Small Cottage Design & Home Plan

¶ Simple, straightforward, and plain almost to a fault, this little cottage home plan is the embodiment of the domestic accommodations usually required by the family of a mechanic in the neighborhood or suburbs of a town or inland city. Almost any mechanic, with a few years constant industry and perseverance, can call such a cottage home his own. The same may be said of the diligent salesman or book-keeper. And when we call to mind, as the result of past observation, how many of each class are struggling under worse circumstances than the ownership of such a cottage would imply, we hope that none will think for a moment that we have marked the grade of their requirements too low, or dishonored them as a class by the appellation bestowed on the plain yet somewhat dignified house represented by this cottage design.

Small Two Story Cottage

¶ The humblest mechanic and the low-salaried clerk alike possess that innate pride, or more properly ambition, that poverty or misfortune cannot quench, nor anything but death destroy. Naturally aspiring and hopeful, they toil with high aims, and, if successful, the very experiences of their upward ascent fit them for the station which they reach; if unsuccessful, they only yield up their hopeful ambition with their latest breath. While they are proud to be American citizens, and enjoy the highest privileges that the world affords, a lively sense of the onward and upward tendency of the human race, tempered by a high regard for the rights of their fellow-beings, is a spur to their endeavors, and, as a consequence, they are found occupying a high rank in the scale of social existence, and it not unfrequently that the highest marks of preferment known in a democratic community are conferred on men who have started in life with a heavy odds against them.

¶ No better evidence than this can be adduced to prove the vital goodness of our institutions. An American rather glories than regrets that one of his distinguished countrymen dwelt in a log cabin, that another was a shoemaker, and another a printer. We have no "born great"; all that would be truly great have, happily, a chance to be so without reference to the accident of birth or inheritance.

Cottage Floor Plan

¶ A neat veranda E, picture 65, of trellis work, gives the necessary shelter to the front entrance; this opens into a vestibule which communicates in turn with the parlor A and the living room B, and also with a flight of plain, close stairs. The dimensions of the parlor and living room are respectively 14 by 18 feet; to the latter is appended a good closet D. Another closet F is opened from the front vestibule. The parlor and living room are connected beyond the stairs by a passage which gives access to the rear veranda E. The kitchen C is 12 by 15 feet. On the second floor, picture 66, H denotes the bedrooms, all provided with closets.

¶ This house is intended to be built of wood on stone foundations.

Cottage Plans

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