The Rabbitt house is quite different.....Consciously or not, its designer [Joy Wheeler Dow] has been strongly influenced by the German Renaissance half-timber work, but has succeeded in eliminating the crudity and vulgarity often found in that period.
The bay-windows on the second story are clever beyond the ordinary, and the arrangement of the first-story openings below them, while unsymmetrical, has the quality of balance which is needed to make a perfect design.
The broad cornice returning across the gable-ends is unconventional and daring, and the use of leaders to form brackets is excellent. Worth noting is the trim of the four grouped windows on the first story at the left with the Jacobean type of pilasters and the breaking of all the moldings around the heads of the pilasters. This same type of pilaster was employed both in Germany and in England during the seventeenth century.........
Photograph and text (unless otherwise noted) from Aymar Embury II, One Hundred Country Houses: Modern American Examples, The Century Company, New York, 1909, pp. 142-143, 145.. Digital editing by Sarah E. Mitchell.
Web Edition Copyright © 2003 Sarah E. Mitchell