^'

THE ARCH1TECTVRAL

VOL. XXXII CONTENTS NO 168 for SEPTEMBER. 1912

COVER DESIGN . By J. M. Rose PAGE THE FIRST BAPTIST CHVRCH, PITTS-

BVRGH, PA. . . . . Arthur G. Byne 193 Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, Architects Illustrated by Photograph* by J. Buckly THE NEW DEVELOPMENT IN GERMAN

ARCHITECTVRE . . . Francis R. Bacon 209 Illustrated by Photograph* THE ARCHITECTVRE OF MEXICO CITY.

PART I ANCIENT . . Montgomery Schuyler 215 Illustrated by Photographs

STONINGTON, CONN. . . M. W. Pcntz 230 Illustrated by Photographs by G. A. Hyde BVILDING THE HOVSE OF MODERATE

COST . . Robert C. Spencer, F. A. I. A. 238 Fourth Article Illustrated by Photographs EXAMPLES OF ORNAMENTAL PLASTER WORK OF THE ENGLISH LOWLANDS Duane Lyman 250 Illustrated by Photographs by the Author EARLY AMERICAN CHVRCHES. PART X Aymar Embury II 257 FIRST CHVRCH, SPRINGFIELD. MASS. FIRST CHVRCH. IENOX. MASS. -GLORIA DEI." PHILA- DELPHIA. MONVMLNTAL CHVRCH. RICHMOND. VA.

NOTES AND COMMENTS . 267

- i . \-_ INfri PVBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE AUCHITECTVRAL RECORD COMPANY 11-15 LAST TWENTY-FOVRTH STREET. NEWYORK F.W DODCE. FT AM LLER JIC PRESIDENT MANAGING f. DlTOR f TRIAS. RVSSELL F WHUI.HtAD CONTRIDVTINC (DITORS HARRY W. DESMOND SCWVYLF.R HERBERT D. CROLY RALPH R.EINHOLD ,\AS'ACIR. YIAIU.Y iVRSCRIPTION BVSINFSS COPYRIGHT IOU IV VNinD STATES \V -TORIICN. J^? ENTERED >\AY 22 I9O2.AS StCOND RECOUP COMPANY SINCU corns, isc CLASS -^AITSR. AT NtW YORK. NY MLUCHntUUVO ' ' THK KIKST HAI'TIST 'I II I :< '1 1. PIT rSI'.L'KGH. PA. CRAM. GOODHUE & FERGUSON. ARCH ITK' "IS THE ARC ITECTVRAL RECORD SEPTEMBER 1912

VOLVME XXXII NVMBER1I1

uson, Architects Jutt'an. uc/k-Cv-f^

modern Gothic is, on at the good stance, looking window tracery ; practically, to discuss the work of but straightway the great over-shadow- rs. (ram, Goodhue & Ferguson; ing window arches with their deep re- and this has been so recently done in veal increased by buttresses to give one Tin: \R( mi KCTTKAL RECORD that only an impression of enormously thick walls

; iing of decidedly new aspect in these are assertively French; and their productions some note at once ar- crowningly French is the slender fieche. id highly personal would be But. if all these are French, where then ted now to our readers. This we are the accompanying pinnacles and ;i the latest edifice designed by Mr. facetious detail? Their conspicuous ab- lime the l-'irst Baptist Church sence takes one back across the Channel ttsburgh. to the sober little English minster It is an intelligent digest of English churches, and one sums np this effort at

I < and .'lumental Gothic, and exh; ; :"ving Mr. iuodlnu-'s edifice, by certain mellowness of conception which saying that it has all the structural would have been impossible to the build- beauty and c< -mp( -ition of Continental, the very period itself, since only along with the nndec. erity and >f mthic. a genenms retrospect could produce it: economical de-i^n Insular archae- and being a digest, it is pleasantly tantal- No piece of Gothic merely 1" Anu'd answer the re- izing classify and analyze. F.tifjlish ol,.-ically Perpendicular, is the verdict, for in- quirements of a modern evangelical re- 194 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

formed congregation, whose prime de- large space with fireproof material. mand is for a large hall from every cor- Their first solution was the groined vault but this ner of which their preacher may be ; was not satisfactory since heard and seen. Certain liturgical cus- its great weight demanded massive and toms whose needs the finest Gothic proto- obstructing piers; moreover the groins answered are obsolete to- were themselves difficult to construct so types perfectly ; but not unlike our mod- there was devised an immense day ; something improve- ern requirements were demanded cen- ment in the shape of the ribbed vault. turies ago by the Benedictines and Do- This improvement revolutionized the his- minicans who went preaching through tory of Mediaeval Architecture, for once Southern France; hence their so-called the self-supporting ashlar ribs were set, "Hall" churches, still Romanesque in the builders could then devote them- plan but ever working towards Gothic in selves to the question of filling them in their solution of vaulting and roofing. with as light a web as possible. The In these churches, the aisles which were farthest their ingenuity carried them was to become such a feature of fully de- to the use of thin shells of cut stone or veloped Gothic were of minimum width brick for the web by which process and served merely as passages. The they could reduce their piers to as little nave, however, was very wide and open as one-ninth part of the girth of the without obstruction from front to back, heavy Norman pier. This lighter vault- forming for all practical purposes a great ing naturally reduced the wall construc- hall. Another expression of the same tion and buttresses also, and was a sav- but is the from of view idea, even more rudimentary, ing every point ; yet even early Gothic chapel of the English I'ni- at its lightest it still required a wall that versities; a "Hall" in the very English we of to-day would characterize as thick, acceptation of the word, and making no thick even where flying buttresses did a attempt to express the true church plan, large share in resisting the thrust of and its contribution, therefor, to modern the vaulting. All this would have been church building would be more apparent avoided by the use of tile for the webs; in the New England Meeting House. Of for tiling is so bound together as to be the Continental Hall-churches, one of the homogeneous and produces no apprecia- finest structures was the Church of the ble thrust : furthermore it is fireproof Cordeliers, at Toulouse. It no longer which heavy stone is not. Yet the < iothic exists, but in the modern adaptation builders seem to have forgotten the tra- under consideration we see its lineal de- dition of its use. which fact has made it scendant a cruciform plan with all the possible for our own race and day and parts inherent to such a building adapted generation to make this contribution to and altered to suit present needs. The the construction of high vaults in fire- nave is of four bays (short and some- proof churches. what at either side of the nave so in the broad) ; And quadripartite vaulting of are the low passage aisles, which open this new American ( iothic church we find into shallow transepts, and beyond the the webs filled with tiles. In the laying transepts is the chancel one bay deep. of these a choice had to be made between This plan therefore solves the funda- the French and the English methods of in mental requirements of a modern "re- filling ; for although the adhesion be- formed" congregation and like many for- tween the tiles is so perfect that any eign churches has in addition to its cruci- fanciful patterning might have been form plan, an adjoining Parish House. tried, it was thought desirable to retain The most striking feature of its in- the logical relationship between ribs and terior, and one that has largely deter- filling, as developed in France rather mined its exterior aspect, is the manner than in England. In France the ridge of of vaulting. Vaults were the trouble, each vault showed a series of clean torment and delight of the ancient build- straight joints; in England the stone ers as we all know their patient and courses met at the ridge diagonally, to profound study, that is how to roof a conceal which the ridge rib had to be in- THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH. PA. CRAM. GOODHUE A FERGUSON. ARCHITECTS.

m

THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH PA CRAM. GOODHUE A FERGUSON. ARCHITECTS. 198 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. vented. The example before us uses the sary to contrast with the massiveness of former method, and by doing without the abutments and the general outspoken the additional English ridge rib main- honesty of construction. tains its appearance of simplicity of In the church furniture are consider- able color and animation a chancel floor systematic elimination of unnecessary features. The ridge rib seen over the of intricate tiling approached by steps of slate a of crossing, where the vaulting changes green ; baptistery Tennessee marble with marble all from quadripartite to the more elaborate variegated inlay, tierceron, does not belie this observation, backed by oak panelling and shut in by of since here it is a necessity. a double curtain rich green and gold silk a tall It will be noticed that the vaulting ; lacy drop cresting across the oak stalls a front with springs from high up in the vast cleres- ; gallery painted to the various events in tory, which makes it possible place symbol representing apex of the vault at a higher point than the life of the Saviour; and most sump- the side walls. Upon a careful study of tuous of all the organ. the theories obtaining at the height of This organ takes up the entire chancel the Gothic development it is evident end above the stalls, an admirable way that the aim of the builder was to in which to treat this otherwise difficult stilt the springing plane of the vault- wall. For the great windows commonly both to add to the beauty and soaring found in English chancels are sometimes a strain on one's quality of the vaults themselves and to eyes during a non- concentrate the thrusts. "Probably no liturgical service. Certainly this organ one matter in Mediaeval design was, from answers every decorative requirement, the an artistic point of view, of such over- clustering of the pipes is singularly whelming importance as the combination in keeping with the Gothic spirit \vhil of a towering clerestory and a high set carving, coloring and gilding offer a vault," says a great authority on Gothic pleasant contrast to the surrounding (Francis Bond). Except for the tile stone. It is an imposing piece of design, webs this vault is like any other Gothic and the broken play of smoky-blue light from vault, built just as it might have been the window back of it adds to its built in the Middle Ages, with ribs con- beauty. ceived within the body of the pier, to be Underneath the whole church extends gradually brought forth until they are a basement or undercroft ceiled with a fully exposed, when they separate and segmental barrel vault of tile. The bases swing superbly each to its appointed of the piers above form deep recesses place. Examining the walls below this along its sides in which are set the win- point, it will be seen that the buttresses dows, these are so low down as to be of the exterior appear to be thrust negligible from the outside a supt through the wall to form the pier and in bit of construction as all of the congre- the aisle space are pierced with low gation will admit who may have visited arches to admit of passage. These piers the dark and gloomy crypts of foreign rise from the floor to disappear in the churches. spring of the vault, while the little aisle The basement of the parish house to- arches die down on the splayed jambs of gether with this undercroft is put to the piers. many good uses a great hall, spacious Passing from structural peculiarities, kitchen, dining n'in. cloak rooms and triumphant peculiarities, we find that the class rooms. On the main floor perhaps whole interior of the edifice is austerely the most noticeable feature, since it i> simple. There is no abundance of elab- an exigency of the Baptist faith, is the orate mouldings or carvings, but rather arrangement for total immersion, being an abundance of broad flat surfaces. so planned that the Catechumen may en- Only in the arches has this plainness re- ter the water on one side and out again laxed, in favor of rich mouldings that on the other, avoiding passing through give a delicate play of light and shade the church and the splashing incidental just that touch of grace and fancy neces- to such a ceremony. By this arrange- MAIN PORTAL, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH. PA, CRAM. QOODHUK A FERGUSON. ARCHITKCTa THE CARRIAGE PORCH FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH. PA.. CRAM. GOODHUE & FERGUSON. ARCHTS. THE BRIDE'S PORCH FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH. PA.. CRAM. OOODHUE & FERGUSON. ARCHTa INTERIOR LOOKING T(.\VAl:i> 'H . \NCKI, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH. PA, CRAM. QOODHUE & FERGUSON. ARCHT'S. INTKK!' >l: T'\VAHD KNTKXS'CE

