THE LONDON BUILDER AND OURSELVES.

In a tolerantly critical notice of the Review recently published in the Builder, we find an effort to substantiate a charge formerly made by it, and replied to by us, on the subject of “trickery” in the construction of the exteriors of American buildings. The Builder reiterates the charge and points to Grace Church, New York, in proof of the truth of it. That marble edifice, he avers, has a wooden spire, crocketted, etc., painted in imitation of the material of which the body of the church is constructed. Alas, we must acknowledge the wood. And we will make a clean breast of it, and still farther acknowledge that at the time that Grace Church was built, our land of wooden nutmegs, and other notions, had not an architectural idea beyond the wooden spire, and that our city and country churches, that aspired at all, were forced to do so in the national material of the day. That said sundry spires of wood were of necessity, painted, is most true; and furthermore, white-lead being a great favorite with the people generally, [when our manners, customs, and tastes were more immaculate than in these degenerate days of many colors,] that pigment was the ruling fashion. That the color of the marble, of which Grace Church’s body is constructed, should be similar to that with which said ecclesiastical edifice’s spire was coated, is unfortunate; but, that the resemblance goes to prove any attempt at a cheat, we most strenuously deny. Grace Church is of a by-gone taste,—an architectural era which we now look back to in order to see, by contrast, how far we have advanced in architectural construction. Trinity Church, New York, was the first great effort at a stone spire which our Architects ventured to rear. And although hundreds have followed its lead, none in this soaring republic have gone so near to heaven as that yet. But the thing once effected is sure to be improved upon.

We are not at all abashed then, to own to the wooden spire painted to imitate stone, which crowns the steeple of old Grace Church, New York. And the less annoyance should it give our most sensitive feelings, when we reflect that the dome of the great St. Paul’s, London, is no less a delusion and a cheat, it being of wood, coated with lead and painted on the outside, having a false dome on the inside, considerably smaller than the external diameter would naturally lead the confiding observer to expect. The body of St. Paul’s is of stone. Why, according to the requirements of the Builder, is not the dome, like that of the Pantheon at Rome, likewise of stone?

Do we suppose, for an instant, that Sir Christopher Wren was guilty of a deliberate cheat in so constructing it? Certainly not. He used the material which he considered best suited to his purpose and his means. And so we should, in charity, suppose did the Architect of Grace Church, New York.

The Builder, like too many of our English cousins, who do us the honor of a visit, falls into error in supposing that wood is generally used for ornamentation of exteriors. In none of our larger cities is this the case. And when that critical and usually correct authority says, “Even the Fifth avenue itself is a sham as to much of its seeming stone-work,” it displays a melancholy absence of its uniform discernment, judgment, and sense.

The only other constructive material to be found on the fronts of the Fifth Avenue, New York, besides marble, brown stone, or pressed (Philadelphia) brick, is in the gutter, which is either of zinc or galvanized iron, and forms the upper portion of the cornice.

Porches and Hall-door frontisces, of every style, are of marble or stone, and never of wood. Pediments and all trimmings around windows are invariably of stone. In fact we are not a little surprised at the apparent want of information on this subject by so well posted an observer as the Builder is acknowledged to be. Some twenty years ago the taunt might lie most truthfully applied to our efforts at architectural construction, but to-day the “trick” of painted and sanded wood would be hissed down by our citizens who claim to live in residences the majority of which are greatly superior to residences of the same class in London, as far at least as material is concerned. No, no—criticism to be useful must be just; and to be just must be founded strictly on truth unbiassed by prejudice.

We do not desire in these remarks to throw the slightest doubt on the good intentions of the London Builder in its monitorial check, but our wish is to correct the erroneous information which it has received, and which has led to the mistake under which it evidently labors.

We as utterly despise any falsehood in construction as our honestly outspoken contemporary, and will at every opportunity disclose and denounce its adoption in this country in all cases where there is any pretension to architectural design. For a new country like this, it is at least creditable that, even in a small class of dwellings, the architect is, as a general thing, called on to design and frequently to superintend—every thing is not left to the builder as in London. Yet there is and always will be in this as in all other countries a large class of private buildings outside the pale of legitimate taste; creations ungoverned and ungovernable by rule. But such should never be taken as examples of the existing state of the constructive art of the day; they should rather prove the unfortunate exceptions to the fact of its position. Even these it will be our duty to watch over and try to set right; for we are ardent believers in the influential power of information, and look with assurance to the education of our people generally on this subject of judgment and taste in building as the infallible means of turning to good account the remarkable progress in that constructive art of the American nation, which the observant London Builder notices with the generous well-wishing of a kindly professional brother.

