To design, plan, and build a house is a task that rarely falls to the
lot of boys and girls. In fact, it is not the common experience of
men and women to build houses without the aid of architects, masons,
and carpenters. Such a task, however, was recently offered to certain
classes in one of the public schools of a well-known New England city.
It was, indeed, a school problem, and yet there was something about
it that seemed to suggest larger and more interesting things than
are ordinarily dealt with in the school-room. It did not seem at all
like some school work. It was more like real life; for all boys and
girls must some day have homes of their own, and here was a chance
to learn how the house, which is an important part of every home, is
planned and built. It is hardly necessary to say that this work--or
play, if you like that word better--was undertaken with genuine
enthusiasm. It was a task crammed full of the pleasure of interest and
of accomplishment--full of the joy of doing something worth while--from
the beginning to the end.
_The House a Work of Art._--One of the first lessons learned by these
young builders--perhaps the most important one of all--was that a
great many things have to be thought of in planning a house, if the
thing is to be well done. It is not simply a question of deciding how
many rooms one will have, arranging them in some conventional order,
and building the house around them with whatever external features
style or fancy may dictate. Too many houses, it is true, are planned,
or at least put up, in this thoughtless fashion; and whatever goes
into them in decoration or furniture is generally chosen either for
necessary use or for display--not with any thought of the real comfort
and satisfaction that come from artistic surroundings. People who are
satisfied with such dwellings seem to show less appreciation of art,
the highest product of civilization, than those uncivilized tribes who
decorated their caves or huts with beautiful rugs of their own weaving
and who ornamented their pottery and their utensils and implements
with wonderfully conceived and elaborately wrought designs. Modern
cave dwellers in apartment houses with all the conveniences of their
ready-made surroundings, are in danger of missing that self-expression
in their home belongings that encouraged and delighted even the savage.
The most extreme example of this form of degeneracy is found in the
suggestion of a certain great inventor, that the age of concrete
construction, now at hand, means that we are to have concrete houses
poured into a standard mould, hardened in twenty-four hours, and
finished for occupancy in a day or two.
The boys and girls of this story would not have accepted a
machine-made, standardized house if one had been offered them, ready
for use. There was a special purpose for which their house was to be
planned and built, as there generally is in the case of any real house.
No style A, B, or C, chosen from any series of pattern-built or moulded
houses, could fulfil such a purpose; and even if it could, would they
willingly give up all the fun of planning and building and furnishing?
Would they forego the lessons of experience to be learned from all this
work? This is always a large part of the satisfaction which comes to
any one who builds his own house. In the present instance it was the
chief motive, since the boys and girls who were planning this house
were not expecting to make their home there.
_Why the House Was Built._--What, then, was the purpose for which this
house was to be built; and what were the specific problems involved in
realizing this purpose? It was to be a practice house for the girls
of the household technology course. This meant that it should be, so
far as possible, a model house; but it must of necessity be a simple
one. Economy, always a safe guide, was a most important factor in
determining the character of the design. A limited appropriation--about
$1000--for building material was available. Economy of space as well as
of expense was also important. The only available land was a triangular
lot in the corner of the school yard, 665 square feet in area. This
limited the dimensions of the floor plan to 24 by 35 feet. It was
decided to develop the design within these dimensions, on a rectangular
plan, with one story and a hip roof, because such a design would
present comparatively easy problems in framing and insure a building of
pleasing external proportions.