KIKST KAI'TIST IMTTSlir l:< 1 1 i-KAM. ';'>'>1'I1I'K KKK'irSoN. ARCHTC ORGAN DETAIL FIHST HAPTIST CHURCH. PITTSBURGH, PA. CRAM. GOODHUE & FERGUSON. ARCHITECTS. '.

M \.\TKI. IN I'AIMSH PARLOR KIKST HAI'TIST ''111 I'lTTSI.rK'.H. PA. CRAM. OOODHUE A FERGUS'

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PA. 207

ment all things are done in seemly fash- ing to the parlor for the ladies of ion, still leaving the actual baptism visible the congregation. This is an elab- from every part of the church. orate room with fine panelling done Turning into the Sunday School we in the old English way that is, the find it is two stories high, lighted from panels are put together with oak pegs above, surrounded on three sides with and the mouldings are run on the styles class rooms open to it but shut off from and rails leaving the ends square so that one another by folding doors. The fourth they butt together without mitering. side has a similar screen on the wall This panelling, absolutely unvarnished, is above which is to be a it is space painted great beautiful ; but the ceiling of the room symbolic map of Biblical lands, and by Bankart which is its chief call for no-

rm-: ASSKMIH.Y Kun.M IN I'.ASEMENT KIKST T.AI'TIST CHURCH, PITTSBURGH. I'A Cram, Qoodhue & Ferguson, Architects. open- int<> the church providing seeing tice. This enthusiast has given us for and hearing space for an overflow on the first time in centuries that delicate crowded occasions. At the point of beauty and personal touch which used to juncture we find another entrance characterize the craft of the plasterer, to the church and a staircase of when F.ngland was enriched by such carved and linen-panelled ak. with solid ceilings as the well known Globe Room balustrade. At the top this takes the in the Reindeer Inn at Banbury and form of a screen of three hays reaching others of its day. to the ceiling and having in its head The foremost impression of this pierced tracery panels, very interesting church is its soaring quality -its "ro and curious. inantic" dignity. Its height, to which tin- At the rear entrance is another lead- low lying parish house gives scale. it< JOS Till-'. ARCHITECTI'RAL RECORD.

heavy walls skilfully created by the sys- justified in rejecting; for certainly the

tem of piers and buttre^e-. the unusual Parish churches of East . \n-lia. and the gable end. and the squat, blunt exterior cathedrals of Gloucester, York and Nor- treatment of the aisles all these show wich, are England's most precious how far it has departed from traditional heritages of Mediaeval art: and of suffi- Gothic. A parallel can hardly be found cient beauty to warrant the repetition of for the treatment of the outer aisles; their spirit here without any tinge of they seem to have almost a suggestion degradation. These clerestory windows of the simple directness of the work in occupy the whole bay as do those in fully Cent-al Syria. developed Isle-dc-1-rancc Gothie. and f. .r One is tantalizingly tempted to decide exactly the same reason. Neither Eng- whether the work has more of Kn-lish lish nor French, but wholly modern, i- or French feeling. It is impossible to the way in which the wall arch of the conceive such tracery as this of the vault and the inside arch of the window clerestory on French soil : for the Latin are fused together carrying Gothic con- mind preferred flowing joyous forms. struction to its logical issue, a stage rare- Simplicity and solidity were qualities ly reached in England. But then again that appealed rather to the Britisher : and the square betna or chancel end has al- the fact that this sort of tracery was ways been peculiar to Anglo-Saxon structural as well as ornamental was not Christianity and was rarely met with on to be despised. It has been said by some the Continent. In short, the church be- to fore us is of all ( that the passing from flowing tracery somewhat iothic : of all the rectilinear forms marks the degrada- countries ; of old and new. It is a distin- tion of English taste. This is one of the guished success, even in the annals of a many sweeping statements that we feel firm known for Good Gothic.

STAIKi'ASK IN PAKISII H H'SK KIKST MAI'TIST Hri:<-H. I-ITTSI:IM:;M. PA. <'r;on. <; Pin, \- Krrniisiin. Architects. THK \\irrKI.SBACHER BRUNNE.x," IN .M AX i .0 fU ANS- 1M.ATX .Ml'NK'M.

\VHKM SOLOMON made his oft-quoted nient. all their latent powers of initiative remark about the novelty of things under and invention would have been crushed the sun, we wonder if he really intended by despair. Were it so. the art of the phrase to be as pregnant with Michael Ati^elo would be comparable to prophecy as many seem to have under- the decorations of Karnak. and the ca- stood it. or whether he was simply la- thedral of Xotre Dame at Paris a replica menting his contemporaries' paucity of of theTempleat Jeru-alcm. Though there idea-. If the latter were his intention, In- nothing that ha- sprung from the we can have no possible quarrel with "nowhere" into the "here," yet problems him. the historian is of all men in -t and conditions are alwa\ - changing and entitled to our gratitude, save only those the art- develop to solve and meet them. whe worthy actions he record- for us A most interc-tin.i: graphical study of and posterity. Theiv i- something Of- tbi- development of architecture can be acular about -uch generalities, an exas- made within the limits of a fe\\ d.i\-'

' perating enigma for critic- to wrangle vacation travel. The journey may over while the l-raeliti-b oracle .-its in a- "iir'- did. in Southern Italy, with a nple and metaphorically laughs up visit to I'ae-tum. Here the Greek hi- -leevc. Mad the craftsmen of later pic-, notably that of Xeptune. dating been convinced ot" the inn. from the -i\tb century B. C. tl and eternal truth of the oracle'< -tate- -baken by earthquake- and bla-ted by 210 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. explosions, yet raise their bold outlines churches contemporary with the work of against the blue Italian sky, impressive in Gothic architects in France. By the end refined simplicity and dignity. They are of the Quattrocento, the Italian Renais- not the summation of Greek endeavor; sance, deep-rooted in classic antiquity, but represent a pioneer stage necessary reached its full growth, and in every to the evolution of that highly finished branch were men who could express the art embodied in the Parthenon about a event of a new day more fluently than century later. ever before. The architects of imperial Rome, fol- Driven from Florence by the oppres- lowing Greek precedent, but freely sive heat of a record July, we enjoyed changing and adapting its forms and the salt breezes of Venice almost as methods of construction, designed the much as the gilded glory of St. Mark's, domed Pantheon, the vaulted Colosseum, or the fanciful fagades of her palaces.

the Forum Romanum ; they built temples Here the classical Renaissance was tinged

"THE NORNEN-BKUNNEN," A STREET FOUNTAIN IN MUNICH.

for their gods, magnificent palaces for with Byzantine influence and hinted at their emperors and circi for the people. the barbaric mysticism and the magic The refined simplicity of Greek work of the far East. Before long, however, becomes more ornate, its architectural our imaginations failed to convince us forms more plastic under the direction of the reality of the sea-breezes, and \ve of Roman craftsmen, and the muse of again followed the North Star to Architecture with her increased vocab- Munich. ulary, becomes more eloquent and ex- Munich's architecture reminds us of pressive. a middle-aged farmer's criticism of Going northward again, we saw in Shakespeare. Upon his introduction to Florence the fruits of Medievalism, the the dramatist's works, he was di -ap- Bargello castle, the Vecchio palace, the pointed in finding that they consisted so Loggia dei Lanxi, and beside them Sta. largely of quotations. Among her archi- Croce, Santa Maria Novella, and other tectural "quotation^" Munich includes Tin: VEUES RATHAUS" THE NEW TOWN \\.\\.\. IN MINI''!! 212 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

the Feldherrnhalle, repeated from the four equal reaches, the intermediate Loggia dei Lanzi. her Koniglichen Resi- piers accented by simple vertical motifs denz, adapted from the Pitti Palace. the bridge excites attention if not uni- IHT Beaux-Arts Palace of Justice, and versal admiration. The one piece of am- in the near vicinity the Castle Herren- bitious decoration is the equestrian chiemsee, a highly-prized Yo/>v of the statue of Otto von Wittelsbach. The con-

