The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Art Of Landscape Architecture

Location Of Buildings

IN several ways the spot where buildings are located should be controlling. They occupy the key to the situation. Here most of the time the human beings live, the men, women, and children, and their physical needs and comforts should be satisfied and their mental and spiritual desires, for here man abides and finds his home, and if he wanders he returns here, and wants in this spot especially the very best that life can give him. Consequently, the house must have the chief part of his attention, and therefore too much care cannot be given to the choice of the site. This is the way Humphry Repton expresses the same idea: "However various opinions may be on the choice of a situation for a house, yet there appear to be certain principles on which such choice ought to be founded; and these may be deduced from the following considerations: First: The natural character of the surround- ing country. Secondly: The style, character, and size of the house. Thirdly: The aspects of exposure, both with regard to the sun and the prevalent winds of the country. Fourthly: The shape of the ground nearthe house.

A Gardener's Cottage at Skylands— A Country Estate in New Jersey.

Windsor Castle, England.
From an Old Print.

Fifthly: The views from the several apartments; and Sixthly: The numerous objects of comfort—such as a dry soil, a supply of good water, proper space for offices, with various other conveniences essential to a mansion in the country, and which in a town may sometimes be dispensed with, or at least very differently disposed."