| August, 
1915 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
and interior settings have met with such success that it is natu¬ 
rally not only interesting, but valuable, to see how he has worked 
out his idea of a home. To begin with, it was to be just a sum¬ 
mer bungalow, but now the family lives there all the year, except 
for the winter months that are passed in New York. It is one 
and a half stories high, with the living-room and studio the full 
height, and with the daughter’s and her governess' rooms opening 
upon the living-room gallery. The garage is also one and a half 
stories high, in the same style as the house, with room for two 
cars and with the servants’ rooms above. It is connected with 
the house by a vine-covered pergola. At first there was only 
the main body of the house, the living-room, with the hall behind 
leading at the right into the kitchenette and on the left into the 
main bedroom, with the bath and the staircase between. 
At first it was all shingled, but for the sake of a different 
characterization Mr. Foster had the walls stuccoed. This made 
the carpenters call it “Woodwasted.” Then the house grew. The 
outdoor living-porch was added; then the scullery; then the 
studio. The garage was built. Then the pergola was extended 
to connect with it and to bring it, so to speak, into the home 
picture. At first the studio window was a long, low casement. 
Japanesque in effect, but this spring the roof was cut, and a 
dormer built for the high window. It is this experimentation 
in building, this changing of material for a very pleasure in 
effects, this continuous element of growth and expansion, this 
readiness to improve by changing, by covering up, by cutting 
out, as well as by simple addition, that helps to add to the expres¬ 
siveness of his home. 
Take his stucco walls. You can see in the photograph, espe¬ 
cially of the studio walls, what a study in texture he has made 
them, what feeling he has put into the surface handling. Take 
the wooden strips that break the triangular surface of the gable 
end. They remind us of a collection of half-timber patterns we 
once made during a study trip among the little mediaeval villages 
along the Moselle River, full of spontaneity, grace and charm. 
Of course, there the timber was an integral part of the con¬ 
struction; whereas here its function is purely decorative, and so 
all the more dependent upon a feeling for space division. There 
is very nice feeling in the four different widths between the 
vertical strips and in the simplicity with which the single strip 
grosses them horizontally. 
Mr. Foster has a sympathetic interest for all burnt-clay mate¬ 
rials. He has taken the greatest interest in his floors. The floor 
in the living-room is of nine-inch-square dull red tiles with a 
border of gray mortar inlaid with small, red hexagonal tiles. 
The same square tiles are used on the outdoor living-porch, but 
by laying them with an inch-wide instead of a half-inch mortal- 
joint, the effect is entirely different. Now and then, on the porch 
floor, a red tile has been omitted, and the space laid in with 
four Grueby tiles with wide, gray mortar joints. There are not 
many squares of Grueby tiles, and yet, as you sit and look at 
that floor, your eyes are suddenly arrested by a new interest, 
caught in a new pleasure. It is not only because Grueby tiles 
are interesting in themselves, with all sorts of quaint geometrical 
patterns sympathetically pressed and glazed, in soft harmonies 
of grays, blues, pale plums, and greens, but it is the spontaneous 
way they have been inserted, seemingly without premeditation 
and yet with the greatest charm. It is this kind of work that 
it is difficult to get workmen to do. They actually ridicule your 
attempts at artistic effects in the very materials that they should 
know and love best. In the kitchenette, for instance, there are 
grass-green tiles, small hexagonal forms, laid with broad, gray 
mortar joints and with now and then a russet orange and then 
again soft blues. In the bathroom there are red hexagonal tiles 
laid here and there with odd groups of green tiles. 
The living-room has a great meadow-stone fireplace on one 
side and a gallery on the other. This gallery has a two and a 
half feet overhang. Beneath it there is the wide opening that 
leads into the hall. The room has a high wood wainscot, the 
panels of which were inside shutters that Mr. Foster happened 
upon one day in a house on Fifth avenue that was being wrecked. 
The house had some beautiful doors that Mr. Foster wanted; 
but wreckers work at such speed that in the short time it took 
to get an expressman they had ruined the doors and he had to 
console himself with the inside shutters. He got his solid front 
On the floor of the living-porch are square red tiles laid in wide gray bond, with here and there a 
Grueby for variety 
Mainly junk — here in the living-room is a discarded fan-top door; 
the wainscot is made of old shutters 
