The Honest House - Presenting Examples of the Usual Problems Which Face the Home-Builder, Together With an Exposition of the Simple Architectural Principles Which Underlie Them #232113

It is difficult indeed for us to create a house which is expressive of the owner, and at the same time consistent in all of its parts, true to a chosen style or character, and containing throughout the elements of good design, for the Sim ple reason that we are still young as a people, our social traditions are not so well established as to indicate clearly what is to be our future, and in consequence, what will be the character of the homes which will result. In our larger houses we are very likely to draw our inspiration from widely separate and distant fields, and we bring into them the accumulated art of the centuries past, and of the whole world. So it is no wonder that in these hustling times, when our days are filled with a multitude of interests, that we sometimes feel that we are strangers in our own homes. Then too, a spirit of pride and emulation is often wrought into the building of our larger houses, and often this motive, working unconsciously in the minds of both the owner and the architect, acts as a Chinese Wall, separating us from our ideals and the things which we actually accomplish.