I'alais of Versailles ! King Ludwig I ventionalization of the horse recalls the of Bavaria announced. "It is my resolve Assyrian manner and is quite in harmony to make Munich a city such that none with the rest of the structure. Other can say he knows Germany who does bridges of similar type have been built not know Munich." How well he has since, and others are being planned to succeeded in this ambition, every loyal u-oss the Isar, but the Wittelsbacher is Bavarian will testify, for Munich's Hof- interesting as a pioneer in the tendency brauhaus. her schools and her museum> toward a changed architectural expres- are each typical of German perfection. sion. In the now town hall we find a very in- ( )f the several fountains in her parks teresting expression of German Gothic and platze, two stand pre-eminent in this as applied to municipal buildings. new style. The Wittelsbacher Brunneii Architectural Munich represents the in the Maximilians I'latz seems to grow severaj periods of a race on emerging up naturally from the native rock, not from the shadows of Medievalism into geyser like, but with a restful restraint the full dazzling light of Modernism. and dignity. The principal basin, fed First was the age of picturesque archi- by two jets of water and by the over- tectural barbarity. Then began the slav- How from smaller basins in the center, ish copying of foreign monuments, a discharges its water through the mouths period of archaeological imitation; then of a score of grotesque creatures i.ito 'he application of other methods and de- pools at the street-level. At opposite Pal- tails to peculiar requirements. The endr. of the large basin, buttressed i>y ace of Justice and the new Town Hall rough native rock are sculptured alle- are contemporary examples of this period gorical groups representing "water in of adaptation each represents a well- action" and "water at rest." The tir>t defined style and neither is logically na- group pictures a spirite.l horse, bead tive to the soil. thrown up. nostrils distended, hearing- Within the past decade a new era of on his back an athletic youth with all .development has claimed tin- craftsmen muscles tense, about to throw a large of Munich. Not content to translate, boulder into the basin. The other group. however, freely, the architectural 1 iv of "water at rest," i- a figure of a bull in Italy or France, they have attracie 1 the repose, expressive \ great potential en- attention of free-thinkers by a totally bearing on his hack a woman's unexpected show of initiative. draped figure. When a few years ago it was decided The Nornen-Bmnncn is another in- to span the Isar by a new bridge, the teresting example of the new develop- architect turned for inspiration, not to ment. Its gracefully flowing lines, its the Pont des Arts or to the I 'out Sant* freshness and vigor of design and exr- Angelo. but where? \o one had seen cution are a pleasant relief from the just such a bridge: it was neither Greek "intensive cultivation" of the traditional or Roman, neither ( iothic or Renais- styles. sance, so the Wittelsbacher Briicke was It is true that this most recent ex- assigned to the all-inclusive pigeon-hole on of German architecture ha- IMI marked "Tart nouvenu." The sarcastic yet "arrived." as a Frenchman would may remark that there isn't much about express jt. When a race has attained the it to criticize. The studied simplicity full height of civilization and culture, i'.s of its lines, the broad ea~\ >weep of its individuals delight to revert sometimes gray stone arches, spanning the river in to the haunts and habits of primitive NEW DEVELOPMENT IN GERMAN ARCHITECTURE. 21.?

lan to heed for a time the call of the we not expect a really new version of "red gods." Amid the environment of architectural lore? half-tamed Nature, he lives his life, not A score of centuries passed from the as his primitive fathers lived it, but building of the Greek temples at Paes- igainst the background of a highly de- tum to the flowering of the Renaissance veloped culture. Under such conditions in Italy. The "new" architectural ex- >me thoughts and feelings and develop- pression has begun its career moder- icnts unshared by his brothers who have ately. The future lies before it, and remained in the glare of city life. So we have cause to expect very inter- too, in this return of the craftsmen to esting developments from our German first principles, working with the ac- brothers if, only, we do not hurry them quaintance of a fully developed art, may with a too-swift sword of judgment.

i.li: "\\ITTELSBACHER BRUCKE" THE NEW BRIDGE OVER THK ISAK

A&CHITECTVRE TY

Avontgomety

FOR A STUDENT of American architec- to have any, had any notion beyond that ture who for the first time has had the op- of pitching shingled tents for their own portunity of seeing Mexico, the conclu- shelter. The communal idea was before sion that every budding American archi- the eyes of the settlers of Mexico as the tect ought to do the same thing while individualistic idea was before those of there is yet time is quite irresistible. It is the early settlers of English or Dutch not risking very much, at any rate not descent. The "civic centre" is the latest too much, to say that some patriotic Pan- fad of American municipalities. Yet it american would do a very great service is impossible to find an ancient Spanish by instituting a ''Prix de Mexico" as off- settlement which did not begin with this set and counterbalance to the Prix de to us novel notion as a primary essential Rome. For one thing, the student can of its existence and growth. The earliest get out of accessible books what a so- layout of the place was a triumph of journ in Rome has to give him much "collectivism." Within the present limits more readily than he could get the same of the United States, New Orleans still thing in the same way out of what a so- shows the advantage of having been journ in Mexico has to offer him. For founded and laid out by people to whom another and even more important thing, the good old Anglo-Saxon rule of every- the natural environment of Mexican ar- body for himself and the devil take the chitecture has far more to offer him that hindmost had no binding force. Every- is congruous with his own problems than where you find in the Spanish settle- the environment of the architecture of ments the civic centre or central Plaza; Italy. To begin with, Mexico is cisatlan- everywhere the "Alameda," or public tic. This is also the "New World," as garden and place of recreation. All we so fond of out in this to instruct while it us. are pointing refer- ought shames ence to the artistic crudities and short- And even this is not the worst of it. comings of our own country. True, the From the earliest settlement down to the Mexican settlements are of a much present day, the Spanish settlements greater antiquity in fact than any of the show immensely more of artistic sensi- "Norte Americano." Jamestown itself bility than the English settlements. It is is of yesterday compared with the scenes true that tiny >upervened upon semi-civ- of the conquest of Cortez. Where our ilization instead of upon rank savagery. colonial antiquities are at the utmost of We of the United States have no more the late seventeenth century, Mexican remains of the art of the Toltecs and the monuments of the sixteenth abound. But Aztecs than we have of that of the Incas. that is by no means the whole story. It The aboriginal and always prevailing is necessary to supplement the dates by part of the population of Mexico have explaining that the Mexican pioneers be- continued to hark back to the monuments gan to build monuments before our own of Uxmal and Palenque, as witnc New England ancestors, if we happened recent A/tec mcinuim-nts in Mexico City, 216 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

where that hostility to the Spaniard the walls. No chimney, no window, the since which has never ceased the days of one orifice for the admission of light be- Cortez. and which has been so very ing the door. No human abode could he powerful a factor politically, is -expressed humbler. One perceives that it is a mere artistically not only in the "phonetic" shelter, and also a shelter mainly from decoration of the incidental sculpture, but the sun, which is the chief enemy of man in the recall of autochthonous motive- in these tropical regions. Shade and in the purely "technic" decoration of the coolness are his primary requirements. monument. The descendants of the The absence of openings secures the for- Aztecs have inherited artistic sensibility. mer; the thickness of wall necessitated It is manifested in their music. The by the material the latter. There could Mexican military bands are among the be nothing "vulgar" about a habitation best in the world, even if their native enforced like this, which is reduced to its compositions are of no great interest. It very simplest expression, and admits no is manifest to-day in their pottery and superfluities. But neither, for that mat- their textiles. Mexican Indians are ter, could there by any architecture. different from North American, even The old text-books all began with the though thev are no cleaner and even less "hut" and figured the monuments as to honest. Clarence King used say: somehow evolved from it, a higher "There is much villainy in Mexico, but power of the vernacular construction. there is no vulgarity." For that matter, Examples of historic architecture, and there is no vulgarity about the North remains of prehistoric, by no means con- firm American Indian in his native and uncor- this view. The first requisite of a rupted state, if you could catch him in it. building projected as monumental is that Rut of course the aborigines are immeas- it shall be durable. On the other hand, urably more important as component the abodes of primitive peoples are tran- parts of the population South of the Rio sient shelters, not intended to outlast < irande than N'orth of it. where indeed their builders. As Sir Thomas Browne they are the most negligible of all the has it about the builders of the pyramids races and tribes of mankind whose com- "the oldest of human monuments and is to also posite the North American tending the most permanent" : "of their liv- become. The common and vernacular ing habitations they made little account. of the Indian building Mexican you may conceiving of them but as hospitia. or see all over while is Mexico, "building" inns, while they adorned the sepulchres the word to to the of the hardly apply hasty dead, and, planting thereon lasting and casual shelter which the Northern bases, defied the crumbling touches of nomad furnishes for himself in wigwam time and the misty vaprousiu-ss of ob- or tepee. The journey South from the livion. And as with tombs, so with tem- Texan border to Mexico City is intensely ples." The remains ,,f I'xmal and I'alen- interesting though rather depressing to que can have had very little to do with the Northerner who takes it. outside of the abodes of the men who built them. the short rainy season, by reason of the abodes which vanished in the generation after aridity of the land. There is nothing they were built, leaving no remains green to be seen, excepting the wide and from which they can even omjerturally glossy leaves of the maguey; hardly a be restored. For duration, stone is the blade of grass. But the native habita- one material all over the world, where it ran tions are very much in evidence. These be obtained. \\ lure 1 >cal conditions abodes are merely shelters, as humble prevented its employment, works intend- as possible, never of more than one floor, ed to be monumental have failed of their hardly ever of more than one room and primary requisite of p-rmanence. \r- that not much bigger than a "hall bed cording to the Greek accounts the build- room." the walls of sun-dried mud, the ing of I'.ahylon oiitrivalled that of Xine- roof of what branches can be obtained veh. but it has vanished, leaving no trace for a framework in this treeless land, behind. "It seems nearly certain." -ays wattled and filled with the material of Fergusson. "that no stone was u-ed in 1 Rl: ()!' Ml-XICO CITY. 217 their construction." On the oilier hand, one material to another, an aggregation "it is the employment of stone alone having the same probative force in art which has enabled us to understand the as the like series of transitional or- arrangements of the Assyrian palaces." ganisms in nature which shows the evo- Hardly anywhere in the world is stone lution of the hipparion into the horse. the vernacular material of housebuilding. To the same effect are the bundles of It is too costly, in time and in labor, to reeds reproduced in the stone columns of be available for that purpose. Conse- the Egyptian temples. But these in- quently, when it is imposed as the neces- stances by no means invalidate the rule sary material for structures meant long that when a monumental material is to outlast their builders, it involves a adopted for monumental purposes, its

