A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder

No good work what ever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

Charlie told me a little about the house in the picture, evidently a favorite. It was in a campground on Cape Cod called Nonquit, a summer community his grandparents had been members of, where Charlie had spent time as a child. He spoke affectionately of the place, and especially of the strong, eccentric architecture there, which he still sometimes returned to admire and, occisionally, borrow from. Every house was different, Charlie said, idiosyncratic but without straining to be. They'

Charlie told me a little about the house in the picture, evidently a favorite. It was in a campground on Cape Cod called Nonquit, a summer community his grandparents had been members of, where Charlie had spent time as a child. He spoke affectionately of the place, and especially of the strong, eccentric architecture there, which he still sometimes returned to admire and, occisionally, borrow from. Every house was different, Charlie said, idiosyncratic but without straining to be. They'd been built at the turn of the century by Beaux Arts-trained architects working in vernacular American idioms—stick, shingle style, bungalow. What he admired most about these buildings was their simultaneous inventiveness and unpretentiousness, qualities not easily combined.

"The houses have a certain propriety I’ve always associated with my grand-parents." These were the Quakers on his mother’s side. "They’re very sophisticated buildings—a dozen different ideas in each—yet they’d much rather be thought of as plain than risk seeming the least bit affected. But there are layers upon layers here if you look. You’re welcome to uncover as much, or as little, as you want." Charlie seemed to prize this notion of propriety in people and buildings equally.