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ALLEN W- JACKS ON
THE COUNTRY HOUSE LIBRARY
BUNGALOWS Hy Henry II. Sayhr
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
By AlUn W. Jackion
CONCRETE AND STUCCO HOUSES
By Oawald C. Ilering
ARCHITECTURAL STYLES FOR COUNTRY
HOMES
A symponum by promitunl archittcti
IN PREPARATION
RECLAIMING THE OLD HOUSE
By Charles Edward Hooper
THE DUTCH COLONIAL HOUSE
By Aymar Embury, II.
FURNISHING THE HOME OF GOOD TASTE
By Lucy Abbot Throop
THE COLONIAL HOUSE
By Joseph Everett Chandler
HOMES THAT ARCHITECTS HAVE BUILT
FOR THEMSELVES
By the Archlteett and Others
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
MW^
Hftll-limbcr work «*; i , ,.ist in tunjurn-lion \w[|i olher malenals, where the
contrasting pattern between the plaster and the wood work is kept very simple, or restricted to use
for features of the building that need accent.
THE
HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
ITS ORIGIN, DESIGN, MODERN PLAN,
AND CONSTRUCTION
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLD EXAMPLES AND
AMERICAN ADAPTATIONS OF THE STYLE
BY
ALLEN W. JACKSON
NEW YORK
McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 191i,by
McBhidk, Nast & Co.
Published March, 191«
/?/z
TO
ALL THOSE
WHO OWN
CASTLES IN SPAIN
Contents
Page
Preface xi
Introduction xv
History of English Domestic Architecture .... 1
The Half-timber House in England 9
Is THE Half-timber Style Suited to Our Needs
To-day? 18
The Charm of Old Work and How We May
Obtain It 24
The Choice of Styles 31
English and American House Plans 37
How TO Plan the House 43
Methods of Construction 63
Exterior Details 84
Interior Details 100
T'he Illustrations
A modem half-timber house showing admirable restraint in the
timbering Frontispiece
Facing Page
" The Gables," Thelwall, England xvi
Symmetry in half-timber work xvii
A brick and half-timber house at Bryn Mawr, Pa xviii
French half-timber buildings 1
A survival of the earliest form of half-timber construction 4
The Hall, " Compton Wynyates " 5
Gateway, St. John's Hospital, Canterbury 8
A gate house, Stokesay, Shropshire 9
The charm of weather-worn surfaces 12
The use of closely spaced vertical timbers 13
Half-timber work with brick filling 14
The overhang of upper stories and an old house in Rouen 15
The projecting pins in half-timber work 16
Quatrefoil pattern in timbering 17
" Stonecroft," a modem English house 18
The charm of an English village street 19
A stone and half-timber house near Philadelphia and an American
example of Enghsh craftsmanship revived 20
A modern American half-timber house expressing its plan 21
A typical Enghsh town house front 22
An English cottage that seems to have grown in its setting 23
Grouped windows 24
A small English manor and a charming example of composition ... 25
Wide spacing of timbers 26
A successful attempt to soften the roof lines 27
Unpainted American half-timbering 28
Restraint in the employment of half-timbering 29
The softening influences of time and weather 80
The half-timber house developed in a flat country 81
An English gardener's lodge in America 84
Half-timber work on a stone base 85
X THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Faoixo Paob
A contrast of half-timber patterns 42
The long, low, rambling tv-pe 43
The Hall, " Seal Hollow," Sevenoaks, Kent 46
An American dining-room 47
A house built with second-hand timbering 60
New houses at Port Sunlight, England 61
A garage in a half-timber house 58
A half-timber house in Cambridge, Mass 59
Half-timber embellishment with restraint 64
Half-timbering against plain walls as a foil 65
A deUil of " The Gables," Thelwall, England 72
"The Gables," ThelwaU, England 73
True half-timber work in process of construction 76
" Stonecroft," Appleton, Cheshire 77
Half-timber work is seen at its best where the strong black-and-white
contrasts are limited to a few points of accent 81
Half-timbering spread evenly over the walls of a house 82
Enrichment of detail on an old English cottage 83
Flat red tile on a modern house 86
Graduated roof slates 87
The chimney as an important element in the design 88
Elaborate chimney designs 89
Casement windows and small panes 90
Small panes as an inevitable feature of half-timber work 91
The sheltered doorway of an English house 94
A new doorway and an old one 95
The terrace 98
Rain-water heads 99
A living-room and its fireplace 102
A modem dining-room 103
Plastered ceiling and car\'ed paneling 106
A modem English Uving-room 107
A room in King's Head Inn 110
Two carved mantelpieces Ill
The stair hall in an American half -timber house 112
A living-room with gallery in an American home 113
Preface
THIS book is not intended as a technical treatise. It has
not been written with the professional reader in mind and
is without pretention to be a serious contribution to the
history of architecture. It is addressed primarily to the general
reader having an interest in house building or to those who have
in mind building for themselves.
If it serves to call the attention of any such to this English
work or to arouse their interest in the matter as a whole, it will
have fulfilled its purpose. In the mind of the author it is further
meant to be at once a protest against the stereotyped use of cer-
tain historical styles for contemporary use, and a plea for a greater
freslaness and virility than is often found in the work of to-day.
It would be impossible to acknowledge all the sources of in-
formation drawn upon, but mention should be made of S. O.
Aldy's The Evolution of the English House, J. A. Gotch's His-
tory of the Early Renaissance in England, and the various works
of P. H. Litchfield. Nor must the author omit to express his
thanks to the Publishers of Country Life (London), The Archi-
tectural Review and B. T. Batsford, for the use of illustrations
owned by them.
Chapter III. is largely taken from a previous article which
appeared in House and Garden.
After much hesitation the author has illustrated some of his
own work. He has been led to do this not because of its supposed
merit, but rather because it happened to illustrate certain points
which he wished to make, better than any other work of which
illustrations were available.
Allen W. Jackson
909 Brattle St., Ca>irriix}I
November 30, 1911
THE
HALF-TIMBER
HOUSE
Introduction
THE whole question of so-called " style " in architecture is
an interesting one for the student. There exists an intel-
hgent opinion that the architectural styles of the past are
dead, and that it is a servile and barren archaism to persist in work-
ing over old forms; which, because the causes of their being have
ceased to operate, have become lifeless material, and the result
moribund and an obstruction to real advance in architecture and
esthetics. While it is true that the conditions which gave birth
to, and differentiated, the architectural styles have lost their force,
they have at the same time become so broadened and made free
that any of the styles may now be properly used where their
characteristics do not render them impracticable from the utili-
tarian i^oint of view. This is the only excuse for the eclecticism
of the present day.
The differences and peculiarities of the various styles were
due to climate, to materials at hand, and to the pecuharities of the
civilization under which they came into existence. Let us con-
sider briefly a typical Italian farmhouse. The material is stone,
both because that was the material easiest to be had and because
it would keep out the heat of summer. The windows are small,
the cornices overhang widely — to keep out the excessive light
of a southern sun. The result, if we go no farther, is a certain
type of house, the logical outgrowth of fulfilling the require-
ments in the easiest way. With an English farm we find the
same logical result. In the stone country of the north the build-
ings are of stone; in the timber country of the south, of timber;
and because of the many dull gray days they all, unlike the
Itahan houses, coax the sun with plenty of windows and little or
no cornice with its accompanying shadow. Thus working along
the lines pointed out by necessity and convenience, each arrived
xvi INTRODUCTION
at a perfect arcliitectural expression of his own condition, re-
quirements, and point of view. Tliis development was still fur-
ther kept a mirror of the peculiar genius and environment of the
builders by their ignorance of what others were doing. The
English carpenter never saw the Italian roof or the Spanish
patio, and was not tempted to experiment in these things. His
building was unaffected. His very limitations were a source of
strength, and the difference in the result correctly measures the
racial differences between one country and another. This is as
it should be, and a real style is the inevitable result. In tliis way
only can an architectural style be formed.
Now let us look at the case in this country. Can we have a
United States style of architecture? Our architecture will differ-
entiate itself from that of other countries, in just so much as our
type and degree of civilization is different from theirs. It will
be as individual and peculiar as the demands, and our ability to
fulfill them, are peculiar and individual.
In the twentieth century such differences are all very slight
among the more highly civilized nations. Not only is there a
similarity in requirement and an equal facility in building skill,
but the building materials of the world are equally accessible
to all. The requirements of the life led by a gentleman in New
York, London, Paris, and Vienna nowadays are much the same.
All desire to live on the same kind of well policed street. Their
business and social lives are much alike. All wear the same
sort of clothes, heat their houses in the same way; modern sani-
tary appliances are common to all ; all have electric light ; all live
secure and peaceful lives. The powerful families of New York
do not need a fortified tower into which to gather their households
when the hirelings of a rival house come charging around the cor-
ner. The gentleman on the Champs Elysees does not need a moat
and drawbridge, or contrivances to greet the guest with molten
lead. The Viennese citizen no longer builds his house with a
watchtower, on the top of a precipitous rock. Any of these
gentlemen can build of what material he pleases or can afford
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INTRODUCTION . xvii
— wood, stone, brick, tile or steel are equally wnthin the reach of
all. Structurally then their houses will be much alike, and as
decoration should be the direct outgrowth of structure, and clothe
the skeleton with grace and beauty without denying the exist-
ence of the bones, there is no reason for any logical difference
in appearances. Such differences as exist are the measure of the
distance we have still to travel to reach the perfect cosmopoli-
tanism. The local inherited forms and motives of decoration
are nowadays no better known to the builders of any locality
than are those of all the rest of the world, since the labors of
!Mr. Daguerre and JNIr. Thomas Cook have made us all so wise.
There will be perforce, much interchange and borrowing ac-
cording to individual preference, and it becomes a question of
individual taste in style rather than a rigidly imposed national
one.
Another great source of freedom is the gain in structural
material. In the old days of brick, stone, mortar, wood and tile,
the ambitions of him who would soar were held do^vn by the very
limited powers of those materials. A stone will cover but a small
opening, and even an arch stretched to the extent of those found
in the Roman baths, pays a great price in space and weight for
its still limited span. Timber has an even more restricted useful-
ness in size and strength, as well as in durabihty. The same is
true of columns which hold the superstructure, and even the at-
tenuation attained by the Gotliic builders in their most daring
work soon reached its limitations. But nowadays, since ]\Ir. Car-
negie has put a wand of steel into the hands of the builder, he has
become something very like a magician, and if he does not quite
build castles in the air, he at least api)roaclies very near it, and
is daily growing to have less and less respect for the old-fashioned
law of gravitation. Chimneys and towers which formerly had to
start from the ground, may now begin in tiie attic and are not
allowed below stairs where they get in tlie way. Great audi-
toriums may be placed in the centre of buildings, with a dozen
floors of offices over the ceiling. Supports are in disgrace and
xvui INTRODUCTION
are either done away with or relegated to out-of-the-way corners.
And as for height, who shall say ?
With all the world, then, having equal access to all the mate-
rials of building, with housing reciuirements varying but little,
with each builder perfectly familiar with the architectural monu-
ments and history of the world, there seems but a sorry chance of
any United States style. It would require a new, radical,
unheard-of departure in our mode of living to bring forward
demands so novel that they could be met only by fresh discoveries
in materials or methods to really constitute a new style.
It would seem, then, that if we are to have new styles of
architecture, they will be world-wide and mark new advances in
building material, or new and extraordinary housing problems.
Meanwhile there is plenty of room for individual genius to
exercise itself with the creation of beauty in building, and to this
there is no end, for if there are nine and sixty methods of con-
structing tribal lays, there are certainly as many of conceiving
each of nine and sixty different sorts of buildings. If we are
sometimes tempted to complain that we are born too late and
that all the changes have been rung on four walls and a roof, we
may find some comfort in Sir Joshua Reynolds' remark that
" Art comes by a kind of felicity and not bj' rule," in which case
we need not fear of exliausting its possibihties.
All old farmhouse at Chaumont
A royal playhouse, Versailles. While the French h.ilf-timber work is interesting,
it does not belong to us in the way that the half-tiraber houses of England do
History of English Domestic Architecture
WHILE what are known as " Half-timber " buildings are
equally indigenous to England, France and Germany, it
is with the work in England that we shall chiefly concern
oursehes. AVhile the French and German work is of just as
higli a type and of equal interest to the student of architectm-e,
for us it is a " foreign " style in a sense in wliich the more ethnic
work of England is not. In the half-timber houses of England
were born, lived and died our own great-grandfathers; these
houses were conceived and wrought out by our own progenitors;
they are our architectural heritage, our homesteads, and hold an
important place in our building history.
This is not true of the German and French work, which is
strange and foreign to us in its motives and feeling, with notliing
in common with the Island work but the name. It has had no
influence on our own work, and is entirely outside the story of
the English and American home with which we purpose to con-
cern ourselves in this book. This timber work of the Continent
is in fact an excellent example of how the same materials used
for the same end, in the hands of men of diff'erent genius, pro-
duce a result that in each case takes its color from the mind of
its creator — it is a subtle document, a bit of racial evidence of
the atmosi)here that surrounds it.
Half-timber work, or, as it is often called, " black-and-white,"
is sometimes deflned by English writers as that sort of building
in which the first story is of masonry and of which the second
story only is timbered; when the whole building is timbered it is
properly called " all-timbered." This is not the commonly
accepted idea of most architects, who understand by the term
" half-timber " that the whole or part of tiic buililing is con-
structed with a timber frame filled \\\ with brick, mortar, or some-
2 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
thing of the sort, that produces the effect of " black " stripes on
a white wall. This is " black-and-white " work, or, if looked at
from the builder's point of view, half timber and half filling.
This method of building is very old. It is easy to see how it
came into being as an outgrowth of the more primitive work which
preceded it, and was the natural outcome of following the lines
of least resistance, with no thought of what it would look like or
where it would lead. It is evident that it did not become the
vogue because stripes happened to be the fashion, but for the
much more satisfactory reason that it was the simplest, easiest,
and quickest way of getting a house, and fulfilled the few neces-
sary requirements.
Although there are probably not standing to-day any half-
timber houses older than the fifteenth century, there is no doubt
that houses of this character were being built for a hundred years
before that time. The oldest half-timber houses we have left
to-day are often disguised in a strange dress and are made to pass
themselves off as having tile walls, or are boarded in with wide
horizontal deal boards. The reason for this is not a desire to de-
ceive, but because " it prolongs the life, and is just as good," as
benzoate of soda is used with old fruit. In cases of this sort it is
ugliness that is only skin deep, and our honest great timbers, sil-
vered with age, are just beneath the surface. The frames were
ordinarily of oak, which as it first shrunk and then decayed, not
only pulled away from the mortar filling but opened up mortises
and presented gaping joints to the weather, racking the building
and making it in course of time uninhabitable. To make the walls
tight without rebuilding, the expedient was adopted of strapping
them and hanging on tile, or boarding the surface, and in this way
continuing the life and usefulness of the structure.
This type of work is not found all over England, but only in
the timbered districts, or what formerly were the timbered dis-
tricts — roughly speaking, in the central, western, and southern
portions. In the north, stone has always been the first thing at
hand and was universally used for both walls and roofing, even
ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE
in the small cottages. In the south, with timber went excellent
clay for making tile and brick, and these were both much used,
although at a later date, as we find no mention of brick before
1400, and tile was probably coeval with it.
Before considering the half-timber work proper, let us see
what preceded it and of what it was the outgrowth and legitimate
successor. The earliest houses of which we have any real knowl-
edge, were formed by the placing of great crucks, which were the
naturally curved trunks of trees, with their bases some distance
Fig. 1. The frames of the earliest
houses, formed with the curved trunks
of trees
Fig. 2. The next step was to put
a wall under this roof, gaining
au attic
apart, and sloping them toward each other until the tops met.
The tops were fastened together and the pair braced by what we
should now call a collar beam, the whole forming a letter A (see
I'ig. 1). A similar frame was set up at a convenient distance,
and the two joined with purlins, the outside of these sloping walls
or roof — for they were both one and the other — being further
braced and joined with smaller structural filling, and then entirely
covered and made tight against the weather by thatch, slates or
whatever came to hand. Sometimes transepts called " shots "
were constructed at right angles to gain more space. An ordinary
building consisted of several of these bays. The determination of
the pro])er spacing of these j)airs of crucks forming bays is inter-
esting, and typical of the kind of pressing utilitarian requirements
which dictate the direction and mold the growth of architec-
4 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
tural style. It has been observed of them that they were always
spaced about sixteen feet apart. This distance is exactly that
required for the stabling of a double yoke of oxen, which was the
team commonly used in plowing at the time these houses were
built. The projection of the cruck into the room would naturally
indicate the place for a division or partition. As a further bit
of evidence that these bays were a proper width for the stabling
of cattle we find that the Latin writers on agriculture lay it
down as a rule that a pair of oxen should occupy what is the
equivalent of eight feet, and it is interesting to see that in a far
distant country, and after an interval of a thousand years, the
thickness of an ox has not changed; so that if he is evolving
at all it must be in the direction of his length. The houses of
tliis ])eriod are always spoken of in the old deeds in terms of
bays, that is, as being six bays, or four and one-half bays and
so on.
It might also be noted in passing that our field measure, the
rod, is derived in the same waj', and is the space taken up by four
oxen plowing abreast. To make our farms produce not onlj^ all
material things necessary to life, but an abstract system of men-
suration as well, is keeping our feet on the groimd pretty consist-
ently. There is something typically Anglo-Saxon about deriving
our system of measures from the size of oxen and the tillage of
the soil, just as the logical and scientific mind of the Gaul is
seen in his taking the mathematically determined circumference
of the earth as his unit of measurement.
This matter of the si)acing of the crucks to form baj's in these
early stables is of interest because the architectural influence of
the ox persists long after the time when the Englishman's house
was not only his castle but his stable as well. Even when this
primitive arrangement was outgroAVTi and the man separated
from his beast, the old sixteen-foot spacing of the baj's continued
in the great halls of the nobility and gentry, even into the large
and luxurious manors which sprang up all over the land during
the sixteenth century, and as late as the end of the Tudor Period
A ('ottii);<-' lit IlrtluTiii);ti>n, lyCicosliTsliirc, wliii li is |>.irtu iil.trl\ iiitiTisliu^;
Ntirviviil (if till- ciirlk-st form of tiiiilM-r coiistnictiuii
ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 5
— the hej'day of the building arts in England. At a time when
your carpenter would have scratched his head in vain if asked
why he si)aced his bays this particular width, it had passed into a
building tradition and become one of the rule-of-thumb methods
of laying out a building. This curious detail only disappears
when the unaffected indigenous Anglo- Saxon method of building
was itself crushed out of existence forever by the superimposi-
tion of the alien style from Italy which had been making its influ-
ence felt from its first appearance in the time of Henry VIII.
down to its complete ascendancy at the hands of Inigo Jones
in the earlj' part of the seventeenth century. Up to the time of
the appearance of this exotic fashion the cause of native art had
marched on in an uninterrupted course, having a natural, logical
development, keeping pace with the advancing civilization and
solving its new problems as they arose, in the light of the accu-
mulated experience inherited from past ages.
But to return to our building, half house, half barn and stable,
with its sixteen-foot bays. In the larger ones the cattle stood
down either side for more than half the length, facing out, as one
sees them to-day in our New England barns. In the middle near
the end, and blocking up the aisle, was the fireplace, and behind
that the master's rooms, the " bower " and often another room
or two. For a long time the " fireplace " was that and nothing
more, merely a s})ot in the centre of the aisle where the fire
which served for heat and where all the cooking was done, blazed
away on a few flat stones innocent of any such effete contrivance
as back, sides or flue. To be sure, a hole in the roof was made
as a concession to the smoke, but it was expected to find it un-
assisted, which, unless smoke has changed its habits, one may
believe it did in a somewhat leisurely and roundabout fashion.
Chimneys, in the sense we now understand the word, were hardly
known in England until the fourteenth century. Even the
larger halls and manors iiad their fires in the centre of the room
and allowed the smoke to find its way out througli an opening
in the roof, which was when necessary guarded against the en-
6 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
trance of the weather bj^ lomTes. Later the fires were built
against the stone walls of the room and covered by a great pro-
jecting hood, sometimes of stone, sometimes of metal, and often
of " daub " or mud plaster on wickerwork. This collected the
smoke which was carried off by a flue set against the wall and
running up through the roof. This flue was built of the same
materials, and undoubtedly one of the reasons why so few traces
of flues in the old buildings are found is because of their con-
struction of such inflanmiable material. Laws were finally
passed forbidding flues to be built having any wood about
them.
Up to this point the building is all roof, or at least wall and
roof are one, whichever we choose to call it, but as skill in building
increased and the demands were for something more elaborate, it
was easy to put a wall under this roof and raise it into the air
and th\is gain an attic (Fig. 2), also to add a shed roof on either
side parallel to the centre aisle like the transepts of a basilican
church, and so gain in width as well.
The servants slept in lofts over the cattle, the men on one side,
the maids on the other. In such an intimate gathering of man and
beast under one roof the all-pervading wood smoke must have
been a real blessing, serving as it undoubtedly did in a great
measure as a deodorizer and insecticide.
Even after the cattle had been given a building to themselves
and the lords of the manor had begun to live with some pomp and
circumstance in their own houses, the servants of both sexes slept
on the floor of the great hall of the manor, which was the dining-
room and general meeting-place during the day. This promis-
cuity was the cause of much ribald wit in the song and story of
the Middle Ages.
While for the purpose of planning our buildings to-day it is
perhaps of little practical assistance to trace the history of Eng-
lish house planning, it is of some interest to the student of domes-
tic architecture to follow the development of the plan and note
how each step is in answer to some developed need, and to fulfil
ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 7
and meet some condition that has arisen. As tliis logical and in-
evitable growth and change are the blood and bones of our archi-
tectural style, or rather are the style, we shall not arrive at a clear
and correct understanding of half-timber work as we see it
to-day in England unless we do look somewhat into the conditions
under which it was produced. While tliis will be done more
fully elsewhere, it should not be uninteresting or uninstructive
to follow the development of the plan a little further than the
half barn, half house of the yeoman and franklin, and see how
their betters fared.
In the turbulent times of the Middle Ages it was necessary
that every man's house should be a fortress as well. We see even
to-day the crags and hilltops of Euroi)e capped with castles or
ruins of former strongholds which relied largely on their inacces-
sibihty for immunity from attack. They were usually built sur-
rounding a courtj'ard, so that in time of siege the defenders might
have some place to take the air. When, however, we leave the
mountainous countries and come to France and England — flat
lands with no strategic height on which to perch a fortress-
dweUing, we find men surrounding their houses with water in
lieu of precipitous and rocky cliffs, as a means of keeping off the
marauder. The fosse, or moat, as we know it in England, made
the insular Britain still more insular, and gave him an excellent
substitute for the lofty perch of his Continental brother. Like
him, however, and for the same reason, he keeps the courtyard in
the centre.
As time goes on, and a more peaceable era succeeds the earlier
riotous conditions, the first movement toward the disarmament
of the house is the knocking out of the front side of the rec-
tangular building so that the court is exposed, and the U-shaped
building ai)pcars. From the usual fact of a small porch in tiie
centre of the cross wing, forming a slight projection in plan, it
is more often spoken of as the E type of plan. The pretty theory
that this was an architectural compliment to Queen Elizabeth,
in whose reign many houses of this sort first appeared, will not
8 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
stand the test of historic research, and a staple in matter-of-fact
evohition can hardly be turned to such sycophantic account.
The corners of the typical old rectangle often ^vere marked
hy towers which remained to accent the ends of the U when the
front side of the rectangle was removed. Now the sides of the
U, or wings of the house, disappear, or at least give place to a
mere fence or wall, and the towers remain standing at some dis-
tance from the house, while in the effete times of long-continued
I^eace they became merely garden or tool houses. To complete
the dwindling of the old pile, the towers finally follow the rest,
and we have nothing but a slender fence to mark where the em-
battled walls once stood. Thus we shear our castle till there is
left but a simple home with an enfenced yard in front; and it is
this memory of medieval usage that our forefathers brought to
this country in the fenced and gate-posted front yards of the
Colonial dwellings which we see still standing, up and down the
Atlantic seaboard.
