The Bates house stands upon a knoll commanding a view over The kitchen and service porch are at the left, conveniently near the 
Long Island Sound street front 
A House Built for a View 
THE HOME OF MR. GEORGE V. BATES AT MAMARONECK, CONNECTICUT, AYMAR 
EMBURY, 2D, ARCHITECT—A HOUSE ON AN INLAND SITE THAT COMMANDS A VIEW 
OVER LONG ISLAND SOUND—THE RESULT OF INDIVIDUALITY IN PLANNING 
by Jared Stuyvesant 
Photographs by the author 
L 
AST summer while driving along a road running parallel 
with the shore of Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, my 
attention was drawn to a house that stood on a slight elevation 
between the road and the beautiful 
lake. The site was one of unusual 
natural advantages, yet the house had 
been built with its front looking down 
over a miry cow-yard that bordered 
the road, while at its back, on the lake 
side, a dense clump of ragged ever¬ 
greens effectually shut out the glo¬ 
rious lake below, even from the back 
door. 1 believe that this particular 
house has been torn down to make 
way for the new home of a man who 
knows a view when he sees one, yet 
I venture to say that this same brand 
of stupidity is to be found — though in 
a lesser degree, let us hope—all over 
the land among those who are content 
with stereotyped house plans, what¬ 
ever may be the character of the ac¬ 
quired sites. 
If there is one principle that will 
apply to every home that is being 
erected to-day, one slogan that needs 
to be shouted from the house-tops, it 
is “Design your house to lit its site.” 
Mr. Bates’ house at Mamaroneck 
is an excellent example of what may 
result when this vital principle is held 
to, firmly and understandingly, in the 
The site is at 
Across the living-room end of the house the view 
porch is built. The boys’ playroom 
is entered beneath it 
the corner of two streets, well above and perhaps a half mile 
back from a small bay opening into Long Island Sound. From 
the intersection of the streets the ground rises to a rounded 
knoll and then drops sharply away 
towards the east and the water. All 
over the plot there are occasional 
outcroppings of rock. The house has 
been placed on the knoll, with its 
longer side to the north. 
The natural — or shall we say 
the commonplace?—thing would have 
been to have the porch running 
around the north and west sides of 
the house, so that one might sit out 
upon it and watch one’s neighbors 
walk along the nearby sidewalks, put¬ 
ting the kitchen and service portion 
of the house as far away from the 
street fronts as possible, where, inci¬ 
dentally, they would have had the 
view down over the garden towards 
the Sound. Perhaps a further con¬ 
ventional detail would have been the 
use of those nice pressed brick for the 
walls and piers, since stone was so 
“ common ” around the place. How¬ 
ever, Mr. Bates and Mr. Embury, his 
architect, didn't do it just that way. 
Stone piers and underpinning grew 
naturally into the design, as do the 
rocks from out of the site itself. The 
passing of neighbors and an occa¬ 
sional butcher’s boy did not seem so 
(116) 
