There is a certain little village in a remote fertile valley of Pennsylvania whose history is rooted deep in memories of the early colonists who settled there. In the peace and seclusion of this valley these wanderers from home seemed to have found happiness. It is as if they had said to themselves: "Here we will live and die; here we will build our homes, and here our children will grow up into peace and plenty." And so the sentiment throughout the little village that sprang into existence and the homes hi the village, was one of permanence. No mere settlers' cabins found mushroom growth on the hillsides; everything was planned for the future; the houses, small and large, were built of brick, houses that would last for generations. It may be that these early settlers realized the possibilities of beauty as well as of permanence in the brick house. Perhaps, in the homes of their ancestors on the other side of the water they had observed it growing old gracefully, and remembered that from year to year and from generation to generation it took on a mellower and friendlier tone, that in time it attracted to itself vines from the nearby flower bed, and after many seasons withdrew into the landscape about it, furnishing a most beautiful color note. It is impossible, of course, to decide just how far into the beauty of things the early settler permitted his mind to wander, for he was not a sentimental person and he was often harassed by poverty, perplexed by religious doubt, and all about him was the problem of the Indian.
But whether his feeling was practical or aesthetic, the fact remains that his desire for a home found satisfaction in the brick house, well designed, sturdily constructed, and planned so inevitably for peace and comfort and right living that the result was beauty. These Colonists had wandered about long years enough to have grown heartsick for what stood as the greatest privilege, the permanent home. How much of gratitude went into the building of these houses in the Lovely Valley one may not say, but that their friendliness is evident and their beauty permanent would indicate that they were built as monuments to the discovery, by these men of travail, of the opportunity of finally taking root in the soil and of establishing permanent relation with the land.
And today a Traveler journeying through this Valley in Pennsylvania and gazing upon these old brick houses, which have been homes from the first closing in of roof and door, will find, as he stands on the winding roadway, with the bees humming in the clover fields, with peace and beauty about him, that not the least of his joy is the friendly aspect of the gentle old dwellings that seem to welcome him as they have welcomed families and friends for generations past. If the Traveler is a man of imagination, and even if he is not, but only practical and wise, he will realize that there is something about the well-contrived, well-adjusted brick house that seems to have a special significance, as though it were somehow predestined to be a homestead; that it belongs in quiet gardens, with brick-paved pathways and bowers of climbing roses, and he hopes for a lattice window back of the roses, and he is sure of a friendly homely existence within the brick walls.
Of course, every traveler who passes through the Lovely Valley may not feel in this poetic way about the brick house. It is possible to conceive of a pedestrian on the sunny roadway who is a cement enthusiast, or who may be devoted to the development of the clapboard house, or of one who has pinned his faith in modern domestic architecture to the style born of the old Mission buildings, with their red-tiled roofs outlined against the brilliant California sky. We cannot expect architectural enthusiasm limited to one expression in America, because we are a people of many tastes and many needs, and happily just now we have become conscious of the fact that we have an independent point of view toward architecture which it is worth our while to cultivate, and we do not intend that any one person or style shall dominate that taste. With our diversified landscape, our different kinds of climate, with our mountains and valleys, seashore and plains, we have the opportunity for almost every kind of home building that the heart of man may crave. AH that we can hope for is that this craving shall be accompanied by a sincere desire to create a good dwelling for a man's own life and the joy of his own neighborhood. Here hi America we have only lately and very slowly awakened to the desire for this home quality in our dwellings. We have wanted the house that our neighbor would admire, or the reproduction of the house that our neighbor had admired somewhere in foreign lands. We seemed to seek through our buildings an opportunity to be flattered.
Our estimate of the place we lived in was how we felt about its appearance, not the peace and comfort it afforded us. We judged it as a stranger, not for the home As pathetically and most wittily remarked, "Americans seem to regard their houses as something to escape from." Our interests have been away from the fireside, out in our concert halls, in our theaters and in our market-places. As the French people have advanced from the phrase "where one lives" to the use of our English word "home," we seemed to abandon both the sentiment and the expression of it for the sake of a hurried, restless, excited pursuit of what we have fancied pleasure to be. We have not sought Lovely Valleys in which to build permanent brick houses. We have put up our enormous hotels, with elevators to take us quickly away from them and cabs at the door to hasten our escape.
But whatever phases of development a nation goes through in pursuit of the various will o' the wisps flickering through its civilization, the homesickness for the hearthstone will always come back sooner or later. And we have just now reached that period of home sickness in America. As a result we are leaving our cities, the more intelligent, the more thoughtful of us, to find comfort or peace or opportunity for work in the country. And the minute a man's face is turned toward the country with affection, his heart softens at the word "home." And when once the desire for home is awakened, the building of the home dwelling place becomes a matter of great significance, and its beauty and permanence the absorbing thought of his days.
It may be that we shall slowly reach a developed ideal of home beauty, but the ideal must grow through love of home, and the love will come as we seek more and more earnestly the peace and repose of the Lovely Valley for our daily life. Not because the Traveler had a deep-rooted objection to cement or wood or stone, did he build his homestead of brick, but because down in the Valley the old brick houses had touched his imagination, because they seemed to hold in essence the home quality his heart was heavy with. These houses had been built with the greatest simplicity out of the material that the Colonists found at hand, and so were in harmony with the landscape; they were built for home life and so seemed to him to be the epitome of what could be wrought as a symbol of home existence.
