A planting of shrubs and a lattice screen shuts off the service en¬ 
trance at the near end, giving the back an unobstructed view 
The laundry drying yard is well tied into the whole design by 
means of the extension wall and posts of stucco 
The Service End of the House 
A MARKED CHANGE THAT HAS BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT IN THE APPEARANCE 
OF BACK DOORS AND LAUNDRY YARDS, DUE TO A NEW MODE OF LIFE 
by Russell Fisher 
Photographs by Thomas W. Sears and others 
T HE stupendous development in suburban living that has 
been evident throughout America for the past decade has 
wrought many changes in the character of our homes. Among 
other things it has abolished the back alley and uplifted the 
back door. 
In the larger cities, where the houses were necessarily set 
cheek by jowl along the streets, an alleyway along the backs of 
these, serving the rear ends of the houses upon two parallel 
streets, was the simplest and most effective way through which 
to bring supplies for the household and to remove ashes and gar¬ 
bage. The element of beauty did not enter into the matter to 
any appreciable extent. The term “back yard'’ became one of 
reproach, and the gardens consisted of a long-suffering shrub or 
two and perhaps a bed of geraniums and coleus set in the middle 
of a moth-eaten lawn bounded by the high board fence. 
Then people began to realize that they were moving country- 
wards in order to get away from just that sort of thing. An 
expanse of lawn came to be appreciated to such an extent that 
just now we are in the 
midst of a period of de¬ 
velopment when perhaps 
most of us favor the abo¬ 
lition of all boundary 
lines between building- 
lots, so that the eye can 
roam over our neighbor’s 
plots as well as our own. 
The high board fence has 
gone, the back alley has 
gone and we find that 
from our gardens our 
own and our neighbor’s 
back doors are about the 
most conspicuous ele¬ 
ments in the landscape. 
So the time has come 
when we must meet and 
solve this problem of 
making our back doors 
and our laundry yards either as attractive as possible or as incon¬ 
spicuous as possible. We find, too, that with the greater freedom 
given us for design and planning upon a larger plot of ground, 
the service portion of the house is as likely to find itself at one 
cud or even at one side of the front as in its time-honored place 
at the rear. 
Indeed, since the back alley is a thing of the past and our 
grocer’s wagon now drives up to the front of the house, it be¬ 
comes evident that a service entrance at one end in most cases 
will permit the necessities of life to be brought in with the least 
amount of disturbance and effort. Now that we have attained 
that sanity of mind that reserves the greater privacy of the rear 
for our gardens and our porch or paved terrace, we must find a 
less important and less conspicuous place for our service portion 
of the house. 
I remember well with what astonishment and ridicule a house, 
designed on a perfectly rational basis such as this was received 
by neighboring owners some six or eight years ago. The wing 
containing the kitchen and 
service portion projected 
to the front of one side of 
the house where it had to 
be passed by everyone 
approaching the front 
door. Such was the skill 
in design, however, in lo¬ 
cating the service door at 
the far end, just around 
the corner, and in having 
high horizontal windows 
in the kitchen front, with 
no openings on the side 
next the front door, that 
the house was not only 
beautifully adapted to its 
site but crowned with dis¬ 
tinction among its com¬ 
monplace neighbors. 
There are two main 
A typical suburban home where the service end is concealed by a well designed 
lattice reached from a branch path 
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