This then, in brief, is the typical course taken by the cottage
on the one hand and the castle on the other, down through the
^liddle Ages in England, as they were acted upon by Time with
his train of attendant circumstance, all the products of a changing
condition of men and things. Responding truly to the logic of
events it continued, by the force of such adaptation, to keep ahve
and to be a growing, living organism, until fashion roughly super-
ceded it with an imported alien style.
Tin- jjiitfw.iy ot'St. Jiiliii's Ilos|)iliil, Canterbury slii>wiii(; llif sliirilv anliiU-iturc
that was produced witliinil striviu); aftiT pictiirfsqMfiii-.ss
'■V
X
'The Half-timber House in England
Now let us suppose that a small but prosperous farmer of
the year loOO wishes to build a comfortable house for him-
self and his family somewhere in the south of England.
He will scorn the idea of admitting cattle under the same roof,
as his forefathers did, and is able to afford a house of some com-
fort, even luxury. He will have a large room for hving and eat-
ing, with great fireplace and ingle, window-seat and row of glazed
and leaded windows, a low, heavily beamed ceiling and a floor of
tile or flags.
In the old work the firejjlaces, after they had retreated from
the middle of the floor in the fourteenth century and backed up
against the wall, adopted the luxury of a flue to collect and guide
the smoke in a straight and narrow way out of the room and
house. Thej^ were big honest affairs, bespeaking plenty of dry
split logs in the shed; glorious great smoked caverns, which were
kitchen range, hot-water boiler and heating system all in one and
the centre and heart of the house as they deserved to be. There
is nothing more pleasant, wholesome and hearty than the way in
which in Sf)ng and story, art and history, the English " hearth "
and " home " are linked together. 'J'he chimney corner was the
lounging-room, library, study, and smoking-room, and the history
of English house-planning swings about this as a pivot. It is the
anchor of the whole.
The farmer will have an entry-way and stairs near the centre;
buttery, kitchen and pantries to one side. On the second floor,
under the roof, he will have bedrooms with their windows close
under the eaves, or higher, so that the eaves must sweep up over
them. The hall or corridor from which bedrooms may lead was
an idea tliat waited long before it came crashing into tlie mind
of some thoughtful pUuuier — one of those simple expedients that
10
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
it takes a great man to discover and for the lack of which all sorts
of inconveniences in social intercourse were endured, and human
progress in social adjustment itself held back. The inventor
of the corridor deserves a statue as much as does Eli Whitney or
James Watt, instead of filling an unknown grave. It was not
only the humble farmer who must pass through some one else's
room to get out of his own in those days, but lords in their castles
The chimney-comer was from the first the centre and heart of the English Home
and kings in their palaces put up with having their suites of rooms
turned into passageways. It is the same in France, Germany
and Italy. We find sumptuous suites of rooms in great houses,
but all strung together in a way that the modern flat -hunting
yomig couple would pronounce " impossible." That it was felt
to be a great inconvenience is shown by the clumsy expedient, in
many of the old houses, of having a number of staircases both
inside and out to serve as a sort of dignified ladder by which one
might leave his bedroom without embarrassing his neighbors.
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN EXGLAXD 11
However, our canny farmer at least puts this inconvenience to
some practical use, for he and his gudewife take for themselves
the room at the head of the stairs, with maids on one side and the
men on the other, so that he commands the junction, and can keep
strict watch of the comings and goings.
His first floor will be perhaps of earth, not even stopping
to remove the top loam, and this will pack down and make a sur-
face not too smooth, to be sure, and certainly none too clean. If
the ground should prove to be damp he will have a foul place to
live in, at least according to modern notions. It is certainly a long
way from waxed oak, and a vaciumi cleaner. If he wishes some-
thing more pretentious he will have for flooring uncut stone laid
without mortar and fitted together as closely as possible.
For the second floor he must needs use boards to span the
joists, and he will use wide oak ones; planks they migiit more
properly be called, from their thickness. First tliick reeds will
be laid across the joists, then the boards on top nailed down
through the reeds. Xow he can plaster the ceiling between the
joists, the reeds forming the lath, and he will have not only a
tight floor but one with some pretense to being sound-proof.
In some districts it has been found that they have gone one step
further and left off the board flooring, and, instead, covered the
reeds as they lay across the joists, above and below, thoroughly
embedding tliem in a four-inch or five-inch sheet of plaster that
attains the hardness of cement. We thus see our ferro-concrete
methods anticipated by half a millenary, for if the reeds were
iron rods we should have the very latest American invention in
reinforced fireproof flooring.
The roof he will probably cover with thatch a foot or two in
thickness, made of rye straw, and if he is afraid of fire he may
give it a coat of whitewash, the lime affording considerable pro-
tection against the flames. Fire is the great enemy of thatch, for
in a prolonged drought the straw becomes like tinder and shrinks
away from the dirt, moss, etc., which perforce are present, form-
ing a sort of tinder, and rendering it an even more easy prey to
12 THE HALF-Ti:\IBER HOUSE
fire. At an early period in London it was one of the building laws
that all thatch must be kept whitewashed, and it became so com-
mon throughout England that the villages witli their white roofs
sparkling in the sun must have presented a very different jiicture
from ^vhat we see to-day in the hamlets where thatch is still to be
found.
Let us suppose, however, that the farmer does not wish to use
thatch for the roof. He may use tile made bj"^ hand, of an excel-
lent quality and burnt to a pleasant red of varying shades. In
the districts where the proper clays were to be foimd, tile was a
very popular method of covering not only roofs but walls. Often
when the oak beams of a half-timber house had so shrunk or rotted
from the effects of age and weather that the filling had disinte-
grated and the whole structure was no longer proof against wind
and weather, instead of repairing along the same lines, which
would be a difficult thing to do, they hung the walls with tile, and
many a Kent and Surrey tile-covered farmhouse of to-day is
really an old half-timber building in a new dress. These tile
were, of course, hand-made, and as a consequence possessed a cer-
tain unevenness of texture, which when added to the fact that the
hanging holes were far from being punched with mathematical
exactness, gave the wall on which they were hung a softness of
siu'face which was most jileasing, accidental and fortuitous though
it was. These tile were thicker than those we get to-day, and, as
was to be expected along with the other imperfect methods of
manufacture, came in a great variety of color, produced by the
uneven burning in the kiln. The tile were often cut with a
rounded or curved butt, so that the builders were fond of getting
variety by laying first several rows of the cur\^ed, and then several
rows of straight ends. These tile, like the slate, were hung with
wooden pins which of course in time rotted and gave way,
but could be easily replaced, and in a country where there was
no severe frost or heavy snowfall, they were i)erfectly suited to
their purpose.
If, however, the builder has an objection to tile, he may, if he
-^
All luliniralili' rxaiiipli' of the cliiirrn of soft tcxturo tliiit rrsultcil in thi" old wi>rk
from the fart that it was not built with inatheiiiatical I'xaitncss
The sticks are vertical in the earlier work and rather close together, there
being about as much plaster showing as wood
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN ENGLAND 13
happens to live in the right district, cover his roofs with slate or
other flat stone, rouglily split, heavy but durable, defying fire and
frost, and presenting a fine, substantial appearance. To be sure
he must make the rafters strong and tie thcni well, for this roof
will never sleep, but its constant pressure will need stout work
below to keep it in the air. However, there will be no lack of
heavy timber of solid oak. Two-by-four-inch spruce studs are an
invention of a more architecturally anaemic age. The pitch of
the roof was determined empirically by striking a medium be-
tween a flatness that threw the great weight of the stone full on
the rafters and called for great strength in them, and the steeper
roof that caused the stones to drag heavily on their wooden pins
and in time i)ull loose and fall to the ground. As a result of these
conflicting problems we usually find as a matter of fact that the
roofs which are, or were meant to be, covered with stone are
flatter than the tile or thatch roofs.
The stone was laid over a layer of straw. The ridge was
formed either with a saddle board of rolled lead, or often with
a continuous row of overlapping half-roll tiles embedded in
nu)rtar. The use of flashing (thin sheet metal used to make
tight the edges and joints with chimneys, end walls, etc.) is
really a confession of weakness, and the old builders got along
Avith surprisingly little of it.
Now we have our roof and floors; let us consider what kind of
wall he will have to hold them up. There is little building stone
at hand, and he certainly will not propose to bring material of
one sort from a distance when he has another perfectly good sort
at hand. IJrick is not yet in common use and not well understood,
but what he does have in abundance is tunber. Tlie hills are cov-
ered witli fine oak trees, than which no finer building wood has
ever existed. Here it is, ready to hand, and here are the axes
and broad-axes and men who have the proper handling of them as
an inheritance from untold generations. If they are not born
with an ax in their hands, one finds itself there very shortly. So
then he will begin to chop; now it does not take many hours with
14 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
an ax, squaring up the trunk of a tree, to learn that it is easier
to make one's timbers large than small. It is as much, if not more,
bother to get out a thin plank, than it is a great stick; and so he
will save time and use the big timbers. ^Vith their great size and
strength he may well space them some distance apart, and fill in
between with something or other not so hard to make as planks.
For this purpose he will use a mortar or " daub " made of lime
and straw, or clay and twigs, or anything that will stick and
harden, and reasonably resist the weather, which is not rigorous
or one that makes great demands on building materials. As a
groundwork for lathing for this plaster he will weave willow twigs
together and make a groove in the sides of his timber to take
ROU<iH l-AT
Woven willow twigs, engaging in grooves in the timber, form a
support for the plaster
the ends and make a tighter bond between the filling and the
beams, so that if the timber does shrink away there will not be an
open crack straight through the wall. Then if he plasters the
inside of the wall all over he will be as snug as possible. He may
make it a more substantial wall by using as a filling brickbats,
small stones or what-not, and covering the whole with plaster.
In place of the plaster filling we sometimes find brick laid up
in a herringbone pattern, set in mortar and left to show their red
surfaces framed between the gray timbers.
For the corner posts a baulk was used, cut near the foot of
the tree to get the beginning of the sweeping curve where it runs
out into the roots. These sticks were turned upside down and the
curved end formed the bracket to support the girt for the over-
hanging second story, wliile the crooked branches were used for
the curved struts and braces. An old ^vriter, Harrison, says,
" No oke can grow so crooked but it falleth out to some use." It
/iczy-.
All interestint; exninplf sliowinn Ihr iisr <>t hriik lilliii); ImIwicii tlu' tinilM-rs,
laid liorizoiitally. Where hriek whs employed it wiis iisii/illy
Inid ill n din^onal pattern
•= _2 i; c
— s
■= k ■
I
■ I
?^ "S
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN ENGLAND 15
is not quite clear why this almost universal overhang was adopted
for the upper stories, at least in the country districts. In the
cities these successive overhangs as the stories were added one
above another formed an excellent shelter from the rain for the
Pliiiiilip
Brick was frequently used as the material for filling in between the
timbers, laid up in a variety of patterns
shop front on the street, and it was not uncommon for houses on
the opposite sides of city streets to bow gravely to each other in
this way until they approached so near that those in the attic win-
dows could shake hands across the street.
There is no doubt that these offsets gained for the framework
a certain amount of stiffness, and it may have been for this reason
that they were adojited; whatever the reason, the introduction
16 THE HALF-TI»IBER HOUSE
into the design of this horizontal band of shadow and the very
marked division of the stories which it represents, added a most
pleasing feature to the whole whether or not introduced with that
idea. Our ])leasure is largely due, no doubt, to its engaging can-
dor in letting us into the secrets of its interior arrangement to
that extent.
This then is the original method of making these walls, per-
fectly logical, following the hues of least resistance, and utilizing
what comes to hand. It is like all good arcliitecture in that it is
the by-product of honest building.
Thus we have the result of our farmer's work in " black-and-
white " walls of " half-timber." The sticks are vertical in the
earlier work and close together, there being about as much plaster
showing as wood. In the later work, where the timbers are placed
further apart, we have more " white " and less " black," and then,
as they became more facile, the builders amused themselves with
arranging the upright timbers and sticks to form diverse and in-
genious patterns, so that we get the quatrefoil, cusps, diamonds
with concave sides, and an almost infinite variety of arrange-
ment, in addition to the more sober placing of the sticks. These
timbers are all dowelled, the uprights into the sills and the hori-
zontal pieces into the uprights, and pinned with oak pins, the ends
of which are left projecting a half -inch or so, that they may be
still further driven in should the joints loosen and need to be
drawn tighter together. In fact the poorer class of work, the
jerry-building of the time, is described as " without augur holes."
In some of the work the plaster is kept flush with the face of the
timber outside, but as this makes the slightest crack between the
two much in evidence, a sinking of the plaster a quarter of an inch
or so back of the face not only made this less prominent but gave
the whole surface more variety and a more solid and rugged ajj-
pearance. The feeling of texture in this old work is of course
enormously enhanced by the rough surfaces of the timber as it
comes from the ax, for smooth as they must have seemed to the
ax man, they were nothing as compared to the product of the buzz
riu- tiiiilx rs wtrr all iluWi'lliil Ut^ttlur .iiul luld \>\ u.ik pins, [\iv ciuls >*( wliuh
ari" hrrc stfii project in^
>^
The builders soon broke away from the use of vertical timbers alone, introducing
diverse and ingenious patterns such as the quatrefoil which is seen here
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN ENGLAND 17
saw. This, with the varying widths of these timber faces and a
certain amount of crookedness in the sticks themselves, together
with the apparent unconcern of those having the spacing in
charge, gives the whole wall a very soft and gracious presence.
For us as we see it to-day this is all accentuated by the heavy hand
of age and accompanying decay, which have still further softened
the lines and blunted the angles, while Nature has crept up
around the base, leaving her mark in every crannj'. She has laid
on her colors with the wind and rain, until the whole with its tim-
ber and thatch seems almost to have reverted to the vegetable
Idngdom and become some new species of giant plant.
The idea that these peojjle were actuated in their work only
by the desire to build tight, warm and cheap shelters, with little
regard for beauty, cannot be entertained for a moment when we
see the amount of carving on molding, barge-boards and wherever
there was a chance for enrichment; clearly indicating their love
of beauty, their pride in their work, and their willingness to take
the time and expense to gi'atify it.
The details of doors, with their nailheads and strap hinges,
the windows with their patterned bars of lead, the giant chimneys
bursting into flower at the top, the generous fireplaces, cunningly
jointed paneling, and the accompanying details which these
builders wrought, guided and directed in the struggle for beauty
by an imagination which took its color from the vigorous, vital,
struggling age in which it found itself, are worthy of more than
a passing glance.
We will now consider whether this is not a style of architecture
that is most facile and flexible, and that lends itself most grace-
fully to the accommodation of our present-day needs.
Is the Half -timber Style Suited to our
Needs To-day P
I FEAR that most members of the architectural profession will
dissent with some heat from the obsei'vation of the mild
Thoreau that " There is some of the same fitness in a man's
building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own
nest." This sounds well enough until we think of some of the
stock-jobbers whom we know, having such potentially dangerous
things as hanmier and nails thrust into their hands and being
sent forth to build their nests. True, as Thoreau continues,
" Who knows but if men constructed their own dwellings with
their own hands, and provided food for themselves honestly
enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as
birds universall}' sing when they are so engaged." It is a pretty
picture, surely, of these worthy citizens balancing up the dizzy
ladder with hods on their shoulders and madrigals on their lips,
but I fear that even the " universal development of the poetic
faculty " is too high a price for us to pay. Wliile every bird is
born an architect, no man is.
If, then, it is a difficult, slow and painful task to learn to build
properly, if it requires countless experiments with their attend-
ant failures to learn to use rightly, wisely and economically the
material at hand with the tools at hand, the final result thus
arrived at must give it ahnost the force and dignity of a law of
nature. When we have followed the thread of common sense in
and out and up and down wherever it has led us, without falter-
ing or evasion, we may expect to come out at last into the light
and find ourselves in the presence of Architecture.
For it must be understood that this reflection of the prevailing
civilization, this mirror of the customs, manners, lunitations and
"Stonecrnlt." a inotlrni Kn^Iish housi* in which the traclilioiis of tiinlurin^ aiui
hold rhiTiiiii'v tn-atmrnt art* wrti ohsrrvcd
tS
a.
a.
THE HALF-TIMBER STYLE 19
environment of a race, showing the slow, painful process of the
growth and development of a people, is what goes to the making
of, and has as a result, what we call a " style " of architecture.
And even when it becomes no longer possible truthfully to reflect
the customs, requirements, and desires of a people in the old in-
herited forms — even then we may not talk of a new style, but
rather of modifications and adjustments of the present one, the
whole problem being one of growth, both in wants and in their
fulfillment.
It is as impossible for a people to repudiate its architecture
as it would be to deny its literature. A people's architecture fits
them and no one else can wear it. We may see much to admire
in others but only our own is flesh of our flesh. The particular
style that tee have been born into, developed by our fathers
through the centuries, keeping pace with the slow, painful prog-
ress of the race, and always a true index of its contemporarj'^
condition; a perfect, inarticulate measure of its culture and
refinement; this style, tliis growing embodiment in stone of a
people's dreams and idealism, this for us is the Gothic style of
England.
The Georgian style, which was brouglit to this country and
flourished here with some modifications under the name of " Colo-
nial " or, as the redundant phrase has it, " Old Colonial," had
nothing Georgian about it unless it be that both the arcloitecture
and the dynasty were foreign, for it was not an indigenous style
of building like the other. It was an imported fasliion, an alien
style, as little at home in catering to British institutions as we
might expect such a typically Latin ])ro(luct to be. It was noth-
ing but the classic architecture of old Rome revived in Xortli Italy
in the fifteenth century and brought into England by tlie devious
way of France and Holland, and showing the influence of the
countries through which it had passed on its journey. And even
if we admit that long custom has served to imbue these bor-
rowed forms with sometliing of the Anglo-Saxon temperament,
we have still the inherent unsuitableness of what is an essen-
20 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
tiallv monumental style of architecture set to serve intimate and
domestic uses. Its simplicity and dignity are all very well, but
they are bound to a tyrannical synmietry, rigid, cold and immut-
able. We all know the work as it was brought over and done in
the Colonies — charming, but a little frigid, dignified but hardly
intimate, chaste but often timid, too often described as simple
by its admirers when stuj)id would be the better word : its vocabu-
lary small if select, its canons fixed and rigid, so that its range
of effects is of necessity very limited.
We all know the Colonial house — the front door in the centre
flanked on either side by the paired windows above and below,
each wmdow the exact size of every other. It may be there is
a guest room in one corner and a bathroom in the other, but such
is not api^arent on the surface. We might have liked to have,
for comfort and convenience, three windows on one side, and
one on the other, some higher or some smaller, but it would be
heresy to take such liberties with this austere front. Like the
unluckj' traveler in the bed of Procrustes, the poor plan is made
to fit the elevations by brute force, either by stretching or lop-
ping off.
Now, setting the matter of stjde aside for the moment, it is
an architectural maxim as apjilicable to a dog kennel as to a
palace, since men first piled one stone on another, that the eleva-
tions of a building shall express, as best may be, the plan — shall
give some inkling not only of what are m a general way the
uses of the building, but, further than tliis, shall indicate the uses
of the various parts of that building as seen from without. Let
us suppose, for example, that we find ourselves in the square of
a strange village ; it is not enough that we can tell which building
is the public librarj', which the fire-engine house and which the
to\vn hall, for the architecture is not vital or organic unless we can
also tell, as we look at them, where the reading-room of the library
is, where in the engine house the firemen sleep and where the
hose is hung, and in the town hall Avhere the assembly room is
located. Of course this cannot be carried into too much detail.
/)' I'.T ,v It.ili.ll, Ar<l il,cts
A iiiodtrii lioubc in the suburbs of Philadelphia that is well done without obvious effort
/. UuaaiU I'opt, Archtltcl
A detail troll) a ^ati- lt>il^<- on l.on^ l.slaiiil \\ lu-rr the true spirit of
KiikIisIi < nirtsiiiiiiisliip has b<eii revived
c
e
? c
s _e
.3 -a
THE HALF-TIMBER STYLE 21
It would be obviously absurd to press this point too far. In gen-
eral and in a large way, however, it is a valuable architectural
truth.
Now returning to our house with the sjTnmetrical Colonial
front: how is it possible for the meanest and the most honored
rooms to be equally expressed on the exterior by the same thing
— the window, for instance? If a given window is a truthful
expression of one room, how can it be of the other? We obviously
cannot expect such versatility from our openings. When work-
ing in the derivatives of tlie classic style as applied in domestic
work, not to be able to tell from the exterior of a house the bath-
room from the parlor, the butler's pantry from the ballroom, is
a basic defect of stjde that forces many undesirable comj^romises
that would be unnecessary in a less rigid system. It is not so
much that the style is inarticulate as that it knows so few sen-
tences with which to try and express so many ideas. There should
not be this conflict between the plan and its elevations by which
one must give way to the other, serious sacrifices having to be
made before the two can be coaxed into joining hands. In tliis
feud between Truth and Ilarmon}^ Utility stands but a sorry
chance. The elevations must follow and grow from the plan;
they shall express what they shield; they are the effect and
not the cause. Beauty must wait on Use, and is only noble when
it serves.
If, then, our exteriors will not subordinate themselves, if they
are not perfectly tractable and flexible, it is a weakness, and it is
this weakness in architectonics that we think exists to a marked
extent in the classic style, and one which never appears so disas-
trously as in the manifold exigencies of modern house-building.
If the entente cordiale is lacking in the Georgian work between
the plan and its elevations, it is, on the other hand, in this very
matter tliat the strength of the true English work of the Tudor
period lies, for the rambling timbered or plastered houses of
this time, by wholly ignoring symmetry, gain at tiie very outset
an inmiense freedom. But because synmietry is neglected, we
22 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
must not for a moment assume that the work is haphazard and
allowed to follow its owti devices without thought or care for the
result. Balance and accent, variety and composition, are con-
sciously or unconsciously seen, or rather felt, everywhere in these
buildings.
The plan here may fulfil the most extraordinary requirements,
may house the most incongruous matters under one roof. China-
closets may come next to chapels, pantries under boudoirs, yet
each have every requirement of light, space and convenience ful-
filled, with its proper and fitting exterior expression. The
ground may be level, sloping or broken, without embarrassing us
in the least. There is here the best possible understanding be-
tween the plan and the elevation — the understanding that the
plan is master and that the other must honor and obey.
The result in England, the home of this work and where it is
seen at its best, is those soft, beautiful houses which affect us by
their perfect repose and harmony, their feeling of rest and sim-
plicitj' — no stress or striving here, only peace and quiet. No-
where are there such homes as these. There are others sur-
rounded by grander scenerj'- and more complicated landscape —
the restless blue of the JNIediterranean may murmur at their feet,
snowclad mountains and frowning precipices may stand guard
over chalets and farms ; there is a charm by the sinuous Danube
banked with vineyard and studded with mysterious castles whose
storied past swathes them in romance; but when the tired trav-
eler, sated with the aggressive beauty of other lands, feels once
more the soft air and views the lush vegetation of the English
shires with their peaceful, homely villages, he will be ready for
their message of peace and quiet. To know them they must be
wooed in various moods — when the hawthorn buds powder the
hedges and the blossoms are dancing on the trees and the happy
streams croon and gurgle to themselves under the ancient
bridges ; or, in some quiet pool, throw back the image of the guar-
dian church; when the sinking sun lends a coat of gold to the
homely thatch, or when the great smoking chimneys of the cot-
Harvard House, Stratford-oii-Avoii — an unusually liuf <'xani|>ii' nt' tlic town luiuse
front, su);i;esting the loving i-arethal was fx|)i-niUd u|><in tin- carving
THE HALF-TIMBER STYLE 28
tages are seen through the gaunt, winter limbs — " Bare ruin'd
choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."
These houses take their place in the landscape more like some
work of Nature than of man, more as if they had grown than
as if they were made, nestling among the trees and verdure like
the flower of some larger plant. Rules of the books, precepts of
the schools, seem very artificial, thin and profitless in their pres-
ence. These buildings have no acquaintance with the paint shop
or the planing-mill ; they are offsprings of the soil, with their
brick and mortar from the fields, and rough-hewn timbers dragged
from the forest. As a tree lacks sjinmetry but possesses perfect
balance, so do they. They are not designed under an artificial
rule derived from notliing in nature. Neither does their enrich-
ment of detail consist of motives copied from those on Greek
temples invented for use five hundred years before Christ.
