File:American homes and gardens (1908) (17968637810).jpg

Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar51908newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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340 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS September, 1908 completest harmony in the production of a single dwelling, a fact of itself of sufficient moment to lift this house out of the record of ordinary dwellings, and place it among the most successful and delightful of all American dwelling houses. One may, indeed, go a step further, and express the doubt whether, in any part of our broad land, there be a house which equals this in the ampleness of its artistic resources in construction and decoration. Some of the essential conditions and requirements of the house should be set down by way of introduction. One need hardly be told that a large house was desired, and a house moreover adapted to the needs and requirements of a family of great artistic interests. Mr. Frederic Bartlett desired a studio separate from the main dwelling, but closely allied with it. These were the personal conditions the architect had to consider as the basis of his problem. The condition of ponderous detail, that this is an Italian house, freely designed with much modification, mixed in with not a little German feeling and variety. This may all be true, but it is quite inconsequential beside the larger, more splendid fact, that here is a house designed for itself, and designed in every part as an individual work of architecture. This is a really wonderful thing in this group of buildings, that the architect has discarded the stock-in-trade of his art, cast out the colon- nade and portico, banished the pergola save in strictly natural utilization as a feature of one of the buildings, thrown away the balustrade and window frame, ignored, in fine, the very things architects seem most to love or which they perhaps find the easiest to use; and then attacking his problem as an original one—as in truth it actually was—proceeded in his undertaking in a natural and orderly manner, using such ideas as his own study and experience with the historical styles had
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The Lake Front Contains the Loggia and Two Great Bow Windows environment entailed no difficulties. There was ample land at his disposal, quite densely wooded with deciduous trees, in which an opening toward the south afforded the most de- sirable outlook, and toward which the open side of the house was forthwith faced. The surrounding woodland forms an essential feature in the environment. In designing the house the conventional was set to one side, although with a family of marked artistic interests the Italian, even as sometimes blatantly interpreted in the East, might seem to supply every necessary motif. The designer took the bolder and much more logical course, of studying his problem afresh from the ground up, producing a highly original resultant that met every existing requirement, and which was thoroughly successful and beautiful. Stylists, whose first view of a building is apt to be accom- panied with a rush to their dictionaries that its style and origin may be duly classified and labeled, as if nothing was so satisfactory as a catalogue, will doubtless tell us, with much given him, and as his own indisputable genius permitted. And so, with much loving care for all that counts most in house designing, the building grew and grew, until to-day there stands beneath the Wisconsin woods as fair a house as America can show, beautiful to look upon, convenient to occupy, a veritable model of all the excellencies that help to make a house desirable. It is a stucco house, gray in color, presenting the general external form of a vast rectangular structure. This without only, for the plan discloses the fact that it consists, in reality, of two main buildings connected with a gallery and loggia, while beyond, and at some distance from the main building, is the studio, an essential part of the house design, as we shall presently see, although completely separated from it. The house is approached from the north, and is entered by an archway on the east wing, to which the picturesque name of the "Dog Trot" has been given. There is enough without before passing beneath the arch to hold the attention for

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