NAWN FARM
City people are prone to think that the country is agreeable only during
the summer months, and that winters spent there are unpleasant and
dreary. This notion is fast being dispelled, as country houses are kept
open longer and longer each year, and the pleasures of country week-ends
during the entire winter are definitely proven. There is in reality no
more delightful place to spend the long winter months than in the heart
of a beautiful country. A never-ending round of interests astonishes one
who has never tried it before. Each month brings a fresh phase, and it
is hard to determine whether the country is at its best during the
summer or winter season.
There is a fascination indescribable in watching the fall of snow, the
settling of flakes on the bare limbs, the transition from brown to
diamond-covered branches that glisten with every motion and are often
decorated with long icicles reflecting all the prismatic colors. If you
have never seen this side of country life, you will find it a wonderful
world, where it is intensely interesting to study the seasons in turn,
note the coming and going of birds, look for the early and late flowers,
watch the melting of snows and the swelling of buds in the warm spring
suns.
More active pleasures, too, await the adventurer in the winter country.
There are so many sports to be enjoyed that one does not wonder the
youth delights to come here for skating, snow-shoeing, or toboganning.
What is more delightful than a sleighing party, whose destination is a
remodeled farmhouse not too many miles from the city? Start the cheery
fire in the huge fireplace, pile on the six-foot logs, draw your chairs
nearer while you forget the outside world, and feel a glow of delight
that you, too, have joined the throng who know the thrill of country
life.
The first thing to do when contemplating an all-the-year-round country
home is to look for a house in the right location. In selecting it the
problem of heating must be thought of in a different way than as that
for merely summer use. Then fireplaces will amply suffice for the few
cool days and chilly evenings, and no better method could be desired.
But for the real cold of winter, whether for continued use or the
occasional week-end, more complete heating will need to be provided.
The cheapest and simplest way is undoubtedly by stoves which can be
attached to the fireplace flues. But this necessitates closing up the
fireplace and depriving family and guests of all the joys of the blazing
logs which never seem more cheerful and hospitable than in the bitterest
weather. If the house is to be used mainly for week-end parties, stoves
have another serious drawback. They must be kept oiled when not in use,
to prevent their rusting, and it takes nearly two days after the fire is
lighted to burn the oil off. Then, when closing up the house again, the
stove must be re-oiled, and this necessitates putting the fire out and
waiting in the cold house until the metal is sufficiently cool to apply
the treatment.
The most adequate method is by hot water or steam, and for a large
country house these are really the only practical ways. The expense
involved will depend upon the structure of the house. In a brick or
stone building, it will cost a good deal to have the pipes built into
the wall. Sometimes conditions will allow them to be carried up in a
closet or partition. In a frame house that has been built with deep
window jambs, as was so often done in the olden times, the pipes can be
hidden within this furred framework. The great objection to steam or
hot-water systems in old houses, however, is the presence of the
radiator, which never can be made to harmonize thoroughly with the
spirit of the old building. When it is used, some attempt must be made
to disguise it. If it can be made long and low and placed in front of a
window, it can be treated as a window-seat with a metal grill in front.
For houses of the later Georgian period, grills can be found whose
designs are not at all out of keeping with the other classical details.
Sometimes a radiator can be placed entirely within the furred partition,
and the heat admitted into the room through paneled doors which are
thrown open when it is in use.
For small houses, the hot-air system is perhaps the most desirable. The
registers are inconspicuous and bring no jarring note into the old-time
atmosphere. The pipes require considerable overhead room in the cellar,
which sometimes becomes a hard problem in the low foundations of old
houses. The fact that it is difficult to drive the hot air against
the wind raises a second objection, but if the furnace is placed in the
corner of the house from which the cold winds blow, or even a second
furnace is installed, the trouble will be largely overcome. And there is
the great advantage, especially for a week-end house, that it can be
started up or left at a moment's notice without trouble from water in
the pipes or danger of freezing as in the hot-water systems.
Whatever the method decided upon, it is an interesting work from start
to finish. One feels a thrill of adventure in evoking from the home of
past generations one for twentieth-century living with all the comforts
and appliances necessary. But to transform an old building that has
never even been intended for living purposes into a residence that is
not only comfortable and suited to the owner's needs but an
architectural success as well, is a still more fascinating problem. How
Messrs. Killam and Hopkins have accomplished this with an old barn at
Dover and kept the distinctive simplicity and atmosphere of the original
building is worthy of emulation.
