I T has probably never been considered that the 
great cities of the country enclose, within their 
very walls, a vast tract of unclaimed, unde¬ 
veloped and untbought-of land, which taken in the 
aggregate, should equal in extent the great Desert 
of Sahara, and which yields to the inhabitants as 
little benefit as that great desert may be said to yield 
to mankind. 
This tract, enclosed as it is between the backs of 
our city houses, is never seen by the general public, 
and in view of the squalor and neglect which seem 
to be its portion in the scheme ol affairs, perhaps 
this is just as well. Although the idea may seem, per¬ 
haps, highly Utopian and among the clouds, it is my 
purpose in this paper to discuss the many possibilities 
which present themselves, and the many solutions 
of the back yard problem. 
The accompanying diagram shows the area under 
consideration, as it exists in most of our cities, with 
the exception, perhaps, of Boston, an area consisting 
of a dreary and often squalid waste of flagstones, 
parched and unkempt grass, empty boxes, ash cans 
and lumber of all sorts. The fact that this vista is 
commanded generally by the dining-room windows 
and by all the back rooms in the house seems to have 
had no bearing upon its treatment in any way, and 
what has always existed bids fair to continue in ex¬ 
istence for all time, each man waiting for his neigh¬ 
bor to set him an example, and all awaiting the 
millennium. 
In the second diagram is shown a perfectly logical 
and sane development in the reclaiming and beautify¬ 
ing of the city desert, and in making the back rooms 
of a house even more attractive, owing to their quiet, 
than those in front. 
Let us first consider the most common form of city 
house, which under early Victorian standards was not 
only the best but the only, and from the nature of 
which several treatments suggest themselves. As 
the kitchen in the basement rear generally precludes 
all possibility of walking in the garden from the 
house without going through the kitchen, consider 
the garden as a picture to look out upon from the 
windows. Fifteen dollars’ worth of nine by nine inch 
red tiles for walks, a few graceful silvery young 
poplars, at about a dollar apiece, some prim formal 
bay trees, at ten dollars a pair, in green tubs, and a 
mass of some quick-growing vine of the nature of the 
kudzu, a few dollars in soil and a judicious expen¬ 
diture on carpentry for a pergola, and one has trans¬ 
formed an ash heap into a thing of beauty—a real 
city garden. If it were possible, a vine-covered 
lattice, placed at a distance of four feet from the 
house, would screen the kitchen windows, and a 
small stair down from the dining-room could give 
access from the house to the garden. The drying 
yard for clothes, always a vexing problem, can be 
quite hidden behind vine-covered lattice and hedges 
of tall, but dense, poplars. The poplars, from rep¬ 
utable nurseries, are quoted in growths from eight to 
ten feet, at five dollars for ten. 
A very interesting development of the basement 
disadvantage presents itself in the following scheme: 
Supposing that the dining-room is directly over the 
kitchen, and that one were obliged to live in town 
through the summer. Build out from the back of 
the house, and to the full width of the lot, an exten¬ 
sion of about twenty feet or more, of concrete, which 
shall be covered, at a level with the dining-room, 
with light structural steel to take a heavy flooring of 
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