'nil-: CATHKI >K.\I. AM- SA>;i:AKi< iS.-mrarlu Unlit 1750). Architect. new construction, instead of that com- architecture is developed out of it- monly employed. True, decorative and requirements and has very little in com- even structural details devised for other mon with the vernacular building in less materials are apt to survive in it. ( >mit- permanent and costly materials. tincr the mooted question of the lithic or However, this is not an archaeol wooden origin of the Doric temple, even article and the interest of the re-nains of thoM- \\h.. maintain, like YiolK-t-lc-Duc. the primithe monuments ..f Mc\ that it \\a- d'.-\i>ed f<-r a construction in aim. -t i-\cliisi\ely an archaeological ill- stone admit that the Ionic volute was It is quite possible, indeed it is rural originally a member carved in wo, ,

centuries ago. But what there has been signalize his viceroyalty by some monu- of architecture in Mexico since has been ment. Every bishop had the same ambi- diffi- tion with strictly colonial and Spanish. It is respect to his diocese, almost cult to find in it any trace of native in- every priest cherished it with regard to fluence, even though the artisans em- his parish. With the steady output of ployed were, as in almost all cases they the precious metals the possession of must have been, Mexicans of native or which was the sole motive, except the of mixed stock. The colony has reflected propagation of the faith, in the Spanish the fashions of the "metropole" as dis- schemes of conquest and colonization far tinctly as our own architecture reflected there was more wealth in Mexico current English fashions from the than in the English colonies to the north- earliest settlement down to the archi- ward. The separation of church from tectural declaration of independence, state was theoretically complete in New Hindi- just about a century after the England, albeit in fact there was never political declaration, when Richardson anywhere a more strict theocracy than betook himself to Southern France for that of Massachusetts Bay or of Xew

LOWER PART OF CATHEDRAL AND SAQRARIO.

his prototypes, so soon after which the J laven. The Pilgrims at any rate found- increasing number and prevalence of the ed, as Rufus Choate said, "a church graduates of the Beaux Arts reduced us. without a bishop and a state without as Johnson apprehended that the English a king." But the union of church and authors of his time might be reduced, state in the Spanish colonies was com- "to babble a dialect of France." But plete and avowed. The rearing and the conditions in New Spain were far decoration of churches were the care of more favorable to an impressive display the government. What wonder that the of architecture than the condition- in Mexican monuments of ecclesiastical New England, meaning the entire extent architecture for those three centuries of the English settlements. For three of when Mexico was under Spanish domi- the four centuries since the conquest, nation should have been a hundredfold Mexico was under the rule of Spanish mi in- interesting and impressive in what viceroys, sixty-two of them in all. Al- is now the Republic of Mexico than the most every one of them was anxious to like development in what is now the ARCHITECTURE OF MEXICO CITY. 219

room, but every one of them is furnished with its miniature dome and its minia- ture campanile. Terry's excellent guide is silent about these, and the North Ameri- can Pullman porter unsatisfactory and clearly inauthentic. "Well, you see, there was a saint come along here one time, and every place he stopped he built one o' them churches." There is hardly a provincial capital in Mexico which has not a church superior in an- tiquity, in costliness and in architectural "~"" " EU!T interest to the edifice in tniWUfUU corresponding any of the "old thirteen" of the United States. But naturally Mexico City, as the seat

BELFRY OP THE CATHEDRAL OF MEXICO CITY.

United States. At any rate that is the case. Coming down from the northern frontier to the capital, not a town but shows at least one church impressive by its magnitude and its massiveness, and commonly by more artistic qualities as well. The cupola with its* ribbed ro- tundity of glossy tiles is an invariable feature, yet not more invariable than the square campanile alongside, with its dead wall of lower tower, its open bel- t'ry -tage, and commonly its cupolated or bluntly pointed lantern. Sometimes, as in the cathedral of Puebla, the touer- are many-staged and crowned with four- hipped roofs, recalling the Lombard Romanesque. In any case, you have to note the absence of the French fleche, or h ^pire, disparaged by Mexiran- as "the Protestant needle.'' On the road southward from Laredo, one pas- interval for mo-t i a day a rurinu- of little diurrhcs. apparently

of the interior is - 6 chapel-, which CORNKK I'KT Ml. -Ml K' II -I no larger than that of an ordinary bed- mr.'i.iTO. THI: <-iiru.-H OP SAN mr .UT .1602). .IKCIHTECTURE OF MEXICO CITY. 221

Mexico from Spain in 1821, which just about the time when our own "Georgian" gave way to the Grecian brought in by the publication of the "Antiquities of Athen-." P.ut during this period Spanish architecture, and by consequence Mexican architecture, un- derwent grave and radical modifications. The Renaissance of Palladio and \ ig- nola has never taken real root in Spain or its dependencies. From the Moors the Spaniards inherited an impatience of its formulae, a wil fulness and an in- dividuality which are far from scholastic. In certain edifices of great importance the Greco-Roman which prevailed throughout the rest of Western Kurope

Photo Copy B. Waite.

FK'-NT OF I. A SANTISIMA. CITY OF IOBXICO. of the viccroyalty, is the centre of the architectural activity of the colonial They say there are a hundred churche- in it, and you can readily be- lt. Among them, the.se reflect CMTV architectural fashion that prevail- ed in the Peninsula during those three Centura-- of the colonial period. Our architectural a- our >art'>rial fashions e much fa-ter than those of Eu- rope, particularly than those of Spain. Rut thi- \va- hardly so in the provincial period. \\'hat we have to show in col- onial architecture, so far as it is entitled to he called architecture at all, is pretty much all of a piece, the l'>riti>h modifica- tion of the Italian Renai anre that wa- fa-hionable and current from the time I'hri-topher \\'reti to the coming

in ..f the < ireek Revival in the first quarter of the nineteenth centun. Mexi- can architecture antedate- ours l>y a full I'll. -to Copyright by C. B. Walte. and Mexican colonial architec- century, Tin: i--i , TIM-: --H ture continued until the separation of TI:I'"/.. -TI. \\ MK MOO. 222 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

was imported into Mexico. The Cathe- posed in elevation and not in perspective. dral of Mexico, as the largest and most The interest is considerable on account costly and monumental, as the "Metro- of the magnitude. For the rest the politan" church, followed the general architecture consists in the "features" of European fashion. Completed in 1667, the usual superposition of the three the huge edifice dominates the square orders. This is managed in a scholarly which it fronts, and the whole old quar- and grammatical manner enough, but the

I

CHURCH OF SAN FERNANDO (1755). ter of the of which it is centre. effect is dull and One is. city the general heavy. It would dominate them still more effect- obliged to the architect mainly for the ually if the crowning member of the manner in which he has made his front church had been, as so often, so almost fill the eye of the beholder on or acro-s invariably in lesser churches, a dome in the great square which is >till the 'Vivic due proportion to the total area. As it centre" of Mexico City, and also from is, the interest of the front is the chief the lateral glimpses one gets of the bel- interest of the building. It was corn- fries down the street> which were open- ARCHITECTURE OF MEXICO CITY. 223 ed in order to show them or down which closing surface, and to convert his entire they were established in order to be front into a feature of profuse carving. shown, as the case may have been. The effect is of a wonderful richness, What the cathedral suffers from the undoubtedly a barbaric richness, but not want of such a crowning feature may be in the least less attractive on that account seen from the illustration of the emer- to the Indian population which forms so gence from above "the purple crowd of much the majority of the faithful of humbler roofs" of the dome of the much Mexico. The Sagrario shows an smaller but certainly much more artistic equivalent facade on the east side to that and equally academic church of San Ilde- on the south, which is the main front fonso. This, one says, is what that was and ecclesiologically the "west front" of meant to be, but lost its way. With a Cathedral and Sagrario. It has a par- cupola which bore the same relation to ticular interest as being the most elab- its mass and its front that this smaller orate and ornate specimen that Mexico cupola bears, the cathedral would be has to show of the Churrigueresque, worthy of its preeminence of magnitude called from Churriguera of Salamanca and costliness and position, as it cannot and his two sons, who in the last quarter ;id to be so worthy now. of the seventeenth century and the first There could not be a stronger contrast of the eighteenth, by themselves and than that of the tame correctness of the their disciples and imitators, so greatly cathedral with the wild and fantastic influenced and perverted Spanish archi- irregularity and profusion of the tecture. "Sagrario Metropolitano" which adjoins The present example is rather belated, it. but which architecturally seems to which may be due to the fact that it is take a pride in having nothing to do with colonial. The elder Churriguera died in it. The very material proclaims the in- 1725, and the fashion he set did not long tention of difference. The cathedral is outlive him. To the rationalist and the of gray sandstone relieved, not unpleas- classicist alike, Churriguerresque is antly, with wrought work in weather- abomination. Reason, the logical devel- worn marble originally white. The opment of architectural forms according trio is of a deep red stone, the pos- to the mechanical purposes which they ;i of which is one of the architec- subserve and express, is thrown to the tural advantages of the Republic which winds. Equally thrown to the winds are >een employed to the uttermost. moderation and discretion and all that There arc. in fact, two sandstones of we mean by "good taste." The attempt :i hue quarried within an accessible is to stun and bewilder the beholder by rii-tance of Mexico City, apparently in the accummulation of features and de- unlimited quantities. There is this crini- tails, features which are not parts of a :Hetv and another of a bright pink. countenance and details which belong to Both are used in profusion in important no ensemble. It is in fact a revolt buildings and both are freely imitated in against the academic, and its success in lining of the plaster fronts which its time was because of that. It "touch- arc tin -taple of the visible building in ed a chord." If some Churriguera the older parts of the city, and which are should arise in these United States to 1 with white or red or green or proclaim with equal sonority and em- yellow or blue with a very enlivening phasis that the architecture of the Beaux ami uay effect. It is characteristic of Arts was "all rot." would he not have a Spani-h and consequently of Mexican fair chance of inducing a multitude to architecture to have some rich and con- follow him to do evil, that is, some other central feature brought into kind of evil? Such are the reflections ^ prominence and made still more con- that the wildne>s of the Metro- ;is by the blankncss of the flank- politano i- adapted to elicit. For. note ing walls. But the architect of tin- \\ell. iiispite of it- otitrageousness and no has chosen to assume that the it- imsponMhility. there are in this work "f the cathedral is hi< blank en- viijor and life, and much RECORD. 224 THE ARCHITECTURAL

