December, 1915 
49 
THE DECORATION OF A BILLIARD ROOM 
Centennial Crudity That Still Exists — The Facts of Furnishing — New Schemes for Tables and 
Cue Racks — The Stein as a Mark of Masculinity 
ABBOT McCLURE and HAROLD DONALDSON EBERLEIN 
C ONSIDERED 
from a fur¬ 
nishing point 
of view, very few 
billiard rooms are 
either a success or 
even part way 
agreeable to con¬ 
template. The ma¬ 
jority of them are 
scarcely better 
than necessary con¬ 
cessions to the con¬ 
venience of the 
male members of 
the household and 
their friends, and 
little or no attempt 
is made or, at 
least, understand- 
ingly made, to ren¬ 
der them really in¬ 
viting or interest¬ 
ing. 
All this is alto¬ 
gether wrong and 
altogether unneces¬ 
sary, and it is only 
because most of us 
are laboring under 
a conventional ob¬ 
session that billiard rooms must be of 
virtually one type, a type that seems to 
have been determined by the idea that a 
billiard table is necessarily of unalterable 
pattern in its substructure. That most bil¬ 
liard rooms are inherently disappointing, as 
expressions of furnishing, is sufficient indi¬ 
cation that the treatment of the billiard 
room presents a problem worth solving. 
The first step towards reaching a solution 
is to fix clearly in mind what are the essen¬ 
tial requirements in equipping the room, 
and the next, to determine how much lati¬ 
tude and flexibility of interpretation these 
requirements will admit of. The billiard 
room is essentially a man’s room, but merely 
because it is a man’s room, there is no 
reason under the sun why it should be 
decorated with a heterogeneous collection 
of beer steins and mugs—chiefly of ques¬ 
tionable design—and other articles of a cer¬ 
tain type of bric-a-brac which some feeble 
and misguided conception has seen fit to 
settle upon as appropriate emblems of mas¬ 
culinity. Nor is there any reason why 
the whole scheme usually deemed fitting 
should be clumsy, heavy and uninteresting. 
No sane person wishes a billiard room to 
Period affinities could well enter into the con¬ 
struction of a billiard table as in this adapted 
Georgian sketch 
At Krisheim, the St. Martin’s residence of Dr. H. 
S. Woodward, is a billiard room that combines 
all of the necessary fixtures and all the requi¬ 
site comforts-plenty of room, a good table, 
seats for guests and no distractions 
look like a boudoir or a drawing room, but 
because it must needs possess a distinctive 
character of another sort does not preclude 
the possibility of giving acceptable or 
varied treatment. 
Types of Tables 
The first and most important feature in 
the billiard room is, naturally, the billiard 
table. Next come the lights, the counters, 
the rack for cues and, if possible, raised 
seats for the onlookers. While, from the 
very nature of the case, these items must 
all be arranged in substantially the same 
way in every instance, there is, neverthe¬ 
less, some opportunity for creating variety 
and interest. Beginning with the billiard 
table itself, a whole calendar of possibilities 
unfolds-before the-visualizing eye. The top 
must be the same in every instance and the 
supports must be sufficient to uphold great 
weight and ensure absolute steadiness. 
There the limitation ends. 
We have so long been accustomed to 
accept the billiard table in all its commercial 
ugliness and vulgarity of line that our per¬ 
ception of possibilities in this particular di¬ 
rection has become atrophied. The ugly, 
elephantine proportions of the usual billiard 
table supports, the vulgar contour of the 
mouldings and the banal color and finish of 
the wood accord well with the appalling in¬ 
terior of a house carried out in the elaborate 
architectural horrors of the Centennial 
period, but who,now, would willingly live in 
such a house ? Why, then, should the billiard 
table underframing 
and legs be retain¬ 
ed as an unalter¬ 
able relic of that 
unhappy day, and 
why should the bil¬ 
liard room of an 
otherwise well fur¬ 
nished and taste- 
fully appointed 
house be reminis¬ 
cent of the amuse¬ 
ment parlor of a 
third-rate country 
hotel or the pool 
room of a Western 
frontier tavern? 
The billiard table 
arose into promi¬ 
nence and popular¬ 
ity at an epoch in 
our mobiliary his¬ 
tory when taste in 
furniture, if it 
could be called 
taste at all, was ex¬ 
ecrable and when 
the sense of dis- 
crimin a t i o n be¬ 
tween good and 
bad was dulled. 
The vulgar substructure of the average 
billiard table has remained as a well-pre¬ 
served reminder to us of that era of smug 
barbarism. 
The nature and structural considerations 
of a billiard table necessarily impose cer¬ 
tain conditions on the maker, but when these 
are complied with, the demands of decent 
design and good taste ought to be heeded 
quite as much as in the making of any 
other piece of furniture. Why should it 
not also be amenable to the laws of good 
taste ? The legs of a billiard table must be 
many and robust to support the weight im¬ 
posed upon them, the body somewhat pon¬ 
derous and the edge sufficiently projecting. 
But all these requirements can be satisfac¬ 
torily met, and the well-designed billiard 
table be quite as practical as the common 
monstrosity. 
Some slight improvement in the design¬ 
ing of billiard tables, it is true, has been 
manifested from time to time, but there is 
still a long way to go in that direction before 
we reach a really creditable point of prog¬ 
ress. Occasionally one meets with a billiard 
table designed upon the lines of Mission 
(Continued on page 52) 
A group of well-designed legs is as practical as 
the single bulbous foundation and far more 
decorative 
