly furnished by October, ready for the 
children to approve before they go away to 
school. This does not mean that our houses 
are not practical in every detail, eminently 
well fitted so far as heating, lighting and 
plumbing are concerned, with luxurious 
details, fine open fires, sun rooms, sleeping 
porches, everything that means a country 
home today. But the fine arts are not al¬ 
ways deeply involved in onr plans, and 
when the architect says “we must get stan¬ 
dard doors and window frames” and the 
builder nods approvingly, we are very 
likely to do it because it saves time and 
money and mental energy. 
Undoubtedly many of our finest archi¬ 
tects will disagree with this and they will 
show you pictures of beautiful doors in 
fine American homes, brought from old 
English manor houses, from French cha¬ 
teaux, and doors designed in this country 
that have dignity and magnificence. 
Some of these doors illustrate this 
article. There is, for instance, a 
lovely inside door, shown here, 
in the upper hallway of the Forres¬ 
ter Peabody House, Salem, Mass. 
Simple moldings are used to pro¬ 
duce the effect of a fine classic 
frame with a half-circular fan¬ 
light, also framed in the simple 
molding. It essentially belongs to 
those beautiful early Colonial 
homes of New England, with their 
fine stairways and simple but 
beautifully designed fireplaces. 
Houses were built slowly in those 
days. They were heirlooms, and 
plenty of time was taken to de¬ 
velop the gracious beauty of every 
detail. 
An exceptionally beautiful old 
(Continued on page 124) 
The Dutch door in the home of 
P. B. Wyckoff, Bernardsville, N. 
J. Clarence Fowler, architect 
An inside door with fanlight is an un¬ 
usual Colonial feature found in the For¬ 
rester Peabody house at Salem, Mass. 