THE MANSARD MADNESS.

Of all the intellectual qualifications which man is gifted with, there is not one as sensitive as that which enables him to discern between what is intrinsically good, and what is bad or indifferent to his eye. Yet are there none of all man’s mental attributes so frequently and so grossly outraged as is this to which we now allude, called Taste.

Custom has much to say in the question of arbitrary rule which taste so imperatively claims. Persistence in any thing will, of necessity, make itself felt and recognized, no matter how odious at first may be the object put before the public eye, and ultimately that object becomes what is commonly called “fashionable.” This apparent unity of the public on one object is variable and will soon change to another, which in its turn will seem to reign by unanimous consent and so on ad infinitum.

In Architecture this fickle goddess, Fashion, seems to reign as imperatively and as coquettishly as in any or all the affairs of this world of humanity. That which was at first esteemed grotesque and ridiculous, becomes in time tolerable and at last admirable. But the apathy which sameness begets cannot long be borne by the novelty worshippers, and accordingly new forms and shapes remodel the idea of the day, until it ceases to bear a vestige of its first appearance and becomes quite another thing.

Of all the prominent features of architecture that which has been least changeable until late years is the “roof.” The outline of that covering has been limited to a very few ideas, some of which resolved themselves into arbitrary rules of government from which the hardiest adventurer was loath to attempt escape.

Deviating from the very general style of roof which on the section presents a triangle, sometimes of one pitch, sometimes of another, but almost universally of a fourth of the span, the truncated form was to be found, but so exceedingly sombre was this peculiar roof that it never obtained to any great extent, and indeed it presented on the exterior a very serious obstacle to its adoption by architects in the difficulty of blending it with any design in which spirit, life, or elegance, was a requisite.

There are occasionally to be found in Europe, and even in America, examples of these truncated roofs, but it is very questionable whether there are to be met with any admirers of their effect.

The principle on which they are constructed has, however, a very great advantage in the acquirement of head-room in the attics, giving an actual story or story and half to the height, without increasing the elevation of the walls. The architects of the middle ages took a hint from this evident advantage, and used the truncated roof on their largest constructions. Its form is that of a pyramid with the upper portion cut off (trunco, to cut off, being its derivation.)

Mansart, or as he is more commonly called Mansard, an erratic but ingenious French architect, in the seventeenth century invented the curb roof, so decided an improvement on the truncated that it became known by his name. This roof adorning the palatial edifices of France soon assumed so much decorative beauty in its curb moulding and base cornice, as well as in the dormers and eyelets with which it was so judiciously pierced, that it became a source of artistic fascination in those days in France; and as Germany was indebted to French architects for her most prominent designs, the Mansard roof found its way there, and into some other parts of Europe.

But, much as English architects admired, as a whole, any or all of those superb erections of the Gallic Capital, it was a century and a half before it occurred to them to imitate them even in this most desirable roof.

Our architects having increased with the demand for finer houses and more showy public buildings, and having parted company with their Greek and Roman idols to which their predecessors had been so long and so faithfully wedded, and acknowledging the necessity for novelty, ardently embraced the newly arising fashion and the Mansard roof arose at every corner in all its glory. At first the compositions which were adorned with this crowning were pleasing to the general view, if not altogether amenable to the strict rules of critical taste. But in due time (and alas that time too surely and severely came) the pseudo French style with its perverted Mansard roof palled upon the public taste for the eccentricities its capricious foster-fathers in their innate stultishness compelled it to display.

Some put a Mansard roof upon an Italian building, some on a Norman, and many, oh, how many, on a Romanesque! Some put it on one story erections and made it higher than the walls that held it, in the same proportion that a high crowned hat would hold to a dwarf. Some stuck on towers at the corners of their edifices and terminated them with Mansard domes! Some had them inclined to one angle, some to another; some curved them inward, some outward, whilst others went the straight ticket.

