Some builders are beginning to recognize that beauty in the small home means good proportion, good design, and a certain simplicity that is the direct outgrowth of a well worked- out plan. Making a thing beautiful is not necessarily adding ornament, but rather, it is a simplifying process. The trained architect is not an inefficient, impractical man. He has long been misunderstood in this respect. He has sometimes misunderstood himself. In reality, his business is that of efficiency manager to the home builder, or to the building trade; to furnish what is needed in the most compact compass, or economical way. and doing it so that its very efficiency makes for beauty. As a rule, the simplest things are the most beautiful. It is much more difficult to get beauty into an extravagant thing than to give that quality to a simple thing. Beauty, therefore, in the small home, which means good design and good pro portion, is not to he had at merely a money cost, nor is the quality increased with the larger price. Many homes have been spoiled by too much money ill-spent. The truth of this is forced upon the attention of any discriminating person who may drive through a newly built-up section of pretentious houses.
Keith’s Magazine on Home Building- 1923
The postcard at the top of the post advertises a home built by Gabriel Amundson at the intersection of 39th and 15th in South Minneapolis.