The winning entry.

With the Sept. 16 deadline for the Best in American Living Awards (BALA) fast approaching, the results of a similar competition more than 100 years ago open a window on housing and life in the early 20th century.

In 1909 “The Delineator,” a popular women’s magazine, held an invitational competition to design a $3,000 country or suburban house. Ten well-known architects from different parts of the country were asked to compete. Among the conditions and criteria:

• The house would be sited on a level 80- by 150-foot lot (12,000 square feet).
• The house would have a 40-foot setback and be positioned with an equal space on either side.
• The house would have “sufficient rooms to accommodate a man, his wife, two children and a servant.”
• The house would have one bathroom, and the body of the house would contain 25,000 to 28,000 cubic feet. Assuming nine-foot ceilings, that is roughly 2,778 to 3,111 square feet.
• The total cost of construction would be $3,000.

The first prize went to architect Frank Choteau Brown of Boston, whose design was praised for its smaller area and the “compact planning of the first floor in the clever arrangement of entrance hall and strairways.”

Entered through a center reception hall that was modest by the era’s standards, the first floor included a large living room with a bay window, a large kitchen, a dining room with a bay window and a small sunroom bridging the space between the living and dining rooms.

A large double-sided fireplace was situated between the living room and the dining room, where an adjacent inglenook provided an inviting fireside retreat.

All of the bedrooms and the house’s lone bathroom were located on the second floor, which was accessed by a stairway in a bump-out on the front wall of the house.

The design was required to accommodate a servant, but separating the family from the servant appears to have been an important consideration. According to the description of the house, “the staircase hall gives a passage which allows the servant to attend at the front door unobserved and to pass up-stairs without coming into the living and family portions of the house.

“There is but one staircase to the second floor, used both by the servant and the family,” the description continues. “But by a simple and unique treatment, the servant’s room on the second story is perfectly isolated, inasmuch as she must enter her room direct from the stair landing.”

And unlike the family bedrooms which look out on the attractively landscaped front and rear lawns, “the windows in the servant’s room also look out only on the service yard.”

Following is the cost breakdown for constructing the winning design:

Architect George W. Maher of Chicago, considered one of the pioneers of the Prairie style of architecture, claimed the second prize with a design that was praised for its “simplicity and dignity of plan and exterior.”

Although the judges thought that it lacked “the clever and compact planning” of the winning design, they noted that “it has the great charm of vista on its first floor plan and places its principal rooms and piazza on the street, and not towards it neighbors.”

The third prize was awarded to architect Claude Fayette Bragdon of Rochester, N.Y. The judges said his design was “notably compact” and they were impressed with its potential to be constructed within the $3,000 limit.

“Its exterior will perhaps not appeal to a client who wishes to build as interesting a house as is possible for the money,” the judges commented. “The design, however, shows great study and care in all its details, and in spite of its rather humble exterior is most admirable in its simplicity.”

A well-known and successful architect, Bragdon had many interests and was also a successful stage designer.

“The Delineator’s Prize $3,000 Houses” is available online in several formats, including an online book reader, at Archive.org, the web site of the Internet Archive. The non-profit Internet Archive was founded to build an Internet library offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.

There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the publication.

Sept. 16 is the deadline for the Best in American Living Awards (BALA), which spotlight the most creative and innovative builders, designers, developers, land planners and interior designers in the nation.

For more information, go to www.nahb.org/bala.