edingly delapidated condition.
The accompanying photograph, however, depicts enough of its former state
to indicate that in its day it was among the best brick country
residences of the vicinity.

CHAPTER III

CITY RESIDENCES OF BRICK

As the city of Philadelphia grew and became more densely populated, land
values increased greatly, and the custom developed of building brick
residences in blocks fronting directly on the street, the party walls
being located on the side property lines. Like the country houses
already described, these were laid up in Flemish bond with alternating
red stretcher and black header bricks, and thus an entire block
presented a straight, continuous wall, broken only by a remarkably
regular scheme of doorways and fenestration, and varied only by slight
differences in the detail of doors and windows, lintels, cornices and
dormers. These plain two-or three-story brick dwellings in long rows, in
street after street, with white marble steps and trimmings, green or
white shutters, each intended for one family, have been perpetuated
through the intervening years, and now as then form the dominant feature
of the domestic architecture of the city proper.

For the most part these were single-front houses, that is to say, the
doorway was located to the right or left with two windows at one side,
while on the stories above windows ranged with the doorway, making three
windows across each story. There were exceptions, however, the so-called
Morris house at Number 225 South Eighth Street being a notable example
of a characteristic double-front house of the locality and period. They
were gable-roof structures with high chimneys in the party walls,
foreshortened, third-story windows and from one to three dormers
piercing the roof.

At the end of the block the wall was often carried up above the ridge
between a pair of chimneys and terminated in a horizontal line,
imparting greater stability to the chimney construction and lending an
air of distinction to the whole house, which was further enhanced by
locating the entrance directly beneath in the end wall rather than in
the side of the building. The famous old Wistar house at the southeast
corner of Fourth and Locust streets is a case in point.

Pedimental dormers were the rule, sometimes with round-headed windows.
Elaborate molded wood cornices were a feature, often with prominent,
even hand-tooled modillions. Slightly projecting belts of brick c