The dormers too came in for a large share of the thickening fancies and assumed every style or no style at all. The chimney shafts were not neglected. Photos of the Thuilleries were freely bought up, and bits and scraps of D’Lorme were hooked in, to make up an original idea worthy of these smoky towers. “Every dog will have his day,” is a fine old sensible remark of some long-headed lover of the canine species, and applies alike to animals, men, and things. That it particularly applies to that much abused thing called the Mansard roof is certain, as the very name is now more appropriately the absurd roof.

Fashion begins to look coldly upon her recent favorite, which in truth “has been made to play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, as make the angles weep;” and it is doomed.

A few years hence, and we will all look back in amused wonder at the creations of to-day, crowned with the tortured conception of Mansard.

HYDRAULIC CEMENT.

The rapid hardening under water of the cement which from that property derives its name of “Hydraulic Cement,” has been, and indeed is still, a subject of discussion as to the true theory of such action. We find in the June number of the Chemical News a paragraph which must prove very interesting to manufacturers as well as to all who use and take an interest in that most useful of building materials to which the Architect and the Engineer are so deeply indebted.

“In order to test the truth of the different hypotheses made concerning this subject, A. Schulatschenko, seeing the impossibility of separating, from a mixture of silicates, each special combination thereof, repeated Fuch’s experiment, by separating the silica from 100 parts of pure soluble silicate of potassa, and, after mixing it with fifty parts of lime, and placing the mass under water, when it hardened rapidly. A similar mixture was submitted to a very high temperature, and in this case, also, a cement was made. As a third experiment, a similar mixture was heated till it was fused; after having been cooled and pulverized, the fused mass did not harden any more under water. Hence it follows that hardening does take place in cement made by the wet as well as dry process, and that the so-called over-burned cement is inactive, in consequence of its particles having suffered a physical change.”

NATIVE COLORED MARBLES.

In the preceding number we have spoken in general terms of this beautiful acquisition to our art materials, and indeed we feel that we cannot esteem this new American discovery too highly; for even in Europe such stone is extremely scarce at the present day, and it is fortunate that the location in which the quarries exist is open to the Old World to freely supply the wants of its artists, as well as our own. The beautiful Lake Champlain affords excellent commercial facilities, the Chambly Canal and Sorel River improvements opening a free navigation both with the great chain of lakes, and the Atlantic Ocean. The Champlain Canal connecting it with the Erie Canal and Hudson River, giving it uninterrupted communication with New York State and its Empire City, from the latter end of March to the middle of December.

The quarry is situated in a great lode projecting up in the bosom or bay of Lake Champlain, forming an island of several acres outcropping on each shore, and giving evidence that the deposit extends and really forms, at this point, the bed of the lake, its supply being thought to be inexhaustible.

The marble occurs in beds and strata varying in thickness from one to six feet, and will split across the bed or grain; blocks of any required size being readily obtained. Its closeness of texture and hardness render it susceptible of a very high polish, and it will resist in a remarkable degree all atmospheric changes. It is hard to deface with acids or scratches, and this one fact should attach to it much additional value. Its variegation in color, as shown by the specimens taken from its outcroppings, give promise of a much richer development as the bed of the quarry is approached; and must equal in beauty and durability the highly prized oriental marble of ancient and modern times.

The facilities, already alluded to, of its transportation to all the markets for such material in the country and to the seaboard, whence it can be shipped to any part of the world, must tend to bring it into general use here and elsewhere, that colored marbles are required for building and ornamental purposes.

We are much indebted to a gentleman of Philadelphia, whose taste and liberal enterprise have so opportunely brought to our knowledge this most remarkable deposit of one of Nature’s most beautiful hidden treasures, which must, at no distant day, add vastly and more cheaply to the art material of our country.

The palace in course of construction at Ismalia, for the reception of the Empress Eugenie during her stay in Egypt, will be 180 feet wide and 120 deep. The estimate cost is 700,000fr. According to the contract it is to be finished by the 1st of October, for every day’s delay the architect will be subject to a fine of 300fr per day, and if finished before he will receive a bonus of 300fr per day. The building will be square; in the centre there is to be a dome covered with Persian blinds. On the ground floor there will be the ball, reception, and refreshment rooms. An idea can be formed of the importance of this structure and of the work necessary to complete it within the required time, as it will contain no less than 17,400 cubic feet of masonry.

To Remove Writing Ink—To remove writing ink from paper, without scratching—apply with a camel’s hair brush pencil a solution of two drachms of muriate of tin in four drachms of water; after the writing has disappeared, pass the paper through the water and dry.