HOUSE AND GARDEN 
September, igio 
155 
This is the sort of monstrosity you will probably find in the 
“parlor” unless you insist upon a real fireplace 
In the reception hall we succeeded in getting a real fireplace flanked by 
book-shelves and a built-in seat 
a canal boat for beauty; the right kind cost little, if any, more, 
and can be had, if you look for them. A few cents here and 
there added to construction cost will save dollars in repair bills, 
as noted below. Oh, there is plenty to do even with a house 
which must be, in its nature, more or less planned for you. 
Let us consider a few things in detail. First, the fireplace. 
A house without a fireplace is built for a boarding house or a 
storage warehouse, not for a home. No gas logs, nor gas log 
fronts—quintessence of abominations—will take its place. My 
builder protested when I asked for a brick, wood-burning fire¬ 
place. 
“Why, it will ruin the room upstairs!” he said. 
“How?” 
“You are building against a party wall. You can't enclose 
your chimney in the wall or put it outside. It will have to run 
up against the wall in your second bedroom.” 
“Well ?” 
“But it won’t be a rectangle,” he almost shouted. “You'll 
have two extra corners in it — it’ll stick out into the room.” 
“Well ?” 
“Why—why-—oh, if you want it that way; but it’ll ruin that 
room.” 
Well, I did want it that way, and I have it that way, and 
nobody who ever stays in that room thinks it is ruined, either. 
What on earth did I care that a space fourteen by eighteen inches 
was taken out of the floor of what was a spare room? Down¬ 
stairs is an old-fashioned brick fireplace, in which are andirons 
I hunted three cities to get, and in which a cheery, crackling 
fire makes coals on a bed of ashes every night in the winter, and 
all day for my wife if she wants it. It is the gathering place for 
my little household. It is almost a Mecca for many good friends, 
and assuredly the bright flame which burns there daily is so 
much a member of my family that it is mourned when the warm 
days make us bid it good-bye, and welcomed with a shout when 
the first cool wind of autumn sends me staggering up the cellar 
stairs with an armful of oak and pine and hickory! Spoil the 
room, indeed! 
Cost? One hundred and fifty dollars, including brick foun¬ 
dations, a three-story chimney properly lined with terra cotta 
pipe, and a simple brick fireplace which has an ash dump to the 
cellar. This last was an unnecessary luxury. I would not build 
another that way, for the simple reason that you don’t deprive 
the open fire you love of the bed of ashes which makes its 
embers possible more than once or twice in a winter, and to spend 
thirty dollars in building an ash dump to save five minutes a 
year carrying out ashes, is beyond my ideas of real economy! 
The builder willingly gave way to my request for a big, broad 
window-seat. 
“Tell me where you want it,” he said. 
“I want it under the group of windows in the downstairs 
front,” I said, “what you call the ‘parlor.’ ” 
“Well, we are not planning a group window,” he told me. 
“We are going to put in two large windows with space between. 
You want some place for pictures or books, don’t you?” 
“Not till I get light,” I retorted. “I want one big window 
and two smaller ones on each side, filling almost the front of 
this room and the window-seat below. Pictures and books can 
go elsewhere!” 
And I got it, and my “parlor” (heaven save us and bless us!) 
is bright and shining with loads of sunlight, and my window-seat 
is big enough for people to curl up and go to sleep on if they 
want to, and the windows being metal weather-stripped, the most 
sensitive need fear no draught. Incidentally, the space within 
the seats, reached through hinged tops, beneath the cushions, is 
most amazing, when it comes to packing away curtains and 
hangings for the summer. 
This particular house differed not a whit from any other 
five to ten thousand dollar city structure in plan. An entrance 
hall, a “reception hall” (heaven will please bless and save us 
again!), a dining-room, a pantry, a kitchen on the first floor, 
with back stairway, stairway from the “reception hall” to up¬ 
stairs, where are four bedrooms and bath, attic on third floor 
(sometimes another story with more bedrooms). The plans, as 
submitted to me, showed the hall proper curving into the recep¬ 
tion hall. To get to the stairs, it was necessary to cross this, 
and facing the front door was a mantelpiece, with the space 
below filled with tiling! 
“No you don’t! I want my stairs at the end of the entrance 
hall facing the door, then the ‘reception hall’ becomes a room. 
The way you have it, it is just waste space. And there won’t 
be any mantel with the space below filled with tiling either!” 
I was vigorous, because, like any other person who loves his 
house, I hate a sham. 
The mantel has descended to us from our remote ancestry 
as a natural evolution from the top of the fireplace. From an 
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