Over the years the genteel houses have been the backdrop in films, among them "Reversal of Fortune" and "Sophie's Choice."

In Wright's History of Essex published in 1835, Loughton is described as 'distinguished by its numerous genteel houses and beautiful and picturesque scenery'.

Laugharne is a picturesque blend of genteel georgian houses and tiny cottages.

Having given thousands of castaway dolls refuge in her genteel house in Harlem, Lenon Holder Hoyte may have developed a sixth sense about them.

That genteel little house looked exactly like its neighbors in the row: tall, narrow houses, made of pale brown stone with gabled, slate-covered roofs, with passages between them too small for most muscular men to squeeze through.

Amaranth, thirty-nine rising forty, darkly blonde and almost beautiful, stood posed before the glass in her room at 'Mon Repos', a genteel boarding house in Gardner Street, Brighton.

It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly.

He was approaching Clairmont Square, at the summit of the hill, where tall houses, once genteel, then decaying, now undergoing gentrification, faced over tall trees to the bustle of traffic on Pentonville Road.

The conversation is quieter on Long Island, where David Hannaford Mitchell transformed a huge white clapboard farmhouse in Remsenburg into a rambling but vastly more genteel house.