at times and skill about the carving, in design as permitted Spanish architecture in execution. The next most noteworthy to degenerate into a riotous irrationality, is has never allowed it to shrink and wither specimen of the style in Mexico City into mere formalism. the perhaps the front of the old church of Technically, San Francisco. This is withdrawn some Moorish influence is no doubt responsi- hundred feet from the sidewalk of one ble for the importation into Spain and of the which of the busiest streets in the city, so that thence into Mexico dome, is marked and it is hard to make out its detail through the most prevalent the gateway and across the garden, and feature of Mexican ecclesiastical archi- It is no means the photograph can do it no sort of tecture, old or new. by later in date the Italian dome of the Renaissance justice. It is forty years

THE CHURCH OP SAN ILDEFONSO. than the Sagrario, and, perhaps corre- which was thus imported. That correct spondingly, more refined. At any rate, example already cited of that type of it has, where it stands and as it is seen, dome, which might have come from the a charming and romantic effect. Salute in Venice, is very exceptional. There is another Spanish style equally The Mexican dome is the Oriental dome, exemplified in Mexico, and that is the covered with the tiles, glittering from Mudejar, the style derived from the afar, which are also a Moorish be<|m-t Moors, whose influence is almost as plain- to Spain and Mexico. Perhaps as com- ly as in their own monuments of Cordova plete and admirable an example a> one and Granada to be traced in the succeed- can cite of the Mexican dome is that of ing Christian building of Spain. That the Holy Well at Guadalupe Hidalgo, influence, it may be, in cooperation with the Mecca of Mexico, of the Mexican the Spanish character, which, if it has Indians above all, for it was an Indian ARCHITECTURE OF MEXICO CITY. Z2S

entrance of an elaborate richness much less barbaric than might be expected, while the dome is roofed with bine and white tiles of i'uebla and the ribs are in tiles of chrome yellow. The whole ef- fect is highly Oriental and highly ar- tistic. As unmistakably Moorish is the church of San Hipolito. It stands upon a site memorable both to Spaniards and Mexicans as that of the "Night of Sor- row." When the Mexicans rose against the invaders for the last time, with re- liil sults so terrible, the Spaniards promptly began a commemorative church on the ffll $ spot, but the present edifice dates only from 1602. The front is as you see a

TMK ll'.I.V WKLL OF GUADALUPE HIDALGO. (1771-91).

Madonna who wrought the miracle that hallows the place. The suburb is only half an hour from the plaza of the Cathe- dral by a most interesting trolley ride. The church it-elf, which .Mexican piety :iriched to an extent hardly rivalled in the Cathedral it -elf. dates from 1709, and i-. in it- interior, from the "archi- ic" point of view, one of the most interesting building- in Mexico. It is rather Kmane-c|ue than < lothic. and the indica'.i'iiis of the rooting in the sections of the nave pier- form an admirable ex ample of the structural logic which is by -.-an- a common characteri-tic of Mexican architecture. The holy well ha- also a lo^u-al enclo-nre. Xo form could better expre-- the purpose of en- do-ing and prouvting it than that which recall- the general siructure of the bap- ti-tery nf I'isa, but wa- evidently de vi-ed for it- <>wn ]>lace and it- o\vn pur- The wall- are of the crim-on al ready mentioned, a characteristic Mexi can material, with carved very richly BNTRANCB TO Tin: THII:\ i;.- M U and quaintly -haped \\indo\v-frame-. th-- .i.l.i ! I Volador). 226 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

' very interesting composition in the Square Garden tower, evidently in a Spanish Renaissance of the early seven- different manner and of a much later teenth century. It owes very much of date than the blank mass of tower be- its interest to its being enclosed between low. This front, flanked at it is, is one of walls almost entirely blank except for the most picturesque things in Mexico, the decoration of red and yellow tiles; and its interest is much enhanced by and this enclosure is of course entirely the monumental erection at the outer

THE OLD CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO SEEN FROM AVENIDA SAN FRANCISCO THROUGH COURT YARD.

Moorish. Apparently both flanking corner of the atrium. The carving of towers were intended to be surmounted this object illustrates an Aztec legend of by clock faces and lanterns, but the in- the conquest, although surmounted by tention was fulfilled only in one. That an orthodox Madonna. This is thus one one is, as in the case of the Giralda of of the very few exceptions to the rule Seville, the prototype of the Madison that the native Mexican element lias ARCHITECTURE OF MEXICO CITY. 227

to do with nothing the ecclesiastical is to understand that these examples of of Mexico. architecture One imagines, its ecclesiastical architecture are by no in this case, an indigenous and patriotic means the only notable churches among with parish priest conniving a native the hundred of the capital. There is sculptor at this architectural inconsis- hardly one of them that has not its in- tency and sculptural protest against the dividual interests. If we were to con- alien domination. In any case the total sider the interiors also, there would be effect is very picturesque and very no end to this article. The illustrations charming. already given seems sufficient to con- Only a few steps away is the old vince every North American architect of

THK .I'M-KKY CLUB. REAIi ELKVATI- >.\ Formerly the Casa De LOB Azulejds. church of San Fernando. In its actual an artistic turn of mind that there is environment this old pink and brown something in Mexico very well worth front has a melancholy and neglected his while. air. It is partly dismantled and looks As has been said already, the secular dilapidated; all of which is to the en- architecture is inferior in interest to the hancement of its undeniable picturesque- ecclesiastical. Nevertheless, there arc is hardly a trace in it. in secular buildings antedating the nine spite of its date, of the Churrigueresque teenth century which are very well icration. worth stmly. Many of the fronts now Tin- reader \vh.. lia- n..t seen Mexico -eculari/ed were originally appurtenances 228 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

STREET FRONT AVE'XIDA BUCARELI.

of monastic establishments. That is the home of the Jockey Club, is one of probably the case with the front illustrat- the most conspicuous as well as one of ed in the Avenida Bucareli, which is the most attractive of the old buildings highly characteristic. The lowness, the still remaining in the commercial quarter expanse, the confinement of the orna- of Mexico City. The photograph i- not ment to the central entrance and the of the main front on the Avenida de punctuating pier>. and the refinement of San 1'rancisco but of the less pretentious the ornament itself, puts this front en- rear elevation, on the .\\enida Cinco tirely out of comparison with anything de Mayo, which was added only in 1906. of its own date which was erected be- This, however, is an absolute facsimile tween the Rio Grande and the Great in detail of the main elevation. Like the Lakes. The Casa De Los Azulejos, now other, it is faced completely with blue

I'lioto Copyright by C. I?. W i

\ < SALTO DEL AQUA FOUNT. IX KNI> >F A-.M'A I l*CT. (17T:u. ARCHITECTURE OF MEXICO CITY. 229

and white Puebla tiles. These, accord- cept upon the supposition that they were ing to tradition, were bestowed upon the 'stolen goods. original structure early in the seventeenth Finally, to conclude with these relics century by an extravagant representa- of Colonial Mexico, there is the terminus tive of the local gilded, or more probably of the old aqueduct, completed in 1779. ered. youth. It was long since abandoned as the water A relic of old provincial times is the supply of the city or any part of it, but entrance to what is locally known as the it will be agreed that this monumental Thieves' Market, not because it is or terminus, with its twisted rococo col- ever was supposed to be a resort of the umns, its heraldic emblazonments, its criminal classes, but because the things sculpture and its decorative detail, was f<>r -ale there were of a cheapness which well worth preserving as an ornament of -upposed to be unaccountable, ex- this charming and romantic town.

