Before we meet next Friday, I want you to please think over the objections which lie against what is proposed in the drawing given me by Mr Harney at your request. Mr Harney and Mr Colburn each tell me that they have pointed out what seem to them conclusive objections. As they relate to matters of local detail I will not repeat them but submit simply the difficulty which I find in reconciling the proposition in this case with what I know to be your wish in respect to the general expression of the place.

You must well know that if you scantily furnish a large and stately room with cheap little cottage tables and chairs, you don’t make it cottage like by doing so, on the contrary the height of its walls appears to be increased; its spaces to be in every way enlarged. Its stateliness becomes oppressive. The effect of a narrow walk carried stiffly up to the central door of a large house—between flat beds of turf would be the same.

That a house should bear an expression of private social and domestic [536] life rather than institutional you need to see something which indicates that its occupants go in and out as they please not with the directness that belongs to places of business or under strict rules and orders. You want to feel that they often turn about between outside and inside occupations and can step out for a moment without change of house attire. You need a place outside the door obviously suited to be so used & to be conveniently occupied at times by a group of people and this place needs to be furnished and embellished in a way that neither belongs to a lawn or garden nor to the inside of the house. Your porch at Nahant last year told the story exactly. Something of this kind is as essential to the ideal of a rural home for a family as a roof or chimneys. It may take the form of a terrace, veranda, portico or porch or simply of a farm house “stoop” with its tubs of oleanders &c. The lack of it makes either a wretched habitation as in the Irish cabin or an official building, barrack, office, jail, hospital or monestery. To make a square place some distance in front of the door does not help the matter. Take away the platform on which you had such a charming effect by the informal grouping of flowers, vines and vases of lovely hues with inviting chairs about a central passage to the door and substitute something with a motive like this drawing of Mr Harney’s and your cottage would very well front on the esplanade of a military station; the bit of square pavement being supplied with a flag staff in the centre and a field piece on each side of it—

What is more commonly done with well considered houses similarly situated is probably the most convenient and the least open to sound objection. Your house has a long front planted on sloping ground, the surface of which at one end being a rocky knoll, at the other a gentle swell. Under such circumstances experience for centuries has found it best to form a level shelf, sustained by a wall or embankment which gives the house a stable base and supplies a convenient out step. Elsewhere in the world this is almost universally done; here we have fallen into the way of getting over the difficulty by shaded verandas, which are simply cheap and shabby terraces in most cases: darkening the rooms looking upon them; their wooden decks or columns always rotting away and needing yearly repair & paint. I think that you are right to abandon this expedient but I can’t but feel that something terrace like is essential to a domestic aspect of the building & I feel very certain that if you adopt the plan now proposed you will soon be compelled by its inconvenience to adopt some make shift modification.

You object that a portal or door would prevent greenery about the door. On the contrary it would be the proper and convenient place for tub and pot plants, it would increase it. If the objection is to the color you can have a concrete of any color you please. I have laid hundreds of yards of it at less cost than flagging and in all colors. You can have mats made or you can cover all that you do not want to tread upon with trays of moss. If you want to grow vines at any point against the wall you can have openings to deep beds of soil below for the purpose. I have done this and the vines flourish perfectly. If the objection [537]

View of south façade of Barthold Schlesinger house, showing
where Olmsted proposed to construct a terrace

I write because I want to be away for a week and shall not see you till we meet next Friday to reach a final decision. I can’t make the drawings I promised simply because I can’t devise anything satisfactory without a portal.