AS an architectural work, the house of Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt is perhaps the most noteworthy of the four large and costly mansions herewith illustrated. In this a design intrinsically interesting has been carried out with an amplitude of means of all kinds which yet nowhere degenerates into profusion or mere ostentation. The dimensions are generous for a town house, and they have been made the most of by a breadth of treatment and an emphasis of structure, in the walls at least, which enable the building to carry with grace a wealth of ornament under which many buildings of equal size would disappear. The material is a soft gray limestone, which leaves much to be desired in color, though in texture it is equally adapted to the simple and massive treatment of the walls and to the minute delicacy of the decoration, both architectural and sculptural. It is very much to the credit of the designer that in spite of a richness without many examples in our domestic architecture, except in the other dwellings of this same series, the first impression of his work, and the most abiding, is that of power and massiveness. This is secured mainly by the unbroken breadth of the flank of wall between the porch and the angle on the Fifth Avenue front of the building—unbroken except by the simple and square-headed openings with which it is pierced, and the crisp and emphatic though

not excessive string courses which traverse it and mark the division of the stories. It is questionable whether this massiveness is not carried too far, but everybody will admit that an excessive weight of wall is a “good fault” in the street architecture of New York, and that of the two, a dwelling is more dignified which approaches the solidity proper to a prison than one that emulates the precarious lightness proper to a greenhouse. The depth of the porch and of the recessed balcony over it in the central division of the avenue front assists this expression of solidity, and helps the building to wear its burden of decoration “lightly, like a flower.” The richness, as we have said, is almost unexampled in New York. Of strictly architectural decoration—that is, of members and details which are usually designed by the architect of a building—there is a copiousness which is only saved by the means just indicated from becoming an embarrassment of riches. All this work is exquisite in execution. In design it is generally interesting and scholarly, though there is common to all of it the defect of being too small to be thoroughly well seen and thoroughly effective. The uniformity of this defect of scale seems to prove that the architect erred in estimating the effect of his design in the colorless material employed. The decoration of the recess of the balcony, too, loses effect by being entirely unrelated to the construction, and the stone trellis with which the turret at the angle is overlaid is equally irrelevant to the object to which it is applied. Architectural decoration ceases to be such when it ceases to be a development of the structure; and these exceptions, by their comparative ineffectiveness, confirm the wisdom of the rule by which elsewhere throughout the building the ornament is used to emphasize the structure, and thereby gains greatly in impressiveness and in charm.

The sculptural decoration, in contradistinction to that strictly architectural, equally abounds. By sculptural decoration is meant that designed as well as executed by the sculptor, and in regard to which the only care of the architect is to provide places for it, and so to frame it that, if it does not help, it may not injure, the architecture to which it is attached. It is not too much to say of this that it is much the most important and interesting work in decorative sculpture which is to be seen out-of-doors in New York. The most noteworthy piece of it, perhaps, is the procession of cherubic musicians girdling the frieze-like band of the corbel which carries the oriel of the southern front.[D] The execution elsewhere, in the panels under and between the windows, and in the pilasters of the bay, is equally good, but the design is nowhere else so effective. One need not be a purist, indeed, to find fault with the introduction of these pilasters at the angles of the bay and on the curve of the oriel, which are so clearly not structural members, actual or symbolic, and which are so clearly introduced for the sake of the ornament they bear, although he may condone the fault for the prettiness of the ornament generally in design, and its unfailing care and delicacy of execution. The only criticism possible, indeed, upon the execution of this work is, that it is too exquisite, and reduces the texture of carved stone too nearly to the more facile surface of moulded clay.