What detail and ornament they have chosen to beautify and deck
themselves in is their own, wrought out lovingly, invented pain-
fully and slowly with many slips and many failures by the people
themselves — always improving and bettering as they come up
out of their darkness of ignorance and povertj\ Eloquent of a
people's history, such houses as these are owned by those who hve
in them, in a very real sense.
The Charm of Old U^ork and How
We may Obtain It
LAYING aside the esthetic point of view, let us consider if
these buildings must remain merely interesting specimens
of the handicraft of a byegone age, or if it is possible for
us to use this style of work to serve our twentieth century needs.
What are we to say to the Plain Business Man with his
strong instinctive suspicion of " Art " ? He who says he wants
no nonsense about his house, no millinery for hun ; what he wants
is something to keep out the rain and keep in the heat, plenty
of hot water and a light cellar.
Here is the real architectural critic at last! — here the great,
patient, primal voice of the World asking for shelter. This is the
prophet of the marketplace striving to express the dim, atavic
stirrings of his innermost being. Thus Xoah spoke to his ship-
wright ; so demanded Paraoh on the fields of Karnak ; and Nero
thus admonished the builders of the Golden House. And when
Ibn-i-Alimar stood on the Alhambra hill and pointed \vith his
scimitar at the growing Generalife it was in words like these
he spoke.
With our half-timber work we need not flinch beneath his
gaze, for it can fulfil all his requirements. Nothing can be more
practical. We can tell him, first, that his work is perfectly suited
to our climate. The plaster makes a warmer house in winter and
a cooler in smimier than can be had with any of the forms of
wood alone; it costs less than brick or stone and, when properlj'
done, even over wooden studs, is very durable. There is no cost
of up-keep, and the amount of painting or oiling is restricted to
the trim and is negligible. The color and texture of the plaster
may be varied considerably and, even when new, is thoroughly
One of the essentials of suivess in half-timber work is the grouping of windows
i-itlicr than leavin); tliini a.s Isoliited units
A typical Lxaiiiple of the smaller Kii(;lish maiiDrs. Nulice lure the ({roiipinjir
of till- windows
ir—"-"
It is hard to .separate the architecture from its setti[ig ajid from the softening
influences of time, and estimate how much of a composition like this
is really a result of forethought
THE CHARM OF OLD WORK 25
charming and wonderfully harmonious among the surrounding
vegetation.
As for appearance, one must not expect to find in the modern
work the charm and fascination which so delight us in the old
English crofts and manors, for their charm is largely due to age
and nature. It is an exceedingly difficult thing to judge archi-
tecture of a byegone time per se — that is, to separate the archi-
tecture, the conscious design, entirely from its setting, and pass
judgment on it solely as an artistic composition, without regard
to the accidental or casual in its surroundings. We must ignore
those caressing marks by which we may know that Father Time
has passed that way. This added beauty and interest begins
where the architect left off; but the latter is too often given the
credit for the beauty that is of nature and not of man — the per-
fect result that neither may obtain alone. The English cathe-
drals — were they so beautiful, so benign, so satisfying, had they
such a pervading aura of spiritual peace when the architect stood
off and viewed his finished work, their future history unborn and
timid Nature looking askance from afar, not yet ready to run
up and chng about the base and storm the walls and find a foot-
hold in every cranny ? The architect's work was done even as we
see it to-day, but to quicken the observer's pulse something was
wanting. There was lacking the subtle human interest which
comes from apprenticeship in the service of man. When Goethe
spoke of Gothic churclies as being " petrified religion " it was to
these time-worn veterans that he referred.
Your architect is careful to ignore these aspects of the case,
and discf)unts these pleasant additions to the picture. He prefers
the cathedrals of France, though they for the most part stand in
the midst of squalid villages whose huts crowd around their base,
clinging to the very skirts of Our Lady. These buildings are
less appealing, less soft and cajoling, but they stand without ex-
traneous aid to proclaim and attest the great souls and intellects
of their creators.
Age has a very potent power of appeal to the sensitive mind.
26 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
For time means history, and nothing is more effective in making
us feel the presence of the past, in recaUing historic events, than
biiil(hngs which have seen or, perhaps, sheltered them. The power
which such works have of revivifying the former life which surged
about them, profoundly affecting the imagination of the onlooker
by the subtle spirit that permeates them, is a force that must be
carefully taken into account and guarded against by him who
would sit in judgment on architecture. These i)leasant emana-
tions are, for the critic, illegitimate, and must first of all be exor-
cised before he is fit to don the ermine.
Let us therefore be a little careful in justice to the present-
day architect before we are quite sure that our admiration is
wisely bestowed, and that our old buildings are really so much
finer works than those which are being produced to-day. Let us
first try and eliminate Nature and her accessories of verdure and
decay; let us try and make allowance for the singularly happy
results she obtains by sagging our roofs and staining our walls,
by blunting our edges and playing havoc generally with the spe-
cifications. It is all very delightful, but it is not architecture.
For the same reason, let us banish Father Time from our
thoughts, with the rich pageant that foUov/s in his train, and
try to discover only what it was that our designer had in his
heart, what colored liis thoughts, what guided his hand when
he stood before his empty field with visions swarming tlirough
Iiis brain.
It is a rather singidar thing that while we all admire these old
buildings and recognize the beauty and charm that is due in such
a great measure to age and to what age brings, we are so chary of
trying to obtain these results for ourselves, and of trying to get
the effect even if we cannot reproduce the cause. For one of
their chief charms is the softness of the lines and surfaces. The
color due to weathering is harder to get, but there is no reason
why we should not try successfully and legitimately to do away
with many of our present hard, straight lines, sharp corners and
ungracious surfaces. The modern Enghsh arcliitects are much
A wider spaciii); ot the timbers iiiiirkc<i the later work, alter the hiiildcr had
be^uii ti) realize the possibihties nf this phable foriii of coiistriu'tion
THE CHARM OF OLD WORK 27
further advanced than we in this particular, and it is often im-
possible to tell the new from the old in their work. They some-
times attain their effects by using old material in order to get
the soft, weathered and warm surfaces which they have to offer.
It is a conmion practice to make some farmer happy by giving
him a spick-and-span new tile or slate roof in exchange for his
old Hchen-covered one, or to buy his old brick barn or walls for
what to him is a fabulous price for badly worn material, although
cheaper for the purchaser than the same materials new. Again,
old timber, hand-hewn and lovely with age, is obtained from some
old croft, so racked and broken as to be no longer of use as a
building. The house shown facing page 50 is a modern house
whose air of soft repose is largely owhig to its use of old timber.
The vertical half-timbers in this case are second-hand railroad
sleepers that are, of course, roughly hand-he\\Ti and of indifferent
straightness. Spike holes, knots, etc., Avere not considered any-
thing to be ashamed of, and no elaborate precautions were taken
to hide them. The horizontal timbers, which are longer, are bits
of old scaffolding; and while it would be easy for the architect
to find clients to admire the results, it would be harder to find
those who would have the courage to sanction this process. But
while these methods are perfectly proper and esthetically legiti-
mate, and should require nothing but courage to employ them,
it is a more debatable question when we come to such things as
shingle roofs imitating thatch. For in the first case our building is
as honest as the day is long, the timbers are as solid and as heavy
as they look; they are exactly what they seem. But what shall
we say of these shingle-thatched roofs? The guilty consciences
of these builders betray themselves when they iiasten to assure
us that they are not imitating thatch at all. But when we note
the great pains and ingenuity that is lavished on these evidently
intractable shingles to make the flat roof curve, the angles blunt,
and the roofs melt into one another; when we see the labored
inconsequence of the staggering line of shingle butts and the quite
starthng resemblance to thatch which is the result, it is hard to
28 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
keep the tongue out of one's cheek. However, it is such a very-
laudable endeavor to correct the prevailing hardness of outline,
and shows such a well developed dissatisfaction in house building
a la mode, and is so altogether charming and delightful in the
result, tliat one would be willing to condone a much more serious
breach of arcliitectural ethics than this. xVfter all, if " archi-
tecture is building that has flowered into beauty," it is well to keep
the objective — beauty — more constantly before our eyes and
not to be too much occupied in being very sure we are not break-
ing the rules of design; with the too common result that when we
are done, that is all that can be said.
There is an existing confusion due, no doubt, to our Puritan
blood, that architecture addresses itself to the moral sense instead
of to the eye alone. The idea of a certain school of armchair
critics that artistic sincerity and the moral law are identical is
one that cannot be buttressed by many of the accepted architec-
tural masteri^ieces. " ' Sincerity,' in many minds, is chiefly asso-
ciated with speaking the truth; but architectural sincerity is
simply obedience to certain visual requirements." To be specific,
it is not enough that a column shall be strong enough for its load;
it must look strong enough.
If Ruskin's observation that " in everji;hing beautiful there
is something strange about its proportions," means anything,
it means that the humdrum rules have been broken and beauty
is the result. Of course it will not do to assimie that this is there-
fore a simple road to architectural success, and that one has only
to be lawless to succeed. If one is tempted to think that the rules
must then be A\Tong, the answer is that they are made more to
act as watchdogs over the incompetent and to keep bad things
from being perpetrated, than to bind those who are capable of
producing beauty. The real artist will always rely on instinct and
not on rule.
However, we will go more thoroughly into the details of how
we may make our houses less hard and cheerless in another place.
Suffice it here to know that such results as we see in the old ex-
The timbering and other outside woodwork should be left ruugli and unpiiiiitcd
E
THE CHARM OF OLD WORK 29
amples and which we all admire are not beyond our reach and
that wliat we have come to believe to be the divorce between
beauty and utility is in reality but a temporary misunderstand-
ing and not a real case of incompatibility.
These tilings do not perhaps seem very important to many
people, but the fact remains in this curious world that there are
those who care tremendously for the fun they can have with their
eyes, and who take these matters of beauty and form with inor-
dinate seriousness. We have Oscar Wilde's brilliant biography,
in " Pen, Pencil and Poison," of Griffiths ^Vainewright, the
famous dilettante and esthete of the London of the early part
of the last century, who combined with his other talents that of
a persistent murderer by the use of poison. When this tempera-
mental 5'oung man lay in gaol, awaiting transportation for liis
crimes, he was visited by a friend who reproached him for the
wilful murder of his sister-in-law; he shrugged his shoulders and
said: " Yes, it was a dreadful thing to do — but she had very
thick ankles." It is surprising that some of our sensitive young
architects, in a moment of fury against the anatomy of many
of our dwellings, are not languishing beliind the bars for
arson.
We must, however, have an honest love for simplicity and a
healthy scorn for ostentation if we are to become happj' o^\Tiers
of the type of work of which we have been speaking. It is essen-
tially domestic, cozy, and immonumental, and if we wish to fer-
tilize envy in our opulent neighbors this is not the way, for our
money can be spread out much thinner and the building bloAvn up
to twice its size for the same price. We can have Corinthian col-
umns running up tln-ough three stories that \v\\\ outshout our
plastered cottage and generally create an impression of fat divi-
dends; for architecture can l)e made to express coupons as well
as slippers and a pipe. We must not fear that " they " will
think we build thus because we can afford nothing else. In fact
this is not for " them " at all. ^^'llcn Pope Julius II complained
because there was no gold on the i)ainted figures of the Sistine
80 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
Chapel, " These are simple persons," replied the painter, " simple
persons who wore no gold on their garments."
" Half-timber " cannot compete wth all gold, and those who
have a hankering for the gorgeous w^ill find notliing of interest
between these covers. We are discussing another matter, more
homely but closer to the lives of " simple persons."
The Choice of Styles
THE half-timber house was developed in a flat country.
Its main divisions, its roofing, and all its manifold details,
were the direct outgrowth of the conditions under which
it was born and had its growth. While it is pos-
Site and sible to build any sort of building anywhere, it is
Location hard to impart to it the appearance which a build-
ing should have, of being the only natural and
proper building for that particular place. A house should always
impress one as being so exactly right that it is almost impossible to
imagine any other sort of house in that particular spot. There
must be no jar between man's work and Nature's. Each archi-
tectural style was developed under different conditions of cli-
mate, civilization, materials, requirements and site; and each
has its own setting into which it falls perfectly and carries the
satisfying conviction, when once it is seen in its right surround-
ings, that it is inevitably the right thing and fits as perfectly as
the last piece in a picture puzzle.
Our English cottages and crofts would look as strange on the
nigged hillsides where the Swiss chalet has its home, as the clmlet
would in the soft, gentle meads of England. Again, the house
of the Spanish peasant would never do in England, with its great
cornice, thick walls and small windows.
As architecture is the direct outgrowth of conditions and re-
quirements, b}-^ fulfilling these conditions, by making straight
for tlie desired goal, following the lines of least resistance, with
absolutely no thought of producing " architecture " at all — for
art is a result, not a j)roduct — we shall in spite of ourselves do
just tiiis. Utility and logic are the parents of tlie " Styles."
The struggle for picturesciuencss, in which the various parts
of the outside of the building are tortured and twisted to make
82 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
a picture, exactly as a painter arranges the objects for his can-
vas, and hi which the inndUing plan is dragged hither and yon,
disjointed, and generally ill used, can only end in
Modern failure. It has been well said that the only artistic
English originality worth anything is that which conies from
Half-timber sincerity. INIanufactured iiicturesqucness results in
Houses a sort of unconscionable stage scenery, and is to
honest work what the landscape of the scenic rail-
way at Conc)' Island is to nature. It is " scenic " but somehow
does not fill the soul of tiie nature-lover with a satisfying, solid,
and lasting joy.
We remember that when Gulliver went to Lilliput he found
" a most ingenious architect who had contrived a new method of
building houses, by beginning at the roof and working do\\Ti-
ward to the foundation, wliich he justified to me by the practice
of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider." It would
seem as if this architect must have migrated, to judge by the com-
plicated roofs which we see covering certain houses about us, for
it is hard to believe that their mazy intricacies could have been
achieved by any other method.
We can but repeat what has been said before, that the inside
and outside of a house form an entirety and must not be treated
as two separate things. Picturesqueness is not a success if it
smells of the lamp, and should never be placed first, but as a
welcome addition to the result of logical and straightforward solv-
ing of the utilitarian problem. It should be a sort of by-product
of honest building. Picturesqueness is the gay and lovable sister
of Common Sense, who often accompanies her, and over the
result of her cold calculations throws the soft, mj^sterious veil
of Romance. She appears unheralded before the tired eyes of
the master builder, a timid maid who only comes unsought, and
flees from those who furiously pursue. And so if we find that she
is Avith us in our excursions, it will be because we are solving our
problems simply and honestly and have forgotten her existence.
It is because each case must be considered by itself that it
THE CHOICE OF STYLES 88
is so hard to lay down even general rules of architectural con-
duct, for the exceptional and the normal cases would be about
equal. As we are discussing an English style, let us look at the
sort of house the modern Englisliman likes and see how it differs
from the corresponding dwelling in this country.
Before considering the plan in its details let us first try to
come to some understanding of the principles that should operate
in the working out of the problem at hand, no matter what pur-
poses it is called upon to serve.
There are three forms of difficulty in making a good plan,
which are found in varying degrees in individual cases. First:
the plan regarded as a sort of Chinese puzzle in which the object
in view is to arrange the blocks, that is, the rooms, spaces and
conveniences demanded by the owner — all of various shapes,
sizes and uses — so that the best possible result may be obtained,
giving full weight to convenience, comfort and economy of both
space and money. After determining the proper sizes and rela-
tion of jjarts, we shall find the problem resolves itself into a
•struggle for compactness, and the elimination of waste s])ace.
Second: we have to consider the plan in relation to architec-
tural composition both within and without. Third: the plan
in its relation to the cost. Of course it is understood that
these difficulties are not to be thought of as being met and over-
come all at one time, but on the contrary they are all present in
the mind of the designer from the beginning, and it is a constant
consideration of the varj-ing claims of each — a series of com-
promises, a sacrificing of the less imjiortant for the greater — that
molds the growing work and finally produces the well balanced
result. It is a matter for verj' nice judgment, for the question
of expenditure, if it is limited, as is usually the case, is a rope that
is continually bringing us up short. Every house would be so
much better if "they" would only spend a little more money!
How to spend the money available to the very best possible ad-
vantage is the crux of the matter, and acts as a check to the other
two considerations.
34 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
To the disi)aragement of the architect and to the glory of the
owner be it said that the rope is generally lengthened before the
end is reached. To the disparagement of the architect, because
he should be capable of doing what he is told or of making it
known at the start that it is impossible to fulfil the requirements
for the given sum. To the glory of the owner, because he comes
to recognize before the building is finished that he is spending
more money than he ever spent before in liis life, that he has
demanded so much in the first place and has caused his money
to be spread so thin, that the quality is bound to suffer not oidy
in the materials and workmanship but in a baldness that tran-
scends simplicity. There is danger of all the work being inade-
quate unless he adds a little more. In other words, the difference
between having everything half right and exactly right is not
very great, and he very sensibly finishes properly what he has
begun.
But we may now reverse the epithets. It is to the disparage-
ment of the owTier that he is so seldom frank with his architect
and so seldom means what he says. Perhaps it is because he has
heard that architects always exceed the stipulated cost and so
he thinks that by naming some sum below what he is really pre-
pared to pay he will be clever enough to gain his ends and diplo-
matic enough not to hurt the architect's feelings. Perhaps he has
read in the " INIarvellous Wisdom and Quaint Conceits," of
Thomas Fuller, writing in the seventeenth century, that " In build-
ing rather believe any man than an artificier . . . should they
tell thee all the cost at the first, it would blast a young builder at
the budding." If this is the reason it is a great mistake, because
it leads to the design of a scheme for the house with the low cost
in view, and when toward the end the owner begins to show a
disposition to spend more and ha^'e things better it is too late for
additions. There is no outlet, except for such things as beamed
ceilings, paneling in rooms not designed for it, better toilet fix-
tures in the too small bathrooms, extra rooms forced into an attic
planned for nothing but storage, or more plumbing poorly accom-
THE CHOICE OF STYLES 35
modated in out-of-the-way places. Often, however, the owner
cannot be accused of disingenuousness in stating his intentions;
perhaps more often he makes it a cast iron condition at the start
that he must have certain things and that he will not pay but a
given sum. It is not hard to see that these two fiats on his part
are seldom a good fit, and that it is the demands that are usually
too large to cram into the sum. Then, he being adamant for
both, it usually ends in his having what he wants and paying
for it.
And to continue and justify our classification, it is to the glory
of the architect that he is often able to find the hidden truth of
the whole matter of which even the owner is unconscious, and so
save the owner from liimself. The course of education which the
owner of a new house has forced upon him is appalling, as he is
the first to recognize when he looks back over the finished work.
If at the start he is sometimes inclined to the idea that it is all
a matter that he, a strong man, can take by the throat, he usually
ends in a more chastened frame of mind, and with greater respect
for building problems. The architect is tempted to paraphrase
the witty French woman who said, " Men are different but all
husbands are alike," and say that " JNIen are different but all
clients are alike."
Now that we have considered some of the lions in the path
leading to our castle in the air, and how they are to be tamed or
circumvented, let us consider what is the desideratum in a home
after all, and how we may obtain it. It may be taken almost as
an axiom that the same problem ne\'er occurs twice. It has been
calculated that the chances of a man's emptying a basket fidl of
letters off the roof of a house and having them form themselves
into Homer's Iliad on the lawn, is quite remote. The chances
are about the same of there ever being two exactly similar families
of exactly similar wealth, who desire to spend the same fraction
of it for exactly the same house in size, arrangement, and appear-
ance, on duplicate pieces of land and surroundings. " There
ain't no such animal," as the farmer said when he saw the hipi)o-
36 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
potamus. Every arcliitect knows how impossible it is ever to
use the same plan twice, and for this reason books of ready-
made plans can never offer a real fit in any case, and are per-
nicious in their paper plausibility divorced from the site and its
orientation.
English and American House Plans
THE two accompanying plans have been selected as ex-
amples of moderate-priced English country houses of the
sort that are built and lived in to-day by the well-to-do
classes. They are not given because they are particularly good
or particularly bad, but as plans that possess features typical of
present-day work and commonly found in the average house
inhabited bj' the cultivated British family. They are instructive
because, being modern houses and jjlanned to suit the occupant,
they throw an interesting light on the demands and predilections
of the English. They are instructive because the}' give a glimpse
of English character, and their difference from houses of a similar
class in this country is a measure of a true ethnological difference
in the peoples, which is more subtly expressed in bricks and
mortar than it would be possible to do it in words. Here we
have a sermon in stones. We shall see that the desire for privacy
with our British cousins is ahnost morbid, and is equalled onlj'' by
the desire for coziness and the hatred of formality and stiffness.
This makes itself felt in the strict eschewing of symmetry or
axes in the plan, or anything that tends to formality. The
American desire for a " house that opens up well " would be in-
conceivable to them. Their walled gardens, rooms with small
doors, each cut off from the others, low ceilings and love of fire-
place and inglenook, all sj)eak of the desire for informal domestic
life and slipj)cred ease.
Let us now look at the first of these plans. One of the most
prominent of contemporary English architects in writing of this
plan says, " The site was quite without any sense of privacy, in
the residential part of the town. An attempt has been made to
remedy this in tlie irregular form of building and the arched entry
to the forecourt." To an American, fifty feet from the road " in
88
THE HALF-TIMBEU HOUSE
the residential part of the town " would in itself have answered
all the demands of privacy; instead of further putting a hedge
^»r T i r
-Sit..
The plan of a modern English home, selected at random, illustrating the
Englishman's insistence upon seclusion
between him and the street he would infallibly have tried to get
back into things by building a great piazza across the entire
front of the house. But this very typical Briton, after he has
retreated thus far, tlii'ows liis scullery and garage up in front of
ENGLISH AXD A^IERICAX HOUSE PLANS 39
the master's portion of the house as a guard, and drives under
a portcullis-like entrance to an entirely enclosed court where he
may get out of his carriage in reasonable safety from being seen
— this was built before flying machines, and the chance of being
discovered now being enormously increased, he will doubtless
roof his court. So far, then, having fought the good fight against
the distressing pubhcitj' of his plot of land, let us suppose that
by hook or crook, bribery and corruption we have penetrated
HOUJC»TTP)»yi££, SOy^EPStT.
E:t?HI.ST Hrw TO N ^RCM .
OaiT'iXO
It worries the Englishman and his architect not at all that in the service from kitchen to
dining-room the maids must traverse the full depth of the house
into the forecourt. It is of good size and almost entirely sur-
rounded by the wings of the house, the effect being very charm-
ing and interesting. We see that the building covers a great deal
of ground and we stand before the great door in the centre of the
main house with lively expectation of wliat will burst upon us
when the butler flings open the door. \Vlien the door is opened
we see stretching ahead of us — the " pantry "! Hastily turning
to the right and pretending we have n't noticed, we enter a fair-
sized hall from which suspicious little doors allow us grudgingly
40
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
to enter what are sure to be delightful rooms. The stairs we
discover later have scudded around the corner and are hiding
in the darkest end of the hall.
If the greeting offered to the stranger by this typical arrange-
ment seems lacking in effusive and expansive cordiality, have
we not heard the same charge brought against its typical owner?
One of the strange features of English house-planning wliich
is better seen in the second plan is the distance and general lack
A typical plan for an American home that " opens up well "
of connection between the kitchen and dining-room. It is more
common than not for the butler to have to walk some distance
past the front door or through a corridor used by the household
to reach the dining-table. It may be of value to the tardy dresser
to be reminded that duiner is waiting by the odor of the cauli-
flower as it is borne through the house; and to have to stand
aside to let one's soup pass would at least give us useful advance
knowledge which might make up for some loss of heat. This
tells us very plainly that it is unnecessary to make it easy for
ENGLISH AND A31ERICAN HOUSE PLANS 41
servants where they are so plentiful and so good; the designs
of our houses in this country are too often sacrificed to make
snares to keep them.
