The house stands to-day much as it stood in 1788, save that in restoring dormers were added, a wide, comfortable porch built on the side and back, and a trellised entrance 
placed at the kitchen end 
A Colonial House Restored in Fabric and Spirit 
HOW AN INTIMATE AND APPRECIATIVE STUDY OF THE LOCALITY BROUGHT AN OLD HOUSE BACK TO 
LIFE—THE SPIRIT OF COLONIAL DECORATION 
Antoinette Perrett 
I N the village of Pompton Plains, on the main r 
corner next to the old church, is a stone house 
Phillips, the architect, has made his home. It is 
the old Giles-Mandeville house and was built in 
1788. The land about here used to belong to 
the Pompiton Indians; it is well-known Revolu¬ 
tionary ground. But even after these many 
decades the spirit of the place is maintained in 
a very true and artistic fashion, and yet has all 
the requirements of a modern house. Mr. Phil¬ 
lips has taken out some partitions, added dormers 
on both the main house and the wing, and has 
put up a wide, comfortable piazza on the side 
and back and a trellised kitchen porch. He had 
to restore a few old window sashes in place of 
large ones that had been put in. There was, too, 
much general repairing; but, for all that, he was 
fortunate in finding a house so little spoiled and 
needing so few changes to make it suitable.. 
Its floor plan could not be better adapted to 
modern requirements. On the south side of the 
hall the living-room extends across the whole 
depth of the house. On the north side, with its 
eastern windows, is the dining-room. To the 
west of that there is a cozy little backroom, 
while in the wing are the kitchen and pantries. 
Upstairs above the living-room is the large bed¬ 
room with two smaller ones across the hall, and 
oad, on the 
that Albert 
Blue and cream-colored landscape 
paper in the dining-room makes 
a striking background for the 
grouping of the silver 
with two servants’ rooms in the wing, led up to by a separate 
stairway, which gives privacy to both parts of the house. 
The stone walls of this old house are very 
interesting, as are the walls of other houses in 
Pompton Plains. They are far superior, for 
instance, to the brown-stone houses about Upper 
Montclair, more irregular, both in size and shapes 
of the stones, and in their very colors. There 
was an old stone quarry nearby, which accounts 
for the local character of the stone; but the 
workmen, too, must have had a real feeling for 
stone laying. Large stones, some rough and some 
crosscut, and smaller stones of all sorts of shapes 
are laid together in such a way that they are 
a continual delight to look at. 
The window sashes are very unusual, with the 
upper sashes three panes high and the lower 
ones only two. Their quaintness is accentuated 
by the blind arms that keep the solid, paneled 
shutters apart. The shutters are characteristic 
of the neighborhood, as are the Dutch doors and 
the details of the square posts and cornices of 
the porches. 
On the inside the windows have deep sills. 
They are appropriately hung with simple, 
straight, white curtains and valances at the sashes, 
and with colored hangings and valances outside 
the sills. Tn the living-room curtains of 
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