One’s admiration of Mr. Hunt’s spirited and scholarly design does not indeed cease with the walls of the house; but it must be owned that it undergoes some modification above the cornice. It cannot be said that the sky-line is so effective as might have been expected from what is beneath it. There is an undeniable piquancy about the statued gable which terminates the roof of the principal mass, and the relation between this roof and the steep hood of the turret is picturesque, taken alone. Unfortunately, it cannot be taken alone, and the effect of the whole series of roofs is not a harmonious grouping, but—there is no other word for it—a “huddle.” It is in the roof, too, that the shortcomings of the architect in the solution of what may be called his academic problem are most apparent. The style of his work is the transitional style of France, the modification of mediÆval architecture under the influence of the Italian Renaissance, until what was all Gothic at the beginning of the transition had become all classic at its close. This is, in fact, an attempt to summarize in one building the history of a most active and fruitful century in the history of architecture, which included the late Gothic of the fifteenth century and the early Renaissance of the sixteenth, and spanned the distance from the minute and complicated modelling of the Palais de Justice at Rouen and the HÔtel Cluny at Paris, to the romantic classicism of the great chÂteaux of the Loire. Certainly the attempt does not lack boldness. Here we have in one building the superimposed bases and interpenetrating mouldings of the latest French Gothic and the fish-bladder tracery of the Renaissance, and in the dormers the stride from the ogee canopies of Rouen to the prim pilasters and pediment of Orleans. Mr. Hunt’s skill has not sufficed to introduce together these features, the outcomes of different modes of thought as well as of different systems of construction, without a visible incongruity; nor are they in all cases successful, taken singly. The large and elaborate dormer over the entrance, especially, instead of being a visible reconciliation of the two styles, is a visible demonstration that they cannot be reconciled. A complete construction of post and lintel, of pilaster and entablature, is supplemented by another construction of flying buttresses which are clearly superfluous and irrelevant, and which, instead of resisting the thrust of an arch, have the appearance of ineffectually “shoring up” a structure which, though complete, is unstable.

One is inclined to ascribe the lack of unity and repose which the disturbed sky-line of the building entails upon it, and which somewhat impairs the dignity of an otherwise dignified and always animated design, to the angle turret of which the architect was evidently enamoured. We may share his liking for it, and admit it to be an extremely pretty thing, without admitting that it belongs to this building. The leading motive of the composition is evidently the “pyramidization,” to borrow Mr. Thomas Hope’s uncouth word, of the whole building towards the apex of the main mass at the angle, from the point of view from which the illustration is taken. It is clearly to assist and emphasize the ascent and convergence of all the lines of the building to this apex, and to enhance the apparent dimensions, that this mass is raised a story, and the extremities of the building allowed to fall away, and it is in order to account for the emphasizing of this mass by a separate roof that the somewhat awkward expedient has been adopted of dropping the cornice on the street side below the eaves. New York readers who are familiar with the aspect of the Dry Dock Savings-Bank in the Bowery will know what is meant by this “pyramidization,” and will remember how it is there attained. Now it happens that it is precisely this intention which in the present instance is obscured and partly defeated by the tormenting of the sky-line, which in turn may be traced to the insistence of the architect upon his extremely pretty but irrelevant

turret. It is a good lesson in architecture to find that the effect of a whole may be so much impaired by one of the most successful of the parts, and that even when “the thing” is really rich and rare, we may still be unsatisfied how it “got there.” Happily neither this shortcoming, nor shortcomings much graver, could prevent such a work as this from being an ornament to the city, and an honorable monument to its architect.

Perhaps it is because Mr. Post, the architect of the house of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, has not attempted so much as Mr. Hunt that his work may be called at once more successful and less interesting. In color it has more and in design less of variety. For the monotony of gray wall and black roof it substitutes red brick, with wrought work of the same gray limestone employed in the house we have been talking of, and with a red slated roof broken by great stone dormers. It is much more simple and compact in composition than the other, for the main house is a parallelogram brought together under one great four-hipped roof, and the wing is here a very subordinate appendage. It is thus much simpler, much more within the conventional decorum of a town mansion in its scheme, while it is equally far from having the appearance of having been designed by contract, and is studied with equal thoroughness, although with a very different motive. In the matter of color, it is undeniable that the brick-work has in places a patchy look by reason of the comparatively small quantities in which it is used, the whole front on the avenue being virtually of highly wrought stone, and it seems clear that the building would have gained if the brick had been omitted altogether from this front. On the street front the mode of treatment adopted might very possibly have made the building dull and monotonous if it had been built in monochrome, as assuredly the addition of a strong contrast of color would have made the more varied design of the other painfully restless. In style the two buildings offer a curious resemblance and a curious contrast. This also is a French chÂteau, but a French chÂteau of the period after the transition, when all detail had been thoroughly classicized, and only a romantic wilfulness and freedom of composition recalled the architecture of the Middle Ages. Here are the shell frieze of Blois and the fish-bladder tracery of Orleans, without the Gothic detail which in the French Renaissance is so often found side by side with them. The carving here, equally well executed for its purpose, does not appeal so much to admiration for its execution, for the reason that it is all strictly architectural, and not directly imitative. In design it is for its purpose equally well studied; in scale, indeed, is much better studied, so that the detail, which is often lost in the ineffectual minuteness of the carving in the former case, here takes its place with emphasis. Perhaps in some instances it takes its place with too much emphasis, as in the modelling of the arches of the first floor; while, on the other hand, there is a clear lack of vigor in the brackets which carry the balcony of the third story, and in the treatment of the spiral shaft upon which rests the corbelled turret at the outer angle. But these defects of design seem to be quite deliberate, and it seems, upon the whole, that the building looks as the architect intended it to look, in a more accurate sense than can be said of its competitor. The leading motive of composition in that was the “pyramidization” at the angle. The leading motive of this may be assigned to the development of the floor lines. The perpendicular lines are entirely subordinated

