144 
House & 
Garden 
MOTT 
c \An “ EcZipso ” Bath 
for permanent beauty 
The hard glistening white surface of the Mott 
Enameled Iron Bath is the secret of its permanent 
beauty. It costs no more to get the best—built 
by the pioneers of the industry 
Send for the Mott Bathroom Book — Address Department A 
THE J. L. MOTT IRON WORKS 
GENERAL OFFICES AND PLANT, TRENTON, N. J. 
Fifth Avenue and Seventeenth Street, New York 
And all principal cities 
Established 1828 
On House &? Garden’s Book Shelf 
(Continued, from page 142) 
It is only thus that one is able to' ac¬ 
quire a feeling for the topography of 
a site and a knowledge of the forms, 
colors and habits of the plants with 
which a site is to be treated. And it 
is only in this way that one is finally 
able to lay down drives and paths over 
an irregular terrain, and create planta¬ 
tions and open spaces, in such a manner 
that they will fit easily into their situ¬ 
ation and be at once beautiful and 
useful. It was in work of this general 
character that Olmsted was chiefly oc¬ 
cupied, rather than in formal and 
“architectural” schemes, and the public 
parks of New York, Brooklyn, Boston, 
Washington, Buffalo, and other cities 
stand as examples of his still unequalled 
skill in this direction. 
It was not until 1858, when he was 
36, and when he was awarded, with 
Calvert Vaux, the first prize for their 
competitive design for Central Park, 
that he became actually engaged in his 
professional career. Previous tO' that 
time he had traveled extensively 
through the South and in Europe, even 
sailed before the mast to China; had 
engaged in writing and had ventured, 
rather unfortunately, into the publish¬ 
ing business. Always, in the accounts 
of his travels abroad, he seems to have 
been more deeply moved by landscapes 
than by any other form of art or 
nature. For instance, among his notes 
there is this passage inspired by the 
sight of Eaton Park in England: 
“Probably there is no object of art that 
Americans of cultivated taste generally 
more long to' see in Europe than an 
English park. What artist so noble, 
has often been my thought, as he who, 
with far-reaching conception of beauty 
and designing power, sketches the out¬ 
line, writes the colours, and directs the 
shadows of a picture so great that Na¬ 
ture shall be employed upon it for 
generations, before the work he has 
arranged for her shall realize his inten¬ 
tions.” It typifies his enthusiasm and 
explains the ultimate choice of his life 
work. 
T HE Construction of the Small 
House, by H. Vandervoort Walsh, 
published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. 
The futility of mere theories, when 
conditions and not theories are to be 
met, is generally apparent, and there 
are few people so ill-advised as to 
address themselves to reading Rus- 
kin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture” 
as a guide to their problems in build¬ 
ing a small house in the country. But 
they are only too likely to turn to 
books which are far worse for their 
purpose than the Seven Lamps, be¬ 
cause they claim to be practical and 
helpful and are, for the most part, 
impractical and misleading. 
Few enterprises upon which private 
citizens embark are more dependent 
upon the application of fundamental 
knowledge and sound good sense than 
the enterprise of building a house—yet 
the greater number of books purporting 
to supply these two aids are made up 
of a great many misstatements of fact, 
and of much personal opinion dis¬ 
guised as fact. And most books which 
claim to aid the prospective builder 
were published before the war, so that 
their facts and figures are not much 
more helpful than notes on building 
conditions in Sweden or Australia. 
The two primary factors in build¬ 
ing—labor and materials—have changed 
building conditions since the war even 
more than is generally realized. Most 
people know that “it costs more to 
build now than it used to”, but they 
do not realize just how much more. 
The first illustration encountered in 
Mr. Walsh’s book are two pictures of 
houses, the first a house planned before 
the war, the second, the very much di¬ 
minished house which the same esti¬ 
mated cost would build now. The 
comparison is far more illuminating 
than figures, because a picture is the 
shortest distance between an idea and 
the human mind. 
In most popular books there is an 
appalling amount of sheer nonsense writ¬ 
ten about planning and building the 
house, just as there is about interior 
decoration. In colloquial and strictly 
non-technical language, there is, in 
print, an overwhelming lot of bunk, 
on this as well as many related sub¬ 
jects, especially the subject of art. 
And the prospective builder, pelted 
with volley after volley of “do’s” and 
“don’ts,” very often conflicting in their 
advices, knows not where to turn for 
help or direction. His best source for 
both, of course, is the architect—but as 
a rule the people who need the most 
help are the least likely to go first to 
the architect with their troubles. 
The writer of this review, upon 
glancing through a copy of H. Vander¬ 
voort Walsh’s “Construction of the 
Small House”, got a pleasant shock, 
and a unique one. Here, it seemed, 
was a practical book which was prac¬ 
tical. Impossible: we had hoped for 
something like this too long, and in 
vain. A page was read, here and there, 
without the discovery of a single line 
or phrase of bunk. There was no 
nonsense in the first chapter; there was 
no bunk in the captions. The illus¬ 
trations all illustrated definite and vi¬ 
tal things. Could there really be a 
good book of advice to those about 
to build? 
If we had not been disappointed so 
many times, and read so many biased 
personal opinions dressed up to look 
like straight facts, we could more 
quickly have realized that Mr. Walsh’s 
book is really good—perhaps the first 
really good book of its kind which 
has ever been published. 
We have since read it through, 
from cover to cover, and found it to be 
even better than it looked, and it was 
refreshing to be spared the reading of 
the usual verbal juggling which is so 
often used to prove or to feature per¬ 
sonal opinions. The best house is the 
one which is built on facts, not opin¬ 
ions, and Mr. Walsh deals in facts. It 
is a relief to read a book in which the 
writer holds no vehement brief for 
this or that material, but puts the 
stress where it belongs, on cost and on 
the quality of the labor which erects 
or installs the material or equipment. 
The truth is not that this or that heat¬ 
ing plant, for instance, is better but 
rather that care, integrity and good 
workmanship in the installation of one 
will cause it to work better than the 
other installed in a careless, slovenly 
manner. This may go far to lessen the 
unfortunate weight of absolutely in¬ 
competent “advice” gratuitously given 
to prospective builders by those who 
have already built. At the risk of 
seeming ungallant we must record that 
women are a shade worse than men 
in this respect. The one who has 
built feels all the elated superiority of 
a secret society member initiate to¬ 
ward a neophyte, and speaks with fit¬ 
ting authority: “Oh, my dear —what¬ 
ever you do, don’t get a Whatever 
Boiler. We got one, and it simply 
doesn’t work at all”. Neither lady, 
unfortunately, stops to reflect that the 
fault may not lie with the boiler, but 
with faulty installation, or even with 
the owner’s own stupid operation of 
it. Nor do they reflect that no manu¬ 
facturer could very well advertise na¬ 
tionally, and operate a large factory 
(Continued on page 146) 
