Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: metrical. The entrance remained the important feature, and was seldom neglected in the working out of details. It usually consisted of pilasters, cornice and pediment or hood of simpler type. These entrances showed marked individuality in design, and are worthy of extensive study. The interiors of the 1730 homes were very interesting, and often handsome, the stairways and fireplaces being especially important. The Hancock house in Boston was begun in 1737. It was a stone building, so well constructed that when torn down it was necessary to blast the stones apart. The Hancock house was erected on a hill overlooking the bay, just outside of the city. The entrance was in the centre of the front, which was fifty-six feet wide, and was protected by a balcony above, which opened from the hallway of the second story. On each side of the entrance were two large windows on both the lower and upper floors. The cornice was refined, and altogether the house was a well designed and dignified building. The Vassal-Craigie-Longfellow house at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was built in 1759, and was the home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow after 1837. This house was among the first to be designed with a deck on the roof surrounded by a balustrade. It is symmetrical in plan, and has a low porch at each end. The exterior is treated with pilasters, which extend from the ground line to the cornice. In the centre portion two pilasters are planted at the corners of a slight projection which terminates in a pediment inthe roof. At each side of this pediment is a dormer window. Elmwood, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, was built early in the eighteenth century. It was the birthplace and home of James Russell Lowell. Elmwood is three stories high, and stands in a grove of trees planted by the father of the ...