[Illustration: THE FORECOURT AND ENTRANCE OF THE FIFTY-FIFTH STREET
HOUSE]
In this hall there is a charming desk particularly adapted to its
place. It is a standing desk which can be lowered or heightened at will,
so that one who wishes to scribble a line or so may use it without
sitting down. This desk is called a _bureau d'architect_. I found it in
Biarritz. It would be quite easy to have one made by a good
cabinet-maker, for the lines and method of construction are simple. My
hall desk is so placed that it is lighted by the window by day and the
wall lights by night, but it might be lighted by two tall candlesticks
if a wall light were not available. There is a shallow drawer which
contains surplus writing materials, but the only things permitted on the
writing surface of the desk are the tray for cards, the pad and pencils.
The only other furniture in the hall is an old porter's chair near the
door, a chair that suggests the sedan of old France, but serves its
purpose admirably.
A glass door leads to the inner hall and the stairway, which I consider
the best thing in the house. Instead of the usual steep and gloomy
stairs with which we are all familiar, here is a graceful spiral
stairway which runs from this floor to the roof. The stair hall has two
walls made up of mirrors in the French fashion, that is, cut in squares
and held in place by small rosettes of gilt, and these mirrored walls
seemingly double the spaciousness of what would be, under ordinary
conditions, a gloomy inside hallway.
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