The architect of today, in designing small houses, is beset with many exactions and complications. The high standard of living with its embarrassing variety of materials and appliances at the architect's disposal, the certainly high cost of labor and the desire for mechanical perfection and convenience, the client who knows too much and too little, and the passing fashions of revived styles and periods, all increase the difficulty of producing houses that fulfill requirements, satisfy clients, and at the same time have order, simplicity and appropriateness to surroundings.

The designers and builders of the old Bermuda houses had relatively few of these complications to contend with. Their pursuits were for the most part agricultural and seafaring, and their manner of life and their luxuries were simple. A generally mild climate, a fertile soil, and easily worked building stone always at hand, lime readily obtained, a plentiful supply of beautiful and durable wood, and cheap labor simplified their building problem. Traditions, if any, were those of English rural architecture, and these, interpreted by shipwrights rather than housebuilders, applied to island materials and island life, have helped to give to the older buildings of Bermuda a particular interest and charm, and have developed an architecture worthy of perpetuation.

The photographs presented in this book have been taken with the idea of collecting and preserving for architects and others interested in small buildings some of the characteristic features and picturesque aspects of the older architecture of the island that are tending to disappear. Many of the older houses are being altered and modernized ruthlessly, or without thought of preserving the old Bermudian character of architecture; others are falling into decay through neglect.

Bermuda is now prosperous, not only through its resources of agriculture in supplying northern markets with winter produce, but also from the great number of tourists and the number of permanent winter residents and house owners that bids fair to increase. Many of the newer houses built in different parts of the island are of the "suburban villa" type, commonplace and smug, devoid of interest, and though not large houses, are so large in scale as to dominate and destroy the small scale of the natural surroundings or of nearby Bermudian architecture. Self conscious "Italian Renaissance," "Spanish Mission" and even "Tudor Gothic" and "Moorish" have put in appearance in some of the more pretentious, newer places.

If Bermuda's prosperity continues to increase, it is to be hoped that the designers of new houses that appear will seek their inspiration in Bermuda's own older architecture. It is eminently appropriate to the climate and other local conditions, harmonious and in scale with the surroundings. It has the unity, charm and simplicity of an architecture that is the unaffected expression and natural outcome of environment, and, from its simplicity, is entirely adaptable to the modern requirements of Bermuda. Architecture such as Italian Renaissance, Gothic and Moorish, referred to above, has no artistic excuse for existing in Bermuda.

To those who are familiar with Bermuda and the houses there, these colorless photographs may be but sorry representations of the actuality, and can only serve to stimulate memory. White, or softly tinted houses with weathered green blinds and doors, frequently buried in luxuriant foliage and blossoms of vivid hues, with glistening white roofs silhouetted against intensely blue sky, or backed against the dull green of red trunked cedars, through which may be glimpses of a turquoise sea, make a strong impression on the senses, but fail to register with the camera—even when held by a more experienced hand than that of the author.