modern age is weary of that excess of symmetry which it inherited. The modern house, even if of comparatively small size, is complex and irregular in its plan, each room haying some dis tinctive characteristic. When the designer is an artist who avoids aimless attempts at quaintness, and who studies to take advantage of aspect and to arrange the walls and openings of every room so that each may most completely fulfil its purpose, so that there is a place for every essential article of furniture, an outlook over the best view, and a cosey corner wherever necessary, the result cannot be otherwise than highly satisfac tory.
The progress recently made in the decoration of the fireplace may be cited as an example of what might be done in every other feature of our homes. The open fireplace was the earliest substitute for the ancient fire upon the floor beneath an opening in the roof. From earliest times the fireplace was surrounded by decoration, and in large mediaeval halls the chimney-piece was a most pretentious affair. Later a formal mass of marble slabs surrounded the fireplace or was placed around a register or where a fireplace should be. These marble mantels were ordered from the pattern-book, and were never objects of art. Re cently, architects and decorators have made a study of the fireplace, have encased it in tiles, and have surmounted it with cabinets and mirrors, often making it truly an artistic feature. It is to be regretted that the dislike of stock patterns in marble or stone has led to the comparative disuse of those materials, which are certainly susceptible, either by them selves or in combination with terra-cotta and moulded brick, of as much richness of color and variety of design as can be obtained in wood, while their incombustibility gives them a manifest advantage.
The change, and an important one, in plan is the rehabilitation of the hall. Instead of the narrow entry, we have the ample hall with its cosey fireplace, serving for an informal place of gathering for the family. In seaside houses and in large mansions this.
revived prominence of the hall is a blessing, but in small houses for permanent residence it is the reverse; for the hall, with its fireplace, open to the staircase and undefended from the outer air by a vestibule, is o often made to do duty for a sitting-room, to the manifest discomfort of the inmates during winter. Detached cottages of eight to twelve rooms provided with a hall of this kind usually show their shortcomings in the winter by a temporary vestibule upon the piazza, which detracts greatly from the effect of the exterior. A third change is in the direction of low
ceilings. There is no doubt that the fashion of the last twenty years built storeys too high for comfort, but some recent dwellings have rooms too low for either comfort or proportion.
Counhy all small towns, and even in suburbs of large towns, wood has until recently been the chief building-material of Amer ica, except in localities where, as in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, bricks are cheap and stone is to be had for the quarrying. The frame house built of rectangular studs and posts, sided with clapboards, and lined with plaster has already been mentioned as the American vernacular. Very little was done to evolve picturesqueness out of this class of house, which yet often attained considerable dimensions and afforded much interior luxury. Of late years architects have so worked upon the wooden house that they have almost transformed it by the admixture of other materials. Solid wood is architectonic, and buildings constructed of sound timbers have proved their monumental character in Europe by an existence of several hundred years, but the wooden vernacular house of the United States was not so built. However large in its proportions, however com fortable in its interior, it was but a board structure, and almost all orna mentation was of boards an inch thick.
In houses erected in the country during the last decade no line of distinction can be drawn between the wooden house and that of brick or stone, since stone, brick, shingles, clapboards, and an imitation of the half-timbered and plaster-covered construction in use in Europe during mediaeval times may occur in the same building. Terra-cotta may be dis tributed about the façades, carved stone may be present here and there, and glass, arranged in odd patterns in the windows, and even set in broken bits upon the plaster of a wall, is made to add to the effect. Yet, notwith standing the honest, and in many cases successful, efforts to build a coun try-house at once artistic and comfortable, it cannot be said that America has yet fully learned the requirements of such a residence as distinguished from one which, whether in city or in suburb, is situated upon a lot not much wider than the house itself.