Two Cottages at Wyoming, N. J. 
j. W. DOW, Architect 
T HA I' the leaning of the present generation of 
American house builders is toward English 
cottage architecture is evidenced by the two 
modern cottages at Wyoming, New jersey, from 
which some illustrations are herewith presented. 
This cottage architecture is not the kind of English 
cottage advocated by John Ruskin, and extensively 
exploited during our dark transitional period of 1845 
or thereabouts, nor is it selected solely because it is 
English cottage architecture in contradistinction to 
what we call “Colonial,” for cottage architecture in 
England to-day is nearly if not quite as faulty as our 
own, and stands in need of quite as general an uplift. 
It is almost unnecessary to say that there are English 
cottages and English cottages. 
The hrick and stucco house built by Miss Good- 
child and the stone cottage of Eldred Bates are pretty 
cottages, in fact they are beautiful. And to encour¬ 
age the building of such cottages, that is, cottages 
considered by competent judges of architecture to be 
up to a certain standard in the subtle domain of 
esthetics, every town committee would do well to 
exempt them from local taxation for a limited 
period, at least. In Greece, during what we call its 
Pagan not to say heathen history, they would have 
exempted all such commendable exploits from taxa¬ 
tion altogether, and more than likely paid off and 
caused to be canceled of record any mortgage or 
other encumbrance the owners found necessary to 
place upon them to help defray the cost of construc¬ 
tion. 
The United States government does offer certain 
free grants of land to pioneers in the wilderness to 
encourage them to settle and cultivate farms and 
build homes. Why not extend some concessions to 
those who in the wilderness of bad cottage architec¬ 
ture (and that means nearly everywhere in the coun¬ 
try) conscientiously try to improve the landscape with 
architectural embellishment which is suitable to it, 
and which tends to idealize the picture rather than 
commercialize it. 
The town committee of Wyoming, very probably, 
have no intention of canceling the local tax upon 
either of these two cottages, beautiful as they are, 
much less assuming the payment of any possible 
mortgages upon record against them. Indeed, the 
average town committee man and tax assessor would 
be very apt to look upon them more in a spirit of 
THE GOODCHILD HOUSE 
”3 
