One of the interesting things when examining houses is the floorplan and what it reveals about the intended use of the house.  Usually, large houses of the nineteenth century tends towards circular traffic patterns, often with multiple circles, or semi-circles, orientated around a central focus.  This central focus is usually an entry-hall with a grand staircase.  The houses may have large amounts of outdoor access/windows but you can usually see no more than one view at a time, and people can avoid each other in the house due to the multiple circular patterns. 

Two examples more than a century apart illustrate the lasting attraction of this circular, inwards looking plan.  Gore Place in Waltham, MA was built in the late 1700’s.  An entry way has three interior options: directly ahead into the dining room, turning left past the main stairs, through a library, and into the dining room; turning right through a parlor, past the entry to the servants’ wing, and into the dining room.  Hillstead in Farmington, CT built c.1900 has a similar pattern: the large entry containing the stairs leads directly to the dining room, swing left in front of the stairs and you can make a circuit through the libraries before popping back out under the stairs in the hall again just before the dining room’s hall entrance; swing right and you make a circuit through the main drawing room and parlor before entering the dining room.

In both cases there is only one ‘public’ stairs to the second floor (Gore has another due to an addition), but other stairs from the servants’ quarters also exist.  Traffic must cross through the central hall, but the two wings of the house are utterly separate, as is the dining room/hall concept.

Which leads us to Esperanza…Circles don’t work.  Unless you are using the porches as exterior rooms, at which point you can make rings.  In fact, this was almost certainly part of the plan.  The house functions extremely well if the east porch and all four of its doors are used, even more function is gained when the four west door are used as well.  This is because the ground floor is essentially one giant hallway, only one interior circle is possible and this involves only one room. (leaving aside the butler’s pantry).  There are three ‘public’ staircases, so vertical circles are possible; a fourth staircase is something of an anomaly for the house: it runs from the kitchen (private) to what was a library (public).  In all but two rooms you can see through the house, and for most of the length you can see 270 degrees, with views to the east, west and north (actually in one spot you can also see south).

This creates a house that has no strong tendency towards division, unless you use the stairs (or outside) you cannot avoid people.  It also creates a house which lacks a central gathering spot.  There is no entry way, each room has its own access to the exterior.  The downside of all this is perennial confusion for the deliveryman, but also that the house can handle two wildly different group sizes depending on whether or not the porches are in use.  Fifty people is nothing in the summer; fifteen is crowded in the winter, not because there isn’t space (there is ample to lose fifteen or fifty) but because if a cluster forms getting out of or through a room becomes difficult.