Not very long ago two enterprising architects in a Western State succeeded in inventing a characteristic style of architecture of some merit. I do not know its name. I am not sure that it has any. But as it is likely to be somewhat in vogue for several years to come, I may as well print herewith a simple recipe for combining its essential elements: Recipe: First, you must endeavor to find some valuable fragment of ancient Greece or Rome, preferably a pedestal for a statue, base of a column, or even the shaft itself and capital, which should not be too attenuated, however, and is to be translated, if necessary, from a cylindrical form into a rectangular one. Now, here is the scheme: Punch your elevations full of rectangular holes in seemly rows, divide them into latitudinal sections by several belt courses of East Indian flat-carving, and bore a semi-circular opening or a series of them (they may be semi-ellipses if preferred) upon the ground line or the projected edifice to afford a mode of ingress and egress corresponding, proportionately, to the same convenience designed for bees in a bee-hive. Next, pour in Alice in Wonderland’s “Drink me” elixir to make it grow, and await results of the magic drug. This is the critical moment. All must work harmoniously, and, having reached the height limit imposed by the elevator manufacturer, perhaps, quickly cap the building with some red, corrugated tiles, if you choose, in the form of a Moresque roof, ornament with lantern and flagstaff, and, behold!—the charm operates!—the great American “sky-scraper” of a commercial city has been achieved. It is not within the province of this review to enter into a discussion of the problem of housing commercialism. It is odd that nobody hints how posterity is going to laugh at us, censure our cupidity, and eventually raze every one of our hideous “sky-scrapers” that shall be left standing. It is odd that the present congestion of Manhattan as a crime against decency, “Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger! Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must.” AMERICAN RENAISSANCE.
THE NEWLY INVENTED ARCHITECTURE.
[Image unavailable.] EASTOVER TERRACE AND PERISTYLE. For convenient reference of the reader a sample of this newly-invented architecture is respectfully submitted (Plate VIII), and a very clever sample it is. The inventors of the style themselves could have done no better; only the irresistible melancholy in the rhyming of Poe’s poem is not easily put out of the head, especially when, as in this case, it happens to be extremely appropriate. So let us continue: “And we passed to the end of a vista, But were stopped by the door of a tomb— By the door of a legended tomb.” Certainly it is unfamiliar environment from which one’s mind naturally reverts to his childhood (you must have had a childhood)—reverts to the wondrous houses we visited in the impressionable days of long ago. Ah, they were a very different kind of houses, were they not?—houses with significance, houses with personality, if building material may ever be said to incorporate that. They had a history to tell. They had legends, too. As we think of them they seem to have been literally covered with legends, some of them No, no, the vagaries of geometrical invention will never supplant those first loves! For you, then, when your lamp is lighted—I hope it is not the dazzling, 16-candle-power electric bulb of commercialism, made still further terrifying by a gorgeous glass globe—for you I have a treat in store to soothe the nerves the newly-invented architecture has indescribably rasped. It is a “sure enough” old-fashioned house. To borrow the style of Ik Marvel in his “Reveries of a Bachelor,” I can see how you will carefully put this book where you will not miss it to show your architect in the morning. You will remember the number of the page that you do not waste the time of a busy professional man in finding the place; and this is about what you will say to him: “I do not know how good the architecture is, that EASTOVER. The Garden Front. A modern development of Annapolitan architecture under the Colonial rÉgime in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Time of George II. the old house on Benefit Street in Providence represents (Plate VII); but I do know it has just the atmosphere that reaches the inner man, and that is the atmosphere I want.” But not every architect is able to give you this atmosphere (Plate X). None of the architectural schools teach it, and commercialism in some form usually doles out the architect’s bread and butter, so that he is accustomed in his work to reduce your proposition to a cold calculation of so much house for so much money. He is made to smile grimly (with Mr. R. H. Davis’s kind permission) over what he considers your sentimental impracticality, then says: “We build houses by the cubic foot, you know.” And after the size, position, number of rooms, etc., are determined, then, whatsoever art may be applied just as well as not without materially adding to the cost is made to serve as the meek handmaid of commercialism; and I must say of this applied art as we see it every day, exemplified in America, it certainly looks the part. All through the Berkshires, wherever a commanding eminence rises in the midst of natural loveliness, the The despoiler of beautiful landmarks, however, is [Image unavailable.] MONEY WILL NOT BUY THE COTTON SMITH HOUSE. rarely idle. He knocks first at one door, and then at the next. New houses or old, it makes no difference so long as the design be good, and worth spoiling. The Cotton Smith mansion is one bright particular exception that goes to prove the rule, for, ordinarily, commercialism suffers no rebuke, and especially is this true of New York City. Here, whatever commercialism wants it takes without more ado. A “sky-scraper” would pay the owners of the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street much better than the admirable and famous twin mansions (Plate XI), that until lately occupied the site, so this good architecture was promptly sacrificed to an object which is sordid and mean. But into what absurdities will the all-worshipful rate per cent. theory, which is conducive of such splendid quantity and such meagre quality, not eventually lead us? Already, we have a “flat-iron building” which I have seen measured by art standards in a contemporary review. I mean to say that such a thing was, in all good faith, attempted. We find the opinion expressed that the “flat-iron building” was a necessity, and as a necessity we should endeavor to make art harmonize To the contrary, art is itself a very jealous god, and does not permit the serving of two masters, at least, two such antithetical masters as itself and commercialism. Art demands that there shall be, first, a sinking fund absolutely within its own control, irrevocable, and forever charged off the commercial ledger. Commercialism has no adequate sum of money that is available for the purpose. Because we define art as dexterity and as cunning, we have been determined to make it fit the exigencies of commercialism; but we [Image unavailable.] CHIMNEY-PIECE, AMERICAN RENAISSANCE, MODERN. Designed by T. Henry Randall, Architect. [Image unavailable.] EFFLORESCENCE OF COMMERCIALISM. have not succeeded. It is, indeed, a grand misfit, because we do not define art rightly. Yet people appear not to want to divine the true definition, no doubt on account of a well-founded premonition that it is going to be an unequivocal rebuke to the selfishness that exacts a certain rate per cent. of return out of everything. Commercialism may defer, but cannot defeat, the enevitable. Art means charity. Now if it were only that kind of charity which the lexicon of commercialism defines as the giving of tithes of whatever a man possesses to the poor, we could still manage as did a certain rich young man we have read about in the lesson. And like him, not being entirely satisfied in our consciences nor with results, we could demand, as did he, what we yet lack, what latent phase of cunning we have overlooked? And it will then become our turn to be the exceeding sorrowful party, for there is no cunning about it. What this generation yet lacks—we have quite everything else—is a sufficiency of the vast, comprehensive form of charity that was intended to be the end and object of every life. That is the synonym of art. |