This design is calculated to embrace convenient accommodations for a large family, combined with some elegance, without any great outlay for a high style of finish. The building is plain, with but few additions simply for ornament, and is allied to the Italian in style of architecture. The object is to give some beauty and elegance of appearance, from the general shape or form of the building, rather than by elaborate carvings, bead-work, and other "hard-finish," which are a constant expense by requiring frequent repairs, as well as the great cost incurred in their construction from the high price of labor.

The approach is by the carriage way, which leads to the porch, from which opens the hall. The diagrams of the first and second floors will mostly explain the interior arrangement. Folding doors connect the parlors, which are octagonal rooms, each twenty feet from side to side. One of them contains a large bay-window, and from the other opens the veranda, by the triple window. The library occupies the lower part of the tower.

The chamber floor furnishes ten capacious apartments, with ample closet room. The stairway leading to the observatory opens from the passage. There would be another small room in the tower, immediately under the observatory, but above the second story.

The entrance to the observatory is through a horizontal door in the floor, which being balanced with weights, is opened with perfect ease by a cord in the stairway. When closed it forms part of the floor, and thus leaves the room unincumbered with a stairway.

This design could be varied to suit the wants of a family who wished a smaller and less expensive house, by leaving off the back addition, and substituting the kitchen in place of the bedroom. The library, in that case, could be taken for a bedroom.

It is difficult to give an estimate of the cost of constructing a house, in different parts of the country, and on different sites. The cost of this would probably be from four to five thousand dollars, according to various circumstances.