A representative architect in New York city has declared impressively, “We are no longer architects, but adapters!” To him, looking upon his own achievement and that of his contemporaries as well as the general tendency of the times in which we live, it seemed, indeed, he had framed an unimpeachable aphorism. It is a funny thing about architecture:—nearly as it concerns our every day needs, much as it is criticised about our ears, our knowledge of it, nevertheless, continues to be absurdly inexact and experimental. I am speaking now of architecture as a fine art, not as the science of an engineer. One has only to read the reviews to note how little the authors themselves know to tell us, how they go ’round and ’round the animal, with more or less entanglement, as we have read of picadors doing in a bull fight. And when they have finished can we call

to mind a single statement wherein they have committed themselves to anything definite? The whole proposition architectonic is to the average reviewer an egregious bugbear before which he is anything but sure of himself.

He hints at the mysteries of design, half advocating, half condemning, the two salient American traits—namely, originality and enterprise; for he readily sees that if he commends those traits unequivocally, he must acknowledge the architects of our Reign of Terror to have been the greatest of all American architects whose work has passed into history, as they were assuredly the most original and enfranchised. And this, of course, would never do for the Della Cruscan critic of America.

Upon the other hand, he is expected, by a species of professional jealousy which is somehow perennial, to cavil at that kind of architecture called at the present time “adaptation.” From which fault-finding the reader gathers that adaptation is but a polite synonym for cribbing and thieving from the masterpieces of antiquity. Then, while preparing his argument, numerous contradictory things suggest themselves to the reviewer that are exceedingly difficult of assimilation. If he be fair, sincere with himself, while caviling at adaptation, how can he make use of such a class of architecture as we have exemplified in every-day acquaintances like Trinity Church by Upjohn and Grace Church by Renwick, two intensely American designs, yet gauged by the standard of modern criticism, out and out adaptations of mediÆval Gothic! Again, it will not do for him to endeavor to extricate himself with credit by declaring that adaptation belongs by right only to ecclesiastic edifices, for there, before one in a moment, stands the Capitol at Washington sharply cutting a piece out of the blue sky on the horizon of Maryland, the pride of every American citizen, acknowledged to be the most successful specimen of American Renaissance of its class (legislative buildings), yet the most loyal to its Italian antecedents, making the newer State capitols with domes look tawdry in consequence, proportionately as they are less Italian and significant historically. So that altogether the case appears to be one hopelessly involved and complicated.

To cry out against adaptation is nothing new, peculiar to our day. It was ever thus from history’s early hour. Popular criticism in France during the seventeenth century was against the Louvre, Fontainebleau and Versailles as being Italian palaces without significance in France, save that of national vacuity in the creative faculty. Saint-Simon, in his memoirs of the epoch, makes out Louis XIV. and his principal architect, Hardouin-Mansart, to have been unskilful bunglers. But to us, the splendid monuments are French Renaissance without dissent, thoroughly French and historically correct because they coincide with the legitimate, historic development of that nation’s art. They have become part of the French landscape, Italian no longer, just as the now familiar town house of W. K. Vanderbilt, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street, which in 1883 (see Plate LXX) was so intensely French as to seem entirely out of its element in New York, has gradually grown to look to us what it really always was, i. e., good American Renaissance adapted from the Valois propaganda of architectural composition. In the more recent day of Ruskin it was the fashion to belittle the work of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren as work of no inspiration; and I have no doubt there were architects, once upon a time, envious of the talents of Michelangelo, who did not hesitate to say the great Italian simply copied.

In lieu of further recurrence to all that has since transpired, and is transpiring to-day with the same moral, I should say without qualification that adaptation—let us call it so until we discover a better term—is the soul of architecture, presupposing the highest kind of talent, most extended education, and artistic susceptibility.

How would it fare with an author who coined words habitually in preference to using those given in the dictionary, or who invented a syntax of his own? But, of course, nobody in his right mind would do this. The object of literature is simply to adapt the words and sentences to express our thoughts original so far as we know. In architecture we have the analogy. An architect is bound to adapt in spite of himself; and conversely, the poorest adapters are the poorest architects in whose hands the art of adaptation falls into

manifest plagiarism—plagiarism mostly of these architects’ more successful contemporaries in America. But the varying requirements of individual cases compel even those architects to adapt or else invent to meet contingencies where no precedent is available, so in practice it has come to be that nobody copies anything exactly.

