Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
There, on a plateau commanding an amazing view, and in the midst of a superb park, we found the rural retreat of the family; but, to our surprise, not a castle, not a villa, not like any other building for a similar purpose in Italy or anywhere else in the world, but a Parisian town house, recently erected in the style of the Valois period, with Mansard roof.
Apperthwaite had caught the Mansard fever of the late 'Seventies, and the building-disease, once fastened upon him, had never known a convalescence, but, rather, a series of relapses, the tokens of which, in the nature of a cupola and a couple of frame turrets, were terrifyingly apparent. Mrs. Apperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of Scott or Bulwer.
We went to the cornucopia, put our ear to the toddy stick and said, "What ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand tremble? Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy." Then there came over the wire and into our mansard by a side window the following touching remarks: "Matter enough. I have been ringing here till I have blistered my hands.
Used exclusively, it amounts to voluntarily incurring the disadvantage of a tropical climate. Let the walls of the second story be upright. The recent fashion of a mansard or "French roof" is only making part of the wall of the house look like roof, at equal expense, at the sacrifice of space inside, and above all, of tightness.
This lower door, which was wholly without the external charm usually seen even in the humblest dwellings in Touraine, was covered by a mansard story, reached by a stairway built on the outside of the house against the gable end and protected by a shed-roof.
Its brick walls are surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises a bell-turret; a pillared portico, where Dickens sat with his family on summer evenings, shades the front entrance; wide bay-windows project upon either side; flowers and vines clamber upon the walls, and a delightfully home-like air pervades the place.
Among the prominent objects which lift themselves above the tree tops are the belfries of the various churches, the white façade of the custom house, and the mansard and chimneys of the Rockingham, the principal hotel. The pilgrim will be surprised to find in Portsmouth one of the most completely appointed hotels in the United States.
The modern pattern has a convex angle in the roof, and dormer-windows; it is a rustic adaptation of the Mansard. The antique pattern, which is far more picturesque, has a concave curve in the roof, and the eaves project like eyebrows, shading the flatness of the face. Paint is a rarity. The prevailing colour is the soft gray of weather-beaten wood.
It had been bought by the Diocese in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to darken the front door, made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically curved.
They steal the architecture of the Moors and call it Mexican. They borrow Roman and Grecian effects for great public buildings. At one time they went mad over the French roof, or mansard. Nowhere have I seen purely American architecture. The race is not possessed of sufficient unity. So all their art is from abroad, and notably is French and English.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking