Property of Mrs. Monte F. Brown and son Mr. Monte E. Brown | architects: Tucker & Shields

11/09/2025 01:28:00 PM

The first thing you discover about Mrs. Monte Brown's house is that her son's cabin cruiser is moored right in the front yard (in this instance, Lake Washington). It must be a big, summer estate, you think, and probably far removed from any semblance of the workaday world. Then you learn that this is a small but self-sufficient year-round house. It has only six rooms and 55 feet of waterfront, and is just a 10-minute drive from Seattle's business district where Mr. Brown works in the family publishing business. It runs without maid or gardener, and gives its owners the agreeable feeling of being on a year-round holiday.

To the Brown family (which consists of Mr. Brown, his mother, and his mother's aunt), this vacation feeling means boating and swim- ming. Therefore, all of the major rooms open onto the terrace facing the lake where the boat is moored, the living room points into the lake like the prow of a ship, and each of the three bedrooms has direct access to the beach.

Both house and grounds are easy to keep up. The luxuriant planting looks as if it had the constant attention of green-thumb gardeners. Actually, it is an object lesson for those who like the maximum effect achieved by minimum labor under the hot sun. Instead of grass to cut each week, there are hardy plants and flowering trees; and there is an automatic sprinkler sys- tem turned on and off by electric clock, so the garden is watered regularly when the Browns are away on a cruise. Day-by-day housework is cut to a minimum by an exceptionally good one-floor plan (swimmers go direct to their rooms, don't track sand throughout the house), and over-the-years' maintenance is cut by a wise choice of materials.