House dr Garden 
M 
YOU AND YOUR ARCHITECT 
What You Should Expect from Your Architect and What Your 
Architect Should Expect from You 
A GOOD architect, like good wine, needs 
no bush, but architects as a class do. 
Even in this enlightened and chaotic age the 
man who employs an architect is secretly con¬ 
sidered rich—in the Rolls Royce group—the 
sort of person who doesn’t care how much 
money he spends. People somehow think that 
an architect is an unnecessary middleman be¬ 
tween himself and the building of his home, an 
expense that can readily be eliminated from his 
budget. Dispensing with an architect is looked 
upon as a canny form of economy—an inside 
way of beating the building game. 
No mistake is more lamentable. Architects 
are not the hobbies of rich men, they are the 
investments of w 7 ise men. There is no way of 
beating the building game unless you are the 
sort of person who is content with cheap sub¬ 
stitutes. Pleasing, livable houses may con¬ 
ceivably be built without the services of an 
architect, but they succeed more 
by chance than by good manage¬ 
ment. There is scarcely a suburb 
in America today but blushes for 
its monstrosities directly traceable 
to well-intentioned people who 
thought they could get along with¬ 
out an architect. 
Employing an architect should 
be the first step toward building 
a house. 
Your choice of the type of architecture should 
be governed by the houses surrounding your 
property and the general landscape. You may 
want an English house on a suburban street 
between two Colonial houses, or a Colonial 
house on a rugged hillside where an English 
house would look better. Here the architect’s 
advice is invaluable, because he can consider 
the problem from an impersonal standpoint. If 
you demand the impossible, it is the architect’s 
duty to protect his reputation by diplomatically 
showing you the right and practical way of 
doing what you demand. 
Second, you must know definitely how large 
a house you will need. The requirements of 
your family, your manner of living, your sports 
and hobbies—these must be provided for and 
agreed upon by the family. 
Third, have a definite idea of how much you 
can afford to spend on that house. At the 
you can’t built a home on that basis, then some¬ 
thing is the matter with your earning capacity. 
With these three points settled, approach 
your architect. He will make sketch plans 
that will help you visualize how his interpre¬ 
tation of your type of house fits its site and 
what its possibilities are. If you are not satis¬ 
fied, any number of changes can be made until 
the exact ideas are set down. Then the work¬ 
ing drawings are made up, the builder selected, 
and the construction commenced. 
At this point, just a word of advice. Few 
houses are finished exactly as originally 
planned. As the work proceeds you will want 
some changes. The fewer the changes the bet- 
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THE LITTLE LANES 
The little lanes of England are crooked, old, and wise, 
They like to hide their happiness from cold or curious eyes, 
They know it is a secret art that is not learnt in years, 
But comes to you who stroll and stray, with laughter, toil, and tears. 
J UST as medicine has been di¬ 
vided into highly specialized 
groups, so has architecture. There 
are men who devote their energies 
to building banks, others to 
churches, others to office build¬ 
ings, warehouses, apartments— 
and others to domestic construc¬ 
tion and design, which is the 
building of homes. 
Having decided that you re¬ 
quire an architect to plan your 
house, you must choose one who 
specializes in that line. What 
one of the hundreds of architects 
in this class you will pick, de¬ 
pends, of course, upon innumer¬ 
able personal preferences. You 
will admire some of his work or 
see photographs of it, and find 
that he already has designed 
houses along the lines of the one 
you have in mind. The main requisite is to 
employ an architect who does the sort of work 
you want. 
The successful house is the result of the in¬ 
telligent co-operation between you and your 
architect. This intelligent co-operation may 
imply many things but they all fall under one 
of two heads—• 
(1) What the architect expects of you. 
(2) What you are to expect of your architect. 
First, have a fairly definite notion of the 
type of house you want. Something cute in 
Dutch Colonial or picturesque in English cot¬ 
tage is what the average architect is told. 
Women, if left to their own devices, have a 
habit of running to the Italian. This is all 
very quaint—and very vague. A better way to 
go about proposing the subject is to have a 
definite picture or some clippings from a maga¬ 
zine. These will crystallize your idea. 
The little lanes of England are rather hard to find, 
Their overhanging hedges are all so close and kind 
To lovers, who the reasons know why real joys are rare— 
You never can forget them if you’ve been a lover there. 
ter it will be for your purse. The extras often 
represent an appreciable addition to the esti¬ 
mated cost—extras such as more chimney 
stacks, more bathtubs and bay windows you 
did not dream of when the first design was 
approved. However, your satis¬ 
faction is what the architect is 
aiming to accomplish, and even if 
the house costs more than you 
planned, it were wiser for you to 
be perfectly satisfied. This satis¬ 
faction presupposes the use of 
good materials and good work¬ 
manship, and it is up to the archi¬ 
tect to see personally that both of 
these go into the construction of 
vour house. 
T HE matter of the architect’s 
i 
The little lanes of England are always left behbid 
By you who on the highway a fortune go to find, 
Yet when in dust, and glare, and din, your dreams and you must part, 
Some happy, little, far-off latte is fragrant in your heart. 
The little lanes of England are graciously serene, 
A benediction falls upon their gaiety of green, 
The birds sing in the morning, but it’s quiet there at night, 
Where all the best delights of day are only out of sight. 
The little lanes of England are holy through the land, 
With angels in their silences to you who understand, 
And when you walk and worship there, you wonder how you dare- 
Oh! God must love the little lanes to set such beauty there! 
—Florence Bone. 
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present moment the high cost of building is a 
very serious deterrent to domestic building. A 
great many people still nurse the fond idea that 
a good ten-room house with all modern im¬ 
provements, built of lasting materials and de¬ 
signed with individuality, can be run up for a 
mere $5,000. It can’t. It can’t be run up for 
$7,000. 
If you have a definite figure beyond which 
you cannot pass, then you must accept what 
you can get for that sum. But if your purse 
allows even the slightest margin, insist on get¬ 
ting the most modern improvements and the 
best work. In either case, your architect will 
save you the expense of poor buying and bad 
workmanship. It is wiser to go in debt for a 
well-built house than to play safe on a flimsy, 
jerry-built structure that will not last ten years. 
Consider a home a permanent investment that 
will pay interest all the days of your life. If 
fee is one on which the lay¬ 
man may be vague. The general 
rule is six per cent for commercial 
work in cities and ten per cent 
for residential work. This is 
based on the cost of the finished 
house, and is reasonable enough. 
A larger percentage may be deter¬ 
mined on, or, in some instances, 
the architect may be paid a lump 
sum. The architect who charges 
less than ten either invites watch¬ 
ing or is a poor business man. 
Payment is usually made in 
fifths. The custom followed gen¬ 
erally is to present a bill for three- 
fifths when working drawings and 
specifications have finally been 
adopted, and the remainder when 
the work is completed. 
In only the rarest instances does the archi¬ 
tect handle all the moneys concerned. The 
contract for building a house is made between 
the owner and the builder, and the owner pays 
the builder direct. While the narrowest in¬ 
terpretation of the architect’s work is to design 
a house and assemble its specifications, he is 
a poor architect indeed who does not superin¬ 
tend the job personally. This protects both 
owner and architect. In this way the architect 
carries out his relations with the builder. 
By cooperating with him intelligently,your re¬ 
lations with your architect should be one of the 
most pleasant experiences possible. It will lead 
to a better appreciation of architects and archi¬ 
tecture. and a better understanding of the house 
in which you live. Don’t change your mind as to 
what you want after your house is half built. 
This is the rock on which most clients and 
architects split, and is the one rule to remember. • 
