The Coconino weekly sun., 1894-02-08


 sleep in none other place but in the
 hall?" In modern times things were
 exactly reversed, and the hall was re.
 duced to comparative insigni1cance, as
 something hardly better than pass 1 ageway to the dining-room, drawing
 room and other familiar chambers.
 This cycle began to show signs of end ing not many years back, and the hall
 once more plays a leading part in social life. It's return to it's original purpose
 of a sitting-room has brought back many delightful features of domestic architecture. The great fireplace, with andirons and blazing logs, is one of
 them. A fireplace of this sort needs
 plenty of unincumbered space about it,
 so that the members of the home circle
 can move their chairs near to the flames or away from them as the heat rises or falls under the fluctuations of the winter wind. In a country house
 of ordinary dimensions no other cham
 Der can give quite so much space to the
 chairs as the hall can. Then there is
 the window-seat, which, with pretty cushions and q leaded glass window
 just above the level of ones shoulders,
 is in summer or winter as comfortable
 lounging place as it is artistic.
 But there is no feature of the most
 modern country hall which is more in-
 teresting than the staircase, or, more
 particularly, the first steps of the stair case. The special treatment of this detail in small houses is in fact pecul-
 jar to recent architecture. Until a
 very late day architects rarely took as much pains as they do now to start their stairway with some touch of dec- orative originality that would intro duce an artistic and useful factor into their scheme for the hall. A broad platform raised one or two steps above the floor, and with a window seat, lends charming picturesqueness to the effect of an evening gathering when a group of young people is formed about it. At other times it is the best of all places for a stately rub. Der plant or vase of hydrangeas. In some houses the designers have spent themselves in building screen of del- icate spindles around the stairs, plac- ing a seat against the former on the hall floor, and this screen, of course, has counted in the decoration of the hall. The newel post has gone through all sorts of transformation. In one house it remains the strictly indc- pendent member which our colonial grandfathers made it, and is attrac- tive simply as marvel of scroll work and of tops" which look like Ossa piled upon Pclion. In another it serves as pedestal for either lamp or flower jar, and in this last guise it has been possibly most often strug- gled with by the ambitious deco rator, who has given it all manner of shapes. In the sketch which accompa- nies this, picture of an English in- tertor, there is seen the natural out come of the evolutionary process through which the hall newel post has passed. It has been developed-out of existence. In it's place, on the wide platform provided by the first or sec ond step, there stands a porcelain flower vase. It will not be long before other objects are substituted for this and statues arc put in position at the of the stairs. This may look like a return to the permanent newel post, but it will really have the of leaving the staircase clear at this point if for any special occasion the hostess wishes to remove her work of art. The flower jar is perhaps best adapted to the corner. It gives just the required emphasis and it is free from the aggressiveness and occasional inconvenience which be- longs to the newel post that is immova- ble.-N. Y. Tribune.