48 
House & Garden 
HOW TO BE HOMELY THOUGH HANDSOME 
The Problem Which the 20 th Century Architect is Gradually Solving is to Design 
Houses that are Both Livable and Distinguished 
T HE passion for display, the desire to make a splash, to im¬ 
press and astound the common herd, are habits of mind 
which seems to have gone out of fashion in these democra¬ 
tic days. Aristocrats who, in the past, would have rolled about 
in huge gilded coaches attended by troops of retainers in livery, 
prefer nowadays to glide along unobserved in the comparative ob¬ 
scurity of a closed limousine. Two hundred years ago the great 
Lady Mary Montagu found it impossible to settle in Naples on 
the grounds of expense; a lady of her rank could not have held 
up her head in Naples without a glass coach, two gentlemen ushers, 
four running footmen to go before her carriage when she rode 
abroad, and eight other servants for the house. One could not be 
a person of distinction in Naples on less. True, the Neapolitan 
nobility never entertained and lived principally on dry bread and 
olives. But that did not matter so long as the appearance of 
grandeur was kept up before the public. 
I T was only natural that this passion for display and exterior 
grandiosity should have had its effect upon architecture. The 
houses of the 17th and 18th Century showed traces of the 
dominating fashion at every turn. Long vistas led up to imposing 
facade,s; long suites of reception rooms, all carved and painted and 
gilt, receded majestically away as one entered the house. Ceilings 
were raised to preposterous heights, the lofty doorways seemed 
built for giants, the great staircases were wide enough for two 
coaches to pass one another with a foot or two to spare. The 
effect was overwhelming; and if, as was often the case, the bed¬ 
rooms were dark and low and uncomfortable, if the servants had 
to sleep in pigeon-lofts and dog-holes, what did that matter? 
These little inconveniences were not noticed by any one outside 
the family. The public saw the facade, the reception rooms, the 
great staircase—and was duly impressed. The rest was of no 
importance. 
But display, as we have .said, has gone out of fashion. We 
now reserve the best of our houses for ourselves and not for others; 
we arrange our architecture, not for display, but for modest retire¬ 
ment. Houses that in the past would have turned their best face 
to the road, inviting attention and admiration from the passers-by, 
now lavish their beauties on the garden. Indoors, their reception 
rooms are no longer designed to impress and overwhelm; they are 
designed to be comfortably lived in, and the rest of the house, so 
often sacrificed to the past, is planned with the same loving care 
as the more public rooms. 
There can be no doubt that the waning of the fashion for 
grandiosity and display has been, on the whole, extremely salu¬ 
tary for all forms of architecture. The effects obtained by the old 
architects were, no doubt, aesthetically splendid; but after all, a 
house has to be lived in as well as looked at, and comfort was too 
ruthlessly sacrificed to the grand fashion. Our retiring, inward¬ 
turning way of life has led architects to study comfort and practi¬ 
cal efficiency with a commendable earnestness. Even in buildings 
where grandiosity and display are still important—in hotels, and 
offices, and public buildings of all sorts—the splendor is always 
combined with convenience in a way unknown in the past. 
A LL reactions from an excess are liable to run, in the opposite 
direction, into another excess as bad, very often, as the first. 
This reaction from architectural display is no exception to the rule; 
and though the excess of retiring modesty into which it has run 
is not so bad as the excess of grandiosity from which it started, 
though it has produced, as we have seen, useful fruits in the shape 
of greater comfort and convenience, an excess it still is, an excess 
that should be corrected. Fleeing from the grandiose and gaudy, 
we too often find ourselves plunged into the merely pretty and 
quaint. 
What we need, here as in everything else, is a compromise be¬ 
tween the two extremes—between uncomfortable pretentiousness 
on the one side and convenient meanness on the other We want 
houses which, though they may be built primarily for the comfort 
and aesthetic satisfaction of those who live in them, shall yet hold 
up their heads before the outer world in a noble and dignified 
manner. 
There is evidence in much recent work that this necessity for 
finding a compromise between the grandiose and the petty is being 
appreciated by contemporary architects. Symmetry, the digni¬ 
fied facade, the plain room of classical proportions—these good 
things are being rediscovered. It is being found that a house 
may be comfortable, convenient, and thoroughly homely without 
being made to look like a glorified cottage. The quaintnesses 
and arty “features” of ten and twenty years ago are being relegated 
to the limbo of dead fashions and we seem to be reaching out for 
a grand style that shall also be homely and convenient. 
I N the gradual evolution of this new style there can be no doubt 
that business architecture has led the way. It is difficult 
to make an office building look like a cottage, and what is more, 
the business man who knows the commercial value of display does 
not want it to look like a cottage. He wants it to be grand, and 
at the same time he wants it to be convenient. Domestic archi¬ 
tects are following suit, and the new houses that are now being 
built show, more and more, a tendency to conform to the dignified 
plan. One of these days, it may be, we shall find that we have 
inaugurated a new and interesting phase in the history of our do¬ 
mestic architecture. 
