Page 252

THE CRAFTSMAN'S BIRTHDAY PARTY
ALS IK KAN
THE CRAFTSMAN'S BIRTHDAY
PARTY: BY THE EDITOR
T has been the custom of THE CRAFiS-
    MAN for the past twelve years to cele-
    brate the day of its birth-October I,
    I9OI-with some homelike festivity.
We have usually talked a little in the maga-
zine about our hopes and plans, and when
we have branched out into any new and
broader Craftsman enterprise we have liked
it to happen at that good time of the year.
For in our birthday month we take stock of
our successes and our failures, and in strik-
ing a balance we like to feel that the year
has meant progress along some line,'-the
development of our ideal through some
practical, comfortable channel.
   Those of our friends who know the maga-
zine well, know how often we have spoken of
the Craftsman ideal,-an ideal of the kind
of life that means beauty, economy, reason,
comfort, progress.  And they know, too,
that we have never rested content to have
that ideal expressed through one channel
only. It did not satisfy me merely to
achieve the Craftsman ideal in furniture,
for as I found people needed and wanted
good strong durable furniture I felt at once
that they must also have the right kind of
houses in which to place the furniture. I
no sooner began     to  design Craftsman
houses than I realized that people, our
friends, wanted Craftsman fabrics, Crafts-
man fittings of all kinds. And now is com-
ing from all quarters of the globe a demand
for a Craftsman center in New York.
   Since we have commenced our Craftsman
 Department of Service, we have received
 many letters saying, "We want to know
 more about what you are doing. We want
 when we come to New York to be able to
 visit some place that will show us all that
 THE CRAFTSMAN stands for. We want
 really to feel that there is a Craftsman
 home center in New York, a place where
 we can rest, where we can look about,
 where we can come in contact with the
 whole outgrowth of the original Craftsman
 idea; where we can ask advice, where we
 can meet our friends, where we shall cease
 to be strangers with the Craftsman move-
 ment." So incessant has been this call that
 at last I decided to secure the kind of build-
 ing that would enable us to enlarge our
 activities along every line that our friends
 are interested in, so that when they came
 252
to New York they could visit us, study
with us, work with us and find out every
detail of Craftsman achievement so far as
they could be presented in one twelve-story
building. It sounds a large undertaking, in
New York, to fill the space of a building
running up twelve stories, extending from
an entrance on 38th St., just off of Fifth
Ave., to an entrance on 39th St., equally
near the main artery of New York-a
building so tall that it looks out over the
city, to the rivers beyond and the harbor,
and with so much space that we can not
only show our furniture and our house fit-
tings and all the accompanying beautiful
things that go with them, but that we shall
be able to install draughting rooms for
the designing of Craftsman houses, editorial
rooms for THE CRAFTSMAN Magazine, cir-
culation and advertising departments, as
well as various harmonious enterprises that
are closely allied with Craftsman achieve-
ment. Above all, literally above because it
will occupy the top stories of the building,
we shall have a Craftsman restaurant, where
we are planning to serve wholesome, de-
licious meals to our friends and patrons,
and where we shall have waiting rooms,
reading rooms, bureaus of information,
resting places for women  and children,
flower stands, every comfort and conven-
ience, in fact, that people living in New
York or visitors to New York would enjoy
finding in the midst of a day's pleasure or
work.
   We are not starting a restaurant be-
 cause we feel that we want to go into the
 restaurant business, but because we feel that
 certain ideals of cooking and furnishings
 should be expressed in connection with a
 restaurant. We want to see just how com-
 fortable, how simple, how beautiful such
 rooms can be made. We want people to he
 happy in them, to brighten their ideals of life
 through contact with them.  This restau-
 rant will be intimately associated with
 Craftsman Farms, naturally, and all the
 wholesome products people crave in a city
 will be brought in every morning from the
 Farms in our own motor trucks. The but-
 ter, milk, eggs, poultry, fruit, vegetables,
 flowers will all come direct to the restaurant
 from the wide acres of our farm at Morris
 Plains, New Jersey. We want the people
 who enjoy coming to see us to realize that
 not only will they find perfectly arranged
 rooms and well-set tables, open fireplaces,
 sunshiny windows, comfortable chairs, good