Certainly, nobody copies a building of an earlier epoch that is susceptible of reincarnation to-day. I explained this point very clearly, I imagined, in an article I wrote for the House Beautiful in May, 1901, entitled “How to Make a Successful House,” which magazine holds the copyright thereof, so that I cannot use the particular reference here I should like to use. The economy of the age would not let an architect reproduce Lambton Castle, for instance (see Plate LXXI), fascinating proposition though it be, and the architect wanted to do so, and could afford the expense of making the necessary minute examination, the necessary drawings and measurements, which I can assure you would be a work onerous and tedious almost beyond endurance for the impatient temperament of an American. Centuries have elapsed, and the province of the architect now is to make the castle perform its whole process of evolution noiselessly in his brain, and come down to date so as to meet the problem of a twentieth century home without disturbing the illusion of its history, a process entailing concerted tension of heart and brain to which the conditions imposed by mere abstract architectural design are puerile.

I have selected a Tudor castle because the field is practically untouched in American Renaissance and modern architecture generally. If there be fashion in adaptation, the fashion has been for Elizabethan and Jacobean adaptations rather than Tudor; but the real reason why we have no creditable offspring of that delightful old rambler—Haddon Hall (see Plate LXXII), in America is to be found in the fact that no American architect capable of exploiting the thing has thought about it or else he has lacked the opportunity, more probably the latter. I have often contemplated that ancient and wonderful staircase on the castle terrace while thrilling romances architectural have filled my

head, though no appreciative client materialized to employ me.

Charlecote Hall (Plate LXXIII) dwells in a unique borderland of the Elizabethan style. What a gracious subject this beautiful edifice supplies for adaptation to date. Any progressive American architect should be able to do it—in fact, he should be expected to improve somewhat upon the original with all the modern science there is at his command. It is true that metal window frames and sashes are not manufactured ordinarily in this country, but it is high time they were, and their appearance in the catalogues of what they would call in England our “ironmongers” cannot be delayed for long, if indications count for anything.

The open-timbered work of Elizabethan houses in America has become very common, and I do not know that I may add any observations of importance concerning this treatment. In the House Beautiful for March, 1901, will be found an article upon the subject, mostly in reference, however, to a cottage named “Canterbury Keys,” illustration of which herein appears (Plate LXVIII). Open-timbered work is also common to France, Holland and Germany, and, notwithstanding an occasional inimical critic upon the way we construct it in America, is thoroughly good architectural development, and will continue to live in the history of the future because it has history of the past to tell—delicious reminiscences of snug old Anglo-Saxon homes. Moreover, Elizabethan architecture instances a scientific focus of the Gothic and Renaissance spirits, habitually unfriendly, where under the hand of the master these spirits are made to coalesce in love and tranquillity delightful to see.

Mr. Gotch in his “Early Renaissance of England” calls all three schools of design—Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean—uniformly Renaissance development because all were influenced by the architecture of Italy, though the Tudor style, hardly perceptibly; but the real English Renaissance, classified for the better understanding of the term, belongs to the later development under the Georges. And it was to this subdivision of the mighty subject that American Renaissance served its apprenticeship, although the articles of indenture, I contend, were legally canceled by the

responsibilities of the “Grand Epoch” (see Chapter V). If there ever existed a condition of unproductive tutelage in America as is imputed by envious critics, it was during the Transitional period. In the earlier chapters of this review, I have defended American Renaissance against all detracting imputations concerning its legitimacy, its honor and its merit, and I do not think I wish to amend anything I have said.

In Plates LXXIV and LXXV I submit two remarkable views of Hampton Court, one, the Wolsey palace in the earliest Renaissance, according to Gotch, and the other the South palace (time of William and Mary) by Sir Christopher Wren, in the latest. The latter faÇade has already served for American adaptation, and in all probability will continue to do so, being very easily adapted to American use. And if the feat be historically accomplished the resulting composition becomes, ipso facto, American Renaissance, not English, however exotic it may at first appear, and although it be the custom to call such an architectural development “pure adaptation.” But when we consider that St. Peter’s cathedral at Rome was once an adaptation, the beautiful library of San Marco by Sansovino, also an adaptation, the Louvre and Fontainebleau, adaptations as well, I do not know that we need be particularly scandalized, nor do I doubt for one moment that, if our work be good, it will soon outlive an appellation of uncertain reflection—a word, nevertheless, which every so often must play its part in the history of art.

The school of design which has proved the greatest attraction to the blossoming genius of America is, of course, French Renaissance, preËminently at the time I write. To say that an architect is a Beaux Arts man is equivalent to speaking of a certain much advertised brand of whiskey, in that compliments are superfluous. You call him “a Beaux Arts man,” and—“that’s all.”

