Compact Mid-City House
by A. H. Alexander
ON a narrow street leading from
Philadelphia's famous Rittenhouse
Square there is a row of buildings
that once served as stables for nearby
city mansions. The horses vacated their
quarters long ago; most of
the mansion owners departed, and the buildings
were transformed, in
gradual stages, into garages, shops, warehouses
and a miscellaneous array of business places.
Perhaps the most interesting recent transformation in this Philadelphia
Britannia Mews is the
town house of Mr. and
Mrs. William F. B. Johnson. When the Johnsons
bought the property it already had gone through
several stages, ending as a
warehouse. The dirt floor
of the stable still remained; the arch of the
carriage entrance was
there; the brick walls
were sturdy, but the rest
of the building was
crumbling toward decay.
John W. Keyes, the architect, was forced to rip the
building down to a skeleton before he
could make it over into a solid and comfortable home.
The result is a compact three-story
living unit, that benefits from a somewhat dramatic treatment of the first
floor, and of a quite conventional treatment of the other floors. The third
holds the bedroom and bath, and closets,
of the Johnsons' son, who usually is
away at college. The second floor, which is fulllength, holds two sizable
bedrooms, two dressing
rooms and two baths,
nicely arranged so that
guests can be housed in
the front bedroom without inconvenience to the
Johnsons in the bedroom
at the rear of the house.
The first floor, however,
is the most interesting. Two-thirds of its
area has been made into
a giant, 41-foot-long living room and dining
room. The high arch of
the carriage doors has
been made into a big
studio window at the
front of the living room.
The entrance doorway
flanks this window. Behind the entrance doorway the stairs rise to the
second floor, and in the
corner made by the stairs there is a
neatly arranged library nook and a
desk. The concrete floor has been
heavily padded and carpeted in soft
gray. The walls, also gray, have been covered with fabric and then painted.
The long, narrow living room runs
back to contain the dining space. Here
the walls have been painted with a
decorative floral design. Behind the living room is the kitchen, also long and
narrow. At one end of the kitchen is a
dining alcove. Beside this back end of
the kitchen is a small bedroom and bath
for the maid. The heater room also is
just off the kitchen.
As house has neither attic nor basement, the architect provided
plenty of closet space. In all, the house
has about twenty closets, and these are
augmented by various built-in spaces.
In the living room, for example, there
is a connected sequence of cabinets,
bookshelves and cupboards that lines
one complete wall. One section of this
built-in wall detail includes space for a
radio phonograph, television set, and for
a motion picture screen. At the dining
end of this long room, the built-in fixtures include a glassed-in cupboard.
All of the cabinet work is done in attractive natural birch.
The front of the house is severely
plain. Its surface is white-painted
brick. The shutters are bright red. An
attractive lantern flanking the front
door, slightly relieves the severity of
the facade.
The house has been thoroughly
sound-proofed against traffic noises,
and some of its rear windows, which
overlook a rather drab prospect have been fitted with fluted glass. This lets
in the light, keeps out the view. For
the rest, it is a small, self-contained unit,
a sort of island in the mid-city section
that lends itself to relaxed living.
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