Vol. XXV—No. 6 
June, 1914 
Cellar and foundation work is expensive. The summer house built on a steep slope may provide cool cellar space at little beyond the cost of excavation. A house of this 
plan provides opportunity for many windows and consequent cross draft 
Suggestions for the Summer Home Builder 
HINTS FOR THE 
A type of sliding panel 
used in forming partitions 
PLAN AND CONSTRUCTION OF VACATION HOUSES—HOW TO HAVE A COOL HOUSE— 
WHAT MAY BE ACCOMPLISHED AT SMALL EXPENSE 
by Edward E. H o x i e 
S UPPOSE that we have decided to 
build a summer cottage. We are im¬ 
mediately beset by innumerable queries. 
What shall be its plan ? How will the 
rooms be grouped for greatest comfort? 
How many rooms shall there be? How 
much should the cottage cost? We shall 
arrive at no very definite conclusions un¬ 
less we answer these questions systemat¬ 
ically and with some understanding. 
Let us state, then, at the outset that 
there is one great fundamental difference 
between a summer cottage and a winter 
house, and if we can bur once get this 
point firmly fixed in our minds we shall 
have progressed a long way toward an 
understanding of the raison d'etre of the 
summer home. The winter house is built 
to keep out the cold and to shelter our¬ 
selves, our families and our friends from the blasts of winter. 
The summer cottage should be built and arranged in such a man¬ 
ner that it will accomplish just the opposite effect. Therefore, the 
plan should be different. That is the trouble with most summer 
cottages. One gets so accustomed to a city house that he for¬ 
gets why the cottage exists. They arrange the rooms exactly alike 
in both. They build the house square, with kitchen, dining room, 
living-room and chambers arranged in a rectangular prism and 
put a square roof on top to keep off the rain. They build the 
walls solid, in many cases, from floor to ceiling, to prevent the cir¬ 
culation of air, and put in tight windows, just as few of them as 
possible, to keep out the cold. That is well enough, perhaps, for 
the winter house, but it is not the thing at all for the cottage. 
In building a summer cottage, the one thing to remember is that 
its aim is to keep cool. Not to keep the air stagnant and shut out 
sunlight at all, but to let every wandering breath of summer from 
across the water or the fields back of the house have full access to 
the tired person. And the only things to keep out are the storms 
and the insects. 
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