Show SHOWING CHARACTER IN HOME builder should express hie own nature and not follow reigning style in architecture the essential in the art of home building Is the ability to suit sour own taste to express your jovn nature your taste may not at all coincide with that of your neighbor but that Is not important there are as many individual expressions of tha art that Is within one as there are leaves on a tree and there la no good reason why the expression of the individual should not continue in the home itself for peoples characters charac teis do show n their homes in the architecture of the dwelling the decorations within the selection of the furniture even in alie pictures and the way they are hung to persons who are not especially observant this fact Is as plain as the fact that one can always detect the pros ence of feminine fingers in the arrangement ran gement of the balc a brae the flowers or vase on the stand or the books and magazines on the library table the thing Is so palpably human that it Is almost impossible not to recognize it it may never have occurred to you how bound down most of us are by conventions that someone else established without our knowledge or sanction and which may or may not represent our ideals and sw we follow them blindly but it Is a sorry fact that most people don t build their houses or their homes to fit their natures blather do they try to make their natures fit into the home which they pay numerous other persons to build for them they allow themselves to be made slaves of convention style or fad and their home Is no more like them no more the expression of their lives or natures than an automobile Is like a flat bottom boat they go to the near cst architect who tells them what the reigning style happens to be at mo ment as it he were planning to fit them all with the latest paris fashions in dress or headgear gin PLANNING IDEA GROWS phase of community activity once regarded as visionary has taken hold on popular interest city planning which may once have been regarded as the peculiar project of meddlesome theorists has taken a nev hold on popular interest in the united states new york city supplies one notable example of planning activity an examination of the causes underlying disastrous slumps in property values in what was formerly a congested district in the low er part of manhattan island showed that the district had been permitted to grow in haphazard fashion without any forethought of the inevitable growth of a business section farther uptown new york business men saw too late that such a condition could have been prevented and they asked tor and ob talked a planning commission interest in city planning has been awakened in indiana fort wayne Is the first city in the state to announce preparations for a planning exhibition although the chamber of commerce of indianapolis and several other cities have been considering local exhibitions as the first step in a cam palan to get a law authorizing planning commissions the material and scope of these exhibitions cin be adjusted to local needs but the purpose of all of them Is to visualize city planning as it Is proceeding in other places and tp show to the uninformed or skeptical citizen that it has an intensely practical value indianapolis star |