Now let us return to the United States and consider what
we have taken as a typical suburban plan as we see it in its essen-
tials. It is placed not too far from the street, the main Hving-
rooms facing it and a piazza big or little about the front door
which is often located in the middle. This brings the hall in the
centre of the house and we have at once on entering a jjerfect
view of the rooms on either side through large doors, usually
sliding or folding. Every nook and corner is exposed. One may
rake the whole master's j^ortion at a glance. No reticence here,
no secrets — you are taken into the heart of the home at once,
and unless you are a modest man and swerve from your path,
you will find yourself walking upstairs into the boudoir. This
is indeed a "house that opens up well"; it is "good for enter-
taining," fine circulation, light, sun and air. I think it must
be that we have a feeling that it is snobbish and unfriendly,
perhaps a trifle undemocratic — that bogey and knock-down
argument in the arsenal of every freeborn American — to wall
one's garden or sit away from the traffic, or jiull down one's cur-
tain. We do not feel the need of privacy ourselves, and the
existence of the feeling in others would rob us of a great deal
that is intensely interesting. Walls, or being away from the
street make it difficult to see the passing. It is hard not to know
what the neighbors are doing.
It is not a matter that is at all related to expense; when our
j)lo(lder in the ranks has received his captain's stripes, we shall
find his half-million-dollar house is fundamentally the same. He
does not build a big, comfortable mansion house with much
thought to the stable, kennels, grounds and other appurtenances
of a country gentleman. Instead of such a Iu)use he builds an
enormous palace, cold, formal and sumptuous. Planned on
axes, we still see on entering the door, virtuallj' the whole. That
the slightly bewildered owner feels somewhat awed in the pres-
42 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
ence of so much monumental dignity is betrayed by the insertion,
in some out-of-the-way corner, of a small office where he and his
battered roll-top desk may metaphorically fall into each other's
arms; here he will make himself a little home within a home.
AVe love to dwell on our open plmnbing and patent thermostats
and electric curling irons, and say that the poor Enghslmian
does n't know Avhat comfort is. No mistake can be greater. He
cares so much for his comfort, he so wants what he wants as he
wants it, that he will let nothing stand in liis way — nothing else
is important. He will sacrifice trying to impress liis neighbors
by external pretentiousness, he will let no architectural consider-
ation rob him of his privacy and coziness. His entertainments
will have to do the best they can; he has figured out that he
entertains a few times in a year and lives in his house every day.
He surrounds himself with his horses and dogs and motor cars,
the keynote of comfort is well sustained in the milieu that he loves
to make for himself, and the life that goes on in his little group of
buildings is almost as complete and diverse as that under the
roof of a medieval monastery.
So much for the differences that are cardinal and indigenous
in the English work. When Charles Dudley Warner said that
he would as lief have an Englishman without side wliiskers, he
might have been just as forceful if he had said that he would
just as lief have an Englislmian who didn't live in a cottage.
Let us consider these houses in relation to our ovm, and
see if there are not some valuable lessons to be learned from
them.
A modern half-timber house at Essex Fells, N. J., with the typical
diagonal oiul-braces and preater elaboration in the bays
Close observation of the En);lish work will help us to avoid the ten-
dency toward too ffreat elabonition in the timber patterns
I g
How to Plan the House
WHATEVER we shall have to say under this caption re-
garding the plan of the house and its arrangements, must
of necessity be in many ways as applicable in all essen-
tials to houses of other styles as to half-timber houses. While
there are certain arrangements that are typical of the particular
kind of house of wliich we are writing — a certain freedom of
design which we like to think is not always obtainable when the
plan must be wedded to a more exacting exterior expression, it
is nevertheless true that for utilitarian reasons such as the elimi-
nation of waste motion, and for the general convenience of hving
under the conditions of modern civilization, our houses must very
closely reflect our lives. Laissez faire is not a motto for a restless
and progressive race. Emerson's comment when he heard that
Margaret Fuller had said that she " had decided to accept the
world as she found it " is still the voice of wisdom. He said,
" She 'd better! " And so, if we decide to accept motor cars and
babies, vacuum cleaners and regular meals, books and the gre-
garious theory of man, we shall all have something in conmion in
starting to build a shelter.
We hope it will be a half -timber shelter, but in any case there
are bound to be certain necessary rooms, and their functions we
shall find automatically determining their relations with one
another. What further rooms or space we may add over and
above what may be termed necessities will be a matter of uidivid-
ual preference and mode of living. In the discussion that follows
the author has had more in mind the usages and mode of life in
this country than in England, where half-timber work has its
home, but the general character of its plan, its untranimeled irreg-
ularities, its siliiouette, as it were; the spaces to be walled and
roofed, will be much alike in either case.
44 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
In the first place it is often true that on a given piece of
ground there may be several spots where it is perfectly possible
to build an economical, atti-active and livable house, and personal
taste and individual predilections should be carefully consulted
before reaching a decision. The general scheme and size of the
building must not be lost sight of for a moment, and the question
of the fit of the house on the land should be very carefully gone
into and with as little left to guesswork and approximation as
possible. The grade of the land, if the piece is sloping, is a most
deceptive thing, and always tends to look more nearly level than
is actually the case. It is an excellent plan in considering any
given spot to do a little rough leveling. A small level will do
very well, and even a bottle almost entirely full with its little
air bubble has been known to give satisfactory results. When
we have to deal ^ntli a piece of land other than a city lot, it is
often a problem how we shall face the house, or whether the orien-
tation shall be governed by the sun or bj' the view. In any case,
before we draw our plans we should have a topographical map
made of so much of the grounds as we propose to deal with, giving
two-foot elevation lines if the piece is large and the ground very
rough, or one-foot lines if there is less difficulty. It is folly to
attempt to do serious, careful work without knowing accurately
the levels to be encountered. Curiously enough the southern
aspect in the old English house was often purposely avoided.
Andrew Baard, the health faddist of the sixteenth century, in-
structs those who build to:
" Ordre and edyfy the house so that the prjTicipale and chief
prosjiects may be eest and west, specially north eest; south eest
and south west for the meryal of al wyndes is the most worste,
for the south %\'}aide doth corrujit and doth make eyyll vapours.
The eest wj-nde is temperate, fryske, and fragrant. The west
wind is mutable; the north wj-nde purgeth yll vapours; where-
fore better it is of the two worste that the ^vindows do open playne
north than plajaie south."
Now wliile it is not likely that the characters of these
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 45
" ^vjTides " have changed much since these observations, it at
least would seem that those who " ordre and edj'fy " the house
have somewhat changed their minds about what they like. In tliis
country, at least, those who dwell near the Atlantic seaboard will
acknowledge that while the " eest wynde is fryske " thej' may be
less ready to assent to the idea that the southwest is the " most
worste."
For houses that are to be exclusively for summer use in a
section of the country where the heat is not a thing to be avoided,
it is naturally the view which will have preference in the lay-out
of the principal living-rooms. However, in houses that are to be
lived in all the year round it is rarely good policy to ignore the
cheerful track of Old Sol, and it is a remarkable view indeed that
would justify us in jjlacing our living-room where the sun would
not enter during a considerable part of the day.
Having placed our living-room, we have next to determine
the relative positions of the dining-room and hall. For the
dining-room we shall be wise to try for either an east, northeast
or southeast corner so that we may have the sun at breakfast
with its i)owerful aid to cheerfulness at this depressing period of
the day. Whether it may not be wise to still further dispel the
natural gloom by adding a fireplace is a fair question. Unless,
however, the dining-room is a large one, some one is sure to have
too warm a back, as with a dining-table in the centre the seats
of those about it are bound to be close to the four walls. A fire-
place may, however, often be economically placed in this room
as it will probal)ly be near enough to the kitchen to have one of
its chimney flues, placed there for that jjurpose, used for the
kitchen range, the smoke pipe from which may be easily made to
pass through an intervening butler's ])antry or some service space
of the sort. Again as a further antidote for the blues, a window
bay for flowers is a welcome addition, and the morning sun will
make the arrangement an eminently ])nictical one.
The dining-room fixed, we have not so much latitude in plac-
ing the kitchen, as in this country it is an almost universal cus-
46 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
torn, having as its reason economy of steps and time, to have it
next the dining-room, or at least separated from it only by the
butler's pantry through which it may be entered, or else by means
of a short hall out of which the pantry leads. It is very desirable
that there shall be two doors between these rooms, to shut out
the noise and the odors that tend to penetrate from the kitchen to
the dining-room, and the butler's pantry makes a very welcome
buffer between the two. If the dining-room is on the southeast
this may well bring the kitchen on the northwest. Tliis is the
least desirable corner of the house for other rooms, and not at all
objectionable for the purposes to which a kitchen is put. It is
the coldest corner of the house, and as the kitchen is apt to be the
hottest room, rather hotter than those who work there desire, it is
well that it should stand as a protector and advance guard against
the chill north winds. Also the pantry or larder, which will be
near-by, is the one room in the house that should never see the sun,
and the same is true of the neighboring shed where the refrigera-
tor has its place. The placing of the front door and hall are gov-
erned by both the position of the living-room and the location
of the street. While it is most often found on the front of the
house, there is no reason why it should not be on either side if it
will help in the placing of our other rooms where we want them.
In small work we shall do well to make up our minds to saving
space in the hall and using it to better advantage elsewhere.
After the stairs are arranged all we shall need is room enough
for a chest, a chair or two and space enough to speed the parting
guest.
This disposes of the essential parts of the ordinary house of
moderate cost. There are various rooms that are very commonly
added to this skeleton and which in individual cases are considered
essential, although they are not really fundamental and should
properly be considered as luxurious and delightful additions of
which we shall have as many as we can afford. It is a question
whether the vestibule should come under the head of a necessity
or a luxury. If the door is on the northwest and is unprotected
//. Hailltr Scolt. ArchiUcI
■Tin- Mall," Seal Hnllnw. Srvi-iKi.iks. Kent, Knjfl.iiul. Thr t-iid wall shows
brit'k tilling iK'twri'ii the limbers
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 47
by a porch and the house situated in a cold climate, it is per-
haps a necessity. It is apt to be a nuisance if it is too small, the
maid having to flatten herself behind the door on one side while
the visitor squirms by on the other.
The library should be one of the most attractive rooms in the
house, and it is not difficult to make it so. It is not necessary for
one to be of such a literary turn as to say with Seigneur JMontaigne
of his library, " There is my seat, there is my throne. There with-
out order and without method — by piece meales — I turn over
and ransacke nowe one book and now another . . . and walking
up and do^vn I endight and register these my humors, these my
conceits. There I pass the greatest part of my live days, and
weare out most hours of the day." The library will be situated
near the living-room but siiould always be slightly withdrawn
from the bustle and general hfe of both it and the entrance hall;
and this whether it partakes more of the character of a real study,
where the master of the house has work to do, or of that type of
room which the mild-mannered commuter loves to refer to by the
savage title of " Den." Sanctum is another name for this room
that is nowadaj'S perhaps a little out of fashion. If he is even
more businesslike he may call it an office. They are all different
names for the master's room, and the " library " is only the aris-
tocrat of the lot. ^Vny room that can be filled with books is
ipso facto a success. They are perfectly capable of taking the
job out of the hands of the interior decorator and making a suc-
cess of it without the sliglitest strain or effort. If the owner is
able to sheatlie his walls with well filled, or perhaps one might
better say eiilircl// filled bookcases — and for decorative purposes
the back of Laura Jean Libby is on a par with that of JNIeredith
— he is a fortunate man and will have a more splendid wall cov-
ering than any decorator can sell him. Rut he will destroy what
he has so well begun if he allows any meticulous housewife to in-
duce him to hang glass doors in front of his shelves. Tlie high
lights and reflections from the panes will be a jarring note, and
the whole effect clumsv and mercantile. The shelves should be
48 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
on movable pegs so as to be adjusted to any height and sheathed
at tlie back, and may well have a row of drawers next the floor
somewhat deeper than the shelves, for magazines, games, etc., the
extra depth giving a shelf on top for which one will find plenty
of uses. The bookcases will be built-in, and only as a last resort,
or in a strictly business library, should the sectional bookcase be
resorted to. It may have a great future, but its past and present
are deplorable. If to the wall of parti-colorcd bindings he adds
a fireplace, not forgetting to build into the side of the breast a
cupboard of ample size to hold the necessary lubricants to free
and comfortable male intercourse, the cheery blaze will complete
the picture.
The recejition room was formerly felt to be an imerring mark
of respectability, and was demanded in the smallest houses even
if it took half the space that might have gone into the hving-
room. This feeling has rather had its day among the average
builders of ten- to fourteen-room houses. Its omission is a real
step in advance, resulthig not only in a simpler form of hospi-
tality, much more fitting for those concerned, but is a distinct
architectural aid to the rest of the plan of the house. Formerly,
when working with a limited amount of floor space at one's dis-
posal (for floor space and money are equivalents), and the prob-
lem called for a reception room, it was bound to mean that the
dining-room, hall, and the living-room suffered. It was just as
plain that the other tliree rooms must be smaller with its intro-
duction, as it is that quarters are less than thirds. Instead of
tliree good rooms we had four bad ones, whereas now by giving
this space to the living-room we may have a fine big room, the
inertia of whose ample space expands the soul and soothes the
nerves. For a big, generous room has psychotherai^eutic value as
well as its more obvious physical advantages. An old book on
building speaks of the recej^tion room as a " Chamber of De-
light." We are inclined to think that it must be a very, very old
book indeed, as that is not a good description of the modern affair.
The reception room nowadays is too often a tawdiy foster-child
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 49
of the honest home, its meretricious elegance having nothing in
common with the rest of tlie house or its inhabitants ; as a sophisti-
cated, citified, hneal descendant of the chill country parlor with
its wax flowers and gilt copy of ;Miss Hemans' poems, it is passing
away. Requiescat in pace. Not that we are to understand that
a reception room is always a mistake, for when the size of the
house and the general style of hving warrant it, it is as indispen-
sable as the library. We only wish to plead with the small house
against putting on airs and squandering precious space so
unwisely.
The sun parlor or morning-room is considered a necessitj' by
the English but is not often found with us. In the country house
it bears much the same relation to the living-room that the break-
fast room does to the dining-room. It is a room for pipes and
sewing, and will let onto a terrace with the garden not far off and
the flowers peering in. It is the sort of room in which the dog
may fittingly doze in the sun, where all the chairs should have
arms so that we may hang our legs over them, and where sewing
threads really look well on the floor. A delightful room for
novels and tea and flirting, or for anything, for that matter, that
is not weighty or portentous. In California, where house heating
takes the form of going outdoors to get warm, the sun parlor fills
a real need, and to live in the sun under glass hke a Hamburg
grape is a most comfortable experience.
The billiard room, which in England is often found on the
first floor near the other living-rooms, is in this country more often
relegated to the basement or attic; when so done, however, it is
usually because of lack of space elsewhere. The billiard room
being strictly for business — the business of play — need have
little attention to outlook or the points of the conn^ass. The
essential thing is plenty of light and adequate size; it should
not be less than fifteen feet by eighteen feet, and should be
larger to accommodate seated spectators. A fireplace is a
welcome addition in any case, as the room is apt to partake of
the functions of a lounging-room, and heat in some way should
50 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
be provided. It is ruinous to ivory balls to let them become too
cold.
If we were in an English half-timber house we should con-
sider the " gun room " under this head, but as this is not an
ordinary requirement in this country we need not let it detain
us further than to say that if we require such a private arsenal it
would naturally take its place along with the library and billiard
room.
The coat closet, wliich there is a growing tendency to amplify
and expand into a lavatory or brush room, is best situated near
the front door and generally off the front hall, where those enter-
ing the house may at once repair and wash and brush up and
leave their wraps, before entering the house proper, where they
may then meet the OAvner on his o^vn footing. It is an excellent
arrangement also where there are children, and may well serve
as a barrier against further inroads of rubber boots and dirty
hands. We are somewhat hampered the moment we introduce
plumbing into a room or closet of this sort by the necessity of
direct ventilation, which means an outside window. This is com-
pulsory under the laws of many cities and towns, and is a rule
that should be observed whether or not officially promulgated.
Although the science of sanitary plumbing has made ahiiost revo-
lutionary strides in the past two decades and is now both in
theory and execution almost perfection, it has not, and probably
never will, arrive at a point where it is hygienically advisable to
dispense with direct outside ventilation for the water-closet.
The next addition we shall probably make will be a break-
fast room. This is a most useful and pleasant room in a large
house where the dining-room will probably be a room of some
size and dignity, the sort of room with which we are quite en
rapport at a brilliant dinner party, an excellent background, with
its statelj'^ splendor, to the subdued gaiety of the occasion. A
room of this character, however, is apt to look in the clear virgin
light of eight o'clock in the morning hke the traditional " banquet
hall deserted," and is a fit companion only for one who has dined
A'^air.f'-
X -S
bo
°1
■Be
o o-
u
= "^
C -c
S2
Modern English houses at Port Sunlight, one of the model English villages
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 51
there the night before and appears next morning in the gay habih-
ments of the feast. To be frank, we must acknowledge that our
splendid dining-room makes a depressing breakfast room. The
austerity of heavy silver and mahogany act as a rebuke to our
obvious let-down from our gracious dignity of the night before.
We are uneasy and irritated in its presence; we are discovered
and feel no better than hypocrites, and are in no mood to be lec-
tured over the eggs and bacon. It is this feeling almost of neces-
sity that has been the mother of the invention of the breakfast
room. It may either take the form of an alcove leading off the
main dining-room, or it may be, that, following the lines of least
resistance, it will develop into a separate room; in either case it
will not be far from the dining-room as they must both be within
easy reach of the butler's pantry and kitchen. The points to be
insisted upon in regard to it are that it shall have plenty of morn-
ing sun, that it must not be too large, and that its furniture and
decorations strike the light and cheerful note. If dignified and
splendid are suitable words for the dining-room, pretty and cozy
should describe its offspring. Tints should take the place of de-
cided colors; hangings, rugs and upholstery should take on a
playful and frivolous character.
It is very common in the English half-timber houses and is
even more appropriate in this country, to have a terrace some-
where adjoining the house, and it is a very happy arrangement
if it includes the dining-room. It is very pleasant in summer to
have this foreground to the garden view beyond, and to have
one's meals al fresco is most delightful. Here we have a dining-
room indeed with the welkin for our ceiling and walls of jocund
posies. We may be as practical as we like, screen it in and cover
it with a roof — if we are not on easy terms of familiarity with
all outdoors — or we may compromise with a less solid form of
shelter, such as an awning of more or less temporary kind, or
better still with vines on some informal arrangement of poles and
crossbars supported on posts. We are trying liard to avoid the
word " pergola." The chairs and tables should be of the sort
52 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
that can be left out in all weather. Practical convenience will
be served if it can be planned to have a window in the butler's
pantry to be used as a shde by the maid in serving and clearing
away, particularly when rain appears uninvited to the feast, as
is sometimes the case, and the adjourimient must be done in a
hurry !
The modern contrivance of a conservatory is a delightful
addition, that, with our modern heating appliances, is not so
great an extravagance as the name conveys to the minds of most
peoj)le. The construction may vary in elegance all the way from
what a handy man around the house will make in his sjiare time
with window sash, to the verj' elegant and quasi-oriental struc-
ture that the professional greenhouse men will erect. The size
must be carefully considered and we must not, in the enthusiasm
of the moment, build too large, for while one cannot have too
many flowers one can easily find them too much care. Old
Thomas Fuller in " The Holy State " gives us seven maxims, the
last bit of wisdom being, " A house had better be too little for a
day than too great for a year." Whether he was living in a green-
house when he threw this stone we do not know, but at any rate
it was sufficiently well aimed.
The conservatory may be connected with the house but should
not be a part of it. It should have its own heating plant, which
should be either a steam or hot-water system. The hot air from a
furnace is too dry, no matter what precautions are taken, for the
best growth of plants. The moisture and temperature which the
inhabitants of the greenhouse require will be too much for the
inhabitants of the house, and for this reason the two should be
separated. A conservatory letting off the dining-room is a
favorite location, but its placing will be governed by so many
things i^eculiar to each individual plan that it is of httle use to try
to lay down rules. It is sometmies arranged to glass-in part of
a covered piazza using adjustable heating pipes to put it up and
take it down Avith the seasons. This is a sensible thing to do
when the amount of space is limited. The floor should be either
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 53
of tile, brick, cement, or the ground itself, and properly drained
to carry off surface water. It should never be of wood.
Coming to the service portion of the house, we shall find that
an enormous amount of time and ingenuity has been expended
in improving the infinite mmiber of things that go to minister
more or less directly to the ease and comfort of the other end of
the house. We sometimes have a suspicion that the desire for
convenience overleaps itself and the results become so complex as
to offset with their intricacies what they gain. It is often a very
pretty question with these ingenious labor-saving devices whether
in the hurlyburly of daily use they are worth the bother. How-
ever, such things as plate slides, ash chutes from the fire-box to the
ash barrel, gas hot-water heaters, gas and electric ranges, vacuiun
cleaners, clothes chutes, etc., seem to have proved their worth and
to have come to stay. To the bare skeleton of kitchen, pantry
and china-closet — for which " butler's pantry " is a more descrip-
tive name, even though it is tacitly understood that it will never
see its titular o^vner — we may articulate a servants' hall, laun-
dry, shed, cold room, coal bins, toilet room, closets, etc., all of
which will be very welcome to those who work here.
Just a word about the kitchen before we leave it. In the first
place, all women may be divided into two classes: those who be-
lieve in large kitchens and those who favor small ones. A small
one will measure about ten by twelve feet ; anjiihing smaller than
this is really a kitchenette. The advocates of a small kitchen talk
of having everything handy and of saving steps. The arguments
for a large kitchen are plenty of elbow room and light and air.
In either case it is desirable to have the windows large, placed
near the ceiling, and so arranged as to give a cross drauglit. The
placing of tables and sinks in the centre of the room, which is pop-
ular in England, is only possible in a large kitchen, and even there
the complaint is made that one is continually having to walk
around them. A hood should be placed over the range, ventilated
into a special flue alongside of, or in the centre of, the hot range
flue; making it a warm flue insures a pulling draught which will
54 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
do wonders towards taking off the hot air and odors as they rise
from the cooking. There should he a dresser for tahle china,
etc., if there is to be no servants' dining-room, and space for a
table. The floor may be cork tile, which is the best, or wood, com-
position, hnoleum or tile. This latter works well and is easily
cleaned but is hard on the feet. Wood floors are difficult to keep
looking well, and no surface finish will last, no matter what the
advertisement says. The various compositions in the market are
good, but are likely to crack over a wood floor.
The laimdrj^ will be the first addition, and it is no longer con-
sidered a luxury to have this a separate room, either near the
kitchen or more often in the basement beneath the kitchen. When
so located great care must be taken to be sure that it is provided
with plenty of light. The ordinary cellar window will not do.
It is usually placed under the kitchen so that the kitchen plumb-
ing and cliimney may be utilized. It should also have easy access
to the cellar door and clothes-yard without, and should of course
be provided with artificial light. If there is no wood floor but
only cement, it will be well to have a wood grille in front of the
tubs for the workers to stand on, thus keeping their feet dry and
off the cold cement.
The servants' dining-room, or, as they say in England, the
" servants' hall," is a j^ractical necessity when there are more than
two servants who take their meals in the house. Their presence
in the kitchen, even if it is a large one, is a constant source of
annoyance and irritation to the cook, and the number of square
feet that it would be necessary to add to the size of the kitchen
for their accommodation would much better be set aside as a
separate room. It will serve as a dining-room with a dresser
for the accommodation of the necessary table ware, and as a
sitting-room when they are off duty. It may be quite small but
should be close to the kitchen so as to minimize the labor of send-
ing the meals and washing up afterwards. Sometimes an alcove
is made off the kitchen, but this takes as much space as a separate
room and is not nearly so satisfactory from any point of view,
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 55
particularly when there are men to be fed. It is very desirable
to keep them out of the kitchen.