to these—so far subordinated, indeed, that the axial lines of the openings in the lower stories are disregarded in the upper—and the horizontal lines are wrought by modelling and decoration into emphatic belts, graduated in richness from the simple basement course to the very rich and elaborate cornice. We may say here, too, that our admiration grows fainter above this line; for the exaggerated dormers, excessive as dormers and inadequate as gables, are the least successful features of the building, while in their decoration, alone in the building, constructive propriety is abandoned. But the great and simple roof certainly prevents the building from straggling, as its neighbor tends to do, while the angle turrets at its base not only relieve its outline of monotonous heaviness, but are clever expedients for stopping the lines of its angles. Upon the whole, one may say of Mr. Post’s design that it is a thoroughly workmanlike piece of work, and may even find less fault with it than with the more ambitious work of Mr. Hunt; though, indeed, he may ascribe this to his belief that there is less in it to talk about or to think about.

Between either of these and the brown-stone houses which have been built for Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, after the designs of Messrs. Herter, the decorators, a wide architectural gulf is fixed. We found a leading motive in each of the others; but what leading motive, or, indeed, what subordinate motive, of an architectural kind, can be found here? There is indeed no development of lines or of masses, and no organized relation of parts is aimed at. The openings are not grouped or spaced so as to tell the story of the interior, nor so as to bear any reference to each other, nor are the structural features which every building must possess brought out by modelling; nor is the ornament applied to accentuate the structural features, nor is it designed with reference either to its place or to its function as ornament. The fluted pilasters of the second story seem to be meant, indeed, to re-enforce the angles of the projecting portions of the wall. But this intention is abandoned in the first and in the third stories, in which a belt of carved foliage is run to the angles of the wall, without reference to the lines of the pilasters. This foliage is in workmanship as careful as possible—as careful, indeed, as the carving in either of the architectural works which we have been discussing. Yet its perfection gives no pleasure to the spectator, for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with the building in the walls of which it is cut. Much of the detail is carefully designed, but the absence of a general design makes it ineffective. Except for the refinement of some of this detail, the building would be as vacant of architectural interest as any work of our architectural period of darkness. The Stewart mansion does not interest students of architecture; but the Stewart mansion itself exhibits a nearer approach than these houses to an architectural design, and certainly a coherent design with coarse detail is less depressing, even if it be more irritating, than an entire absence of architectural meaning, with here and there a pretty architectural phrase which in some other context may have meant something. These houses have another misfortune in their very lugubrious color. A vivid piece of painted decoration in the recessed balcony of the nearer is a grateful oasis in the gloomy waste of rubbed sandstone, and some relief to its monotony is also afforded by the gilded railings of the windows at each side of this balcony. But it is to be hoped that courage may be found to let loose a discreet decorator with unlimited goldleaf upon the whole sad fronts. A mode of decoration which has been found so effective in the fogs of London might profitably be employed to animate faÇades which are in no danger of becoming too joyous. It would not be fair to leave these architectural failures, which are in so unpleasant contrast to the encouraging architectural success achieved in the other Vanderbilt houses, without noting one excellent piece of design in the railings which surround them, in which an original, characteristic, and successful treatment of metal has been attained, and which, as works of art, are really of more value than the houses they protect.