At the beginning of the Ambersons' great period most of the houses of
the Midland town were of a pleasant architecture. They lacked style, but
also lacked pretentiousness, and whatever does not pretend at all has
style enough. They stood in commodious yards, well shaded by leftover
forest trees, elm and walnut and beech, with here and there a line of
tall sycamores where the land had been made by filling bayous from the
creek. The house of a "prominent resident," facing Military Square, or
National Avenue, or Tennessee Street, was built of brick upon a stone
foundation, or of wood upon a brick foundation. Usually it had a "front
porch" and a "back porch"; often a "side porch," too. There was a "front
hall"; there was a "side hall"; and sometimes a "back hall." From the
"front hall" opened three rooms, the "parlour," the "sitting room," and
the "library"; and the library could show warrant to its title--for some
reason these people bought books. Commonly, the family sat more in
the library than in the "sitting room," while callers, when they came
formally, were kept to the "parlour," a place of formidable polish and
discomfort. The upholstery of the library furniture was a little shabby;
but the hostile chairs and sofa of the "parlour" always looked new. For
all the wear and tear they got they should have lasted a thousand years.

Upstairs were the bedrooms; "mother-and-father's room" the largest; a
smaller room for one or two sons another for one or two daughters; each
of these rooms containing a double bed, a "washstand," a "bureau," a
wardrobe, a little table, a rocking-chair, and often a chair or two that
had been slightly damaged downstairs, but not enough to justify either
the expense of repair or decisive abandonment in the attic. And there
was always a "spare-room," for visitors (where the sewing-machine
usually was kept), and during the 'seventies there developed an
appreciation of the necessity for a bathroom. Therefore the architects
placed bathrooms in the new houses, and the older houses tore out a
cupboard or two, set up a boiler beside the kitchen stove, and sought
a new godliness, each with its own bathroom. The great American plumber
joke, that many-branched evergreen, was planted at this time.

At the rear of the house, upstairs was a bleak little chamber, called
"the girl's room," and in the stable there was another bedroom,
adjoining the hayloft, and called "the hired man's room." House and
stable