A Comparison between American and Italian Homes

Part 2 of a 1927 magazine article on The Perfect Home

T0 THE dwellers in the Florentine villa the little half a twin house in Philadelphia would be awful to contemplate, and the same would be true to the young couple who find unbounded satisfaction in the efficiency housekeeping made possible by the very up-to-date appliances they have purchased and paid for on the installment plan. One may ask what is going to happen in both these homes when the babies begin to assemble. Think of raising children in that beautiful but derelict Italian villa. Frightful, if you look at it from the viewpoint of one accustomed to the innumerable housekeeping handmaidens evolved by modern science. But then what a playground those villa gardens offer and what a training for young eyes in appreciation of the beautiful. Think then of that gas-house outlook from the half a twin house and the playground of flat hard pavements, icy cold in winter and baking hot in summer.

Yet great men and great women are known to have come from infinitely bleaker surroundings, just as multitudes of worthless men and women have spent their childhoods in what to many eyes seemed gardens of Eden. And happily in these United States the perfect home, for every ambitious married couple, is something that the future will provide.

Foreigners regard us as a nation of nomads, ever on the move. For two generations to grow up in the same home is a thing almost unknown. We are mad about home improvements but utterly indifferent to home permanency. The Smiths are living in New Jersey one year and in Illinois the next. The Joneses have lived in five states in ten years, though it is true that the Joneses started in a kitchenette flat in Brooklyn and have progressed to a twenty-room house with two-car garage and acre of garden in a beautiful suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. And in all this moving about, the Joneses had a liberal education in home making. Each time they moved they were harder to please, increasing their demands upon the architect and builder.

Nowhere in the world, since history began to keep records, has there been such an incessant drive for better homes as has been witnessed in these United States during the past century.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 4:08 am and is filed under Architecture, Home, Houses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.

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