“By 1870...the yard was expected to be large and private and designed for both active and passive recreation...The new ideal was no longer to be part of a close community, but to have a self-contained unit, a private wonderland walled off from the rest of the world.” (58)

(Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.)