A shed, which is considered an absolute necessity in the coun-
try, will be hailed with delight anj^vhere. Its uses are manifold
and cannot be catalogued. It is a sort of refuge for outcasts that
caimot claim a more definite residence. They will be a diverse
and motley companj' to be sure, these waifs : the velocipede with
its pedals looks with pity on the one-armed ice-cream freezer;
the ironing-board will gaze with padded contempt on the naked
mahoganj' table leaves ; while an assortment of garden tools will
modestly seek to hide beliind a bristling rubbish barrel; and king
over all is the portly refrigerator. This last, however, is often
placed in a small recess in the back vestibule, just large enough
to receive it, between the outside back door to the jjorch and the
one to the kitchen. Again, an excellent arrangement is to have
it in the pantry, provided it is not too near the kitchen range, and
the ice may be jiut through a door in the wall, either from a back
hall or from outside the house. This latter method is very pop-
ular as it keeps the iceman entirely out of the house, which is
just as well as he has been known to hit on the bright idea that
shpping an egg or two into his pocket will help moderate the high
cost of living! He must at any rate be kept out of the kitchen,
with his dripping ice and muddy boots. Refrigerators are now
made with ice doors built into the back. In large establish-
ments the refrigerator may assume a more commodious form
and become a cold room all by itself. This is a small insulated
room entered by a tight-fitting door with a great trough for ice
on the outside wall, the ice being fed in through a high door in
the back, the walls sujiporting shelves, hooks, etc., for the food.
We nuist be sure to find a corner somewhere — it need not
be large — that can he turned into a closet for brooms, mops, etc.,
and which may also serve as a coat closet. The omission of this
small aft'uir causes an amount of feeling that is surprising, and it
is hard to realize, if we may believe our ears, that it is not quite
the most important affair in tlie house.
56 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
Our pantry must have an outside ^v'indow so that we may
keep it cool, and for the same reason it must be located where
the sun will enter as little as possible — never, if it can be ar-
ranged. It must have cupboards for flour and sugar barrels,
crocks, etc., a few drawers with a wide counter under the window,
a mixing-board of plate glass or a marble slab, and plenty of
open shelf room. Part of these shelves may well be protected
from flies by being partitioned off with a screened door.
There is a tendency to make kitchen pantries too large, just
as there is a tendency to make butlers' pantries too small. The
latter should contain a two-j)art sink of German silver if possible,
with the metal brought up to cover the counter and run up six
inches on the walls. If its cost puts this out of the question we
must make a tinned-copper-lined box sink do, the objection to this
being that the tin plating soon wears off and allows the copper
to show through. Iron or porcelain sinks are not good here as
they are apt to crack the china. The chance of getting a cupboard
under the sink should not induce us to enclose tliis space. The
plumbing pipes and trap should, for sanitary reasons, be left
open to the air.
^Ve should see to it that we have two banks of drawers, the
bottom one deep enough for table linen and long enough for
centre-pieces. The top drawers should be shallow, say four inches
deep, divided by slender partitions, and lined with felt for silver.
We must get all the counterspace and glazed cupboards with
shelves to the ceihng that are possible. Our cupboard doors maj^
either be liinged to swing, or slide on tracks. The objection to
the hinged door is that if it is left open by any chance it hangs
out into the passage and will cause trouble as an obstacle in the
dark, or when the maid is intent on her work. The sliding doors
for this reason are probably better, though they have been known
to stick, and as their being left open carries no penalty with it,
we shall find in practice that this is too often the case.
Beneath our counter, in addition to our drawers, we may have
cupboards, a safe, and perhaps a small refrigerator for salads,
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 57
desserts and such things, and a plate-warmer. This latter often
takes the form of a small radiator designed for the purpose.
This of course can he done only when the house is heated hy hot
water or steam, and even then will he useless when our winter
heat is discontinued. Gas is also used. The electric plate-
warmer is perhajis the hest; the ohjection that it may be left
turned on can be overcome by placing a red light on the same
circuit, which will show in the pantry or kitchen, and act as a
reminder. This may also be done with the cellar light which
we sometimes forget to turn off when the switch is at the head
of the stair. We should have a slide at the level of the counter,
opening into the kitchen, and the counter should be continuous if
possible so that dishes may be slid right through from pantry to
kitchen. Our table leaves may also find a specially designed
home here, and such conveniences as towel racks, sliding counter
extensions, platter racks, drop shelves, disappearing steps for the
top shelves, etc., will all or many of them find a place.
The distance of the front hall from the kitchen should be as
direct and short as possible, and, it is hardly necessary to add,
should avoid taking us through any room. On the other hand,
the kitchen should be cut off from the front hall and the master's
portion by at least two doors, which will necessarily mean some
sort of hall or closet between, giving us the dead air space which
is so desirable for sound-proofing and as a protection against the
kitchen odors. Doors occupying such strategic points as these
should not be relied upon to keep their openings closed unaided,
and a substantial automatic door check will be found to have a
much better memory than the best trained maid, and at the
same time will prevent the possibility of slamming either from
draughts or other causes. It will often be found convenient,
in small houses, to glorify this passage by a slight expansion
into a coat closet and telephone booth, and it may even be found
possible to have the cellar stairs go down out of it, of course
with a door at the top. It may also be found advisable to have
the back stairs go up from it.
58 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
The exigencies of the more important rooms will probably
have forced this hall into the interior of the house, and it will
in that case be necessary to borrow light from the butler's pantry
or kitchen through a sash in the wall, or to insert a light of glass
in one of the doors. If this proves to be the case we should reso-
lutely give up any ideas of introducing a water-closet into tliis
space.
It is better not to have either the cellar stairs or the back stairs
to the second floor lead directly out of the kitchen, even with a
door to cut them off at the start. Odors and dampness never
seem content to stay where they happen to be, and may be relied
upon to break through and start on their wanderings through
these convenient passageways. This matter of the small interior
hall is not of course an ideal arrangement and will be resorted to
only in very small work where space must be very economically
apportioned. This is the principle of the relation of the kitchen
and the front hall reduced to its lowest terms. In bigger work
we shall avoid enclosed space Avithout outside air or light, and
generally increase and amplify the connecting links.
Arriving in the front hall, we are now back where we started
and ready to go to the second floor.
Before leaving the ground floor we might say a few words of
a general nature regarding some of the common problems that
often have to be decided in the arrangement of the main living-
rooms. If we are building on a site which is of a naturally irreg-
ular surface with considerable change of grade over that portion
where our house is to stand, it is a perfectly natural and sensible
thing to fit the house to the ground as much as may be, by lower-
ing or raising the floor level with the changes of the grade,
thus not only effecting an economy of material but fitting the
building to its site. Our reward will be that only true and
satisfj'ing picturesqueness which is the result of meeting logi-
cally and naturally, in the most direct way, the problem as one
finds it.
We must, however, be careful in planning not to let such
/
I'Uv pliin of the half-timber house, by reason of its pnal)ihty. may provide, as here,
for incorporating the (jarafje into one end of the building
2
2
to
c
§.2
¥•
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 59
changes of level occur in locations which will interfere with the
ease of carrying on the work of the household. The shifting of
a step a few feet will often make a vast difference; for instance
from one side of a door to the other, to form part of a neighbor-
ing run of steps, and so on. If changes of level occur in the
middle of a room it has the practical effect of dividing it into
two distinct rooms and where we had one big room before we shall
have the equivalent of two small ones. If one is on the upper
level in a room so divided he will alwaj's be haunted by the fear
that he may forget and step backwards. It will be forcing on
him an added responsibility which he will unconsciously resent.
We must also be careful not to place steps where they are not
to be expected or where they will be badly lighted, or we shall
have accidents. When only two or three steps occur they must
be made wider and much more ample than is at aU necessary in
a long flight.
The matter of a fireplace is always a vital one and if we are
to have a chimney it is often a temptation to locate it so that it
will serve two or more rooms. This of course is an economy if
it does not result in our having two fireplaces where we do not
want them, instead of one where we do. For instance, if we have
a living-room and library adjoining, we are often tempted to put
a chimney in the partition between with fireplaces in each room,
back to back. JNIore often than not, however, this wiU bring them
close to the entrance doors, which is not a good arrangement, not
only because of the draught but because it will prevent a drawing
of chairs about the fire. And fully equal to these real inconven-
iences is the instinctive feeling that there is a lack of coziness. One
never saw a cat pick out a spot to sleep in between a door and a
fireplace.
There are some people who so object to stairs that they en-
deavor to have as much of the house as possible on the first floor.
The pros and cons of a ground-floor bedroom are sufficiently
obvious, and it resolves itself into a matter of personal taste.
There is no sound reason for not having one's sleeping-room on
60 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
the ground floor. Those who don't like it give as a reason — that
they don't like it ! It seems to be another case of
"I do not like you. Dr. Fell,
The reiisoii why I cannot tell,
But this at least I know full well,
I do not like you. Dr. Fell."
Which is often the best of reasons because it is so impervious to
argument.
Lest you, gentle reader, belong to this class and are being
gradually prodded into a dull rage, let us say no more on the
subject but hasten up stairs at once. As has been remarked in
another place, if we are in a real English house we may have to
hunt about a bit to find these same stairs.
The problem on the second floor is briefly to get as many and
as large rooms as possible, and all other considerations are secon-
dary. There is no need of the clear height from floor to ceiling
on the second floor being over eight feet six inches, and it may
well be eight feet or even seven feet six inches, which will be a
great aid to coziness and will lend to the rooms an appearance
of size which they do not possess.
The owner's quarters will naturally be the best, and we shall
expect to find him with the southern sun, a pleasant view, a fire-
place and his own bathroom and dressing-room, a sitting-room
perhaps, and one or two closets — a man and his wife should each
have one. The other members of the family will j^robably not
have individual bathrooms.
There should be one bathroom in any case opening into the
main hall for the public, even if it is ordinarily private property.
It is a good idea to arrange two rooms and a bath at one end of
the house that can be shut off from the rest and used as a suite,
where, in case of a contagious disease, the nurse may live with
her patient in isolation. All the bedrooms should be plentifully
supplied with closets having poles for coat-hangers, a wide shelf
for ladies' hats and plenty of hooks. A linen-closet should lead
out of the upper hall ; either a big closet that one may walk into.
HOW TO PLAN THE HOUSE 61
with drawers and shelves, or, if we are pressed for room, merely
a series of recessed, deep shelves from floor to ceiling, having
paneled drop fronts flush with the wall surface. This will need
no other door. Such an arrangement will hold all the linen that
most families require. The shelves, instead of being solid, are
often formed of slats so that fresh linen placed on them may
have a further chance to air and dry.
A matter which is not ordinarily given sufficient care in the
planning of a bedroom is the consideration of wall space for the
accommodation of the necessary furniture. Radiators are almost
as greedy of wall space as windows and doors, and are ahcays
bigger than we planned! Registers, too, have a way of turning
up in unexpected places and taking to themselves the most desir-
able spot in the room. It is some satisfaction to know at least
that the ancient architects did not get off free on this score, for
Sir Henry Walton, writing in 1624, says, " Palladio observeth
that the Ancients did warm their rooms with certain secrete Pijjes
that came through the walles (transporting heate as I conceive it)
to sundry parts of the House, from one common Furnace — which
whether it were a custom or a delicacie, was surely both for thrift
and for use, far beyond the German stoves : and I should pref ere
it likewise before our own fashion, if the very sight of a fire did
not adde to the Roome a kinde of Reputation." We all feel the
" Reputation " of such a room and the call of the open fire. Our
own Charles Dudley Warner had the same thing in mind when
he deplored the cheerful blaze gi\'ing way to our modern methods,
and pictures the future Yuletide season when pater familias on
a blustering Christmas eve gathers his faithful wife and merry
brood about the — register! The register and radiator are every-
where and it will be hard enough to hold these ubiquitous nui-
sances in check even when their presence is anticipated.
Tlie problem of the servants' rooms is one that often causes
much difficulty. In the medium-sized house it is usually necessary
that they have their rooms on the third floor. The objection to
this is the noise resulting from having them over one's head.
62 THE HALF-TI^IBER HOUSE
There seems to be some mysterious, exhilarating influence that
affects those who inhabit the third story, that finds its outlet in
their dashing their boots to the floor. It seems strange in this
age of luxurious living and practical eugenics that one-legged
servants are not bred, for on this score at least they would be cer-
tainly twice as desirable. Another drawback to the third-floor
servants' room is the heat in summer; under the roof as they
are, even with a partial air space between the ceiling and the roof,
these rooms are bound to be hot, especially at night after the sun
has been blazing on the roof all day.
A better arrangement, if we can afford the space, is to put the
servants' rooms with the bath on the second floor over the serv'ice
portion of the first floor, and reached by the back stairs, this group
of rooms being connected with the rest of the second floor by a
single door. This brings their working and sleeping quarters
close together and gives them more freedom, while the master's
portion of the house is unconscious of their existence. This
arrangement is not a difficult one to bring about, but the problem
is somewhat comphcated if there is a single manservant to be
housed. A room on the first floor in the kitchen wing is often the
best solution here, but it is a point that should be carefully con-
sidered for any given case.
Methods of Construction
IN Chapter II we followed the methods of construction of the
half-timber house in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
during its period of evolution and gro\vth, at a time when
the state of civilization was very different from what it is to-day
— when the methods of building were more primitive and the
choice of materials much more restricted to the immediate vicinity
of the work in hand. It is true that bricks were imported fi'om
Holland at an early period, but these were for the palaces of
the nobility or the important buildings belonging to church or
state.
The idea that these limitations in the matter of tools or mate-
rials was a handicap to good work, from the artistic point of
view, or that our greater facility in these matters gives us an
advantage over the earlier builders, is not at all true. Good art
is not dependent on good tools ; as a matter of fact, is quite inde-
pendent of them. The limitations of these early builders was in
reality a source of strength, and a powerful aid, even if an uncon-
scious one, to honesty and directness in their work. They did
not know the temptations which beset the modern builder, any
more than they knew the difficulties that hamper the modern
designer. Tliey were not confused and diverted from the end in
view by the multiplicity and complexity of the means at their
disposal. There was only one way, and not a hundred others
that were " just as good," by which " no one could tell the differ-
ence." One honest thing, perfectly adapted to its o\x\\ special
use, was not tricked out into imitating some other honest tiling
which happened to be more expensive. If the work of the early
builders was good, their path at least was not beset with so many
temptations to dishonesty at every turn. To-day the false econ-
omy to be secured by the use of the clever substitute for the real
G4 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
thing is a pitfall it requires much strength of character to avoid.
We are a little skeptical nowadays about the " gods seeing every-
where," or, rather, we do not care if they do, so long as our neigh-
bor, Mr. Workllywise, does not.
Although the time has not yet arrived in this country as in
Europe, when it is as cheai) to build of brick or other burnt clay
products as to build of wood, it is not far distant. When this
condition does exist it will be a great help to the general arclii-
tecture of this country, and the appearance of flimsiness, insepar-
able from timber work, will give way to the substantial impres-
sion produced by the more solid and enduring materials.
The finical, emasculated appearance which is a character-
istic of wood frame construction, is one to which our eyes have
become so accustomed that it is only on returning from a trip
to foreign countries that we are struck wth the flimsy appear-
ance of our frame houses. There is a beauty of wood and
another beauty of brick and stone, but the latter are the most
appropriate and sensible for the onerous use to which a build-
ing is put.
However, the time has not yet arrived in any locality when
stone, or baked clay, covered with stucco or otherwise, can com-
pete in first cost with wood — convincing advertising pamphlets
from the makers of clay products notwithstanding.
So if we must, with a sigh, give up the idea of building our
house of the more permanent materials, and turn to the wood
frame, let us at least cover it with something that will give us a
wall which at once produces a plane surface of pleasant texture
and at the same time is not dependent on the paint brush for its
verj"^ life ; that fire does not touch, that vines may cling to Avithout
harm; and that is warm in winter and cool in summer. Stucco
is such a material. It has the happy quality of satisfying the
l^ractical man who can live by bread alone, and yet to whom we
thus give cake as well.
Now let us look at this method of building our walls. In our
half -timber house, the walls between the timbers will show stucco,
i'lu- {Hiint^ ut iiitt-rt'sl on Hit- t-\U-rii>r nf a Itou.so piin tii etlci'tivciie^b b^
being neither duiuituus nor scuttcrcd
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION 65
and much or all of the rest of the house will be of the same
material with, perhaps, some brick, stone or siding, as the case
may be, to give varietj' of color and texture.
Stucco The term " stucco " is a loose one, but the com-
position when used for outside plastering, is of
cement, lime and sand in varying proportions. The proper
proportioning of these ingredients, especially of the lime and
cement, is a subject of much controversy and hardly any two
plasterers combine them in the same j^roportions. Tliis seems
to be matter that has always been in debate and even as long
ago as the Middle Ages we find masons commonly mixing
such things as ox blood, beer, dung, sugar and milk with their
lime.
The accounts for the repairs of the steeple of Xewark Church
in 1571 contain an entry, " 6 strike of malt to make mortar to blend
with ye lyme and temper the same, and 350 eggs to mix with it."
During the building of the Duke of Devonshire's house at Chis-
wick, the interior of which was stucco, the surrounding district
was impoverished for eggs and buttermilk to mix with the stucco.
It used to be a common practice in our southern states to mix
molasses with the mortar. The object of most of these admixtures
was to retard the set in order to secure more ease in manipulation.
It is a curious thing that a scientific formula to give the best
results has never been promulgated, or at least never adopted.
It is a matter of the utmost importance, and strangely enough
there seems to be absolutely no authoritative decision as to what
constitutes the best mixture for the peculiarly trying purpose for
which stucco is to be used. While it is not strange that in a mat-
ter where every jjlasterer claims to be an expert, there should be
a wide divergence of oj^inion, it does seem curious that among
the really expert men of established reputation who have done
(juantities of work, and have years of cxi)ericnce behind them,
there should not be a conunon formula wliich the consensus of
opinion would accept as the best. It is, of course, a matter in
which such a formula can be arrived at only empirically; an
66 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
opinion from the study or the laboratory can carry httle weight
until it has been given the test of actual experience under the con-
ditions wliich it will be called upon to meet.
There also, unfortunately, seems to be a disposition on the
part of the plasterers to treat the matter as a trade secret, and
any statements that it is possible to wring from them carry such
involved and lengthy qualifications and are so contradictory one
with the other, that a collection and comparison of hard-won data
reveals such surprising discrei^ancies that one wonders how any
of the walls stand. To compare the results and discover what
they have in common in a broad, general way, seems to be about
all that one can do towards giving a formula for outside plaster.
Such an average of the best obtainable opinion, then, would
seem to indicate that the first or " scratch " coat should not have
over half cement nor less than fifteen per cent, that the second
coat is usually a little " stiffer " — that is, that it may have more
cement in proportion to the lime, and that the third coat or the
" slap-dash " will vary as to the amount of the cement according
to the color which is desired for the finish.
To introduce one of the many qualifications, we might say
that there is a school of plasterers who say that in order to have
the coats adhere perfectlj' the one to the other and form a com-
pact, homogeneous mass, it is important that all coats should be
of exactly the same mixture. In order to show, however, that we
have an open mind in these matters, let us give the formula recom-
mended by one of our largest manufacturers of expanded metal
lath. " ]Mix the scratch coat," say they, " in the proportion of one
part Portland cement, three and one-half parts sand, one-half
part putty, made with hydrated lime. The second coat should
be mixed in the proportion of one part Portland cement to three
parts sand, and the finish coats one part Portland cement and
two parts sand. Lime putty, not exceeding five per cent, is often
used to advantage in the finish coat."
Another popular mixture calls for half and half Portland
cement and lime, with four times their combined volume of sand.
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
67
Many men use two parts of lime to one of cement, while others
vary the proportions in the different coats. The tendency of the
honest plasterer, new to this kind of work, is to put in too much
cement. He argues that in most other mason work the more
Portland cement in the mortar used, the better job, which is
generally true. The trouble with this reasoning is that when
Portland cement mortar is applied in great sheets such as we
have on the side of a house, it has not enough elasticity. The
cement makes it too rigid and brittle, and the changes of temper-
f Cr "V/v.) ly •■ at
By courtesy of The ArchUeclitral Hevietff
The most vulnerable points in a stucco wall are found at the intersection of stucco and the
wood trim around windows and other openings. The protection of these points by flashing
cannot be too carefully done
ature or slight shrinkages of the building cause it to crack or
perhaps come away altogether. One is rather forced into the
position, after seeing what a chaos of opinion prevails, revealing
such a total lack of any real knowledge on the part of these work-
men, of believing that it cannot after all make very much differ-
ence ichat his stucco is made of. Therefore it is a very cheering
thing to be told that such is really the case! The mixture of the
stucco, we are told, is really not so important after all, neither
is the kind or make of the lath backing so essential; but the really
necessary and important thing is that the plaster coveruig itself
68 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
should at every point of contact with tlie woodwork, about the
windows, water-table, cornice, posts and angles, be so absolutely
impervious to the entrance of water that this arch foe of metal is
repulsed at every point, keejiing the metal upon wliich the plaster
clings and owes its suj^jiort sound from rust.
For this reason it is important that all horizontal timbers em-
bedded in the plaster, whether or not they are flush with the plas-
ter face, be carefully flashed with metal. This applies to
water-tables, tops of window- and door-casing as well as to the
half-timbering. The wider edge of such timbers must have a drip
to drop the water clear of the wall, so as to prevent the water run-
ning down the face of the wall.
The vertical pieces must have rabbets run on their back edges
so that the wet stucco may be forced into them and so stop any
through crack that might appear should tlie wood, in time, shrink
away from the immovable cement.
This stucco face can be put on over poured concrete which
has had its face roughened either in the mold or afterwards,
or put on a w^all of cast concrete blocks which have had their
faces corrugated so as to give a clinch for the stucco. With-
out some actual physical grip on the face to which stucco is
aiijilied, it will not stick. It has no adhesive properties of its
own. It may be applied over a brick wall the joints of which
have been raked out so that the stucco may be squeezed in, and
the bricks in this case should be hard baked and even rough and
twisted. It maj' be apphed over terra cotta blocks w^hich have
been molded with a key on the face, or in fact over anytliing that
will give the necessary grip for the mortar.
JVIuch of our modern work is applied over a wall of wooden
studs, and is ordinarily done in the following manner: The
wall is framed with studs wliich are placed on the sill or girts and
boarded on the outside exactly as for a shingled or clapboarded
house. Over the boards on the outside is nailed one, or better,
two thicknesses of some damp-proof building jiaper with all the
joints between the sheets well lapped. Furring strijis of wood.
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
69
one inch square, are then nailed vertically nine inches on centres.
Over this one-half inch wire mesh is stretched — better galvanized
after it is wo\en — and securely fastened with galvanized staples
to each strip.
We are now ready for the stucco. Some plasterers prefer the
Me'Du -La.ti-e^s'Ened^toT-Iron^Fuj^
RnSIG*<&^CE^€NT- PLASrERZI>0ll3I]D<
flNlSH^AFODRNICE.-
Corni<:e
&e<lmoul<l
JJrvp
• Cement J'bxJLar-
■ Tar Poper
MetaiLath.
■ T-lrof\.vr
»5tople, Ta-rtu\jcJ-s.
"WaU- E>oarcltrta
•\St.-u.dj
rc.ft
Roof
Boarding
?Latc
Co »vt.raction.
Lap of Cornift
•Top ofExttf-
ioc- Plajtertna-
One 'way- 01
Jtaplelng
^y courtrsy of The Architectural Review
A detail of the wall and cornice where nietil lath on T-irons was used upon
the outside of the sheathing
furrings put on horizontally, as they say it enables them to stretch
their wire up and down tighter, but it seems to the author that any
settlement of the frame will be more likely to bring the horizontal
strips to wiiich the wire is fastened closer together, and thus cause
a slight buckling, than is the case when the strips are vertical, and
such shrinkage of llie wall boards and settlement of the frame
can not shorten the strips which run from top to bottom and are
themselves the frame that really sujiports the stucco face.
70
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
Sometimes the manufacturers make a metal V- or T-shaped
channel which is to be used instead of the wood furring, and this
no doubt is good when properly applied. It is stapled in place
through a slot in the metal which allows of slight movement up
and down, should there be a settlement. The lath is wired to this
metal. Instead of the wire mesh, expanded metal is often used,
but it is not holding its own in popular favor. The danger of
trouble with stucco applied over a metal lath instead of on brick
or concrete is that the metal may rust away in time and the stucco
'PLA^m^ON-LAmCED^WDP-lATI'
rci
fCi>/Cr.
