THE RESIDENCE OF JAMES L. BREESE, SOUTHAMPTON, LONG ISLAND

AMONG the buildings that Messrs. McKim, Mead & White have designed are such well-known structures as the Rhode Island State Capitol, the Pennsylvania Station in New York City, the Library of J. P. Morgan, Madison Square Garden in New York City, the Minneapolis Art Museum, and many others of the largest monumental buildings in America. It is interesting, therefore, to find that they have also designed a country house of so informal and picturesque a character as the residence of Mr. Breese at Southampton, Long Island.


In designing this house the architects carried out their belief that an American country house should be exactly what its title indicates; that is, that it should be both American and country, and not an imported idea so built as to suggest monumental work.


The house follows in general Colonial motives. The two-story piazza across the front will at once suggest Mount Vernon; although it is rather like the two-story piazzas used in some of the upper New York farmhouses than that of Washington's home. The treatment of the gable end suggests the Dutch Colonial; but the house is in general free from the influence of any specific Colonial house, or even from that of the Colonial school, in any particular section of the United States.


The architects have followed rather the general spirit of Colonial as it existed throughout, and have created a harmonious whole which is distinctly adapted, and not copied from precedent. Of course much of the interest of the house is due to its picturesque setting. The white and green of the frame Colonial building is not only an excellent background for planting and shrubbery, but is bare and unsightly without them. When we find new Colonial houses apparently of good design which are uninteresting and barren as compared with the old work, we can probably lay part at least of this defect in appearance to the fact that they are not surrounded and embowered in trees as is the old work after the lapse of years. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION.


Click HERE to see "The Orchard" at wikimapia with links to oldlondisland.com for additional information and photos. Property now called Whitefield Condominiums. 

THE RESIDENCE OF GEORGE D. PRATT, GLEN COVE, LONG ISLAND

THE house of George D. Pratt at Glen Cove, Long Island, recalls the English Tudor architecture familiar to us from pictures of Haddon Hall, the home of Dorothy Vernon. Although it was not designed primarily as a copy of English work, the English form was used because of the irregular plan and the grouped windows. The owner of the house wished certain arrangements of plan, and also desired the windows to be small and placed in groups instead of large and singly spaced. These two requirements are most easily met by adapting English forms, and so the house was in general designed in English style.

The house is built of stone, and the stones of which the walls are composed are small, more or less irregular in shape, and of variegated colors. The reason for this is that smooth, even stonework never looks well in a country house. It does not afford a good background for foliage, nor does it give that play of light and shade in the wall surface that is pleasant to look at. 

Old houses invariably have this pleasing irregular quality. The reason for this is that in the first place their builders had no machines with which to cut stone, and the expense of handcutting was too great to be undertaken. Another reason is that these old houses have with age weathered to a roughness of surface and a variation of color according as the stones were hard or soft.

In the best modern work architects endeavor to reproduce this agreeable quality of light and shade. Even in slate roofs American architects are now searching not for slates of uniform size and thickness and as neatly cut as possible, but for slates of variegated colors and different thickness and rough surface. They are laid just as well as smooth slates were laid, and the house is just as waterproof; but the effect is many times more attractive. It is because of a just appreciation of the causes of the attractive qualities of English work that the residence of Mr. Pratt is so interesting.


PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION. 

Click HERE to see "Killenworth" at wikimapia.