Home range

“ They are built higher. Courts and yards become so constricted that daylight scarcely penetrates his home. The home-owner finds that even that prime necessity of life, access to outdoor air, is denied him. ”

“ These plans have been carefully prepared by competent architects in consultation with home-management specialists and agricultural engineers familiar with farm conditions in all parts of the United States. It is urged that the plans be studied carefully before making a selection, but that no changes be made in them except for alternate arrangements indicated by the drawings or descriptions. Changing the size of a room or the location of a door or window may spoil some other valuable feature, and is almost certain to harm the appearance of the house. ”

“ Then the Little Woman strayed into another new house, and was captivated by a series of rooms that ran merrily around a little extension in a manner that allowed the sun to shine into every window.
We had become connoisseurs by this time. We could tell almost the exact shape and price of an apartment from its outside appearance. After one glance inside we could carry the plan mentally for months and reproduce it minutely on paper at will. We had [Pg 80] learned, too, that it is only by living in many houses in rotation that you can know the varied charms of apartment life. ”

“ Since more than three-fourths of the life of the farmer and his family are spent in sight of home, more than one-half of life in the house, and more than one-fourth in bed, the house, the place where they live, should receive most careful attention. Having secured sufficient land to maintain a home, and having made certain that these lands are productive and profitable, a problem is presented in locating and building the house which demands a high degree of intelligence, long, painstaking study, and a good understanding of what constitutes fitness, beauty and durability. ”

“ The result is, that the garden apartment gives to the wage-earner a five-room apartment at about the same cost as a four-room row house. This difference between four and five rooms is not 25%, it should be pointed out, but means 50% or 100% difference in bedrooms. The real measure of the standard of living in a home is the number of bedrooms. What gives to the American wage-earner's five and six-room home so striking a superiority over the three and four-room standard of the European worker is the greater number of bedrooms. ”

“ The interior is wide open and only raised one step from the street, and you look across the brightly burnished floor through the opening of the paper sliding screens, which are thrown back in the daytime, and catch pretty glimpses of the home life in the back yard. Many of the shops are hung with funereal-looking purple and black hangings, inscribed with white hieroglyphics giving the names and nature of their wares. ”

“ The standard of living is distinctly lower in farm homes than in town and city homes of the same financial status. The house is generally comfortable, but small. It is behind the times in many easily accessible modern conveniences possessed by the great majority of city dwellers. The bath, modern plumbing and heating, the refrigerator, and other kindred appliances can be had in the country home as well as the city. ”

“ Most cottages are so divided by entries, stairs, closets, etc., that there can be no large rooms. But in this plan, by the use of the movable screen, two fine large rooms can be secured whenever the family work is over, while the conveniences for work will very much lessen the time required. ”

“ Although a home means a little world by itself—much more than a piece of land with a shelter on it—the establishment of a home, nevertheless, involves, first of all, the acquisition of a piece of land, even though it be the smallest suburban building lot with a twenty-five-foot frontage. If the piece of land is large enough so that its owner, if he is inclined to land cultivation, can make a living by working on it as either gardener or farmer, so much the better. ”

“ The formerly unused parlor might be transformed into a living-room, the former living-room into a dining-room, and the old dining-room into a kitchen. The details by which this evolution is made must, of necessity, be worked out by those who are to occupy the house. That home is enjoyed best which is planned by those who have to pay the bills ”

“ We will next notice the economy of time, labor, and expense secured by this cottage plan. The laundry work being done in the basement, all the cooking, dish-washing, etc., can be done in the kitchen and stove-room on the ground floor. But in case a larger kitchen is needed, the lounges can be put in the front part of the large room, and the movable screen placed so as to give a work-room adjacent to the kitchen, and the front side of the same be used for the eating-room. Where the movable screen is used, the floor should be oiled wood. ”

“ We got nearly one hundred answers to our carefully-worded advertisement for a house, or part of a house, within certain limits, and the one selected was seemingly ideal. Green fields behind it, a railroad station within easy walking distance, grasshoppers singing in the weeds across the road. We strolled, hand in hand with the Precious Ones, over sweet meadows, gathering dandelions and listening to the birds. We had a lawn, too, and sunny windows, and we felt free to do as we chose in any part of our domain, even in the basement, for here there was no janitor. ”

“ But the greatest merit of the garden apartment is, that it offers the wage-earner an ideal home. Economy and efficiency, essential as they are in industrial housing, will not alone suffice unless the housing is humanly attractive and personal, for these are the qualities which create the ideal home. Some understanding of the architecture of the garden apartment is therefore desirable. ”

“ Unless the location selected already has buildings on it which meet the needs of the purchaser and his family, there will be the immediate problem of building the home or remodeling the structure already in existence. In recent years a great deal of attention has been given to rural homes, stimulated no doubt by the very evident trend of population from the city to the country. These homes should have attributes distinctly their own and should harmonize with the purpose and the location in mind. ”

“ Every cottage ought to have an entrance-porch for containing the labourer’s tools, and into which, if possible, the stairs ought to open, in order that the bed-rooms may be communicated with without passing through the front or back kitchen. ”

