The sets of plans and specifications sold by the thousands.

It was not long before the magazine was able to present small-house plans by the foremost architects of the country, whose services the average householder could otherwise never have dreamed of securing.
Bok not only saw an opportunity to better the exterior of the small houses, but he determined that each plan published should provide for two essentials; every servant's room should have two windows to insure cross-ventilation, and contain twice the number of cubic feet usually given to such rooms; and in place of the American parlor, which he considered a useless room, should be substituted either a living-room or a library.

He did not point to these improvements, every plan simply presented the larger servant's room and did not present a parlor.

It is a singular fact that of the tens of thousands of plans sold, not a purchaser ever noticed the absence of a parlor except one woman in Brookline, Mass., who, in erecting a group of twenty-five "_Journal_ houses," discovered after she had built ten that not one contained a parlor! For nearly twenty-five years Bok continued to publish pictures of houses and plans.

Entire colonies of "_Ladies' Home Journal_ houses" have sprung up, and building promoters have built complete suburban developments with them.