By courtfsy of The ArchUectwal EevUw
(a) There are those who claim that the use (b) Extremely sharp corners are neither
of diagonal wood lath is as good as, or per- necessary nor desirable on stucco walls,
haps better than, metal as a support for the There is a metal corner-bead that helps to
stucco preserve a true edge
fall off in great slabs. The users of the ^vire mesh claim that the
first coat of mortar if properly apphed squeezes through the mesh,
falls over behind and thus completely embeds the wire and pro-
tects it from any dampness that through any inadvertence may
have found its way back of the stucco. It is claimed that, while
the expanded metal is stronger and stiffer, it is harder to effect
this embedding process, and that rust makes little of its extra bidk
and strength once it finds an opening for attack.
We might call the attention of the reader at this point to a
fact wliich constitutes one of the very strongest claims of stucco
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTIOX 71
and wood to the favorable consideration of the prospective house-
builder. Whether the lathing be one sort or another, and what-
ever be the formula for the composition of our stucco, we obtain
for our wall the very great advantage of two dead-air spaces in
its thickness. These dead-air spaces constitute a most valuable
insulation, not only against dampness but, what is of more un-
portance, a very efficient protection against changes of tempera-
ture, which fact tends to jjroduce a cooler house in hot weather
and a warmer house in cold weather.
The first air space is that between the inside plaster on its
wooden or metal lath fastened to the inside of the studs, and the
boarding on the outside. This space of course we find in every
frame house, no matter what the outside covering. The second
space, peculiar to this method of work, is that between the outside
boarding with its paper covering, and the back of the outside
stucco which is held away one inch by the thickness of the furring
strips. We thus get a double hollow wall.
Because of this possibility of rust in metal lath of any form
there are those who stoutly maintain that exterior wooden lath
on furrings is just as good if not better than metal, as it avoids
this possibility of disaster.
There is another method that is often used and which has
its staunch supporters, and is the cheapest for buildings that are
not too large. This method consists in ai)plying the metal lath
directly to the studs — and when this is done an expanded metal
of some little stiffness should be used and the studs be placed
nearer together than in the first method and cross braced twice
in a story's height. Xine inches on centre is about the right spac-
ing for the ordinary two-story house. If the house is high and,
in consequence, demands greater stiffness, we shall sadly miss the
outside boarding with its added strength and protection against
racking which it is bound to afford. Again, the necessity of
placing the studs nearer tv)gether, nearly, if not quite, offsets the
saving which has been effected by eliminating the boarding.
One of the strongest points in favor of tliis method is that
72
THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
after we have plastered the outside of the lath we go inside and
l)laster directly on the hack side of the same lath between each
pair of studs. It will be seen that in this way we get the metal
entirely embedded in the cement, at least theoretically. In prac-
tice, however, the inevitable shrinkage of the stud will in time
open a small crack where the two come together, and although
•ME'IAL^LAm^FA5'EJ€D*TO*5TUD^' S^
'PKO'EC'ED^Br^PlAJER^&Nl.SIDE^^OUT
■ Back PLojte-ruig ^^tui
• betwear.- >Stiid^. (
. on. uintr _fac< o,'
Lotfi
Metal LaL
■to-receivt
Exterior
Plitster Coats ^^
:Woodtti- ,
• WdterToble
■ Upper Wentber
.JUshed b<KJt
• belund PU»tcr
• Lover Taeurc
• coveritigdown.
over Kjundatton,
IntirtoT WooA Lathi-
- — iTCterior Hou^e Plaiter
/f^^\y^ .Sbui
rc.^
Jfetnp oj-.open-
ina joint coux
fd jby J kiinkoae
-iv. VAdtA- o^ thjft
iStixd ■ pulUno ■
au/ay from. -CKe
IntfertorPWter
protection.
iilL
3TfliHi»^over-
•Water Table
By courtesy of The ArchUeclural Rfx-iew
The method of fastening metal lath directly to the studs and then plastering
on both sides of this support. There is a disadvantage in the loss of a
dead-air space
this is of course on the inside, and has the whole tliickness of the
outside coat still between it and the weather, it is not quite fair
to say that the metal is hermetically sealed. Any Avet that may
have got behind from some cause or other, such as the careless
junction between a bit of outside finish and the stucco coat may
still search it out. There can be no question, however, but that
the protection is much more nearly perfect than in the other
method. This inside back plastering must of course be done be-
"The Gables," Tlirlwall, l'Jij;laiul, (uu- nl tin- fiiitiparatu rl_N lew iiunK-rti lnui.srs wlicre
the timbering is so\u\ itiul extc-iiiling the full iK-|>th uf the wall
.-5S^'
Another view of " The Gables." Were it not that the timbering has been kept light in
color the contrast of so nuich pattern would be far less satisfactory
One of the strongest features of the design is the straightforward,
sturdy treatment of the chimneys
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
73
fore the inside lathing is nailed in place. By this method we
also lose one of our precious dead-air spaces, which are really one
of the very strongest utilitarian arguments in favor of covering
our house with stucco. It should be said, before leaving this
subject, that the danger of trouble with metal lath is not great,
as the process is understood nowadays, and the stories of the
failure of such work are of cases usually of some years back,
before this work was as well understood as it is to-day. Even
^PLAJTEl^'ON-HOLLOW-TlLE'
Terra Coita.
Tile
Pidjier
Terra cotta blocks are beginning to compete seriously with wood construc-
tion and will no doubt soon be the less expensive form
now, however, it is not every })lasterer that may be entrusted with
this outside plastering, and we ought to be slow to take a man's
own word for his competence without some more convincing proof
of his ability.
But it is a question how much longer this method of ai)ply-
ing stucco over a wooden frame will continue in vogue, as the
difference in cost of building a house having the outside walls
of wood covered with stucco, and of terra cotta covered with
the same material, is becoming less every day. Wliile lumber
is showing a steady and natural tendency from year to year to
advance in price, the burnt-clay products are gradually becom-
74 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
ing not only cheaper but more widely distributed, better kno\vn,
and much improved in every way.
A committee of the Boston Chamber of Commerce recently
investigated the subject of the comparative cost of building, and
their conclusions are of interest. A set of plans of a house which
had already been erected was submitted to five different contrac-
tors and their estimates were then averaged for purposes of com-
parison. This average estimate for a frame building covered with
clapboards was $6759.95. The average increase in cost for other
methods was as follows :
Peb Cent.
Stucco on frame 2.92
Brick veneer on studding 5.83
Stucco on hollow blocks 6.34
Brick veneer on boarding 6.95
Ten-inch brick wall, hollow 9.16
Brick veneer on hollow block 10.77
AVhile these increases were no doubt correct for the house under
discussion we seldom in practice find these increases so slight
as here given.
Of course there are other things for the builder who is chiefly
interested hi economy to consider besides the first cost. There is
the matter of upkeep and of fire protection. Stucco on a wooden
stud is the most fireproof material with wliich one can cover a
frame house. The matter of repairs and upkeep is reduced to a
minimimi. There is no outside painting to be done except for the
small amount of wood trim, and the wall itself requires absoluteh'
no care, whether the stucco is applied over a wood frame or over
some form of burnt clay.
So much for the backing of our stucco wall. Now as to the
application of the stucco itself. The work should be put on in
three coats, the first mixed with hair and troweled well into the
lath or wall and " scratched." The second coat is troweled on
after the first is dry, and the third or last coat troweled on, leav-
ing it rough mth the trowel marks showing here and there, not
too ostentatiously. If the plasterer is told to leave the marks of
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTIOX 75
his trowel he will, if his ideas of a good job will permit him to do
it at all, laboriously and regularly let each sweep of the trowel be
as distinct as it is possible, and even tlien these sweeps, which ordi-
narily have a certain pleasant freedom, will be cramped and tunid
because of his self-consciousness. If we wish it smooth from the
trowel he will glory in making it a perfect mathematical plane,
with all the corners sharp and true. A more popular and better
way than either is to make the last coat what is known as " slap-
dash," or " pebble-dash." This is done by using a very thin mix-
ture, of the consistency of heavy cream, with which has been mixed
coarse sand containing small stones about the size that will pass
through a one-eighth-inch mesh. This is taken out on a piece of
board about the size of a slungle and thrown against the house
with some force and left untouched. A broom of twigs is some-
times used instead of a paddle, this being dipped in the liquid
which is then thro^^Ti on. The result is a very rough siu'face of
marked and pleasant texture. This last coat may be colored be-
fore it is thrown on so that the pigment is part of the coating and
gives a practically permanent color. A little yellow ochre gives
a pleasant wall, if just enough is added to make an old-ivory color
— enough to take off the coldness of pure white which the large
amount of lime in the last coat will give if it is left untouched.
There shoidd not be enough to make it look yellow, unless for
some reason tliis is desired. Pinks and grays and blues may also
be had. These pigments must be earth or mineral coloring mat-
ter, and their free use is restricted only by the fact that when used
in large quantities they tend to weaken the cement mixture, acting
as inert matter, much as does clay or loam if it is allowed to get
into the mortar bed. Vegetable colors are to be avoided, as the
action of the lime seems to vitiate them and the sun still fui-ther
fades and alters the original cohir. While the weakening effect
on our stucco by tlie use of mineral coloring matter is so slight
in the ordinary use of color as to be negligible, there are methods
of getting color which do not detract even so much from the
strength of the set. In the first place we may, instead of mixing
76 THE IIALF-TI^IBER HOUSE
our pigment into the body of the mortar, a^Dply it to the surface
of the last coat when it is still wet, as a surface coloring. This
may be done by a blower of some sort or by being washed on witli
a brush. Tliis is not a method that is much used, and the neces-
sarily imperfect hold which the jwwder will have on the stucco,
together with the difficulty of getting anything like an even distrib-
ution of pigment, and the consequent uneven and blotchy effect
of the resulting wall, are inherent weaknesses in its use. A better
way than this, if we should want a pink or brown or yellow wall,
would be to mix in the proper amount of brick dust in the last
coat to produce the desired shade of color. In the same way con-
siderable effect can be obtained by using colored pebbles and sand
in the finish coat. This will not affect the strength of our mix-
ture, and there are, of course, many other materials of the same
general character that are available in the same way and which
will increase the range of colors at our disposal. It must be re-
membered that cement alone is of a cold gray color that does not
form a good body color for our tints. They lose their clearness
and individuality in the partnershii^, of wliich the pigment is too
often the silent member. It is of course impossible for any but
the practised plasterer to tell what color will resiUt from any
given proportion of admixture, and it is absolutely necessary that
samjiles of considerable size be prepared and applied to some
wall in the same manner and showing the same surface textiu'e
as it is proposed to finish the wall under treatment. Again, this
must be looked at only after it has had plenty of time to set and
di'y; then only can the final color be seen. Tliis should be con-
sidered in sun and shadow, wet and dry, and wloile the pigment
will not itself probably fade or change, the natural darkening
which will result from the rough walls collecting dust and dirt
as time goes on, must also be taken into accomit. Pure white,
light j'ellows, or soft pinks may be best obtained if there is a
goodly proportion of lime in the last coat; that is, if it largely
predominates over the cement. Lime is naturally an almost pure
white, and an excellent foundation for the production of clear.
A tniL' half tinibiT house in process of constnictioii
?i '[ r- ^^ »^l >! V V 'HI ^^
The use of solid timbers exleiuliii); throujfli the walls is, hiTe in Aiiierieii, iilmnst out of
the question beeause of the eost both iif the timbers uiid the lalx>r required
-a
4
o
METHODS OF COXSTRUCTIOX 77
unaggressive tints, free from the sodden, muddy look of which it
is so hard to get rid when cement alone or in large proportions is
present.
If it is argued that adding too much lime will not give the
hardness or the toughness that is desired, and that only Portland
cement will give, we may then use white cement which is a com-
paratively new brand, having the same strength as the ordinary
Portland cement, and of a pure dazzling whiteness. The only
drawback to its more extensive use at present is the cost, which
is several times that of the old Portland cement.
It has not been thought necessary to warn the builder against
Rosendale cement, as its use is now practically abandoned every-
where, and the cheapness, availability and infinite superiority of
Portland cement for everj' purpose where a cement is used has
driven it from the market.
For our half-timber work there are several methods which are
common. In England to-day it is quite usual to pursue much the
same methods that the joiners of the old days followed. The big
honest timbers, often hand-hewn on the very land of the owners
of the future house, are doweled and pinned in place with oak
pins and the " daub," a little more scientifically mixed, no doubt,
is filled in between. Many of the building laws of the local gov-
erning boarils, however, demand nine inches of brick wall as a
backing to these timbers. In this country, where our climate is
more severe than in England, we must take additional precau-
tions against the weather and not fail to carry at least some por-
tion of our wall back of the half-timbers, thus obviating any
cliance of joints opening and acting as a channel to the enemy
water. The illustration facing page 76 shows a house of this
sort in the process of construction. Facing page .50 is a photo-
graj)h of a house built by Mr. Ilarrison-Townsend, who says that
the half-timbers used here were old railroad sleepers taken and
used just as they lay. One may imagine the beautiful color and
texture, and tiie imj)ression of primitive strength tliat is always
so satisfying. The longer horizontal timbers were pieces of old
78 THE HxVLF-TIMBER HOUSE
staging, equally rough, and stained with those particularly fast
colors of which nature alone knows the secret. In the same way
Englishmen are fond of using old roof tile and slate which they
buy from the owners of old cottage roofs, usually by offering to
replace these roofs with brand-new ones, much as we have heard
of furniture collectors in this country exchanging a new varnished
chair for old Chipjjendales in the rural districts. This use of old
material for the sake of its atmosphere, for work of our character,
is one of the great lessons that the present-day English archi-
tects have to teach us. But after the arcliitect has learned the
lesson he will still have the task of educating the client. It is
strange that nothing is easier than to find people who would
admire houses of this sort immensely, but yet who would hesitate
and gasp if told that part of the price of such charm and sim-
plicity is the using of battered, second-hand lumber. " But what
would the neighbors?" etc. The English understand the inde-
scribable charm that hangs like a perfimie about old things, even
if they are but fragments of old things, like our battered timbers.
The richness that goes with mild decay speaks to the sensitive
man as the new, characterless stuff without experiences or memo-
ries of its own can never do. The o^vner does not like to pay just
as much for old, battered, second-hand stuff as for the new, clean,
straight stock, and yet such charming houses as that facing page
30 owe their elusive charm to the texture and color which belong
to the old tile, unplaned siding, and rough sticks. We pay enor-
mous prices for antiques to put into our houses. Why should we
not build them in and make of them the warp and woof of our
home? Whatever be the reason of their appeal, we may safely
leave the explanation to the professors of esthetics; the fact is
enough for us that the subtle charm and beauty of such houses,
built in this way, is undeniable and is felt by the most cai'eless
observer. If we are wise we will see if there is not something
here that we maj' learn to our profit even if the esoteric psycho-
logical reasons are hidden from our understanding and we work
empirically in the true artistic fashion.
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION
79
The usual criticism of the use of modern half-timber work,
namely that it is impossible to build new houses with the charm
which we admire so much in old ones, because such charm is pri-
marily due to their age with its incident effects, is not a just one.
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A Teiy common substitute for whole-timber oonstruetion is the use of a rabbeted
plank pluntud ujKin the outside of the sheathing
It is true that we cannot rejiroduce, nor would we wish to try,
the pleasant air of general dilapidation so much more delightful
to look at than to live with. We may, however, obtain the general
sense of beauty, picturesqueness, and, above all, of the Anglo-
Saxon home feeling wiiich by unconscious atavism so fills the
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METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION 81
heart of the exiled descendants of English blood in the presence
of these wonderful cottages. It is the " Home sweet home " that
we have never seen, but our hearts are the touchstone that prompt
our slower brains. Such houses as those shown facing pages 73
and 77 are all new, all perfectly tight, warm and practical. They
may have vacuum cleaners and wireless telephones for aught we
know, but they have not lost the charm that so often slips through
the fingers of the most up-to-date builder or painstaking writer of
specifications.
There is another method of building our half-timber walls that
is less satisfactory from the esthetic point of view, but which is
nevertheless a good substitute as far as appearance and practical
service is concerned. This is the use, when we are dealing with
a frame house, of a rabbeted plank planted on the furring thus
formhig our " half-timber." The plaster filhng is between, ap-
plied on the metal lath, the rabbet on the back of the stick helping
to secure tightness. These planks are sometimes secured in place
after the first coat of plaster is on, the other two coats filling up
the space flush or nearly flush with the face of the planks. This
is the common method in vogue and while not comparable to the
use of real sticks of timber with the attendant knots and checks,
may be made an acceptable substitute if we take care to avoid
hard edges and corners, and either have the faces hand-hewn with
the adze, or use the planks " mill-faced," that is, with the rough,
furry marks of the circular saw still in evidence and not touched
by a plane or smoothed in any way. And, above everything else,
they must not be touched with lead and oil paint. The wood
should either be treated with some of the patent liquid wood
preservatives on the market, or given two coats of raw linseed
oil, which will serve as an excellent preservative against rot if
brushed over about as often as one would })aint outside wood-
work. To work in such a rough, masculine way as we have done
up to this point, and then to cover our honest wood with such
a smug, artificial thing as a coat of paint would be a great error
in conmion sense and taste. The key which we strike at the out-
82 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
set must set the pitch for the entire work, and consistency is as
vahiable a jewel here as elsewhere.
In laying out the design of these half-timbered walls it is
always well to remember that we are handling a very vigorous and
aggressive form of decoration, whatever else it may be. It should
be labeled, " Dangerous — Handle with care." It is sure to arro-
gate to itself the lion's share of attention, and so must be used
carefully and with due restraint. It is valuable and should be
handled as if it were a jewel — as a precious thing. It should be
used to i^roduce an accent, a high light in the picture. Tliis
aspect of half-timbered walls has never seemed to be duly appre-
ciated in modern work. The timbering is often seen spread
evenly over the four walls of a house from top to bottom, so
that its chief value and charm, its contrast with less exciting wall
surfaces, is entirely lost. To accent one word in a sentence gives
force, to accent all gives none.
In pictorial art this point is well exemplified in the sketches
of the greatest of all modern pen-and-ink artists, the Spaniard
Vierge. Their life and sparkle are largely due to the one or
two small patches of solid black which he is careful to introduce
somewhere among his middle tones. They give an accent, a
snap to the whole where their more generous use would produce
a result at once flat and conmionplace.
The modern houses shown facing pages 21 and 59 are ex-
amples of the sparing use of half-timber. In the first it is used
to glorify the front entrance of the house, in the second as a point
of interest against the foil afforded by the plain walls about it.
It was common in roofing the dormers and gables to project
the roof over the walls a foot or so in order to protect the walls be-
low from the weather. The projection was greater in the earlier
work, and receded for some reason or other as time went on, until
we find the barge-board which formed the outer finish of the over-
hang flat against the wall. In the best work much care and in-
genuity were expended in the decoration of these barge-boards,
or verge-boards, as they are sometimes called. Many beautiful
■X. ;,
n
It is a relevation to those of us who are aeeustoined to machine work on every hand to see
the enri<hnient of detail on even the simplest English cottage of an eaHier age
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION 83
examples still remain of the piercing in trefoil cusps, which are
carved and played with bj' the ingenious carpenters, who treated
them in much the same way that old Izaak Walton tells us to
treat the frog with which we are baiting our hook, when he says,
" Handle him as if you loved him." The finial against which
the barge-boards abut at the top is also a favorite object of the
carver's attention.
Siding, much like our own clapboards, is much used in Eng-
land on wall gables to obtain a variety of effect. The best wood
for this is elm, for though it twists and warps, tliis does no harm,
as we are relying on it only to throw off the rain and not to
keep out the cold. It is sawn rough and the natural edge some-
times left untouched, and, with nothing more done to it than
to add a coat of oil, will take on a soft silvery hue, most har-
monious with the other material and the surrounding fohage.
Exterior Details
THERE will probably never again be a roof covering
for a small house quite as beautiful as thatch. We say
" again " because thatch is doomed. Its utilitarian objec-
tions are too many.
Its dampness and consequent rotting make it
Thatch unsanitary. It is always invested with vermin;
it is apt to leak after a prolonged spell of dry
weather; and the danger of fire is very great and ever present.
In England its use has been legislated against, so that where
building laws are operative it is forbidden. Thatching is be-
coming a lost art, and in this country it is rarely that a man
can be found who understands how to do it. What little has
been done here has been of a small and j^layful character, as
garden houses, children's play-houses and the like. With a sigh,
then, we will pass on to more practical methods of keeping out
the rain.
In England they are fortunate in being able to get hand-
made tile. These are infinitely preferable to the tile we get in
this countrj' with their even color and hard, flat.
Tile and machine-made look. Old tile are also often used.
Shingles If the use of old tile needs any apology we
have it in their superiority from the point of view
of the practical man. Their age has somehow or other made
them weather-tight and they are soft and porous enough for
hchen to cover them, that silvery fungus to which, Ruskin
beautifully said, " slow fingered, constant hearted, is entrusted
the weaving of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills." To
coax lichen to our new tile will mean that we must make them so
soft and porous that they will not for a long time be damp-proof;
to make them hard enough to resist the weather will be to con-
EXTERIOR DETAILS 85
demn them to carry their ghttering surfaces fresh and raw to
the end. Then, hand-made tile have a shght concave curve in
their width which is of great aid in throwing off the water. Ma-
chine tile, for ease in packing and transportation, are made as
flat as a hoard. The dry, thin, desiccated-looking tile roofs which
we see all about us have about as much real charm and character
as the machines that make them. However, we are getting past
this stage and better tile are now coming on the market. Whether
it is that the machines are being perfected and have added the
sujireme " art that conceals art," or whether the clumsy inaccu-
rate hand of man is allowed to play some part in their creation,
we do not know; but the fact that we will no longer have to
miport roof tile from England is encouraging. As in other mat-
ters of this sort it is necessary only to create a sufficiently urgent
demand and make it sufficiently felt, to have it supplied. Tliis
means that the desire of a few, no matter how intense, will not
avail, but that there must be a widespread and insistent call all
along the line.
If for reasons of immediate, if shortsighted, economy we feel
we must fall back upon the stock wooden shingle, its lifelessness
and excessive neatness may be somewhat mitigated by laying the
shingles so that the butts do not follow an exact line but fall hit
or miss, a half-inch more or less above and below. This does not
mean that first one shingle is to be laid half an inch above the
line and the next half an inch below, and so on ad nauseam, but
that there should be no method. Let the carpenter rule his line
for the butts and then slap the shingle on the roof and drive in
his nails as he would if he were in a tremendous hurry. To con-
vey this point of view to the workman and get this done as we
wish will be an extremely difficult and tiresome task. It will re-
quire no end of explaining and reasoning with the carpenter
before he can be got to humor us to the extent of doing this
properly, as his ideas of a good job will be thoroughly outraged.
It really would save time and attain the same result to make
him slightly drunk and set him to work. Another way is to have
86 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
the stone mason do the shingling. Another method of getting
some variety into our roofs with common shingles is to lay them,
butts to a line, but varying without any system, the widths of
the courses.
Still better, and hardly more expensive than the ordinary
shingles, is the hand-spht cypress shingle of the South. It is very
tliick and large, being about two feet six mches long and of gen-
erous and varying widths. The extra size, with the resulting
increase of area exposed to the weather, means fewer shingles to
cover any given surface, and it is this greater covering capacity
that helps to bring down the cost. The gain is that of the pleas-
ant texture wliich is obtained from the sjjlit or hand-shaved sur-
face, the hea\y butts, and the sense of scale that is imparted by
the greater size of the shingles and their spacing. While they
are effective on the roof, they are even more so on the walls of a
house. As yet they are httle used in the North and West, but
are destined to become more popular as the present shingles
of commerce become of poorer and poorer quahty as the years
go by.
The use of slate is destined to become daily more popular.
The wooden shingle is not only becoming more expensive with
the increasing scarcity of lumber, but its quality is
Slate steadily deteriorating. The danger of fire from a
wooden roof covering also strengthens the demand
for something more substantial. Slate shares with tile this im-
munity from fire, and has the advantage over it of being less
expensive. The cost per square (one hundred square feet) of
shingle, slate and flat tile, on the roof, is about $10, $15 and
$30, allowing some variation for qualitj' and locahty. Red slate
is also more expensive than the other colors.