THE CATHEDRAL. LOOKING DOWN AVENIDA CINCO DE MAYO. rpTONINGT

Atmospnere t? preservea 10

IT HAS BEEN SAID that happy is the of the Renaissance or the still more dis- nation which has no history. If this were tant middle ages, could be reconstructed true we Americans should be the happi- without any other change than the gar- est nation in the world, yet as it is the ments of the inhabitants. universal weakness of mankind to covet Centuries of warfare in Europe have what they have not, we long for a past wrought less of destruction arid recon- which seems struction than a hundred of natural with a passionate eagerness years almost incomprehensible to the foreigner. development in the United States, and in America was discovered only a little over those of the Colonial centers which have four hundred years ago, and our history become the cities of to-day there exist as a nation does not cover much more only a few scattered landmarks of the than one hundred years. We can take old work, as for example, Independence only a languid and second hand interest Hall, in Philadelphia, and the City Hall, in the past of other nations, nor does the in New York. The only places where pre-Columbian period concern us even as enough exists to give us a fair idea of deeply as English history, since while we the life of that time are in the scattered possess the land of the mound builders backwaters and eddies of civilization, their traditions have vanished with the towns whose early importance has been race. destroyed by the building of railroads Our earliest real history dates only which have made them merely way sta- from the settlement of Jamestown by the tions between the enormous cities which English, and its visible expressions in constitute at once the crown and the re- houses and monuments are barely two proach of our civilization. hundred years old. As the remotest past A hundred years ago things were very can call is different of which we logically our own ; methods communication that of Colonial days, our keenest concern were so poor that each little seaport is centered in that period, and was never city acted as a sort of metropolis for before as intense as it is to-day. The the country immediately surrounding it, universal desire for Colonial furniture, and in speaking of the Atlantic Coast Colonial silver, Colonial houses attests one thought not only of Boston, N'ew this ; every one wants to see Colonial pub- York and Baltimore and Philadelphia, lic buildings, Colonial towns. The but also of such towns as Cast inc. relics left by our ancestors are lament- Charleston, New London and Stoning- ably few. Europe has village after vil- ton, which, with New Bedford, \Y\\ age and city after city in which the old London, Newport and others of the work predominate?, and Rothenburg and sound ports, fitted out fleets of ship- for Nuremburg, in Germany, Nancy and the seal and whale fisheries. Carcassonne in France, and Pavia and These have become places of pilgrim- San Gemigano in Italy, are only a few age to architects, historians and anti- of thousands of towns in which the life quarians, and their number is lament- STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT. 231 ably few. Castine in Maine, Salem in 1662, it was named Mystic, and finally Massachusetts, Germantown in Phila- its present title was fixed in 1666. Chese- delphia, Charlottesville in Virginia, and bro's original settlement was for farm- Charleston in South Carolina are all ing, and in 1650 one Thomas Stanton places of this sort. They were all for- procured a license to erect a trading merly of considerable importance, Salem house and the exclusive right to trade and Charleston trading ports, Castine a in that region for three years. Gradu- ship building town, and Germantown ally others joined the colony. The first and Charlottesville then, what they still meeting house was built in 1659, and in remain, beautiful residence villages. 1668 the total population had reached Even in these there has been so much forty-three. The manner in which real new work built around and on the sites estate transactions were handled in that of the older buildings that much of their day may be of interest now. A home lot early character has been lost. was given to each inhabitant on condi- There remains as far as I know only tion that he build upon it within six a single place which has preserved to months, but the title only passed to him any marked degree its Colonial atmos- after he had dwelt there for two years. phere, and that is Stonington. Here However, he could not sell the land un- progress has been asleep, its population til he had offered it to the town and they has barely doubled in a hundred years; had refused to accept it. A very ex- its old sea trade is dead beyond hope of clusive little place. in its streets its recall. Grass grows ; During King Philip's War the rem- wharves are tenanted only by a few mo- nant of the I'equot Indians still living tor boats and unused steamers of the in the town remained faithful to the Sound lines; its glory has departed. It English and were of great assistance is kept alive by a few textile factories during those dangerous times. Its de- and a great machine works, but its velopment from then on was steady, and principal industry is summer boarders, new houses were built, old ones repaired, fortunately not so numerous as to the town became wealthier, and it was as change its ancient tone. The resi- flourishing and prosperous a little city dent population, aside from the descen- as the colonies could show. dants of its original settlers, is composed In the early days of the Revolutionary largely of Portuguese from the Azores War it was bombarded by Commodore Islands, descendants and relatives of the Wallace, who had heard that the Conti- daring sailors who once formed the nental forces had there gathered con- crews of its fishing vessels. Here they siderable forage and munitions of war, furnish the factories with labor and including a large number of cattle from form an element both picturesque and Block Island, which had been previously useful. sacked by the British. The Americans The original settlement was made by replied with a battery of long sixes and William Chesebro, of Plymouth County, nines, and one eighteen: pounder carron- in 1649. He unquestionably showed in- ade mounted in an earthwork on the telligence in his choice of site. The vil- point beyond the light house. No dam- lage is on a high and rocky peninsula, age was done to either party. The town excellently situated for defence, since it had another taste of warfare of the is separated from the mainland by a nar- opera bouffe order in August, 1814, KAV and marshy neck, once crossed only when Admiral Hardy (the same Hard\ hy a single causeway, now drained and who, as a captain, rcceiwd the dyiiu: filled until it forms the site of the new words of Nelson) with a really powerful portion of the town. It-- name- have fleet attacked the town. His headquat Men many, and their memory still is pre- ters had been at New London, and the served by local titles of various parts. inhabitants of Stonington had grown ac- First railed I'aucatuck. when chartered cu-toined to British war vessels on by Massachusetts, in 1658, it became blockade duty passing up and down Long Southertoii; annexed t<> Connecticut in l>land Sound, too accn-toined indeed t. 232 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. take any precautions. \Yhen he ap- to move out of town." They, in quite as proached close to the town there was elegant language, replied : "We will de- naturally great excitement. The only fend the place to the last extremity. defenses were a battery consisting of Should it be destroyed, we will perish in two eighteen-pounders and a four- the ruins." It must have seemed a good pounder, the old battery used thirty-five deal of a joke to Admiral Hardy to re- years having been allowed to sink in the ceive such a reply from a little town of

THE BANK. ground. The messages between Ad- wooden cottages, defended by such a miral Hardy and the town were grandil- ridiculously small armament, and he oun- oquent in the extreme, especially when menced heavy firing about four in the viewed in the light of results. Hardy afternoon from his fleet of live war sent word "Not wishing to destroy the vessels, the flagship of which \va- the unoffending inhabitants of Stooioffton, Ramillies, a ship of the line of sevenu- one hour is granted on the receipt of tlii< four guns. The American defender-. STON1NGTON, CONNECTICUT. 233

doned the battery, but securing six more kegs of powder, they returned to find the British not landed, so they got a black- smith to drill the spikes out of the guns and started firing again. Admiral Hardv got his boats out to land, but found the militia had been coming in until five or six hundred men were in town, and de- cided not to attempt it. After bombard- ing for another day, still with no effect, he retreated. The English were re- ported to have fired over fifteen tons of round shot into the much of which THE LIGHT HOUSK. town,

only about forty strong, replied from their battery, sent messengers through- out the country for militia reinforce- ments, and hastily commenced digging out the Revolutionary cannon. The bombardment continued until eleven that night, the enemy throwing solid shot, ex- ' slu-11, rockets and car- 1 Congreve casses, a -pecies of bomb weighing two hundred pounds, and filled with com- bu-tib!es. Fire was started in a dozen placo. but fortunately the Americans were able to extinguish it before it did any damage. The action was renewed the next UK rning, and the sloop of war "I >e-]>au-h" was severely injured and tuwed r.ut of action. The American gunner- \\vre commanded by a sailor who had been impressed on an Knglish ship and had gotten his knowledge of gunnery there. By three in the after- noon the powder of the Americans ran out and they spiked their guns and abau- THE SECOND COXGREGATlM.NA I.

was picked up by the Americans and sold in New York. The total American loss in this memorable action was none killed and one injured (not very severely, iMwever ). and on the I'.ritish -ide twenty killed and fifty injured. The Americans saw at once how big a joke it was and one of the papers published a poem ahunt it fn>m which the following two

-tan/a- are copied :

They killed a goose, they killed a hen Three lio-- they wounded in a pen They da-lied away and pray what then?

Till-: < 'II KSIII:- ST> >i;i; That was nut taking 234 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

Then shells were thrown, then rockets occasionally run some cars, but it is flew probably done in the middle of the night, But not a shell of all they threw when everybody is asleep and there is Though every house was full in view nothing else to do. Could burn a house in Stonington. The approach is by a typical country road running up a sharp hill to the After the war the town continued to square. There are only a few houses be- flourish peacefully until the advent of the fore you reach it and once there you find railroads, from which time until the pres- yourself removed to the eighteenth cen- ent the town has practically stood still. tury. Great trees fill the square and I suppose the trees have grown up, some border streets whose stillness is only houses have been re-shingled, a few new broken by an occasional passerby or the shops have been built, but in the old automobile of some explorer from the

THE CUSTOMS HOUSE. portion of the town so little has been outer world. A glance at the map sh<>\\> changed that the effect is precisely what better than words can tell the shape of it must have been a hundred years ago. the place. Two streets, Main and Water The railroad station is on the neck of Streets, converge from the square on the laud which separates the old town from landward side of the peninsula to tin- the mainland, no trolley passes through tiny green near the point. On one side the streets and only a couple of side of the square are a pair of beautiful old tracks to the unused pier of the steam- houses: the Hancock house and its neigh- ship company exist to change its ap- bor, the Williams house. They an t\p- pearance. Even these wabble around sn ical village residences of the best type. unobtrusively through the back yards big. square and simple, beautiful in de- that they are almost invisible, and I have tail, colored the prevailing white and never seen a train upon them. I sup- green. While the roadwav- and -idewalks pose to preserve the franchise they must alike are sprouting grass the place lias STONINGTOK. CO.V.V/TC77i 7 / 235

antiquities and has every requisite of a complete little city; dwellings, a couple of churches, a light house, factories, a bank, a customs house, stores and a city hall all can be found, and each is a worthy representative of the times of

M MBER 118 WATER STREET. a singularly well kept air. The lawns are neat and trimmed, the tiny front yards are bright with flowers, the

NTMl'.KK :i:\ \V.\TKK STIiKKT.

the Colonies or the early nation. A theatre naturally enough is lacking: our ancestors did not believe in diversions of that sort, but their diversion, the

xr.\i 1:1:1: \\ AT Hi: STKKKT.

i\n> cs are in repair and the houses freshly painted. The old town has sonn \\hat the effect of a museum of