No Brahmin of India has his faith more absolutely defined than has the Beaux Arts man his. And he must progress, and ply his art as though he were a bishop on the chess-board, always in a designated line, and always with the same local color of the place of his matriculation except, we shall say, when he is off

for a spree, which, to be sure, does him no credit, and he dabbles in Colonial, Elizabethan and other diversions. But his art is French Renaissance, not the graceful Renaissance of Pierre le Nepveu at Chambord (see Plate LXXVI), nor the romantic Renaissance so insinuating of Azay-le-Rideau (see Plate LXXVII), the designer of which no modern ascription names, but the colder, impersonal, mathematical Renaissance of the time of Viollet-le-Duc or the ultra, over-decorated Renaissance of the last exposition, and the present generation of French architects. The Ecole des Beaux Arts (Department of Architecture) is essentially a school of material art to which there is no spiritual side. It is the art which we measure by metres and centimetres, not an art we may measure by psychical balances and our affections. And the personal side of architecture—the side which ministers so largely to us when we come to that complex embodiment of our joys and sorrows complete in the one word “home”—well, sentiment has nothing to do with the case in the estimation of the Beaux Arts man.

Of all the historic chÂteaux in France, Chenonceau (see Plate LXVII) has received the most attention from American architects. Replicas of its fascinating tourelles—some faithful, some deformed—greet one very frequently in the modern residences of America. We have to recognize the Chenonceau dormers, too, though they be dwarfed and squatted according to the limited roof space at the disposal of the American designer. Such tremendous roofs as were supported with ease by the formidable walls of the old chÂteaux are prohibitory with us, that is, if we cipher with American expediency and commercial economy. But the right way to adapt a French chÁteau is really to make believe restore one, pretending for the nonce, that one is M. Pierre Lescot, M. Claude Perrault or M. Gabriel, and that the king or some grand seigneur of the realm has commanded one’s services for the purpose. As in the elevation of the house for Mrs. H. at Morristown (see Plate LXXVIII) I made believe to myself that the mediÆval tour was genuine, already there, but requiring immediate restoration. It was easy to set imaginary masons to work pointing the machicolations and curtain. I made believe that long disuse had

vanquished the portcullis, leaving its yawning pockets to be disposed of. Commercialism said “wall them up,” not I. It would be a pity to lose a particle of the thirteenth century atmosphere that consents to linger. So I decided upon a bold innovation as the privilege of adaptation. I could anchor the chains for holding up the glass canopy over the carriage entry, in those pockets that once housed the arms of the portcullis; and thus, the spooky old tour could be saved intact. The main part of the American chÂteau is in this case supposedly modern, developed from motives supplied by the minor chÂteaux of France—the manoirs, the fermes, with a little American household planning within, necessary for comfort.

But you have noticed that no American, however rich, has yet amassed sufficient fortune to warrant an undertaking anything like an adaptation of Chambord (see Plate LXXVI). A class of architecture in itself, the Valois shooting-box is quite too tremendous in extent for any modern use as a private domicile. The palace of Fontainebleau, also, would entail most too much of a contract for even the president of a trust, and I may add to these names, delightful to pronounce, the Louvre (see Plate LXIX), which the people of Philadelphia alone had the hardihood to caricature in a municipal building. Shades of FranÇois Mansart, what crimes have we enacted in thy name! [My acknowledgments to Mme. Roland].

Perhaps the most inviting and as little explored field of architecture suitable to domestic purposes in this country that I can think of to suggest to our talent is the opportunity we have in the Swiss chÂlets of the eighteenth century. There is a great variety of types from which to choose—high-roofed chÂlets and low-roofed chÂlets, chÂlets of stucco and chÂlets of wood. And there never was a sounder theory than that of Switzerland concerning the construction of wooden edifices. I do not except Norway, nor Sweden, nor Japan, for the ancient[7] chÂlets of Switzerland are in academic Gothic, if you please, architecturally of a high order which has withstood the vicissitudes of art and awaits the homage of future generations. To American architects who still have

more to do with wood than any other building material these chÂlets should prove both instructive and useful. Mr. Jean Schopfer has contributed, in the Architectural Record (New York), two very interesting papers about the eighteenth century chÂlets, and I will devote what remains of my space in this chapter to an American chÂlet I had some little difficulty in prevailing upon its owner to have, but with which, now that it is finished, he has assured me he is perfectly satisfied. (See Kingdor, Plates LXVIII., LXXIX.)

Cypress, which in this part of the country has come to be our main reliance in the absence of good white pine, answers admirably for American adaptations of these Colonial houses—let us call them—of Switzerland. Most any size timbers may be specified without bankrupting the client or inconveniencing the contractor, while some durable stain will form an excellent ground for a venerable patina by infinitesimal particles to attach itself. I confess my only disappointment in Kingdor was that I was not permitted to carve the scriptural legends in archaic missal text that should always adorn the long horizontal timbers of a “truly” chÂlet. For in the most part of the adaptation it became my privilege, much to my unspeakable delight, to say to the black beast that besets the path of all architects—namely, the everlasting spirit of commercialism—expressively what Beau Brummel tells the importunate bailiffs in the play: “Oh, go and walk in Fleet Street!”