1938

Corinth, 2 August 1938.

Dear George,

Your letter of July 26 reached me here today, having been forwarded from Athens to Nemea (which always takes at least two days) and from Nemea here. There came also the same roundabout way a letter from Sir Panayotis, who says concerning extension of the Chrysostomides lease "In any case you should not worry at all about this matter whatever the course it will take might be. If Messrs.Chrysostomides wish to force our hands unreasonably they will suffer rather than ourselves. The Director of Antiquities spoke to me on the above subject on his return to Cyprus and it appears that he has taken a very great interest in the matter"

As to the plan of the house, I agree that the dining room is likely in practice to be the central room upstairs rather than that downstairs, and that service to it would be easier from a kitchen opening on the verandah than from one in the position I have suggested, though the difference is not great and to Savvi, accustomed to carry food half a block, would seem nothing at all. If you keep the kitchen on the south side of the house, I should rather see it at the SW corner rather than at the SE, with the stairway remaining where it is. Then the occupants of the rooms upstairs and workers in the east apotheke could go to the bathroom and the WC without passing the kitchen door. The kitchen would be better lighted there, particularly in the forenoon when cooks do most of their work; and the noise of the kitchen would affect the room above it considerably less with a broad solid balcony floor rather than an open staircase, between them.

But I think it still better to put the kitchen at the NW or NE (the latter rather better because the north gate can be seen from it) with only one outside door and that on neither facade. Of course there would have to be a bell-push or two (in the middle room upstairs, say, and somewhere in the lower verandah, at least) so that the boy could be summoned from the kitchen without having to be sent for or called for..

It is quite true that to have a bathroom entered from a verandah through a double door seems queer; but that would not affect the facade at all. The glazed doors would have curtains (as the western of the verandah doors would, too, at least when used as a bedroom) and only one leaf would be opened. I should, however, recommend making the room as large as practicable, for the benefit of a possible purchaser, later, who might not care to have a bathroom; and to make it useful, also, in the meantime if you happen to delay equipping it as a bathroom. Mentioning a purchaser of the future reminds me that he would be very likely to prefer to have the WC entered from under the stairs rather than from within the house, so that it might be as nearly as possible equally accessible to the occupants of both floors.

I omitted to say in my letter of two weeks ago, I think, that I believe the north window of the central room upstairs needs to be a large one, as it can be of course without injuring the facade, since it would come over the large north door of the ground floor. A small window at the north and the glazed door at the south would, I am sure,not give the room light enough. The other rooms of the same size have two more windows.