How to build a house

by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc

“In front, against the wall of the billiard-room, let us put your brother-in-law’s study, with a small anteroom, where people who have business with him can wait, so as not to be wandering about in the hall. On the dining-room side (of the hall) we will put the pantry. The study must be at least 12 feet 6 inches wide. We will make the entrance-hall jut out a little to form a projection.

“The staircase is a very important point in every house. It should be proportioned to the house,—neither too spacious nor too scanty. It must not occupy space uselessly; it must give easy access to the upper stories, and be sufficiently conspicuous. If we take a part of the staircase out of the entrance-hall, which is very large—18 feet by 16 feet—it will be very conspicuous, and we shall gain room. The width of a staircase in a house of this style and size should be at least 4 feet. But the hall ought to communicate directly with the dining-room, the pantry, and all the offices to the right of the plan. Let us reserve a passage of 4 feet and mark the first step. The height of the lower story between floor and floor should be, reckoning the size of the rooms, 15 feet; which will give them a clear height of 14 feet, reserving 1 foot for the thickness of the floor of the chamber story. The steps of an easy staircase should be about 6 inches high. To ascend 15 feet we require thirty steps. Each step should be 10 to 12 inches wide. The staircase should have an extension of 25 feet for steps of 10 inches in width, or 30 feet for steps of 12 inches, reckoning thirty steps. Let us take a mean—say 27 feet. We must find room for this extension of 27 feet at the least. We will therefore place a staircase projection at the angle of the entrance-hall prominent enough to bring us, in winding round a newel (which will be in the prolongation of the wall on the right of the drawing-room), to the first floor, passing out into the antechamber of this floor.... I mark out this staircase for you: we shall have to return to it. The first fifteen steps come into the length of the newel and the wall, and allow us to place below the last half flight of the stairs the water-closet for the family on the ground floor. Opening from the passage we will next put the pantry. Then the servants’ staircase in a tower; then the serving-room; then the kitchen in the wing; a bakehouse and scullery, a wash-house, and a way out from the kitchen to the kitchen garden. Forming a return, we will put a stable for three horses, a coach-house for two carriages, a harness-room, and a small flight of stairs to reach the rooms for the coachman and groom, and the hay-loft in the roof. Near the stable we will leave a way into the yard and the larder and servants’ conveniences.

“We will separate all these offices from the main building by a plinth wall and trellis-work at the right of the round tower servants’ staircase, which will give us a courtyard for the kitchen, stable, and coach-house. In front we will reserve a space for the poultry-yard, the fowl-house, and the manure pit....

“Now that we have traced out the general plan of our ground floor, let us try to improve it in detail.

“It would be very nice to have a bay window at the end of the drawing-room looking out on the garden. Nothing prevents us from planning another at the end of the billiard-room, with a divan where the gentlemen might smoke, and a third at the end of the dining-room, which would allow the dishes to be passed in through a turn from the serving-room, and afford room for the sideboard and carving tables.

“We shall find these projections useful on the first floor.

“But we ought to have a way out from the drawing-room or the billiard-room into the garden. I must confess that I am not very fond of those flights of steps, which are scorching under a hot sun and very disagreeable in wind and rain; if, then, in the angle formed by the billiard-room with the drawing-room, and along it, we were to place a conservatory inclosing a flight of steps, I think it would be a convenient arrangement. Thus we could pass from the drawing-room or the billiard-room into this conservatory, and could take coffee there in wet weather, and have a covered approach to the garden. Some flowers and shrubs placed along the glazed side would enliven the billiard-room without darkening it. But in front of the entrance-hall we will have a flight of steps in the usual style, which we shall take care to put under shelter, the position of the staircase allowing us to do so without difficulty.

“Let us draw out all this as nearly as we can; we shall have to revise it when we have studied the first floor, whose arrangements may oblige us to modify some of those on the ground floor (Fig. [1]).

“As the walls must rise from the bottom, you will put a piece of tracing paper over this ground-plan to avoid loss of time. You will thus have beneath your eyes and pencil the walls to which you must accommodate the superstructure, and we shall presently see whether there is reason to modify some parts of this ground-plan.