1 of

You are browsing the full text of the article: The Changing Styles of Country Houses

 

 

Click here to go back to the list of articles for Issue: Volume: 11 of Architectural Review (USA)

 

Architectural Review (USA)  Volume 11   Issue: 1  January 1904  Page: 1
 
 The Changing Styles of Country Houses By Robert D. Andrews
Captions:
 
HOUSE AT BEVERLY FARMS, MASS.

PETERS & RICE, ARCHITECTS
Footnotes:
The illustrations show a number of typical American Country Houses
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
THE CHANGING STYLES OF COUNTRY HOUSES

By Robert D. Andrews
 
Twenty-five years ago nearly all the better class of American country houses that were building were of a picturesque, romantic sort. The roofs were of a good steep slope, with dormers; and the masses of the house were broken and freely assembled. Field or local quarry stone was largely used for lower walls and chimneys, and shingles covered the upper walls and roof. The detail treatment given these houses ran from delicate Francis 1st motives to the unmoulded forms of peasant dwellings, according to the taste of the architect or his client. Their plans were mostly free in conception and handling; the staircase was made a picturesque feature, often with a chimney-corner beneath it, and anything like formal symmetry was avoided. The grounds about these houses were treated in a like informal spirit, with curving driveways and masses of shrubs and flowers irregularly disposed. The general idea seemed to be to make the country house like the country, — naturalistic, unconventional, local.

This mode of treatment was not confined to any one group of architects or to any one section of the country. The houses of McKim, Mead, and White along the Long Island Sound and New Jersey shores were of this description, as well as those of Richardson and Emerson in New England; and what these leaders did was repeated by other architects all over the land, with infinite minor variations.

Since then a very decided change has occurred, especially in the case of the larger and more costly houses. They have departed from the picturesque type just described and become more formal and stately in pretension. One element in this change has been a revival of interest in colonial history. The formation of numerous societies for the perpetuation of colonial associations and the display of colonial ancestries has quickened an interest in the architecture of that time. Western towns, which were yet undreamt of a hundred years ago, today have their colonial mansions as well as Cambridge and Charleston.

Another factor which has had great weight has been the influence of the French School of Beaux-Arts, to which our students have flocked in large numbers, bringing back with them a predisposition for formal types of planning and a technique based on the employment of classical details. Still another factor, more powerful than either of the above, has been the sudden creation of a distinct wealthy class, seeking to emphasize their position by the erection of houses which should be different in character as well as in degree from the common type. Naturally the standards taken by them for imitation have been the palaces of the European nobility,which are, for the most part, formal in character; and the lead thus given by the “smart” set is widely followed, even by those who would deny their influence.

It is hardly necessary to give examples of this new plutocratic type of country-house, for every student of the architectural journals can recall many to mind, and the visitor to Newport and Lenox may see them. The best of them are very beautiful and stately and are doubtless in harmony with the life they shelter, which one suspects is related more to the continental than the English standard of what country life ought to be.

But it would be a great misfortune if the mass of our people were to forget the English ideal in their pleasure in formal gardens and symmetrical houses. Happily, there is no serious danger of this result. The amount,of Latin blood in the American people is very small compared with that of the Teutonic or northern European races, and hereditary influences are more powerful and lasting than those of environment. The love of individual freedom and all that follows from it is stronger in us than the admiration which the French
Architectural Review (USA)  Volume 11   Issue: 1  January 1904  Page: 2
 
 The Changing Styles of Country Houses By Robert D. Andrews
Captions:
 
HOUSE AT WALLINGFORD, PA.

W. L. PRICE, ARCHITECT.

--

HOUSE AT LAKE FOREST, ILL.

A. H. GRANGER, ARCHITECT.

--

HOUSE AT FOX POINT, WIS.

ELMER GREY, ARCHITECT.

--

HOUSE AT GERMANTOWN, PA.

WILSON EYRE, ARCHITECT.

--

HOUSE AT CINCINNATI, O.

ELZENER & ANDERSON, ARCHITECTS.

--

HOUSE AT JAMAICA PLAIN, MASS.

PEABODY & STEARNS, ARCHITECTS.

--

HOUSE AT WAYNE, PA.

HAZLEHURST & HUCKEL, ARCHITECTS.

--

HOUSE AT TUXEDO PARK, N. Y.

HOWARD, CAULDWELL & MORGAN, ARCHITECTS.
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
and their kindred people have for centralized power. Nothing is more interesting than to observe how the whole character of architecture and architectural landscape changes when one passes from France to England, or even into Holland. The French instinct is formal and monumental, and is shown in a hundred ways. It loves public ceremonies and displays, builds promenades for public meeting places, accentuates the functions of its government in every possible way, isolates and dignifies its public buildings by parks and fountains, regulates the height and design of private structures along city streets, clips the city trees to uniform size and shape, spends the public money for works of art and for the maintenance of the opera, and, in short, everywhere emphasizes the communal interest above that of the individual. The same spirit is shown in the planning and disposition of separate buildings, which have only to be compared with those native to England to bring out as great a difference as that presented by the aspects of Paris and London. The quality of English architecture is essentially domestic. Even in its greatest buildings, its cathedrals, grace and charm are more conspicuous than monumental dignity. It is in its country houses and parish churches that the English genius finds its most typical architectural expression. If the glory of the city belongs to the continent, surely the glory of the country is the heritage of England. That racial instinct that led Shakespeare to write “the ornament of beauty is suspect” has led the English builder to so unite his work with nature that it all seems like nature, upon which conscious ornamentation could
Architectural Review (USA)  Volume 11   Issue: 1  January 1904  Page: 3
 
 The Changing Styles of Country Houses By Robert D. Andrews
Captions:
 
HOUSE AT BROOKLINE, MASS.

