Joy Wheeler Dow

The result of the best adaptation is the gradual formation of a national style of architecture. The closest adaptation that has been exploited in America both in recent and what we call our ancient work, compared with its separable prototypes, who shall say is not unmistakably modern and American? Style is never evolved by the empirical architecture of irrepressible inventors. Invention belongs to science. Happily, in the field of art, everything was planted, arranged and cultivated for us ages ago, so that we have only to wander as children, in an enchanted garden that our days are not half long enough to encompass. We observe, but wait for the planchette to move—to guide.

Style in architecture and literature alike is something which shapes itself unconsciously to the mind—something which will neither be coerced nor cajoled, but obeyed. Style selects its craftsman rather than craftsmen their style. Style is the master, and we are the students ever observing, listening, trying to understand, waiting for our cue, and finally speaking our lines according to the histrionic ability there is in each of us, for style is eminently dramatic.

But the moment we set up for ourselves and say, “Go to, let us make a style!” that moment we miss our usefulness in the economy of art.

I knew of a young student of literature who, convalescing from an attack of grippe, was found by his physician one day, sitting upright in bed surrounded by a lot of new-looking books. As the visitor failed to conceal some surprise, the enthusiast hastened with an explanation for which the reader is scarcely better prepared. “Doctor,” he said. “I am reading Kipling for style!”

Now, no matter how encouraging to the physician was the patient’s interest in the books, it was a most discouraging thing as a matter of art. For you don’t want to read anybody to copy his style, much less a

PLATE LXXXII.

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MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE.

PLATE LXXXIII.

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DETAIL—MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE,

Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

contemporary of your own. And no architectural student should want to imitate the style of his master or employer, for it is heresy. It is mockery.

If you have not sense enough to listen to your own muse, to study the history of art for yourself, to speak the language of architecture as all your honored predecessors have spoken it, following religiously the splendid historical chart that is ever at your service for reference while leaving your style to take care of itself—I am sorry for you.

In my own very limited scope of usefulness, I am quite willing to confess that I have never bothered about style, and do not consider that I have any worth mentioning; although, I suppose, an occasional architect is annoyed past endurance by somebody who comes with an illustration of a particular piece of my work which has appeared in the magazines, requesting that my style be copied. Of course, it is not my style that is desired, but the expression of Anglo-Saxon home feeling as opposed to whatever is advectitious—out of place there—however correct academically, and according to the rules of harmony, good form or anything else you choose to call it. All tendency in myself toward mannerism, prejudice, partisanship and eclectic theory I have endeavored to repress, for I found that good style needed no suggestions from me.

Good style means the historical note which measures the success of an architectural design. It is the distinct theme we must be able to recognize throughout, no matter how elaborate or original the accompaniment. To exemplify which point I have selected the Searles cottage, erected in 1889, at Block Island (see Plate LXXXVI), not because it was erected without regard to expense or financial returns, for there is much domestic architecture in America erected quite as independently of either consideration which would ruin my argument were I to use it; but because the Searles cottage is one of the most original designs in American Renaissance, without in the least compromising good style, that I know of in contemporary work. It is said to have been designed by a decorator, but in that case merely adds another instance of the truism that there are decorators who should be architects and architects who should be decorators. The illustration shows the

building in process of construction, but let us place it beside the illustration of a very recent example of modern house and see what happens. I think thereby will be conveyed to the mind of the reader more insight of the difference between style and fashion in architecture (see Plate LXXXVI) than could be accomplished by writing in a week. At last we see a house with a cupola where the cupola has a recognized mission, and pleases rather than offends, as occurs also at Mount Vernon, in Virginia (Plates XXVII and XXVIII), and where it crowns the roof of the McPhÆdris house at Portsmouth (Plate XXXI). Here are instances where we should miss the cupola as part, not so much of the design, perhaps, as of the style, the historical atmosphere, were it absent. It would be the incomplete sentence, in other words, where the original thought had not been completely expressed.

I am aware that the Searles cottage is not one that, ordinarily, would be called “pretty.” The cottage I designed for Mr. Mitchell, at East Orange (see Plates LXXX, LXXXII, LXXXIII and XCI), I dare say answers to that description better, as does also Princessgate, at Wyoming, N. J. (see Plates XVIII, LXXXIV, LXXXIX and XCI), but I am speaking now of style, the picturesque is something else again. I can fancy the beginner in architecture leaning over his drawingboard and saying, “Well, that’s the funniest Colonial house I ever saw!” But the first year of his course will correct the slight astigmatism from which he suffers. For, even should he fail to pursue the engaging study of style, style is so insinuating, because of the immense significance it has behind it, that very soon it will be speaking to him. And while the student feels it only in that first intangible stage, unable to say to himself what it is, even while people aver that the Searles cottage was entirely misplaced on the treeless coast of a pelagic isle, while they tell him that no use could be found for it except as a kind of casino, yet there will begin to dawn upon him an uncontrollable appreciation, just as began to dawn upon the aged auditor in the pit of the old-time playhouse at Paris during the production of a masterpiece by MoliÈre, till, toward the end of the second act, no

longer master of his enthusiasm, he cried out to the author on the stage, “Courage, MoliÈre! VoilÀ la vraie comÉdie!” And in good architectural style do we not see a comedy indeed, faithfully enacted? Yet, of the thousand and one things that have gone to make architectural style all intimately connected with human events the influence of individuals has counted least. One generation of builders has taken up the work where its immediate predecessor stopped. Each generation commits its blunders, while each adds the imperceptible trifles of such intrinsic value, taken together, as to have produced style.

The fashions of architecture—they perish. Style endures.