“ The importance attached to housing is much enhanced by the general tendency to lay stress on the material conditions of life, which characterizes the present age. Among material conditions environment takes a leading place, largely under the influence of the theory of evolution in a popular and probably erroneous form; and among the factors of environment the home assumes a more and more prominent position. There is reason in this, for whatever other provision be made for work or recreation the home is after all the place where people spend most of their time. ”

“ You really get an impression of a home immediately upon entering the hallway. It is also true that on entering a house you are lured or repelled by the sounds in it, whether from the house itself or the people living there. If you are greeted by loud voices, slamming doors, creaking stairs, there is immediately the impression that this particular home is not well ordered and that the people in it are not at peace. ”

“ What dignity and repose an ample, well kept house-yard gives to even a plain, modest house! The effect of the mistake of locating the house too close to the highway is often accentuated by locating the barns on the other side and immediately upon the highway, and in front of the house. ”

“ If economy demands, the doors, floors, bath rooms, and wardrobes may be of plain and inexpensive material, for later they may be replaced when means justify additional expenditure; but if the outside covering be faulty, the house is a partial failure from the beginning. ”

“ We tore out the old plumbing, we put in two new bathrooms. We made a laundry out of the storeroom. We cut doors and threw rooms together which never had associated before, and we turned all the windows which gave upon the porches into doors, so that we could step out-of-doors at will. We ordered our porch screened entirely, and planned to furnish it as a study for Aubrey. We put paper-hangers, painters, gas, telephone, and electric men at work all over the house, and made them promise, yea, even swear, to finish their work by a certain time. ”

“ The Rural Home.—To give the elements of satisfactory living under modest circumstances, the country home should be so located and serviced as to give the maximum of comfort and convenience for the money invested. The location, type of construction and interior arrangement of the home are important factors in attaining these objectives. ”

“ Ground, in the country, being the cheapest item which the farmer can devote to building purposes, his object should be to spread over, rather than to go deeply into it, or climb high in the air above it. We repudiate cellar kitchens, or under-ground rooms for house work, altogether, as being little better than a nuisance—dark, damp, unhealthy, inconvenient, and expensive. The several rooms of a farm dwelling house should be compact in arrangement, and contiguous as may be to the principally-occupied apartments. Such arrangement is cheaper, more convenient, and labor-saving ”

“ Close by the cottage, and extending back at right angles from it, so as to inclose the farm-yard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the house: any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as the two others, and all three look still more suitable for donkey-stables and pigsties. ”

“ Such a building, four stories high, would accommodate sixteen families of four members, or eight larger families, and provide light, warmth, ventilation, and more comforts and conveniences than are usually found in most city houses built for only one family. Here young married persons with frugal and benevolent tastes could commence housekeeping in a style of comfort and good taste rarely excelled in mansions of the rich. The spaces usually occupied by stairs, entries, closets, etc., would on this plan be thrown into fine large airy rooms, with every convenience close at hand. ”

“ A screen, or belt of privet, or low evergreens may be planted in a circular form from the front right-hand corner of the dwelling, to the corresponding corner of the rear offices, enclosing a clothes drying yard, and cutting them off from too sightly an exposure from the lawn in front. The opposite end of the house, which may be termed its business front, may open to the every-day approach to the house, and be treated as convenience may determine. ”

“ In certain cases, where the closest economy is needful, two small families can occupy the cottage, by having a movable screen in both rooms, and using the kitchen in common, or divide it and have two smaller stoves. Each kitchen will then have a window and as much room as is given to the kitchen in great steamers that provide for several hundred. ”

“ A sunny garden terrace or arcaded front to the south to catch the winter sun—cool and shady rooms to the north for the summer—a sheltered porch to protect the guest against the weather. Such contrivances as these show that thought has been spent and care taken in the planning and building; that the builder or designer has been influenced by considerations of true utility—not in the bald and more modern sense of mere money or time saving appliance, but the truer economy of making a house livable. ”

“ The addition of the living room and front porch requires considerable change in the arrangement of the kitchen to keep traffic from the back door to the living room from passing directly in front of the range. It will be best to set the range against the end wall, and preferably to use an electric or oil range so that no new chimney will be required. After the living room is added, less dining space will be needed in the kitchen. ”

“ In my district I do not think there is one cottage to be found consisting of a day-room, three bed-rooms, scullery, pantry, and convenient receptacles for refuse and for fuel in the occupation of a labourer, but there are many consisting of a day-room and two bed-rooms, constructed with a due regard to ventilation and warmth, pantry, and fuel house, with a small garden and pigsty adjoining, and the labourers occupying such cottages, generally speaking, are far superior to others less advantageously situated. ”

“ Nothing has been attempted for appearance, solely, beyond what is necessary and proper in the dwelling of a planter of good estate, who wants his domestic affairs well regulated, and his family, and servants duly provided with convenient accommodation. The form of the main dwelling is nearly square, upright, with two full stories, giving ample area of room and ventilation, together with that appropriate indulgence to ease which the enervating warmth of a southern climate renders necessary. ”

“ Far enough from the city center to evade the region of dear building-lots, and yet within easy reach of all kinds of door and sash factories and planing-mills, there would be no need of crowding three generations into a single room, and suffocating them with mingled kitchen-fumes and sick-bed odors. Three rooms and an out-house should be the minimum for a family with children. ”