Slate, hke tile, should be laid on the roof boarding over some
waterproof paper or felting, asphalt or the like. INIany of the
patented preparations are good. The slate are then nailed with
copper nails through the waterproofing into the roof boards and
set in slaters' cement around angles or curves.
S in
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5i
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EXTERIOR DETAILS 87
The nails should never be of iron or steel even when galvan-
ized, and must not rust out, as the fastening should be as inde-
structible as the slate.
The old tliin blue slates of the middle of the last century have
given place to a thicker, rougher slate which is to be had in varie-
gated and pleasant colors and is superior in every way. Shades
of red, green, purple, blue and gray are on the market, and we
may make our roofs of one solid color or mix two adjacent tints
to give a pleasant life and variety to the surface. It is well to
make sure that our slate is unfading in color, as this is not always
the case.
The greatest gain of the slate of to-day over the old ones is
in their increased size, thickness and surface texture. This has
done away with the thin, hard-looking roofs of our earher time.
A favorite method of lajnng is to graduate the sizes of the slate
from eaves to ridge, that is, to lay the largest, tliickest slate in
wide courses at the eaves and allow them to decrease in size as they
approach the ridge. If we seek the effect of variety and rugged-
ness, it is important to use large slate but is even more important
that they be thick. An inch at the butt is not too much on cottage
work, and the effect is worth what it costs. Facing tliis page is a
roof of this sort.
The ridge may be finished with a copper or lead roll, which
had best be left unbroken and without ornament.
There is no more satisfactory roof for any house than one done
in this way, combining, as it does, all the virtues of beauty, fitness
and utility.
Stamped tin imitations need hardly be taken seriously as they
are neither handsome, honest, economical nor efficient.
The asbestos shingle has done well but has hardly been on the
market long enough to have been thoroughly tried out. It suffers
from its even hfelessness of color, and looks like a ])ainted sur-
face. It is fireproof and its makers claim long life for it.
We have already touciied on the value in the design of the
outside chimney stack, and of what a typical feature such a chim-
88 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
ney was in the old half-timber houses. The variety of shape
and design of these cliimneys is almost infinite, from the very
elaborate and complex stacks as shown facing page
Chimneys 89, in which the brick are especially molded or
ground to fit their places in the design, to those
in houses like that facing page 72, where the bricks are alike and
all of the common variety. The intricacy of the design is made
entirely by placing the brick in different relative positions, some-
times chipping off a hidden part to keep the bond about the
flues and insure stability.
Such elaborate stacks as those shown facing page 89 are ren-
dered more difficult to-day by the use of terra cotta flue linings,
which make any curving or twisting of the flue almost impossible
without somewhere constricting the sectional area and thus hurt-
ing the draft. It may best be done by using a circular flue lining.
We have a tendency in this coimtry to be a little timid \vith
our outside stacks; they too often look as if the builders were
ashamed of them instead of being proud of them, glorifying and
honoring them. They are capable of being the most effective
motive in the design if they are made ample in size and plenty
of thought is given to their design. There are not many parts of
a house that are so tractable and so flexible as an outside chim-
ney ; we may do with it almost what we will, expand or contract,
raise or lower, shape it to suit any caprice and enrich it as much
or as little as we please. It can easily be made to give scale to
the whole. The idea that an outside chimney is apt to have a poor
draft need not trouble us, for with modern flue linings and
eight inches of brick or more around them we can avoid any
danger of such trouble.
These chimneys are most successful when a common water-
struck brick is used and the entire " run of the kiln " is utilized.
That is, the bricks must not be culled but all the bricks used as
they come from the baking; light, dark, and even twisted. The
more variety of color and surface the better, not forgetting the
black headers which have been nearest the fire. Lay these up as
'I'lii- I liiiiiiiry limy l>r one of the chirf clciiidits in tlu- dcsiftn of Iho oxtcniir.
•• The- tJables," riii.'lwuli, Kiif^land
EXTERIOR DETAILS 89
they come to hand, again avoiding the conscious selection of every
header a black one, or any other rule. It is interesting to see
what splendid lively brickwork is done when the masons think it
will not sho\r, behind furring and the like. If the surface is a large
one, without breaks or angles, the need of a little variety in the
surface will be felt. In this case we may make a criss-cross pat-
tern, either using black headers or by projecting them slightly
from the face of the wall, so that the slight shadow will make
a simple pattern. Again, we may lay courses of brick on end or
on edge, or project a row of the corners of brick laid at forty-
five degrees with the surface, or sink panels, or make designs,
or project belt courses. There is considerable choice between
narrow hmits.
Then if we choose we may invest the surface with the desired
interest by changing the color of the brick joints or by raking
out certain of them. In fact it will not be hard in innumerable
ways to add just as little or as much interest to our brick wall
as we choose.
One of the things to avoid and that will render useless all the
trouble we have taken, is the use of a pressed or fancy brick of
any descrii)tion. Another is the use of a red mortar that matches
the bricks. Again, it is a temptation to say that only red bricks
will do, because it is so nearly a complete fact. Lately, however,
bricks of a purple tinge, with excellent surfaces, have come on
the market and one can imagine they would look very well under
certain conditions; but as for gray, yellow, white or mottled
brick — they will never do. Nothing is so safe and satisfactory
as red, the individual bricks of which may vary from salmon pink
to dark plum. Lay these with an honest white mortar, half-inch-
wide flush joint, and the effect will be of a soft pink wall of great
life and interest.
If chimney-pots are used, they should be of the plainest pos-
sible design and without any patent arrangement at the top sup-
posed to help the draft. If our flue is as big as it ought to be
its draft will not need any such assistance.
90 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
The chimney-pots themselves must have a sectional area as
large as that of the flues they cover, and the contraction at the
top should be very slight. It may be that such contraction at
the top of a flue helps the draft, as is said, but only a very little
should be permitted. The struggle we are sure to have had to
get our flue big enough will have gone for naught, if it is to be
choked at the top,
Chinmey-pots are only of assistance for the draft when the
chimney is loAver than some neighboring roof ridge or other pro-
jection. The wind blowing over such an obstruction sometimes
forces an eddy of air down the flue. If we raise the outlet high
enough we avoid the trouble. It is in thus prolonging the flue
that the chimney-pot has its real use.
The windows in the old work were fiUed with casement sash.
From a comparatively early time this sash was of metal, and has
so continued — the section of the bar being im-
Windows proved upon of late years as well as a more com-
plicated frame to receive it, with the ever-present
idea of excluding wind and rain. These sash opened out m nearly
every case and were fastened with an ornamented lever working
on the cam principle.
The detachable butt was an invention inspired by necessity or,
at least, convenience. For in the reign of the first Tudors glazed
window sash were a luxurj', and your nobleman, when he traveled
from one of liis country seats to another, not only carried his bed
and other furniture, but, with his tapestries to keep out the
drafts, he unhinged his ^vindows and brought those along I In
the early times horn was used in the windows in lieu of glass. In
manuscripts of the time of Henry VIII we find such items as " a
thousand lantern horns for the windows of timber houses," and
" gilding the lead on lattice work of the horn windows." These
casements were divided by lead muntins (bars dividing the panes
in a sash) in the earliest work, when they were of diamond pat-
tern, but later the divisions became rectangles, usually higher
than they are broad. This is a more quiet shape and less tiresome
Caspiiiciit wiiuloMN iin<l Muall paiirs liolli licliiiit; iiisfp.inilily tn the
halt'-tiiiiluT llOMSC
Hi
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to
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EXTERIOR DETAILS 91
to the eyes which must look through them ; for as these muntins
and the shapes they assume are very plainly stamped on the eyes
of the outlooker, the hlack lines against the light, this is a matter
of importance and will be felt by the least sensitive in such mat-
ters. The lead divisions later became extraordinarily complex,
and great ingenuity was displayed in their design.
Owing to the difficultj'^ and in fact impossibility which was
experienced in making sheets of glass of any size, these panes
were small, and necessity in this case ])roved a friend, for, estheti-
cally at least, the clever maker of great sheets of perfect glass
has been of no assistance to the artist or architect. Except in
a shop window or a Pullman car, large sheets of plate glass are
unsatisfactory. They destroy in the house all sense of seclusion,
coziness or warmth, ruining the scale and making a summer-house
or observatory out of one's quiet study. The letting in of all out-
doors dwarfs and makes poor our interiors. One is never quite
sure whether he is indoors or out ; he is really astride the w^indow
sill and has an imeasy feeling that the whole world is looking
in at him. For it is a poor window that does not work both ways.
The modern idea,' born of the fresh-air crusade — that houses
cannot have too much light, not sun but light — is one of which
many amateur house-builders learn the folly and unwisdom after
their experiment in these directions is completed and it is too late.
Like the sculptor, the architect must strike right the first time,
for after the work is finished he will have learned his lesson, but the
time will liave passed for applying it. Too much light in a house
is esthetically bad; it makes one's furniture and belongings look
meagre and dingy — as witness our neighbor's goods and chattels
on the sidewalk on moving day. One would not have believed
how tawdry his best parlor set really is, and as for the family por-
traits he has been so proud of — mere ana?mic daubs! No.
Colors and textiles as we have them in household banmnjjs, rucrs
and stuffs generally, furniture and woodwork with its carving
and enrichment, seem dreary and feeble by too abundant day-
light. The ballroom is anotiier place and a very tawdry one the
92 THE HALF-TIMBEll HOUSE
next morning when the candles are out and the sun looks in. I
have no doubt this over lighting of our rooms could be shown to
be equally bad for the eyes, with its accompanying reflections and
high-lights. A room is not comparable with its cross lights to
outdoors, and the same amount of light is much more distressing
to the eye.
In i)lacing our windows we shall obtain more of an effect of
privacy and warmth if we keep the stool or sill two feet or more
above the floor. If it is over three feet we shall have difficulty in
seeing out when we are seated, which is a source of annoyance. In
the bedrooms tliis height may be raised without its being unpleasant
and is accompanied by an increased sense of privacy. Of course
the higher a window is in the wall the more light it contributes to
the room. There is also a gain in ventilation with windows that
can be opened near the ceiling.
On the exterior the levels of the heads of the windows should
not change if possible for each story, unless it is to mark a stair-
case within or some reason of that sort; otherwise it will give
the building a chaotic, restless, jumpy look that is the one unpar-
donable sin in the houses we have under consideration.
Our smaller panes, as seen from the outside, give a sense of
scale, and by kee^jing the panes of glass as nearly as possible the
same size and shape all over the building, whatever the size of the
windows may be, the eye is insensibly given something to use as
a basis of comparison by which to judge of relative sizes of other
parts of the work.
A common criticism, that seems to obtain in the lay mind
against casement sash, is that they are not tight against the
weather. There is no doubt some truth in this criticism against
such sash, when they are made to swing in ; but when they swing
out — as they always should do — it is not at all a difficult matter
to make them as tight as a double-hung window — that is, one
that is divided into two sash which slide up and down in grooves
and are balanced by weights. In England it is customary, even
in inexpensive work, to make the casement sash of metal and the
EXTERIOR DETAILS
98
frame to receive them also of metal, each cumiingly rabl)eted so
that they come together in such a way as to keep out wind and
rain equally on top, sides and bottom. A more serious charge is
that it is hard to keep them ojjcn in a high wind, at least with the
usual adjuster.
The use of the metal frame is less common in this country,
but the wooden sash and frames which we use may be equally effi-
WINOOW ClOStD.
WINDOW opm
Ordinarily the casement windows had better open out unless there
is some particular reason for having them opon in. The whole sash
may be raised on its hinges to slip out of the groove on the siU
cacious against the weather. The gain to be had by using case-
ments is that the whole opening of the window may be utilized
for ventilation, whereas in the sash window, only half can be
opened at a time. We may more readily use them in groups, and
when so used they are much more easily handled and the desired
appearance obtained with greater ease and much less apparent
straining after effect. They are smaller and less heavy and
clumsy to manage, and the amount of wall space wliich we pro-
94 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
pose to devote to windows can be much more accurately and grace-
fully secured by using this form of opening.
Just wliat the psychological reason is for the charm and pic-
turesqueness which seem to be inseparable from these casement
windows, with the light sparkling on their small panes, or swung
open to give a black hole into the room behind, with its mysterious
lure of the unknown, we do not know. The scientific reason why
they please us, does not interest us here. The fact for us is that
they do possess a magic all their own, and that we freely and
eagerly accredit them with being harbingers of delights within.
Bay-windows are alwaj's charming and are capable of an
almost infinite variety in shape, size and method of treatment and
design. No two are alike. They more often than not take the
form of oriel windows corbeled out from the wall in our half-
timber work, and their brackets in the old daj's gave a chance for
the droll fancy of the carvers to express itself, and many quaint
conceits are the result. These bays may be either continued to
the floor or may stop above it to give a window-seat — a delight-
ful arrangement — or they may be cut off just below the window
so that only a wide stool or flower-shelf is left.
Dormer windows are usually a practical necessity if we are to
make much use of our attics. They have always been used, but
it may be taken as a general rule that most roofs gain in dignity
and repose by their absence. They are usually treated so as to
attract as httle attention as may be. Their small walls are often
shingled so that they will melt into the surrounding roof even
when the walls below are of some other material. In the design
of the houses of which we are writing, we shall do ever)i;hing
possible to produce the long low efi'ect in contra-distinction to
the high narrow one. We place the house as low in the ground
as possible, with only one step to the front door ; accent our hori-
zontal lines by producing horizontal shadows, with overhangs and
eaves, and deprecate anything as interesting even as a dormer
window to attract the eye so high.
The doors in these old houses were usually made of solid planks
To the Rn|;lishMiiin tlw <ii)or»iiy hns iilways Ihtm ii very iiiiporl.iiif iinOiilcctiiral t'fiifurc
of his home and hi- sparol no pains in cnriiliin); it with carvol detail
^^- .jaii.' '^' J]
^yimOB£\, *^~'" ^*Y I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^HI
EXTERIOR DETAILS 95
without panels — that is, sohd wood from side to side and often
studded with nails. Three feet or so of solid wood means
shrinkage and expansion, and it is often hard, we
Doors find, nowadays at least, with an indifferently sea-
soned wood, to make our doors in this way and have
them continue tight and well fitting. There is a great tendency
to warp and twist. In the old days they apparently were not so
nice in their requirements, and were thinking more of strength
and less of draughts. The more pretentious doors were paneled
and carved, often with narrower stiles and rails than our manu-
facturers of stock hardware will permit us to use — so hamjjcred
is the practical architectural designer. Strap hinges were used
in the simple work, and of course in the more elaborate work the
doors were hung with hinges which were very beautiful examples
of the blacksmith's craft.
The Englishman has always felt the sjinbolism of the door to
his home. He placed over it his coat of arms with mantlings. It
was thus he announced himself, and beneath it in his porch he
loved to give warm welcome to his friends and to press the stirrup
cup on the parting guest. The doorway was the setting of many
happy comings and sad partings. It held a very important place
in the family shrine of home, and nothing could be more natural
than that pains should not be spared for its adornment. It was
usually covered by a porch to protect from the weather those who
sought admittance.
The functions of a front door and its relation to the rest of the
house have changed not at all with the passing centuries, and it
is as worthy to command our best to-day as it ever was. The
porch lends itself with much grace and distinction to architectural
treatment, and we give a niunber of examples of timbered porches,
some old, some new. The old lych gates to the churchyard en-
trances are among the best examples of these timbered hoods and
shelters.
AVhether or not a terrace belongs with " exterior details," may
be open to question — at least as to its being a detail. It certainly
96 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
is not if Webster is right in defining " detail " as " a minute
portion." But if we have tliis definition at hand we may put
it to some use by letting it stand for exactly what
Terrace a terrace should not be. It is usually made too
small and can never be made too large.
We have already, in speaking of dining-rooms, had something
to say about the pleasures of dining out-of-doors and of the value
of some sort of covering, screening or glazing in many localities.
If the terrace has a duty to the dining-room, it must not neglect
the living-rooms or hall, and should form an addition to one or
all of these rooms. Nor will it have fulfilled its true function or
exhausted its full possibihties for usefulness unless it can combine
the greatest possible amount of privacy with the best that the
house affords in the way of view. It will in any case sen-e as the
vestibule of the garden, which in turn will act as an intermediary
between the house and the country bej'ond. The garden should
take each by the hand and bring them together. It is a great
temptation, now we are almost in the garden, to say something
about this great outdoor hving-room, with its decorations of nod-
ding hollyhock, foxglove, bursting snapdragon, dancing primrose
and the thousand and one other blossoms, not forgetting the great
rose family with their stately flowers and aristocratic names —
these names which are so transformed by the Saxon tongues of
the EngUsh cottagers. Thus the gallant crimson Giant de
Batailles becomes " Gent of Battles." Gloire de Dijon changes
to " Glory to thee, John," and a rose named from the great rosa-
rian. Dean Re}Tiolds Hole, is called " Reynard's Hole," while
the beautiful General Jacqueminot becomes " General Jack-me-
not." However, an Englislmian has told us that a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet, so we will not quarrel about the
labels.
Further than to say that the garden should be thought of as
an outdoor room, that it should have as intimate a connection with
the house as is possible, and that the house should turn its friend-
liest face in its direction, we must not go. Volumes and volumes
EXTERIOR DETAILS 97
are written, and very properly, about gardens alone, and when
we remember that of late years they have even acquired a self-
anointed high-priest called a Landscape Architect who has consti-
tuted himself keeper of the sacro sand mysteries of garden craft,
let the author then, a mere architect, flee for his life up the path
and safe onto the terrace before he stops for breath!
The terrace floor may be of brick, laid in cement mortar over
a bed of broken rock and sand. The brick may be laid in herring-
bone or basket pattern, or varied to suit the particular case, and
when so used are best laid flat, as the resulting floor is smoother.
Again, for cheaper and less formal work, the brick may be laid
on a bed of sand and the joints between merely flushed full of
sand or loam from which in time will spring up moss and small
vegetation. This floor will have to be held in place by a border of
cut stone, brick laid in cement or something having sufficient rigid-
ity to hold in the loose brick. Such a floor, while it will in time
settle in places and be less true than the other, can be more easily
mended, it being a simple matter to lift a few bricks when they
have settled and insert the necessary amount of filling to bring
them to a level with the rest. Hea\'y frost will not be as apt to
make trouble with a flexible floor of this sort as with the more
rigid one of cemented joints.
Tile also make an admirable terrace floor, being smoother than
brick, and may be had of a splendid red color. One must be sure
his tile are baked sufficiently hard to withstand frost and hard
knocks, and should be from six to twelve inches square and of an
inch or more in thickness. Tiles imported from ^Vales ha\e long-
been favorites, but lately a very satisfactory domestic tile has ap-
peared, tougher in fact than the foreign one, but of not quite so
good a color or texture. Tile keep their original color better than
brick in actual practice, the latter holding more of the grime and
dirt.
Another excellent surface for our terrace is flagstone. Any
evenly stratified stone split off in random sizes and shapes will
do. Rluestone or any firm shale is commonly used. This may
98 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
be laid either in mortar on a prei^ared foundation, like brick;
or better, laid all shapes and sizes, dovetailed together as nearly
as possible, the joints being allowed to take care of themselves,
which means that grass and vegetation will quickly fill in the in-
terstices, producing a very jDleasmg and practical flooring for
outdoors. Black and white squares of marble, while handsome
enough in Itahan or very formal work, are a little too grand to
be in the same key with the rest of the house. Terraces of wood
are desirable only when one camiot afford anytliing else. They
are, when laid tight and uncovered, subject to rapid decay. Laid
with open joints, their life will be prolonged, but they will be
drafty and unsightly.
We are surely at the very edge of our province when we come
to the terrace posts and rails, but we will keep one foot at least
on the terrace and so save our consciences from the sin of poach-
ing. Such posts may be built up either of brick with stone or
cast cement cap, or made of cut stone or of cast cement — never
of cobbles or field stone. With our type of house such a thing
would be a triumph of vulgarit}'. Our rail, if it is not a wall of
some kind, may be of stone with balusters of either brick or of
turned stone, taking care that it is of the proper height and width
to sit upon. If economy is necessary wood rails and turned bal-
usters will answer very well. Chestnut or locust will stand the
longest. We may have no rail of any sort if there is little or no
change of level between the ground and the floor of our terrace.
Rain-water heads and down pipes or conductors are just as
necessary to-day as they ever were, but for some reason or other
they have ceased to play the part they formerly did.
Rain-water While they were formerly given a place of honor
Heads and were a source of pride, they now seem to be
admitted grudgingly and apologetically. Where
formerly they were big, splendid, important parts of the design,
enriched and made much of, they are now merely timid, emascu-
lated pipes, tucked away out of sight as nearly as may be. This
is a great mistake.
Ill the half tiinlxr house iif tu-day we shiill make iiiik It more >>t' our termer, f;iviii)(
it the host combiiiatioii of privacy and view, with a (Mviii);
of tile, Hafj.stoiie or liriik
Another typical feature of the half-liiiilHT lioiise that we have too loiifr nefileeted
is the rain-water head of lead or its modern copper substitute
EXTERIOR DETAILS 99
Their vertical lines, which may usually allow of considerable
latitude in their placing, are of the greatest help to the designer,
and the big heads give a splendid chance in the small house to
obtain a sense of scale of wliich the architect should not be slow
to take advantage.
Wliile the lead heads, which to-day are as common in England
as they formerly were, are hard to obtain in tliis country, we may
make very satisfactory heads and pipes of copper, although it can
never be as tractable for this purpose as the more ductile lead.
Galvanized iron, which was a few years ago much used for this
purpose, is to-day of such a poor quality that it will not last over
six to eight years when used for this purpose. Zinc is not feasible
largely for the same reason.
Interior Details
WHILE the exterior arrangement and design are little sub-
ject to rule, the interior effect is even less so. The diffi-
culty of successful interior treatment lies in the minds of
many householders, more in ignorance of what they should try to
do than in any lack of interest in the result. The enthusiasm is not
lacking, but it is too often without proper guidance.
The longing for a pretty and attractive home is strong in
every housewife. She has a very clear mental picture, in a large
sketchy way, of the artistic milieu she wishes to produce, but a
very hazy idea of how it is to be brought about.
There is, in the masculine mind, however, a deep-seated suspi-
cion that an artistic home means an uncomfortable one. The very
word " artistic " brings to his mind a picture of a room crowded
with pictures and gimcracks, with chairs too good for one's feet,
and not strong enough to sit upon; or else he is chilled by the
vision of that other tyjie of the artistic room in which everything
has been reduced to its lowest terms and only that is permitted
wliich is not only decorative in itself but that fills a definite role
in the carefully studied picture. Not a jonquil must be touched,
not a chair moved. Nothing is admitted except on business. A
pipe left on the mantel would throw the whole room off its bal-
ance. These rooms are refined, delightful, and thoroughly en-
joyable — m other jjeople's houses.
I'erhaps the best rule for obtaining the happy medium that
will bring the words " artistic " and " home " together is the well
known one of William Morris: " Have nothing in your house that
you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," — and,
we might add, not too much of that ! It may be taken as another
rule that practical requirements either in the furniture or its
arrangement must never be sacrificed for the sake of appearance.
INTERIOR DETAILS 101
" Art for art's sake," may do Avell enough in the studio but should
not be tolerated as a rule for the home.
Good taste should be something more than a connoisseur's
knowledge of works of art; it should include as well a just appre-
ciation of the relation of these works of art to their surroundings
and to each other. The room of careful selection, arrangement
and restraint of which we have spoken, is an ideal one when it
possesses the added feeling of comfort and usefulness. But the
artistic should be so interwoven with the practical that the result
will reflect the natural refinement wliich is the possession of the
owner.
It is in this that the trained designer may be of use to the
owner of general culture who desires to surround himself with
an atmosphere of refinement but who has not had the special
training necessary to j^roduce it. There are a great many sensi-
tive people of culture who become heartily sick of cheap meretri-
cious decoration, but who, lacking the opportunity or nice dis-
crimination to obtain for themselves simple refinement, give up
the fight, throw over artistic effort of every sort, and allow them-
selves to revert to decorative savagery. Perhaps we would better
say that they still keep their eclecticism, but that their desire for
honest simplicity fixes their choice on a crude sort of furniture
that was the style in the Stone Age.