[Illustration: NAWN FARM--FRONT VIEW]
When Mrs. Genevieve Fuller bought the Nawn Farm some three years ago, it
was her intention to alter the farmhouse then on the property. Its
location, however, was not entirely favorable; the house was on sloping
ground in somewhat of a hollow and too near the public road. Besides
this, the rooms were small and very much out of repair. On the crest of
the hill was the barn, occupying a commanding position and framed in
splendid old trees. The structure was found to be so stanch that it was
decided to tear down the old house and convert the barn into the
residence.
[Illustration: Rear View]
The foundations were left unchanged, and an ell on the north side was
added for the service portion of the building. The supports and interior
divisions are all virtually unaltered. The living and dining rooms
occupy the positions of the former mows, and the hall connecting them is
the old passage for the wagons. Most of the original studding has been
used as it stood, and the beams incased or hidden in the finish of the
walls. The roof was flattened on the top, and the gables cut off, but
the slope was unaltered. Wider eaves were added at a slightly different
pitch, softening the lines of the roof.
Doors and windows were, of course, cut anew to conform with the
different usage of the building. Their position was necessarily
determined somewhat by the existing supports, but they have been very
happily placed, whether in groups or singly. Those of the sleeping rooms
on the second floor are especially well handled; they are wide and
raised well up under the overhanging roof, so that they carry out the
broad low lines of the architecture. The openings of the
sleeping-porches have been treated exactly as windows, their size
corresponding with the apparent dimensions of the windows, and their
locations determined by the same factors. They become at once an
integral part of the structure instead of the unsightly excrescence
which the presence of a sleeping-porch so often proves.
[Illustration: The Living Room]
On the first floor, the living-room occupies the entire eastern end,
having exposures on three sides. This has been attractively finished in
gum wood stained a dark brown, and the warm tones of natural colored
grass-cloth tone the walls. An interesting treatment has been accorded
the fireplace by flanking it on either side with a nook, the outer walls
of which cleverly conceal parts of the old structure. In each of the
recesses is a small window above the paneling and window-seat. The
furnishings of the room are appropriately simple and invitingly
comfortable, suggesting old-fashioned things adapted for modern uses.
Especial interest is attached to the fireplace fittings; they are of
hand-forged iron, wrought by the village blacksmith after designs of the
owner. The andirons were made from the tires of old cart wheels,
flattened and bent into shape and curled over at the top. The wood-box
is of flat strips of iron interlaced.
From one wing of the hall ascend stairs which are the faithful
reproduction of an old Colonial design. The other part of the hall,
across the southern front, is so broad and cheerful with two big windows
and two glass doors opening on to the sunny loggia that it has been
furnished with a davenport, tables, and chairs almost as a second
living-room. The woodwork is North Carolina pine stained brown, and the
walls are gray.
The billiard-room back of this hall, with its attractive alcove and
fireplace, is finished in fumed oak, and the walls are also gray.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Two Views of the Dining Room]
Perhaps the distinction of being the most attractive room in the house
can be accorded the dining-room with its Colonial white woodwork. The
fireplace and the china closet, balanced on the other side by the door
into the pantry, are of excellent proportions and charming detail. The
mullioned panes of the china closet and the treatment of the moldings
about the frame are especially interesting. On the opposite side of the
room a group of three windows provides opportunity for an unusually
delightful feature in the long window-box, built by the village
carpenter. Its simple, sturdy lines are worthy of notice. The walls are
papered in a deep cream, and the greatest simplicity maintained in the
furniture and draperies.
[Illustration: The China Closet in the Dining Room]
The service portion is well arranged both for convenience of labor and
comfort of the domestics. The basement laundry leads directly into a
large drying yard which was the original enclosure for the cows and is
surrounded by the same wall of field stone.
Up-stairs the rooms might be said to be divided into three suites, which
can be practically shut off from each other: each has its own bath and
sleeping-porch. In the group over the living-room there has been an
ingenious solution of the structural conditions. The division of the
rooms made possible by the old supports permitted a dressing-room to be
placed conveniently between the two chambers, but the fireplace added in
the living-room was directly below, so that the chimney would naturally
cut off the outside wall. It would have been possible to construct a
large fireplace in the dressing-room and allow the light to come through
the chambers, but the architects evolved another scheme. The chimney was
carried up on one side, providing a fireplace for one of the chambers,
and a second chimney was built in the opposite corner of the
dressing-room. In the space between, a window was cut, and the two flues
joined directly over the window. From the outside of the building this
gives a most unusual effect as there is a chimney directly over a
window, having no apparent support, or even purpose. The lines of the
pyramidal base conform to the slope of the roof.