A H'fSI-: "N MAIN STKl

drinking place, is now conspicuous by it> aWmv. Wherever one walks one tinds

tin- i ild \\urk. Passing down the ri-ht of tin- gri-cn al.mg Water Stnv

in tlu- lui-nu-sx ,| ; NTMr.Ki: r.i MAIN STKKKT lind yniirself 236 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

such as it is, on which are the meat mar- \Yater Street and from the Sound side ket and the grocery store illustrated by a stone pier which can hardly have here, the latter kept by one Chesebro, been touched for a hundred years. The perhaps a descendant of the first settler. building in which the machine works is The meat market is probably not very housed itself invites attention, so differ- old, yet the force of tradition has been ent is it from the modern factory. Its strong enough to compel its design along granite walls are pierced with windows

NV.MUKI: KICHTY-KIVK \\.\TKI: STREET. the lines of the older work; and the filled with >mall panes, and its \\ater grocery store is a delightful example >f tank is concealed in a tower like that of how business \\as subordinated to fam- a Colonial church and covered with a ily life, the store being conducted in the little dome. < >n the green is the Fir>t basement under the piaxxa. which en- National Hank. aK i granite with tered at one end form- the entrance to wooden columns and entablature and the house itself. The machine works facing it is a monument to the defenders have their landward entrance from "f Slonin-ton Hanked by a couple of the STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT. 237

Several cross streets connect Main and Water Streets and where there is width enough little side streets project like spurs from them, each lined with resi- dences, quaint or dignified as the fancy of the owner dictated. The customs house still flies the flag of the Revenue Service, and I suppose the collector has occasionally something to do, yet look- ing through the window one sees only a couple of old gentlemen half asleep over the THE .\K<'.\i'i: MAI: Kin- newspapers and a collection of dusty and mildewed leather bound books. guns which formed part of the battery, Peace and a certain sleepy are now (alas) with their muzzles pointing dignity the characteristics of the old town. It toward the bank ! is unable to get much excited about Immediately beyond the green is the any- thing; changes and advances in civiliza- south end of the point, a grassy, quiet tion are infrequent ; the authorities there place with a lovely view of the water appreciate the loveliness of the on three sides and the delightful old place and are anxious to it as untouched stone light house in the center. This is keep as possible. Sometimes this is carried a splendid place to sit and dream and to extremes. I was in the store if you try hard enough you can easily drug one day looking over some cards fancy Admiral Hardy's ships fighting post of the town, and two or three men were away without doing any harm except around the soda water counter for what a modern lawyer would term sitting behind which the an enor- the damages for mental anguish of the druggist, mously stout old chap, was inhabitants; who, after all, do not seem polishing to to have been much alarmed. In the glasses. Turning one of the men the druggist said, I see have harbor not far from the point is a "Mayor, you started South monument which marks the corner mowing Street, and high time it too." answered the between the states of Connecticut, is, "Yes," "ever since that confounded kid Rhode Island and New York, and Mayor, lost in it there has been so much as a small boy I went out there and got kicking that finally I had to have it at- with my legs curled around it "In to." This is an three states at once." tended epitome of the in the town. Turning back from the green toward present day forgotten tin- square, on Main Street, one passes more exquisite examples of the old work, .if which the most charming is the hou.-e known to the youngsters as "Mi>- Katty's" and the Wayland resi- dence which in some ways is the show plate .if the town. Almost opposite the Wayland house is the old library, a typ- ical house of the early times, when two- story h-nises were taxed by the Kini; and when one-story house-- went free. Still on Main Street is the Second Con- gregational Church, an interesting c\ ample <>\ church architecture of tin- early nineteenth century, although not in detail as good as the earlier work .MISS LUO II VILDING ODERATE

encer^Jr. F.A.I. A. ^f

BEFORE GOING FURTHER with this little be willing to spend eight, but eight was serial treatise on house building as a and is the absolute-final-ultimate limit. fine art, let us consider in detail a most Your first floor plan shows a hall 9x troublesome question which must be dis- 12, living room 18x23, dining 13x17, cussed and answered in some way at kitchen 12x15, maids' dining room 8x the first interview between client and 9^2, service pantry 7x8^2, cook's pantry architect. 5x8, entrance porch, kitchen porch and It is the question of cost, already entry and a screened porch off living touched upon in earlier articles, but not and dining room 12x17 inside. On the considered in detail. second floor you have three roomy bed For months perhaps years, you and rooms, two baths, a dressing room, a your wife, or rather, your wife and you, small study, or "den" and a linen room. have been laboring over those home- In the attic two servants' bed rooms with made sketches, which yesterday you closets and a bath. There is but one modestly, but with ill-concealed pride, staircase, however. Your plan, allowing unfolded upon the long oak table in your for thickness of walls and partitions is architect's private office. They were a rectangle about 52 feet long and 24 really very well done, considering, and feet wide to which is added the large very well considered all but the cost of porch, the dining room wing 7x14, the building them. Both of you, but par- stair bay 6x9, the modest entrance porch ticularly your wife, gave them much and the service porch and entrance. It study of winter evenings under the lib- is about the size of the house your Cou- rary lamp and when the last closet had sin Jack built twelve years ago for eight been squeezed in and even a space pro- thousand it certainly is no larger. vided for some sort of a staircase, you You mention your appropriation and drew them over again at scale, only for- your architect looks like a man about getting that walls and partitions are to break a piece of bad news as gently thicker than lines. But that was ex- as possible. He asks you if you are cusable many country carpenters draw averse to rather low ceilings say 8' 6" "plans" in the same way. You naturally for the first story and 8' 0" for the felt that little remained for the architect second. You are not. Then he begins to to do but to enlarge them to the usual do some figuring, while you wonder why working scale of a quarter of an inch he doesn't say at once that your appro- to the foot design the elevation on the priation is ample. "Well," he finally simple Colonial lines upon which you says, "we ought to build on the lines you had set your hearts and dash off some have indicated for about ten thou-.uul specifications. You thought that he dollars, including everything necessary really ought to knock off a good frac- to make the house complete, but not in- tion of his fee for the labor you had al- cluding grading and planting-walks, or ready saved him. But you encountered architects' fees. trouble immediately at the first inter- "These are the n-u-li figures: ground view. Your appropriation has seven area about 1,500 sq. ft., mean height, thousand dollars. At a pinch you might allowing for a roof of minimum pitch BUILDING A HOUSE OF MODERATE COST. 239 to accommodate rooms in attic, 32 feet, The fact is that Jackson is building a cubic contents, therefore, above base- house that cost him over twenty thou- ment floor level 48,000 feet worth $9,- sand, had been "stung" or felt that 600.00 at 20 cents per cubic foot. Al- he had, which amounts to the same thing. lowing about $500 for porches and serv- He went to a young fellow who has ice entrance extension it totals ten thou- turned out some very good small houses, sand one hundred. For a well built but hasn't practiced long. Used to be a frame and stucco' house out there on designer in a New York office, and when the river road twenty cents is as low a Jackson went to him with a twenty thou- cubic foot cost as it would be safe to sand dollar program and a twelve thou- allow. You may get somewhat lower sand dollar appropriation, his inexperi- bids and you will certainly get higher ence with prices, his optimism and his ones. We planned several houses which desire for the "job" led him to encour- were built there last year costing from age the idea that while twelve thousand ten to fifteen thousand, and they aver- was hardly sufficient, fifteen ought to be aged twenty cents. Twelve years ago enough with economical planning and yi .u might have built the same thing in not too expensive construction. A case the same neighborhood for sixteen of hoping against hope, or, rather against cents." the cold facts of the building market. And the little class for the study of Jackson put off building until he was the high cost of living is discussed an in a great hurry to break ground, allow- hour or so longer in a new modern ing too little time for the preparation house of one's very own while you hope and study of the preliminary sketches, that your architect-instructor is some- and so busy with affairs at his factory, how a mistaken pessimist, although it while the madame was working over- will doubtless be best to figure on put- time at auction bridge, teas, and recep- ting in the additional two thousand, as a tions, that the working plans and specifi- last resort rather than give up that cations were only hurriedly looked over perfect plan for a perfect house, which before being pronounced satisfactory. can't be cut down anywhere and still As the house went up they both be- remain worth building on that beautiful gan to think of things they wanted and lot. that must go into the house. One little The Johnsons, who built on the next instance : piece last year can't afford any better All the interior partitions were in house than you, yet theirs is larger. You place, and the plumbers busy "roughing simply can't cut yours down, and besides in," when they concluded to have tran- you really expected to spend at least soms over all the bed room doors and all nine thousand, and Aunt Susan has the framing about them was ripped out and over. After of the raf- promised to help you out if your build- done many in ters a roof of j; fund runs short. But, of course, you were up, they wanted didn't say anything to your architect heavy green glazed tile instead of shin- about this reservation. It wouldn't have gles, necessitating heavier main rafters, i business-like nor safe. Why, it was the lighter ones coming down, and most thi in* .rning in the smoker of the of the roof being reframed. Altogether, M" that Jaekson warned you against including the tile roof, there were over letting Bozart (the architect of your eighteen hundred dollars in "extras" on ciioia- > <.r any other of those other top of the original contracts, aggregat- 'Vuttlin. at x" know the full extent of ing nearly twenty thousand, which ymir appropriation. the way, was really about what he had "Whatever you tell him, he'll get gay n uant to spend. Some of these the and make you >pend thirty per cent. were due to haste or carelessness on niorr In- fore you are through with him. architect's part in preparing the plan-. They all do. and besides the contract Others were due to the desire for a \\hich -rcw as it took price you'll have a lot of extras to pay "swell honV I'.r delinite alx've Other- !. fore everything i*; settled up." shape ground. BRICK AND HALF TIMBERED STUCCO GIVING MORE FREi OF SECOND FLOOR PLANNING THAN ALL BRICK CONSTRUCTION. BUILDING A HOUSE OF MODERATE COST. 241 might have been avoided by due pre- ing a man's real appropriation by what liminary co-operation and consultation he says he wants in a building rather with the architect, a few others were than by what he offers to spend. fairly chargeable to the inexperience of Like the old oriental system of hag- a young practitioner. gling over a bargain the seller too high Jackson is sore. If a "Booster's the buyer too low, until a mean closing Club" is ever organized to help along price is reached, this method is bad and young Hardmuth's practice, he will cer- ought not to be considered necessary by tainly not be a member. Of course, a practical people who are in the habit of Hardmuth can't shift all of the blame buying goods at plainly marked prices. for not making a firm friend of his cli- Let the owner say to his architect in ent. He should have told the hard truth the before a line has been beginning," about cost as soon as rough sketches of- drawn : You know and / know that it is fered a basis for a cost-per-cubic-foot not customary for clients to be frank estimate, or he should have refused, as about their house building appropria- some wise architects do, to make even tions. The average client is afraid of an approximate statement as to the cost the proverbial extravagance of archi- of a sizable house. Perhaps an honest tects. or intelligent guess as to cost would have "Of course, I understand that most of sent Jackson to some other architect will- you try to see that your clients get as ing to cast any sort of a horoscope to much as possible for their money. Your please and hold a prospective client, but reputation is helped that way. But your it would not have made him an enemy tendency, since every artist is somewhat in particular and a detractor of architects of an optimist, is to overdo it. You m general. And it might have made him count too much on these low bids from a friend. reliable contractors that seldom come Take the case of "C" who went to when most needed. And we who are "D" for sketch plans of a "positively about to build naturally want more than not more than five thousand dollar" we are able, or at least more than we house. To satisfy "C," "D" not only are willing to freely pay for. We have made sketch floor plans and a perspec- a hazy feeling that the system of letting tive, but also four elevations to scale and contracts to the lowest competitive bid- secured approximate figures from con- der on a set of plans and specifications, tractors. These went to six thousand. may bring us a piece of something for l>aid "D" for the sketches, saying nothing. So we name a low price and that five was his limit, and that more- you don't tell us flatly that it's too low. over, Mrs. C. was very much prejudiced unless it's absurdly so, even though you in favor of Z's unique ideas in domestic know it without putting pencil to paper. architecture. C. built Z's design, com- Your experience with past clients tells plete in every detail, including a massive you that every intelligent owner must garden wall and spent twelve thousand or ought have a fair idea as to what on his bungalow house. he must really spend before he is Before it was finished he advised sev- through, and that he will finally build eral friends who intended building to go what he wants, more or less regard:- to D who had lost a small job, but had of any stated cost. made a friend. This is not a "fable in "One man in twenty, however, usually slang" or otherwise, but it has a moral. limited in his resources says what he We may always not be quite frank and means and sticks to it until his house i- square with the other fellow, but he built, and you can't always recogn it's late. archi- u can't do both at the same I've practically decided to build on a time." percentage, or 'cost-plus-fixed sum' Are you one of these successful mon- basis, and the foundations can be start- eyed men who is amply able to pay if he ed as soon as your plans are sufficiently chooses for a house of more than moder- complete for approximate estimates of ate cost? When you go to your archi- cost." Many house builders are, how- tect, surprise him by saying: "Now. ever, "between the devil and the deep

