THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS

VOL. I--JANUARY, 1858.--NO. III.




NOTES ON DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.

If building many houses could teach us to build them well, surely we
ought to excel in this matter. Never was there such a house-building
people. In other countries the laws interfere,--or customs,
traditions, and circumstances as strong as laws; either capital is
wanting, or the possession of land, or there are already houses
enough. If a man inherit a house, he is not likely to build another,--
nor if he inherit nothing but a place in an inevitable line of
lifelong hand-to-mouth toil. In such countries houses are built
wholesale by capitalists, and only by a small minority for themselves.

And where the man inherits no house, he at least inherits the
traditional pattern of one, or the nature of the soil decides the
main points; as you cannot build of brick where there is no clay,
nor of wood where there are no forests. But here every man builds a
house for himself, and every one freely according to his whims. Many
materials are nearly equally cheap, and all styles and ways of
building equally open to us; at least the general appearance of most
should be known to us, for we have tried nearly all. Our public
opinion is singularly impartial and cosmopolitan, or perhaps we