There is so much to be said for the brick house. After the first expense of building, it is less costly than many other kinds of construction; it adjusts itself to various styles of architecture, to the simplicity of the Colonial period, to the more ornate and lavish Jacobean style; it may be made equally effective for the small bungalow or for the stately mansion; there is indeed no end to the variation of beauty and color which can be achieved by an understanding use of brick. There is no more permanent building material than brick, witness the examples of this architecture still remaining in Pez'sia and Egypt.
For a period in America we lost our sense of proportion toward an aesthetic valuation of brick. We massed it in flat surfaces, often we painted the brick and the mortar one color; we built it without interest in its architectural possibilities; we erected long lines o city brick houses all the same color and tone. It also became a means of easy development in the quick up building of crude frontier towns. It was used without understanding, until the brick houses became almost an architectural byword. Finally we turned away from it or from the usual presentation of it, and for the time centered our interest in the wood structures.
And then we proceeded to do very largely to wood what we had been doing to brick, we forgot its possibility for beauty and all the lovely association which the well-constructed wood house has had in the architectural development of each nation. We put up the clapboard shanty. We used up good forests to build bad houses. We degenerated from the shanty to the terrible building known through our suburbs as the Queen Anne house, which was a matter of openwork walls and gingerbread trimming. As we lost our love of home and our appreciation of good construction we seemed to lose our color sense in relation to architecture until our suburban houses became blotches on the landscape and our city houses indicated that our metropolitan life might be a prison routine.
Today we are once more thinking about our homes, about the beauty of them, of the value of permanence, of their relation to the kind of life we are living; about the effect they will have upon our sons and daughters as they grow up to be real American men and women. The result is, as we have already said, that we are turning toward the country for the life of these sons and daughters, and we are building in the country homes that will outlive our own life, that will be monuments for generations to come of the awakening of the American people toward the necessity of a beautiful, satisfying home life, if the nation is to make the progress which we have all in our hearts hoped for it.
The brick house has the great advantage of furnishing its own beautiful color spot in the landscape, and with the present method of varying the color hi the brick in its manufacture, and with the mortar used in the natural tone and raked out between the brick, a picturesque effect of rich and subtle coloring can be achieved which would only be possible in other architecture after very many years of weathering and mellowing.
A house of brick, well thought out, may be made to harmonize most interestingly with almost any kind of landscape. It is most friendly in effect if adjusted to a sloping hillside; if it stands on flat ground it only needs the close proximity of an apple orchard. In the woods it relieves gloom and monotony, and on the seashore it is in beautiful contrast to the gray tones and the blue sweep of the water. There is but one point to be considered in planting a flower garden for the brick house. Vivid red flowers should be kept back in the separate flower beds or in the hedges at the side of the garden enclosure. The poppy, salvia and red geranium should not be brought too close to any tone of brick house except those of yellow.
The use of brick in the garden wall is a thing that the English people have brought to perfection. What could be lovelier than old English gardens hedged about by orick walls, with the apricots and pears growing against their sunny exposure. And what so friendly as the brick pathway with flowers close at the edge, and even a weed or two under one's feet, leading to the capacious and the kindly entrance of the old brick house. We have lost sight in America of the value of the brick pavement in the town or country landscape. To be sure, it eventually becomes quite uneven, it is never very neat and crisp, but what color it lends to the pathway and how intimately it is related to the brick house itself, and how it branches away and leads you out to the brick wall where the fruit is ripe,—the wall which seems somehow to shelter you from the world with most friendly arms, and at the same time to hold gentle lure for the stranger without the gate.
From a practical point of view the brick house is an excellent investment. Well constructed at the start, it needs very little repair, and has the advantage of becoming more beautiful from year to year instead of increasingly shabby, as is the case with many of our wooden structures; generally the case where the houses are painted instead of being oiled. And if one stops to think of it, what an inartistic as well as unfriendly thing it is to paint a house over from time to time in quite a new and different color. How can we hope for tender associations about a dwelling that is green one spring and red another and yellow another; that from year to year has a different face for us, and seems to be striving in a crude way to keep in fashion ? What would we think of a friend who came to us one season as a blonde, and the next as a brunette, and then suddenly startled us as we were trying to form some sweet tie or association, in the guise of a striking Venetian type, all red and gold and orange ? No sense of affection can spring in your heart for the house that does not grow old beautifully, that does not hold the same friendly aspect from year to year, changing only as the hand of time is laid upon it. We want to find in our houses what we seek in our friendships, an unchanging quality, a welcome and a surety of peace and comfort.
From "The Craftsman" 1911
I thought this might be of interest to the readers.
Tim Davis is an experienced architectural designer who specializes not only in residential house plans, but also commercial.
Residential Home Design: http://customhouseplans.8m.com
Commercial Building Design: http://buildingdrawings.8m.com
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