HOUSE AND GARDEN 
420 
June, 1911 
The third example of the 
smaller houses illustrated is a 
superintendent’s house for 
Mr. Stanley G. Flagg at 
Stowe, Pennsylvania. Mr. 
Flagg is a Philadelphian with 
a big factory at Stowe; de¬ 
siring to erect a house for his 
superintendent, instead of 
simply handing out the or¬ 
der to some carpenter he took 
a little thought as to conven¬ 
ience of arrangement and ex¬ 
cellence of exterior. It cost 
no more than the cottages 
owned by his workmen which 
surround it, but there is a 
difference in their quality due 
not to the comparative wealth 
of their owners, but to the fact 
that Mr. Flagg wanted and 
knew how to get something 
that was not commonplace. 
Most of the other 
houses illustrated 
in the article are 
the summer homes 
of wealthy city 
residents; play- 
houses if you like, 
built for temporary 
housing, and yet 
evidently for tem¬ 
porary housing of 
people who regard¬ 
ed beauty as an es¬ 
sential to their 
dwellings as much 
as to their clothes. 
The tendency of 
life to-day is to 
spend more and more of it 
in the country, following the 
English idea spoken of in 
the beginning of this article, 
but our country places are as 
a rule so situated that they are 
possible of access to the city, 
so we can attend to our daily 
business whether we live in the 
city apartment or in the coun¬ 
try house. 
The houses illustrated show 
the wide range of types used 
in America to-day, the basic 
motive of some of them being 
the American Colonial, others 
are of the English domestic 
type, and one is a sort of mix¬ 
ture of Italian and Colonial; 
yet each seems particularly suitable to its situation, and I think that 
no incongruity would be noticeable were they placed side by side. 
Whether this would be because we have grown accustomed to 
seeing every sort of house on a single block, the exotic beside 
the native, and the well designed beside the house of no design at 
all, or whether it is because the overwhelming force of modern de¬ 
sign compels the introduction of a certain characteristic modern 
note, I am hardly qualified to 
say, although I believe the lat¬ 
ter to be the case. They are 
all essentially homelike in 
quality and one can admire 
them alike without reserve. 
Two of the Colonial houses 
are the work of Messrs. 
Ewing and Chappell, well 
suited for the Connecticut 
hillside on which they are 
placed. Another of the Colonial 
group, a house at Nassau 
Boulevard, Long Island, de¬ 
signed by Messrs. Kirby, Pet¬ 
tit & Green, resembles the 
others in its coloring and the 
fact that it is surrounded with 
trees. These white and green 
houses, beautiful as they are, 
are much enhanced in appear¬ 
ance by trees higher than the 
houses themselves, and these 
trees should be of 
the deciduous type 
—lindens, elms, 
maples and the like. 
On the other 
hand a house of 
English derivation 
such as the David¬ 
son house, Albro & 
L i n deberg, archi¬ 
tects, seems most 
fitly placed with the 
trees so fortunately 
growing around it. 
Some kinship evi¬ 
dently exists be¬ 
tween the stucco 
walls and soft roof 
lines of this house and the 
quiet somber forms and dull 
green of the cedars. Trees do 
unquestionably improve any 
house in appearance, and de¬ 
lightful as the house at Cyn- 
wyd is, it will be still more 
attractive when the small trees 
around it have grown to large 
size. The combination of stone 
and half-timber of this house 
is particularly well done. 
Around Philadelphia they cer¬ 
tainly know how to do stone¬ 
work better than we do in 
New York, and this is an ex¬ 
ample which should at once 
recur to any prospective home¬ 
builder whose fancy pictures 
a stone house. Contrast this with any of the many houses built 
by a cheap real estate company, in which the so-called rubble, or 
fieldstone walls, each stone of which is round and seems to be 
rolling out of its place, so that one questions very strongly the 
stability of a wall built of such materials. Of course the splendid 
cement mortar which has nowadays taken the place of lime, makes 
(Continued on page 482) 
The summer home of Mrs. John C. Clark, Lawrence Park, Bronx- 
ville, N. Y., William A. Bates, architect. An avoidance of all 
symmetry in the disposition of the openings is in harmony with 
the rough character of the woodland site 
A sharp contrast is this summer home of Dr. Hollister at Easthampton, L. I., Albro & 
Lindeberg, architects, where the long horizontal lines of the building are accented in 
every way to harmonize with the lines of beach and horizon 
The country home of Mr. J. A. Lafore at Cynwyd, Pa., Baker & 
Dallett, architects. The use of stone and the more permanent 
building materials is no longer a dependable indication that a 
building is for all-year-round use 