We may imagine the perfectly harmonious living-room of the
Cave Dweller, with its cavernous rough stone fireplace, where
he might roast an ichthyosaurus whole, his chairs of great hewn
logs, and liis table ware of chipped flint. He himself, a dirty Her-
cules in a lion's skin, fondles a club. There is no jarring note in
this picture. It is a perfectly consistent expression. Everj-thing
is in scale. But what would be our impression if the o^^Tier were
a dyspeptic commuter with a pink tie and creased trousers?
Great, clumsy furniture made of scantlings and upholstered with
cow-hide is a style of work which seeks to curry favor by adver-
tising itself as simple, when i)rimitive would be a better word. It
seeks to be nothing, and so escapes being bad. This negative
102 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
virtue certainly makes it more desirable than a great deal that
may be had for the same price. If our purse be slim perhaps
we cannot do better, but it is nothing of which we may be
proud. We may think of a chair of this sort that it is the best
we can get for five dollars, but not the best chair we can get.
No piece of furniture that can be made by an indifferent work-
man with a hatchet in half a day, can have much claim to be
taken seriously.
It is no use. Time will not turn back in his flight, and while
we are bound to sympathize with those who are in revolt against
the tawdriness which is so common, the remedy does not lie in
flying to the other extreme. It is rather in insisting on having
our things well designed and well built, whether they be simple or
elaborate. Nor is this impossible. Such things are to be had, and
the ability exists to make them more common and only waits for
the demand to call it forth. The difference between good and bad
here is not to be measured in dollars, but solely in the skill of the
designer.
In adopting a type of work we must imbue ourselves thor-
oughly with the scale and spirit of that style. We may choose the
robust or the delicate; we may work in the spirit of the English
Tudor or of the Colonial. The adjectives used to describe these
two opposite types of work will vary with the sympathies of him
who speaks. Where one will say the English work is clumsy and
brutal, and the Georgian chaste and delicate, another, cast in a
temperamentally different mold, will call English work virile
and honest, and the other timid and anaemic. We know what
each means, and that these descriptions will fit either style at its
best and worst.
It does not make so much difference in which manner we
elect to build. The important thing is not to mix them.
^V^len the dainty and the bold are joined we have an epicene
effect impotent and vulgar. The result is an architectural
eunuch.
Panehng, together with tapestry and painting, is the oldest
f\
INTERIOR DETAILS 103
method of covering the walls of a room. The chilhness and
roughness of stone walls was what led to the use of hangings
of some sort to keep out the drafts. Hides were
Wall probably used first and later textiles of one sort
Treatment or another. The weaving of tapestry for the es-
pecial purpose of wall covering was a very early
and widespread industry throughout Europe and continued to
supply a popular need well into the seventeenth century.
Paneling of one sort or another is also a very old art, and the
various stages in its development are of great interest and worthy
of study. Beginning with very wide panels of a single piece of
wood, they were gradually made narrower as it became more diffi-
cult to get the larger pieces. Then the rails and stiles underwent
a series of changes in their construction, all in the direction of
economy of time and labor and the reducing of the necessary
amount of skill required, so that a larger body of workmen would
have access to the craft. This is of course the direction always
taken in the improvement of methods of work.
It will not be worth our while here to discuss such technical
improvements as molding " run " in the solid, or " planted " on.
That is a matter of architectural archaeology. ^Vliat we are in-
terested in here is what our paneling is going to look like when we
have it.
Few luxuries in a house will pay their cost better than wood
panehng, but it has something to say for itself even on the score
of economy. It is surprisingly warm, for it does not chill the
warmed air of the room as plaster does, and we are saved the
trouble and expense of constantly decorating, for unlike wall
paper, paneling improves with age. The higher we can cover our
walls with wood, the better they will look, and they will look best
of all when sheathed in a brown coat from floor to ceiling.
While the divisions of the paneling sliould be of simple shape,
ordinarily rectangular, we may well flower out at the top into
something a little more interesting — a few simple moldings and
perhaps a httle carving; but if our room be not large we shall
104 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
do well to keep the paneling very quiet and modest, avoiding too
heavy sinkages or too heavy molding framing in the panels. If
we use a lively wood, as quartered white oak or cypress, we need
not fear monotony even if the panels have the slightest pos-
sible sinkage and no molding whatever. In fact, as in so manj'
other i^roblems in design, we are steering our course between
the Scylla of fussiness on the one hand, and the Charybdis of
stupidity on the other. The medium that is just in step with
the room, its size, decoration and furnishing is what we are
striving for.
For finish there is nothing so good as oil or wax on quartered
oak over a brown stain, not too dark. Oak does not turn dark
from age but only from dirt. In England the wood is frequently
left as it comes from the plane, but in this country we prefer
to do sometliing by way of filling the pores in order to keep out
the dampness. It is hardly necessary to discuss paper made to
imitate wood and used to give the impression of paneling. It is
among those lies that are the immoralities of architecture.
If we are to have plaster walls there is not much need to say
anything about them here, as every man who lives in a house
is familiar with them, or at least with the paper that usually covers
them. It is not the author's intention to harangue against wall
paper. Far from it. It is probably the most pleasant, attractive
and serviceable covering for walls we have — for the money —
and the variety of patterns should give us a new respect for the
himian mind. If the paper is one with flowers or trees it is safest
to have them treated conventionally and to avoid the realistic
roses, etc., which are pretty enough as pictures but are hardly
suitable as a decoration. Papers printed in two tones of the
same color are always safe and quiet and make excellent back-
grounds for pictures.
It would be going a little too far afield to discuss the claims
to our attention of the various sorts of patterns and colors. Choos-
ing a paper is a matter in which we must keep one eye on the
paper and the other on the room considered as a whole. The ques-
INTERIOR DETAILS 105
tions of color, of scale, and appropriateness of pattern, are the
things to be considered, and with all the taste and knowledge in
the world at our fingers' ends, it will still remain a most difficult
thing to do, and most of us will have a surprise of some sort when
we " see it on! "
There is much to be said for leaving plaster walls, and par-
ticularly ceilings, rough from the trowel or darby. They may
then be tinted if thought desirable. The texture is soft and pleas-
ing, and the reflected lights from the walls and ceilings much
tempered. There is no better background for hanging j)ictures.
It may seem rather ascetic to one who is used to having bunches
of luscious pink roses nodding at him from his wall, but when he
has become accustomed to it he will never go back to the other
wliich he may well regard with a sujjerior eye.
The simplest of all ceilings, which is the underside of the
floor above, is still practicable for us if we choose. That is,
the beams and joists forming the construction of
Ceilings the floor are allowed to show from below, and the
spaces between may be j^lastered or ceiled with
wood. This gives us for beams the real solid timbers which
are working for their living, and their checks and cracks
and knots afl^ect us pleasantly with the feeling whicli great
strength in repose always gives. In the simplest work we may
leave these untouched or enrich with carving or decorate in color
as much as the room warrants. The objection (for no shield
more inevitably has two sides than an architectural j^roblcm) is
that such a floor is apt to transmit tlie noises from above, unless
this contingencj' is guarded against. This may be j)rcvcntcd by
laying sheathing quilt between the under and upper floors above,
doing away as much as possible with any connection between the
two, even to nailing from one into the other. The u])pcr floor
may be laid on sleepers and so floated on the quilt witlioiit even a
nail to convey the vibrations to the under floor and its joists. Our
])laster underneath may be also furred out onto the beams instead
of being put on latliing nailed tight against the underflooring,
106 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
thus giving us a dead-air space between the two which will help
smother the sound waves.
If, however, this matter of sound seems to us a very important
one and we are perhaps to have a young person above our heads
who insists on taking a constitutional before going to bed, there
is another way. This is to have our floor and ceiling constructed
in the ordinary way, plaster and all, and then beam our ceihng
without regard to what is behind. These false beams give us a
greater freedom in the matter of design as we may be quite inde-
pendent of any constructional requirements, as they are already
taken care of. We may make om* beams of any size or shape that
suits us, space them and pattern the ceiling with them as we
please. In this case, too, we may build them up instead of using
the solid wood and so get rid of any future checks or cracks, if
that is ever a desideratum. A still more thorough method of
sound-proofing is to hang a false ceiling below the real one and
entirely independent of it.
Now let us consider plaster ceilings of a more elaborate sort.
The plaster ribbed ceilings of the time of Ehzabeth and James
are the most peculiarly and distinctively English tilings of all the
architectural work of that busy time. Although the art was
learned from the Italians, its subsequent development was along
the lines of native thought and predilection. It clung to its in-
dividuality with great tenacity and refused to be touched by the
foreign influence that was having such a marked effect all around
it. The plasterers of this time developed a style of work that is
pecuhar to England and is found nowhere else. These ceilings
are very elaborate and of most intricate pattern, being covered
with an all-over design of interlaced and decorated bands and
ribs, often with bosses or pendants at the intersections.
The effect of these complex ceilings when well designed and
covering rooms worthy to receive them, is at once refined and
sumptuous. When badly done they are extremely clamorous
and chaotic.
The expense of doing this work to-day keeps it from being
Paiieliiif; i[i I'lif Mali, M:i)r<l:il<'ii Colleffe, Oxford, sliowiii}; llie rkhncss
obtaiii''(l bv tlif use i>t' the linen fiikl ami lieraUlic motives
I'lie (linjii^'room of St. Donals. W'lieii plaster came to l)e used for ceiling
decoration it t'olloued (or i time the stone vaulting of Gothii' work
INTERIOR DETAILS 107
more generally seen. There is, however, a simpler form of plaster
decoration without its expense or its esthetic dangers, that might
be much more commonly employed than it is. That is the appli-
cation of molded ornament of a repeat pattern, used to accent
structural lines such as the groins of vaults, or to ser^-e as borders.
Very pleasant and individual effects may be obtained in this way
and it is to be hoped it will gain in favor. Facing page 103 is an
example of this work.
There are two schools of technique in plaster work: the old
cast work with its flat surfaces and blunt edges left untouched
from the mold, and that other sort of work which is cut with a
chisel as sharply and crisply as a cameo, vnth much undercutting
— the whole full of life and snap. Some of the best work of this
sort is to be seen at Fontainebleau and in many another palace
throughout France and Italy, but not so often in England and
never until the time of Inigo Jones. For our purposes in our
modest homes we shall do better to use the molded decoration
left untouched by the chisel, and not insist on the more nervous
and habile style.
Vaulted ceilings are a pleasant variation and serve to bring
a ceiling down in appearance. The curve may be either the arc
of a circle or half an ellipse. If designed with groins, a pleasant
feeling of solidity results, and an agreeable play of light and
shade.
We have already seen how our first fireplace was a few fiat
stones with the opening in the roof protected from the Aveather
for the exit of the smoke. While this method
Fireplaces may have given more heat to the room than the
modern arrangement, it unquestionably must have
given more smoke. The idea, first, of a great hood to catch it,
and second, of a flue to guide it up and out, followed. The flue
was naturally built against the wall and so the fire found itself
there as well. Remembering that the logician has been described
in derision as one who builds bridges across chasms over wliich
any one can jump, we will hasten to assume that the reader can
108 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
jump from the fire to the mantel, and not delay to follow the
slow evolution of a shelf for jjots and pans and oji to such
elaborate mantel arrangements as that shown facing j^age 111.
It is a long time since England has been a country where it
was feasible to fill the great j^awning fireplaces with logs of wood.
As in all the old countries, wood is too precious to burn except
in the most gingerly fashion, and with its disappearance the fire-
place has shrunk until it is now too often only large enough to
hold a small coal grate. So we shall not care for the modern
English method of fireplace treatment, and would much better
look to the old ones for inspiration.
As the function of a firejilace is bound to make it a focus of
life in winter, so the treatment due to its importance will make
it the decorative centre of the room the rest of the year. What-
ever the details, its general design should be carefully kept on
the same plane with the rest of the room and its furnishings. That
is, it should be as simple or as gorgeous as its surroundings, which-
ever the case may be. The keynote that has been struck must be
maintained if we are to have harmony. This might seem to be a
superfluous warning to intelligent people, and would be so if
widespread interest in the fireplace did not so often blind the
owner to its less important surroundings. The owner has seen
some particular fireplace somewhere wliich he admired so much
that he has never forgotten it, and has long been awaiting the
chance to rejiroduce it. So, with a single eye to its charms and no
thought of the rest of his room, in it goes. There seems to be no
other explanation why in a gentle, refined room we may turn
around and find ourselves confronted by a ruffianly-looking
cobble-stone fireplace, mantel and all. The sort of thing that
would do very well in a bungalow with tables made of logs and
armchairs ingeniously evolved from mutilated mackerel tubs, is
not at all the thing to go with our Georgian furniture and white
paint. Another abomination in a real house is the rough brick
chimney and mantel, the tentacles of which seem to have insinu-
ated themselves firmly about the hearts of our home-makers.
INTERIOR DETAILS 109
So, then, let us have our fireplace and mantel in step with us
and our other belongings. The fireplace opening should be from
two to five or six feet in width, with whatever height we choose.
Three feet is enough width for an average room. The size of
the flue nuist increase with the size of the opening; the sectional
area should not be less than one-tenth of the area of the fireplace
opening. A good depth for the opening is twenty inches. If
it is deeper we lose too much of the heat, if shallower than six-
teen inches we may have smoke. It is a mistake to have fire-
places over four feet wide unless we are prepared to burn big
sticks, as small ones will look mean.
We may frame in the opening Avith either cut stone, as in
the illustration facing page 106, or brick or tile, or anything
that is not inflammable. If our mantel is of wood it must be
kept at least four inches awaj' all around. Red brick makes
an excellent border in the living-room for xmpretentious work.
If brick is used in the bedrooms it will often be better to use
some lighter color such as gray or yellow. When red brick is
used the joints should always be either white or black, but the
mortar should never be colored to match the bricks unless for
some special reason. Tile gives a little more finished appearance
than brick, but great care should be exercised in the selection.
Excellent dull-glazed tile in plain colors are to be had. Those
with the high gloss are generally to be avoided; tlie glitter of
their high-lights gives a thin, hard look, which is a restless note in
the room. Tiles without any glaze whatever may be had in quaint
and attractive patterns, copies of medieval tile, and should be
particularly suited to an English room. Stone, marble and ce-
ment facings are also used, the choice depending on the type of
room with which we have to do.
The mantel is capable of such an inexhaustible varietj' of
treatment that we can only speak of it in general terms. If the
chimney breast is in the centre of the wall of a room not too
high-studded, and is of ample width, it is never a mistake to insist
on the horizontal lines of a mantel. In the first place the shelf
no THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
may be carried straight across the front of the breast and even
turn the corners, if our chimney projects into the room, and return
on the sides against the wall. The space below the shelf on either
side of the opening may be treated with some arrangement of
panels, columns, brackets, or pilasters, and the space above, if
we can afford an overmantel, either with simple paneling to the
ceiling, or more elaborate work, if the general treatment of the
room demands it. When finished, if we have managed to keep our
horizontal feeling predominant, it will have a very sober, restful
look. There is a sense of physical weight about such a design,
a feehng of inertia, that is a very soothing one to tired nerves. A
good picture framed into the overmantel looks well, much better
than a mirror.
It is as true of the mantel as of the paneling, on whose province
it begins to encroach, that the more the better. We cannot have
too much wood, and if the question were asked if it would be better
to have a great deal of cheaply done paneling or a little of verj'
excellent quality, the author, after mature deliberation, decides
that he would refuse to answer!
A common mistake with a fireplace that is to be much used as
a centre of sociability, is to place lights over the mantel shelf.
When these are lighted those in front of the fire will have to look
directly at them, which is always disagreeable. If however such
outlets are sufficiently supplemented by others, so that they may
be treated merely as decorations if need be, and their light dis-
pensed with, it may be a help in the design to keep them, and let
their use be chiefly that of contributing to the general ilhmiination
on special occasions.
The stairs of an earlier age, which were of stone and wound
around a central shaft or newel in a tower, are now rarely found.
Those between two walls are more common, but
Stairs for front stairs are generally avoided. The stair
that follows the walls, either straight or turning
with the angles of the hall, were the latest invention and the best.
They are capable of much dignity and richness in their treatment.
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IXTERIOR DETAILS 111
and lend an interest to the apartment in which they occur that
transcends that of any other feature of the house. A stair is
really only a luxurious ladder, having stringers instead of sides,
and flat treads and risers instead of rungs. The hand-rail would
have been called an effete and degenerate invention by the Lake
Dwellers, and the balusters a waste of tinie and material whicli
would have, no doubt, been bitterly assailed by the leaders of the
Society for the Conservation of the Natural Resources of the
time.
This ladder, as it becomes more elegant and complicated,
should add to its other improvements that of diminishing in
steepness. The amateur planner will nowhere have so much diffi-
culty as with the stairs, and nothing short of bitter experience
will teach him that they are one of the comparatively few things
that will absolutely admit of no compromise. There is no stand-
ard width for halls or doors, no given size for fireplaces or rooms ;
they may be varied to suit. Not so our stairs. They are rigid
and intractable. As long as men persist in growing six feet tall,
they must have six feet of clear unobstructed space to walk in.
Wliile their legs are three feet long they will object to having
to hft their bodies more than six or seven inches at a step. And
if a man's foot is not quite twelve inches, it is so near it that noth-
ing less than that much space will do for him to step on. There
are various empirical rules for laying out comfortable stairs. One
in common use with stair builders is that the product of the rise
and tread must be between seventj'-two and seventy-five inches,
with the height of the tread between four and eight inches. An-
other rule in use in England gives the product as sixty-six inches,
with the assumption that the rise will be five and a half inches,
and this is further modified by the rule that for every one inch
of tread added to or subtracted from twelve inches, the five and
a half inch rise shall be diminished or increased by half an indi.
That is, a rise of six inches should have a tread of eleven inches,
a rise or seven inches, one of nine inches.
It will be seen from this rule that as the rise increases the tread
112 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
decreases, and this is found to be a correct relation. It should be
said in this connection that short flights of steps outdoors should
have a wider tread, allowing for the longer stride which our
greater jiace will make necessar}'. This is also true wheVe two
or three steps occur alone inside. A very good proportion for
comfort is a rise of five or six inches and a tread of fourteen
or twelve.
The easy, luxurious stair, if one may ever call the exercise of
lifting oneself by one's calves a luxury, of our old houses, is nowa-
days too often rejilaced by few^er and higher steps with the accom-
panying narrow tread. Whether this is due altogether to the rush
of modern life which is wiUing to sacrifice anything to speed, and
regards the elimination of one step as a gain in efficiency, or
whether it is due partly to lack of floor space for the accommoda-
tion of a proper stair, is a question that might admit of debate.
It is always appalhng when our plan is still on paper, to see the
amount of room the stairs take up, when they are properly drawn
to scale. They are apt to so fill our hall and encroach on doors
and passage sjiace that we feel something must be done to keep
them within bounds, forgetting that they are incomj^ressible, and
that the penalty of trying to squeeze them is sure to be hard climb-
ing or knocking one's head, or more likely both. The steepness
of some flights sometimes tempts one to think that the plush hand
cord along the wall might well be used to roj)e the climbers to-
gether before thej^ start up.
It is well not to go the whole distance from floor to floor with-
out a landing w'here one may pause for a moment if desired. Old
peoj^le find a long, uninterrupted flight a considerable tax on
their strength, and such a chance to get their breath is much ap-
preciated. If the stairs make a turn it should be by means of a
landing, and never bj' the use of " winders " if it can be avoided.
Winders are steps which have their risers radiating from a newel
and are of necessitj^ narrow at the newel, and flaring out against
the opposite wall. This variation in width, together with the
changing of direction, makes them the cause of many accidents.
i 'Ji
T 2
INTERIOR DETAILS 113
There is, however, this to be said in their favor, that their varying
width of tread, according to the distance from the newel, enables
long or short legs to pick out the step that best suits them, and
this one will unconsciously do in climbing a winding stair. We
must expect to find winders in ser^-^ice stairs, where landings would
be too high a price to pay for the space they require.
The English type of stairway that will be appropriate in our
house will not vary in construction from any other, except in the
one point of having what is called a " close string," that is, the
outer edge of the stair, instead of allowing the risers and treads
to be seen from below, is finished so that the}' are entirelj' en-
closed, showing a straight edge i)arallel to the soffit. The balus-
ters, which will be all of the same length, rest on this string. This
is as typical of the English stair as the " open string," in which
the ends of the steps show, is typical of the Georgian or Colonial
work.
As for the rest, we shall have turned balusters, a heavy carved
newel, and the finish generally will partake of the character and
scale of the surrounding work, which will naturally be more heavy
and robust than in tlie Colonial.
The chairs of the Tudor period were made entirely of wood,
and though we may mitigate their rigidity somewhat with the help
of cushions, we shall still find them heavy, clumsy
Furniture and uncomfortable affairs, and unsuited to modern
ideas. The tables with their bulbous legs do well
enough, and many of the cabinets and i)rcsscs of the period with
tlieir naive carving are very (luaint and cliarming. The cane fur-
niture of the Stuarts and the turned work of the Jacobean period
are thoroughly practical for us, and a sterling style of work that
strikes the hap])y medium between the chiinsiness of the early
work and the almost rococo quality of Avliat followed. In select
ing our furniture we need not be too careful to insist on luiving
everything of any one historic style. An anachronism will not
be felt if we keej) the same spirit and character in tlie work.
Stuffed chairs, upholstered in leatlier or tapestry, the high re-
114 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE
pousse, leather-backed Portuguese chairs, or even the armchairs
of Italy, will not jar. Their fundamental characteristics are the
same. Oscar Wilde has said: " All beautiful things belong to the
same period," and if truth is somewhat stretched for the sake of
the epigram, it is true so far as there is a bond of brotherhood, a
secret understanding, between beautiful works of art, whatever
their period or country. Of course with the " jieriod room " there
is no problem of this sort. But we need not feel because we have
a couple of chairs of one period, that the whole room and its con-
tents must be made to match.
It is more dangerous to mix our periods than to mix our
nationalities. Work of the same epoch is apt to have much the
same character everywhere. A Jacobean chair is perfectly com-
patible with one of Louis XIII in France, but will never do
with a Louis XV chair, or even with an English chair of the
time of George III.
There is one article of furniture, however, over the style of
which we have no control, namely that amorphous monstrosity,
the grand piano. Its portentousness begins with its name and
is further evidenced by the great, shapeless body supported on its
fat, vulgar legs, its unspeakable " piano finish " still further call-
ing attention to its grandeur. On entering a strange room if we
are in an absent-minded mood, our first instinctive thought on
noticing its funereal presence will be that we must not intrude at
a time like this when the family's late pet mastodon is evidently
lying in state. It is one of the seven wonders of the decorative
world why it is that civilization has put up with such a thoroughly
outrageous piece of furniture for so long. Perhaps it is because
one imconsciously thinks of the ugly woman with the beautiful
voice, and with a sigh classes it as another one of the mysterious
workings of nature. But it is not a necessity at all. Splendid
piano cases have been designed, but it is only spasmodically that
the heavy hand of the Victorian era has been for a moment
shaken off. To have a case especially designed means that we shall
have no choice in selecting the tone of the piano but must take
INTERIOR DETAILS 116
" the works " as it comes; and there is of course a great choice in
the tone of pianos even of the best makers.
There is no more dehghtful study in the decorative arts tlian
that of furniture. Men of all ages have gloried in lavishing their
best energies and skill on the artistic invention and beautifying
of the articles in daily use. Men have always expressed their
true selves in the work they loved best to do. Of old furniture it
is not too much to say : Show me what a man sits on and I will tell
you what he is.
The subject of the styles of furniture is not one to be treated
lightly or dismissed in a paragraph, and is far beyond the scope
of any such general work as this.
Public education in matters of architecture and decorative taste
have made gigantic strides in the last twenty years. In nothing
do we show the characteristics of a quick-thinking, adaptable
jieople as in the eager rece])tion we give this renaissance of the
arts in which we have had so large a share. No better architec-
ture is being done anywhere in the world to-day than in this
country, and if some of the allied arts lag a little behind we feel
that it vnU not be for long; for abihty and enthusiasm are at
work, and the result will be beauty in the service of man.
Tuc DMn'riuirrT prem, caudiiidok, d. s. a.
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