WINSLOW & BIGELOW, ARCHITECTS

--

HOUSE IN A BOSTON SUBURB

JOHN A. FOX, ARCHITECT

--

HOUSE AT OGONTZ, PA.

HORACE TRUMBAUER, ARCHITECT

--

HOUSE AT MARION, PA.

W. L. PRICE, ARCHITECT
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
but intrude. Art there is, and design; but its purpose is seemingly to bring man into harmony with the country rather than the country into harmony with man, which I conceive to be the Latin idea.

As the external masses of buildings are in harmony with their plans, it is not surprising that essentially different modes of planning are found in the two types of houses I am contrasting. The formal, continental method is to work upon a central axis, which is carried entirely through the whole composition of house and grounds. This is crossed by subordinate axes, which, in turn, are crossed by others, the point of crossing yielding symmetrical and balanced views in all directions. The square house with central hall, staircase opposite the door, and equal rooms with equal doors on either side suggests the type. Wherever possible, the central axis is emphasized, and a bilateral uniformity preserved. The effect is formal and conventional.

The typical English method is the opposite of this. There is no long-continued axis maintained anywhere. One moves from one door to another, one feature to another, by a path like that of the Knight on a chessboard, first forward and then sideways. You “tack,” as it were, from one point to another, like a sloop beating up against the wind. Enter the porch, and the door is at one side; enter the hall, and you must turn to look down it; its features of staircase and fireplace are somewhat withdrawn from immediate view, and you must continue well down into the hall ere your destination is made certain. The lighting of the rooms by windows is concentrated, and when you enter the room it has well-defined dark and light areas. The effect is like that of Dutch pictures, mysterious, appealing to the imagination, piquing the visitor to go on and explore to the end, and then to return to some sequestered corner which you alone seem to have discovered. The sentiment of such a house is like a garden or wood; it is filled with reticences and consequent surprises; it is built for individual comfort and family life. Each room has but one door leading to it, and that so placed that it does not command the whole room.

You know from what point intrusion will come, if it comes at all. All the walls of the room are not punched through with windows, soliciting your attention to the external world. Your mind is left free for books or talk. You are at home. Surely this is the environment that we ought to seek in our country houses, rather than the diminished grandeur that may be borrowed from Roman palaces. It is good to get back to the soil, to get in touch again with natural ways, and to renew the intimacies of an unformalized social life. If the architect is not master enough to know how to express this natural life
Architectural Review (USA)  Volume 11   Issue: 1  January 1904  Page: 4
 
 The Changing Styles of Country Houses By Robert D. Andrews
Captions:
 
HOUSE AT TORRESDALE, PA.

WILSON EYRE, ARCHITECT


--

“PRINCESSGATE,” WYOMING, N. J.

JOY WHEELER DOW, ARCHITECT

--

HOUSE AT FOX POINT, WIS.

ELMER GREY, ARCHITECT

--

HOUSE AT GROTON, MASS.

R. CLIPSTON STURGIS, ARCHITECT

--

HOUSE AT BRONXVILLE N. Y.,

WILLIAM A. BATES, ARCHITECT
Zoom:
 100% 200% Full Size
Brightness:
Contrast:
Saturation:
 
in the shell he is called upon to build for it, he has missed the truest and most exquisite function of his calling.

If the reader will keep in mind these two opposite modes of planning as he examines the architectural journals, he will observe that the great majority of American houses are modelled upon neither one exclusively; and this, of course, is just what one would expect. If a family can have but one house, especially if it be in that suburban region betwixt city and country, it must serve for formality and domesticity alike. But when one builds in real city or real country, then it is worth while to try to express the local quality of the place and the life normal to it. The city is cosmopolitan, and the attrition of people gathered from many localities tends to wear down their native peculiarities and produce a uniform conventional type. City houses should be conventional and uniform, and our taste in this respect is far from the best standard, as exemplified in Paris, for example. We too often take our rusticity into the city, and try to be individual where we should be conventional. It is an equal breach of fitness to carry the city ways into the country. Just where and how the line is to be drawn is a question which has a different answer in each case. It is a question of manners, of taste, of unconscious emphasis or relish. Offence comes when one begins to air his knowledge for its own sake. The fault is not in the thing, but in its absence of occasion. See how charming in its freedom from sophistication amongst natural surroundings is a house by Mr. Garden on pages 32 to 34. Mr. Elmer Grey’s work has this indefinable quality of naturalness in a high degree, combined with remarkable skill in the composition of masses; and Mr. Howard Shaw displays in his own house shown on pages 23 to 26 a great felicity of technique in handling a balanced mass in an informal spirit. As Browning says:

 

“A little more, and how much it is;
A little less, and what worlds away.”

 

Why one house is adorable and another is an abomination is hard to say; but the poetic sense underlies all good work, and to the architect who understands his trade and can express in material shapes the moods of men, the country house will always be the most congenial of his tasks, for in it he may give expression to the deepest of man’s passions — that which unites the love of nature with the love of family and friends.