Homes and How to Make Them — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Architect’s Voice: Wit and Condescension

Gardner’s architect-narrator speaks with a blend of dry humor and barely concealed impatience. In Letter XXVII, he responds to a client’s request for an “ornamental and modern” finish by listing absurd possibilities: “pink plaster images,” “bronze dragons,” even “setting your own tin-type, life-size, at every corner.” The tone is mocking but instructive, as he forces the reader to recognize the silliness of ornament divorced from function. He admits he will “acquiesce” if the client insists, but his “sober advice” is that interior work be “simple and unobtrusive.” This rhetorical strategy—exaggerating a request to expose its folly—appears repeatedly, suggesting Gardner valued persuasion through ridicule as much as through reason.

Truth in Materials: A Moral Aesthetic

Gardner’s central tenet is that building materials should be used honestly. He praises “Nature’s bricks” over artificial imitations and condemns “the weakness and sham of brickwork” in a later letter. In the excerpt on finish, he argues that elaborate woodwork, carved panels, and inlaid floors are “wholly incongruous with walls and ceilings of lath and plaster and floors of cheap boards.” The mismatch between expensive ornament and humble structure is, for Gardner, a kind of architectural lie. He urges the reader to “be not afraid of a flat surface terminating in a plain bead or quarter round.” This preference for the plain over the pretentious aligns with the broader Arts and Crafts ethos emerging in the 1870s, though Gardner’s language is more pragmatic than philosophical.

Domestic Details: Dust, Dirt, and Daily Life

Gardner’s practical eye extends to the grime of everyday living. In a parenthetical aside, he notes that carpets, after a month of use, become “all mixed with sand and dirt,” and that elaborate cornices serve only as “vast store of dust.” These observations ground his aesthetic arguments in household reality: ornament is not merely ugly but unhygienic. He also advises that stairways and mantels “may be treated more liberally,” while doors should be “of richer design than the frames.” Such distinctions reveal a hierarchy of importance based on use and visibility. The architect’s concern is not abstract beauty but the lived experience of a home—its cleanliness, durability, and comfort.

The Epistolary Frame: Dialogue as Instruction

Gardner’s choice of the letter format is itself a rhetorical device. Each letter addresses a specific query or objection from a fictional client, allowing Gardner to anticipate and counter common arguments. The preface dedicates the book to those “about to build” and those with an “instinctive longing” for a home, suggesting the letters are meant to educate a lay audience. The conversational tone—complete with asides, jokes, and direct addresses like “DEAR FRED”—makes technical advice accessible. Yet the architect retains authority: he is the expert who must “carry out the wishes of his employer as far as consistent with his own peace of mind.” This tension between client desire and professional integrity drives many of the letters, making the book as much about the social dynamics of building as about architecture itself.

Gardner’s Homes and How to Make Them rewards readers who attend to its specific, often caustic observations about materials, ornament, and the realities of domestic life. The epistolary form invites you to imagine yourself as one of the architect’s correspondents—perhaps the hopeful client, perhaps the skeptical critic. Let Gardner’s sharp judgments provoke your own thinking about what makes a house true to its purpose, and notice how his 1874 concerns echo in contemporary debates about authenticity and sustainability in design.

Reading Gardner’s fuss over dusty cornices made me recall my grandmother’s parlor, where every surface begged for dusting. I felt that same quiet insistence on honesty in Old Houses in Holland — Text and Context, whose plain brick façades seemed to breathe without pretense. Both books left me staring at walls, wondering what they’d say if they could.