HOUSE OF MRS. RICHMOND-DOW, WARREN, R. I.
View from the Close.
HOUSE ON HIGH STREET, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.
THE BENNETT HOUSE, COUNTY ST., NEW BEDFORD, MASS.
as that of the de Zeng house on High Street in Middletown ([see Plate LIII]), don’t try to make it Colonial as I have seen a tendency among ill-advised people to do of late. Let me say to you that you have something already so much ahead of average modern Colonial—“as she is spoke”—that it would be a sin against the decalogue of art to alter or, indeed, do other with it than religiously to guard. Just keep your Transitional exemplar in the same admirable state of repair in which you see the de Zeng house at Middletown—and enjoy it. You will thereby have fulfilled your duty to art and to the future generations who will rise up and call you blessed.
The foregoing paragraph applies equally to the Roberts mansion at the northeast corner of Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia ([Plate LIII]). For the sake of goodness, don’t try to colonialize it! There are several houses in Philadelphia that resemble the Roberts house—the Dundas-Lippincott house and the Willstack house being two of them, but I think neither so admirable.