Fall has finally arrived in the greater Washington, D.C., area, and as the rooms get chillier there is a pressing need to have the fireplace and heating system checked out in the new house. Fireplace is done as of this week, heating still to come.

As I sit and enjoy the burning logs tonight, read a little about the benefits of a fireplace from a A Home of Your Own, written about the time that my house was built. I imagine the builders were thinking of my future enjoyment when deciding its location in my living room ~ with bookshelves on both sides, and small high windows. Ah, simple pleasures in life.

1925: The Fireplace

The living-room must have a fireplace, because a living-room without a fireplace is like a face without eyes ~ nothing to light it up, to give it expression.

Whether the fireplace shall be at the side of the room or at the end is purely a matter of choice and of convenience to your other plans. . . .

There are advantages to be considered in placing the fireplace at either the side or at the end of the room. At the side it greets you pleasantly as you enter. Also, if you should want to open the chimney on the porch or sun-parlor side of the wall and have a fireplace there, you can do so. On the other hand, bookcases seem so completely to finish the architecture of the fireplace that it is a pity not to have them, and you can't have them and have doors opening on to your sun-parlor too. And I certainly should have the sun-parlor off the living-room. So there you are.

If the fireplace is at the end of the room you can have bookcases at either side with small high windows above them, and you can also have your doors on to the sun-parlor so that the two rooms open together giving still more effect of space.

Source: Della Thompson Lutes. A Home of Your Own. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1925.
~ pp. 197-98 ~

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