Page:Architectural Record 1920-08 Vol 48 Iss 2.djvu/5

 THE ARCHITECTVRAL RECORD



VOLVME XLVIII

NVMBER II

AUGUST, 1920

HILLSIDE HOUSE ~ ROPERTY OF GEORGE HOWE. Zr

ea CHESTNUT HILL, PHILADELPHIA +9

Seta?

Mellor, Meigs & Howe, Architects

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BY PAUL P. CRET

ROM the terrace the lindens are H outlined on a background of hills

that one might suppose remote from all cities and human turmoil. Two other sides are enclosed by the woods rising at the rear of the grounds and the third by the house. The shadow of a giant oak, a bench against a hedge of hornbeam, and that same feeling of peace that reminds one of cloisters in Italy or of an eighteenth century garden in a_ sleepy provincial town of Touraine. Is there a better place to read? I wish I had had there that volume of Edgar Allen Poe, in which he develops his views on landscape gardening, as he most irrever-

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ently cails it. Some passages would find their illustration right around. ‘That one, for instance, in which he claims the su- periority of the artificial style (which we nowadays call formal) over the natural style. “. .. . The artificial style has as many varieties as there are different tastes to gratify. It has 2 certain relation to the various styles of buildings. There are stately avenues and retirements of Versailles ; Italian terraces ; and a various mixed old English style, which bears some relation to the domestic Gothic or English Elizabethan architecture. Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of pure