84 
House & Garden 
Photographs taken in the Royal Suite, Rits-Carlton Hotel, New York 
T HE ceiling fixtures in these rooms are Duplexalites. They 
replaced other fixtures, to provide the last word in comfort 
for Ritz-Carlton guests. 
Our book, “The Light to Live With” illustrates a variety of 
shades for Duplexalites. If you prefer, you may purchase 
just the Duplexalites-the basis of the perfect results-and 
make suitable shades yourself or have them made by your 
Decorator. 
It is the Duplex- 
alite around the 
Mazda C lamp, 
inside the shade, 
which controls 
and directs the 
light rays and 
makes possible 
the beautiful 
illumination. 
There are Duplexalite Dealers all over the country. Send for a 
copy of our book, "The Light to Live With.” 
DUPLEX LIGHTING WORKS 
of General Electric Company 
6 West 48th Street, New York City 
Duplex-a-lite 
c Ifie ligfit to live icit/i" 
If You Are Going To Build 
(Continued from page 82) 
a convenient kitchen, the most sympa¬ 
thetic architect is a little bored with 
this detail. How can he think the 
height of the sink vital, the nearness of 
sink to cupboard important, the work 
table near the refrigerator, an ash 
chute to the cellar, all a part of the 
progress of civilization? England has 
had some bitter lessons to learn be¬ 
cause of the strange old idea that the 
people in the kitchen were automatons, 
and we in America will have a servant 
problem until we begin to live de¬ 
mocracy as well as play at it. Women 
have grown justly to detest housework 
because it took no cognizance of them 
as potentially happy human beings. 
With the kitchen properly fitted with 
electrical or gas devices, with the 
laundry work done in a cool, dry cellar, 
with every convenience that Yankee in¬ 
genuity has devised for simplifying 
housework (and what a quaint idea 
that most of these labor-saving devices 
should have been created in New Eng¬ 
land, where a certain average of house¬ 
wives go every year from kitchen to 
insane asylum), housework takes on en¬ 
tirely a new aspect. No matter how 
large your home or how many serv¬ 
ants you intend to have, plan your 
kitchen as though you and your children 
were intending to work in it, and you 
will have happy, contented servants. 
If your house is even medium-sized 
you will want a hand elevator which 
will run from garret to cellar, adding 
immensely to the convenience of house¬ 
keeping. Of course, this is a luxury, 
but you would not plan a house with¬ 
out some luxuries. 
In arranging the upper rooms, once 
you are upstairs you will think of your 
own bedroom. The owner of the house 
should have the best room in it, with 
possibly a sleeping porch, and cer¬ 
tainly a private bath. You will want 
a good outlook to a lake or a river or 
the hilltops, and you will want it 
quiet. 
The Bedroom 
Do not give the best room in the 
house to children. It should, of course, 
be the suniest, and a cozy room with 
sanitary modern fittings. But I do not 
think that the spirits of little children 
are vastly uplifted by looking out over 
a valley at sunset or a mauve mountain 
peak at daybreak. 
If possible there should be a special 
bathroom for children, plenty of win¬ 
dows in the nursery and everything as 
wholesome as can be without the hos¬ 
pital atmosphere. To make sure of 
sunlight and air in the nursery, you 
must plan it at the very beginning. The 
fittings should be simple and gay. A 
certain emptiness is a good thing for 
children, a room without much furniture 
or many playthings. Many children 
are born with a touch of actual genius 
and could do interesting and lively 
things if we would let them, but we 
prefer to satisfy our own vanity by 
giving them presents. 
If there is a governess or nurse maid, 
it is wise to have the children’s room 
well away from the homemaker’s room, 
but if there is only one maid in family 
she must sleep at night, and then the 
nursery should open off the main sleep¬ 
ing room. Children are apt to be easily 
disturbed at night, before their con¬ 
fidence in the material and spiritual 
worlds is established. 
Of course there must be a guest room, 
which can be quite small, as it will be 
the least occupied of any, but it should 
be a room with real possibilities of 
comfort, with a fresh, not too vivid 
color scheme, a private bath if possible, 
with ample closet room, and a great 
many coat hangers in the closet and a 
good hand mirror on the dressing table. 
There is no reason why this room 
should not be on the third floor if that 
fits into your scheme better, the guests 
will find more quiet there and you could 
probably arrange a better outlook from 
the windows. It is a cruel mistake to 
have a sad and dingy guest room, your 
friends come to you either with a great 
love for you or a great need of you 
and a bleak, unfriendly, damp guest 
room is always a blow. 
The question of servants’ rooms is of 
real significance. They must be near the 
kitchen, well lighted and well ventilated, 
warm in winter, with the kind of fur¬ 
niture that is comfortable for tired wo¬ 
men. 
Your house must be built with an air 
chamber over the top floor, if this 
space is to be used for anything be¬ 
sides an attic or storeroom. No amount 
of open door and windows or cross 
draughts will cool off the top floor that 
is directly under the roof. The expense 
of an air chamber is not particularly 
great, and it always makes a safe 
storeroom. 
Window Problems 
As you are metaphorically walking 
about your house, you will decide about 
your windows, the type that will suit 
your house, the fittings for them and, 
if possible, you will arrange for storm 
windows and doors, because of the great 
saving it will afford in coal. Before the 
final plans are made your architect will 
want your decision about all this archi¬ 
tectural detail, not only the type and 
number of your doors and windows, 
but the color of paint to be used and the 
amount and kind of hardware. 
I cannot imagine a conveniently 
planned home without a sewing room. 
There are times in every home when a 
seamstress is essential, for the making 
of simple clothes, the doing over of last 
year’s supply, the making or re-model- 
ing of curtains and draperies, the care 
of children’s garments and for generally 
keeping things in order. If you attempt 
to sew in a room that is otherwise oc¬ 
cupied, the comfort of that room com¬ 
pletely vanishes. A machine must be 
there, a form for fitting and work tables, 
and frequently the seamstress may leave 
an untidy place that cannot be put in 
order until the next day. If a woman 
does much of her own sewing, she will 
all the more need a room that does not 
demand much housekeeping. Almost 
every house in the process of designing 
has some waste space that can be uti¬ 
lized for ,a sewing room at a trifling 
expense. However small this room, it 
must be well lighted, and warm in 
winter. 
Then, The Architect 
After all these rooms so necessary for 
your comfort have been arranged on the 
different floors and you have decided 
their relative size, where the stairs are 
to come down, about the entrance, the 
fireplace in the living room, ample closet 
room, etc., your architect will then 
make you see things more clearly with 
his own plans drawn to scale and later 
he will furnish the exteriors and speci¬ 
fications. Read through the speci¬ 
fications most carefully in connection 
with building catalogues, so that you 
will know the extent to which the 
architect has caught your ideas, and 
can begin to ascertain what it will cost 
to carry them out. When the building 
begins, if the architect is away at any 
time, it will be quite easy for you to 
oversee some of the details of construc¬ 
tion, and you will know with certainty 
whether the specified materials are be¬ 
ing used by the builder. It is a wise 
thing to have the architect’s drawings, 
(Continued on page 86) 
