HOUSE AND GARDEN 
June, 1911 
A superintendent’s cottage at Stowe, Pa., Aymar Embury, II., architect—another example 
of what can be done with the very small house 
venient and quick transportation to more 
distant points has made a hundred miles no 
very great distance to go, and this range in¬ 
cludes all of Long Island and a good part 
of Connecticut and the hill country of lower 
New York and New Jersey. Of course the 
direct commuting district is within thirty or 
forty miles of the city and unfortunately, 
and perhaps necessarily, because of an in¬ 
crease in cottage building operations greater 
than that of architects fitted to handle them, 
the bulk of this work has been done either 
by carpenters without taste or training 
for design, or copying directly by the 
owners from the plans in some one of 
the many commercial books sold for a 
dollar or two—a design fitted to catch 
the eye of only the man untrained in art. 
This condition is L think in process of 
amelioration ; the real estate promoting com¬ 
panies have perceived the commercial value of good design 
and have endeavored, according to their several degrees of 
taste to employ architects and procure designs for build¬ 
ings more attractive than heretofore has been the case. Yet 
it still remains a fact that it is the few and not the many who are 
building beautiful houses, whereas, before our countryside can 
The summer home of Mr. E. S. W. Griswold, Greenwich, Conn., 
Ewing & Chappell, architects. There is an abundance of examples 
in this larger type of country home from which lessons for the 
smaller place may be learned 
A summer home at Lawrence Park, Bronxville, N. Y., William A. 
Bates, architect—a splendid adaptation to modern needs of the 
Connecticut farmhouse type 
A summer home on Nassau Boulevard, L. I., Kirby, Pettit & Green, 
architects. A type of summer home that is based largely on the 
inspiration of Mt. Vernon. There is a provision for an outdoor 
sleeping porch on the roof of the high-column portico 
houses intended for all the-year-round use, but there is a certain 
minority—most of them homes of the wealthy—intended to be 
for summer use only; but the effort is always being made, even 
in these, to place them not so far from the cities but that the male 
portion of the family can reach them easily for over Sunday and 
where possible once or twice during the week. While the many 
miles of beautiful water front around New York are either in¬ 
accessible, or already tenanted by shops and factories, the con¬ 
ever take on the exquisite charm of the English landscape, all or 
a vast majority of the houses must be built with some taste. 
I should like to present with this article a number of country 
houses ranging in cost from four to seven thousand dollars, to 
illustrate the fact that these can be quite as good in their way as 
the more expensive houses, but unfortunately such a group would 
be almost impossible to find, since the average man building a 
house of this size prefers to go to a carpenter and let him prepare 
the plans and build his house, than to go to an architect and have 
him design one. Speaking plainly, the envious criticism directed 
so constantly by the public and the popular magazines of this coun¬ 
try at the lack of taste, lack of education and vulgar ostentation of 
the wealthy, is misdirected if the comparative taste displayed by the 
wealthy and the merely well-to-do in their homes can be taken as 
a criterion. While it is true that many of our largest and most ex¬ 
pensive houses cannot be described as our best and most beautiful 
