26 
House & Garden 
A 
DETAIL 
About the early de¬ 
signs there is a remark¬ 
able simplicity that 
gives them charm 
WORTHY OF 
ENRICHMENT 
The Old Designs of Rain-water Pipe-heads Can Be Used 
to Decorate the Exterior of the Country House 
HARRY C. RICHARDSON 
T HE extent to which decorative rain¬ 
water pipe-heads have been made use of 
by our architects in designing country 
houses is but little appreciated by the Ameri¬ 
can public. The real reason behind this lack 
of appreciation lies in the fact that our pipe- 
heads have almost always been prop¬ 
erly designed and used—that is to 
say they have always been in keeping 
with their surroundings and never 
insistent. They may be beautifully, 
even richly, ornamented and de¬ 
signed, but the}' must always be sub¬ 
ordinated to the architectural design 
of the house which they are to adorn 
else they will stand out too promi¬ 
nently from the house mass. 
As a note of exterior decoration 
few objects can lay claim to so dis¬ 
tinctive a value as the rain-water 
tank with its attendant gutters, 
down-water pipes, pipe-sockets and 
goose-neck. To be beautiful and yet 
wholly utilitarian is a combination 
which always demands careful study 
in design, whether the subject be 
dormer, portico, stair-railing or just 
gutter pipes. 
In the case of gutter pipes we 
must keep in mind the material of 
which the wall is built and the vari¬ 
ous reliefs to flatness offered by such 
breaks as windows and doors. The 
old English designers of Jacobean 
Yet these rain-water adjuncts were a vital 
necessity, a purely utilitarian object enriched. 
Had we used, here in this country, our rain¬ 
water shed for the household water supply 
during the past few hundred years we would 
no doubt be blessed with a crop of the most 
outrageous cast iron rain-water sys¬ 
tems that fancy could conjure. For¬ 
tunately, we have been spared this 
orgy and are permitted the use of 
the rain-water head as a decorative 
accessory to the necessary gutter sys¬ 
tem. True it is that almost all our 
houses are equipped with gutter and 
down-water pipes, but they are for 
the main part of so simple a design 
and are so utterly lacking in indi¬ 
viduality that we always accept them 
more as a necessary incumbrance 
than as a thing of useful beauty. 
Our best American designs are 
found in old Georgian houses, al¬ 
though, because Georgian architec¬ 
ture did not permit of as much origi¬ 
nality as 1 udor and Jacobean, the 
expression is more restrained. 
Various materials have been made 
use of in the construction of rain¬ 
water pipe-heads, among the most 
desirable being cast iron, lead, cop¬ 
per and wood. Lead, however, is 
the material with which this article 
deals mostly. It is, and always has 
been, the most satisfactory material 
and Tudor houses visualized the completed 
facades in full detail, for in only the rarest in¬ 
stances do their gutters, pipe-sockets and pipe- 
heads look out of place. The color of the lead 
blends in with the brick or stone walls and of¬ 
fers a happy contrast to the green of the vines. 
This simple design for a small 
house can be executed in lead, 
copper or cast iron 
In England we find our best examples of lead rain-water pipe-heads. 
Some have been in position many centuries and the modern work 
generally copies the old designs. This example is in Worcestershire 
While lead is the usual ma¬ 
terial for pipe-heads, this de¬ 
sign can be made in cast iron 
