The sets of plans and specifications sold by the
thousands. It was not long before the magazine was able to present
small-house plans by the foremost architects of the country, whose
services the average householder could otherwise never have dreamed of
securing.
Bok not only saw an opportunity to better the exterior of the small
houses, but he determined that each plan published should provide for
two essentials; every servant's room should have two windows to insure
cross-ventilation, and contain twice the number of cubic feet usually
given to such rooms; and in place of the American parlor, which he
considered a useless room, should be substituted either a living-room
or a library. He did not point to these improvements, every plan
simply presented the larger servant's room and did not present a
parlor. It is a singular fact that of the tens of thousands of plans
sold, not a purchaser ever noticed the absence of a parlor except one
woman in Brookline, Mass., who, in erecting a group of twenty-five
"_Journal_ houses," discovered after she had built ten that not one
contained a parlor!
For nearly twenty-five years Bok continued to publish pictures of
houses and plans.
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