January, 1918 
49 
1 
ERNEST IRVING FREESE 
THE MAKING of EASY STAIRS 
Privacy and Stair Position—The Simple Mathematics 
of Risers and Treads—Lighting Rules 
1 ET us, forthwith, agree upon two points: first, the 
essential and primal purpose of a stairway is to 
afford an easy means of transition from one floor 
to another; and second, a stairway in a private dwell¬ 
ing is a thoroughfare essentially private. 
With these two basic but continually ignored facts, 
we are prepared to strike a death-blow at an ancient 
tradition of the home. 
You are already beginning to squirm. You are 
beginning to squirm precisely as others have begun 
to squirm upon being inveigled into a plot to lay 
Tradition low. “Traditions,” you murmur platitudi- 
nously, “are sacred things.” 
Well, so be it. I ask you, then, a question. What is 
a reception-room? And, in answer, you are bound to 
admit that it is the barrier between the innermost 
privacy of the house and the outermost publicity of 
the street. It is the one room into which chance 
callers and unwelcome visitors are admitted upon 
ringing your door-bell. In short, a reception-room is 
essentially a room for the reception or detention of 
the public. It is the one public room of the private 
house today. 
Again, you are forced to concede that sleeping 
rooms, bathrooms and boudoirs are rooms essentially 
private, to be approached only by way of an essen¬ 
tially private thoroughfare. And you have agreed 
that a stairway, in a private dwelling, is an essen- 
By using this chart 
the exact measure¬ 
ments of risers 
and treads can he 
determined 
The landing makes 
this an easy and 
safe stairs to as¬ 
cend. The treads 
are quite wide 
,r. : 
tially private thoroughfare, and that it should afford 
an %asy means of transition from one floor to another. 
Now why should this easy means of transition, this 
private thoroughfare to the second-floor sleeping 
apartments start boldly and invitingly upward from 
the reception room? Why should it cry out to the 
chance caller, the unwelcome visitor, to ascend to the 
regions of innermost privacy ? Why should it be a 
thoroughfare blatantly evident upon the opening of 
the front door? 
In the dwellings of Colonial times, privacy from 
the chance caller was obtained by an intervening vesti¬ 
bule, or entry, between the front door and the stair 
hall. In this vestibule the visitor was detained; here 
he met the appraising eye of the butler and, only upon 
passing this acid test, was he welcomed by the mis¬ 
tress of the house and thereupon admitted to the 
privacy of its inner rooms. 
Vestibule and Stair Seclusion 
The old-time vestibule, however, is becoming obso¬ 
lete. It has expanded into the present day reception- 
hall, and its significance is forgotten. Wherefore, we 
calmly go about placing the stairway, admittedly the 
most private thoroughfare of the house, in this recep¬ 
tion-hall, admittedly the most public room of the 
house. And not only do we place the stairway there, 
but we seem to be possessed of an uncontrollable de¬ 
sire to have it start as close to the front door as pos¬ 
sible. In all truth, it appears that our stairways are 
so placed for no other purpose than to invite every 
chance caller who crosses our threshold immediately 
to ascend to milady’s boudoir. Ridiculous. Is it not? 
Then why cling so tenaciously to the old-time stair- 
hall of our forefathers when the conditions that once 
rendered it logical no longer exist? 
The keynote of the stairway should be seclusion. 
There is no reason under the sun why it should be 
at once revealed upon the opening of the front door. 
It should be reticent and secluded, rather than for¬ 
ward and bold. The ideal arrangement is to place it 
in a side hallway, either entirely hiding it from casual 
view or else allowing the first few steps and the newel 
post to project into the reception hall as a modest 
suggestion of its location. If the exigencies of the 
plan require it to be placed in the reception hall, the 
proper subordination can be secured by starting it 
from the end of the hall farthest from 
the front doorway and making it as¬ 
cend toward the front. Here, too, its 
location can be modestly marked by 
projecting a few steps forward and at 
right angles from a low landing. 
Certain it is that my conclusions 
concerning the location of the stair¬ 
way will not be accepted unanimously. 
I cherish the firm conviction that in 
this conclusion lies the ultimate and 
logical solution of the “problem” of 
the stairway. 
Since the stairs are a private con¬ 
venience', they should be placed in 
the rear of the hall near the back en¬ 
trance, as in this residence. Parker 
& Unwin, architects 
Measuring Risers and Treads 
Now that I have rid my mind of 
this burden, let us discuss a few prac¬ 
tical matters concerning stairs and 
stairways in general. To begin with, 
a stairway should most assuredly be 
easy of ascent. It should be comfort¬ 
able to climb and safe to descend. 
The vertical face of a step is called 
the riser; the flat part, where the foot 
rests, is the tread. The height of a 
riser is the vertical distance between 
one tread and the next; the width of 
a tread is the horizontal distance be¬ 
tween one riser and the next. And in 
the correct proportioning of the width 
of tread to the height of riser lies the 
secret of a comfortable stairway. 
To determine these correct propor¬ 
tions, I have for some years made use 
of a diagram that is based upon the 
results of a valuable series of experi¬ 
ments once made by Mr. Frederic Law 
Olmsted. This diagram reduces the 
correct proportioning of comfortable 
steps to a definite law. There is no 
guess-work about it. By its use, the 
(Continued on page 60) 
