Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each one links straight to the page it comes from.

Every house in the book was actually built. The introduction is firm: these are houses "that have been built at costs varying from $1,500 to $10,000," and "not simply designs made as experiments." Read it in the book →
The hints chapter distrusts the professionals. It relies on "the opinions of those who have built houses and lived in them" rather than "architects and builders who have built only to sell." Read it in the book →
The small-house philosophy comes from a novel's Grannie. Quoted from Mrs. George Wemyss: "People with small houses always have room… People with one fat pony drive farther afield than people with two fat horses and one fat coachman." Read it in the book →
Small houses were the better investment. "Small houses are always more salable than large ones" — 1914's housing market in a sentence, offered as a reason to build modestly. Read it in the book →
The tile-and-stucco chapter opens with every builder's plea. "You see, it's only a small house, but we don't want it to look like all the others" — justified, the book says, by the monotonous similarity of small houses in almost any American town. Read it in the book →
The Dutch Colonial's best feature is a chute. The one detail singled out for the housewife: a clothes-chute running from the second floor straight to the laundry in the cellar. Read it in the book →
A whole seashore bungalow for $1,700. Its single chamber is an alcove off the living-room where a bed-lounge can be screened off at will — the tiny bungalow "having its day." Read it in the book →
Rye's little Colonials are built from the meadows. The houses at Rye, New York are "wrought of field stones from surrounding meadows" — the Westchester hills furnishing their own architecture. Read it in the book →
The sleeping-porch was a national movement with a failure rate. "In every section of the country, from seaboard to seaboard, sleeping-porches have been built, but are they always successful?" — the final chapter is a corrective manual. Read it in the book →
Winter porch-sleeping had approved equipment. Storm-sash or heavy duck and khaki curtains — arranged to open, because "fresh air will be lacking if storm-sashes are tightly closed," and fresh air was the porch's whole purpose. Read it in the book →