INTERIOR-RESIDENCE OF JOSEPH E. STEVENS, ESQ., TUXEDO PARK, N. Y. Walker & Gillette, Architects. the design. And here, too, is an apt illustration of the ready versatility which is demanded of the architect in general practice in this country. Completely differing in all conditions. and requirements of residential work in the country, there is city residential work, to the design of which the architect must bring his greatest abilities of invention and ingenuity, in addition to his ability as a designer. Presenting but one front calling for architectural embellishment, this must be so devised as to strike the keynote of the whole house, as well as to achieve a certain urbane manner, with dignity and general poise. With no prevalent style in city architecture, yet without the isolation which makes diversity in country house design possible, it seems that our best city houses are those that dwell in the best architectural harmony with their neighbors. The architect, of course, ignores the old "brownstone front" type, on the assumption that all these will be either demolished, or remodelled, and the consistency in design is to be reached rather through general adherence to a type than to any specific style. For this reason four city houses illustrated here are good New York houses, being neither extreme because of originality or negligible because of stupidity. They express excellently the better type of New York city dwelling and represent exactly what the general problem of their design calls for. To indulge in a little retrospect, one of the most marked phases in the development of American architecture is to be read, perhaps, in the evolution of the city residence. The reasons for this evolution are many, and though the intention of this article is rather to discuss some details of interior decoration, an appreciation of the value attained in this particular by Walker & Gillette may best be reached by a brief outline of the BED-ROOM IN THE TOWER-RESIDENCE OF JOSEPH E. STEVENS, ESQ., TUXEDO PARK, N. Y. Walker & Gillette, Architects. changes which have made possible the house of the type of the Mr. W. G. Loew residence, in New York City. After the rather primitive, but at least dignified house of the earliest days the type still to be seen in New York in certain downtown side streets, and on the north of Washington Square-there came the amazing and all-obliterating popularity of the famous (or infamous) "brown-stone front." Apart from the mournful stupidity of its exterior appearance, it possessed as well an interior arrangement no less stupid. "Individuality" was an element unknown, for the highest qualification of this type of house was that it should be precisely like its neighbors. The high "stoop" (derived from the Dutch stoep) was a relic of an entirely different social system than that demanded by later years, and was made to accommodate the family dining-room below the main, or "parlor" floor, to place it, in fact, on the kitchen floor, where a minimum of light, head-room and ventilation existed. Gradually the civilized began to dine upstairs, on the "parlor" floor, and to arrange communications with the lower regions by means of the dumbwaiter. From that change to the development of the front part of the basement floor into an entrance-hall or "foyer" was a simple enough matter, but was an innovation which took over a generation to evolve. The city dweller was slow to accept the new idea and to relinquish the type of house to which he had been so long accustomed. It would have been bad enough had only the exteriors of the brown-stone type of house been of a depressing similarity, but the planning, arrangement and decoration were also identical in identical in all the gloomy, highstudded "parlor-floor" rooms, with their cheap plaster imitations of a debased. form of French ornament, their narrow halls and steep stairs with a niche at the turn and a wretched little closet called THE ENTRANCE FRONT-RESIDENCE OF JOSEPH E. STEVENS, ESQ., TUXEDO PARK, N. Y. Walker & Gillette, Architects. DETAIL-RESIDENCE OF JOSEPH E. STEVENS, a "hall bed-room" at the end. It was a stupid plan stupidly executed and blindly followed for many years. It reflects, however, the general lack of taste and imagination which obtained at the time, and these houses are found when the builder of to-day demolishes them to make place for better buildings, to have been cheaply and parsimoniously constructed to fill a bourgeois and undiscriminating demand. Perhaps, after all, they are only a posthumous monument of the times, for every age leaves some architectural trace of its ideals and attainments and the age of the "brownstone front" was an age most conspicuously lacking in any ideal or attainment of culture. The first gain of the city architect upon abandoning this type of house was the obvious opportunity to save waste building space, of which every fraction. of a foot counts in urban house-planning, by abolishing the high stoop. The elevation of this often calling for ten or twelve steps necessitated the placing of the actual front of his building from seven to ten feet back of the building line allowed by city ordinances. This space constituted the "area-way," and admitted of the basement door under the stoop a dismal little enclosure in which it was often endeavored (and always unsuccessfully) to grow grass or flowers. The first gain then was one of from seven to ten feet of actual floor space on each floor, the entire width of the lot. Further advantage was also taken as the acceptance of the wide "foyer-hall" at the street level became general. Another factor conspired to improve city architecture a factor even more significant, |