THE KNOTS IN UNDRESSED AND STAINED WIDE LAPPED BOARDS RATHKI: ADD TO THEIR EFFECTIVENESS AS AN INEXPENSIVE EXTERIOR COVERING.

that's about what we think we want. Go sea." They are like the fellow who out and rake a look at our property and wants to own a touring car on a run- make some sketches. Doubtless you about income. They want better and may suggest some additional features, costlier houses than present means or or perhaps an altogether different certain future prospects warrant. You scheme, and perhaps some other mate- can hardly expect them to be frank with rial. an architect, because they think they "\Ye want a well-built house, suitable mean what they say as to ultimate cost. to our property and neighborhood, and But yet. in the case of each, the new the way we live, and the cost is a sec- house must somehow be a next year - ondary consideration. We don't want model, seven passenger, four bathroom a larger house, and we don't want to affair, fully equipped with hot water spend money for unnecessary and mean- heat, indirect electric illumination, vac- BUILDING A HOUSE OF MODERATE COST. 243 mini cleaning system, tireless cooker, in- plan to build without regular architects' ter-telephones, etc., etc., etc., or the fair services. Simply compute the cubic con- chauffcnsc will never smile again. The tents or "cubage" of the building, and architect is sought as a possible worker multiply by an assumed cubic foot price. of miracles. The accuracy of the result will depend These are the people who discount the on the degree of accuracy with which future, and find when all the bills are this cubic foot price has been guessed. paid that they have spent rather more For all estimates, except those based than they could well afford. It is they, on actual bids from contractors are mere- rather than their architects, who are ex- ly guesses. And so wide are the varia-

E OF TIIK SITE AFFECTS COST. F ill THIS SMAI.I, AI.I.-SH1N' 1 1 .F. I T BATH. ME.. THE CELLAR WAS BLASTED OUT OF A QRANITK LEDGE AND WALLED EXPENSIVELY WITH LARGE DRESSED GRANITE BLOCKS

/ant. They are the American tions between contractors' bids, on com- -[lenders. They are the people who pleted drawings and specifications, that mortgage their homes to buy and run often appear to be guesses, rather automobiles. than the careful, expert computations of A- already suggested, there is a rough men thoroughly familiar with current and u-ady method <>t' estimating the ap- prices in their special lines. proximate cost "t" a h'-n-e from the sim- So architects often find that their itline floor plan >keiciie< which you rough estimate- ha-ed on assured cost evolve at home or from the published per cubic foot are nearer the tru plan- which yon buy In- fore y.ni seek tract cost than many of the acttiar pro- an architect, r fn>m which yn perhaps posals which they rec< , BUILDING A HOUSE OF MODERATE COST. 245

THIS WELL BUILT FRAME AND STUCCO HOUSE COST ABOUT SEVENTEEN CENTS A CUBIC FOOT FIVE YEARS AGO AT HINSDALE, ILL.

In no branch of building is the unit but would now cost twenty probably price more difficult of accurate assump- more. The same type in our more ex- tion than in residence work. Not only pensive and remote North Shore sub- is cost largely influenced by locality, in- urbs would average about twenty-two cluding the local material market, wage cents. scales, working hours and efficiency of A few years ago solid brick walled mechanics, but it varies with the type of and shingle-roofed houses of good size plan and design, while the character of could be built at twenty-five cents. The construction and materials remain un- price of brick has since increased mate- changed. rially, but local wage scales are higher, If the cost be estimated according to and the wood framing, floors and finish cubage for a certain construction and more expensive. Each year, too, the finish, it may be modified by percentage standard of quality demanded is higher, factors to determine roughly the cost of particularly in the matter of equipment. different materials, workmanship or Wiring for electric lighting, formerly equipment. largely done in the cheapest way is now The larger and more elaborate the run in metal conduits. The bath room

. the more difficult it becomes to floors must be of tile instead of wood. assume a cubic foot price. For the Piping for vacuum cleaning must be in- of moderate cost, however, fairly stalled, and maids' quarters must offer trustworthy data can be given, remem- the equivalent of good hotel accommo- bering that they vary with locality, size dations, so acute has grown the servant and construction, and that the tendency problem. The old-fashioned, wide open of all forms of wood construction and porch is now a sort of over-windowed wood finish it to gradually increase as annex to the living room and must not our forests continue to dwindle. only be glazed with sliding or casement Twenty years ago good small frame sash, but provided with enough radiation houses were being erected in Chicago's to render it livable all winter. When fashionable suburbs at seven and eight ten years ago there would have been no cents a cubic foot. The same houses now stable or other out buildings, there must cost more than double. Five years ago iio\\- be a small garage. a good frame and stucco house o>stiu^ For small frame houses, wide, sound, ten to fifteen thousand could be built in tight, stained, lapped, knotted boards. our western suburbs at seventeen cents, ship-lap or boards tongued with rebated 246 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. battens to shed rain are the most eco- first story and stucco or stucco and nomical exterior covering over sheathing stained wood above will cost usually and waterproof building paper or nearly as much as the all-brick building, "quilt." but has a picturesque and lively quality, Shingles have nearly doubled in cost which renders it suitable to some sites, in the past twenty years, but still cost while the frame walls of the second- no more than the thin, painted, lapped story may be readily extended in the "siding" or "clap-boards" which for form of bays, overhangs, or upper more than a century have been the stand- porches, allowing greater freedom in ard covering for the American frame planning the upper floors. house. Hard, painfully neat, thin and In some localities where gravel or flimsy looking, without variety of color crushed stone are close at hand, hollow or texture, and requiring paint every few cement block for outer walls, including years to prevent a worn and shabby ap- foundations, compete in cost with ordi- pearance they have seen their day. In nary frame construction, but are unsight- the long run, if of clear lumber and ly unless cast without facing and the counting the cost of frequent repainting walls "rough-casted" all over. Hollow over the life-period of the average terra cotta blocks similar to those used house, they are no cheaper than stucco for the partitions of fireproof buildings on metal lath. take and hold cement rough casting well, Simple brick houses will average not but the cost is so variable at the present more than twenty per cent, more than time that the writer would hesitate to frame and "stucco." name a cubic foot price for the Chicago The combination wall of brick for the suburbs with which he is familiar. For

SOLID BKfi'K. WITH ST< >NK Tl: I M M INi !S AM) SMINCI.KI* TII.K I :">!. I >KSI< IN Kl > BY SPENCER & POWERS AND COSTING LESS TM\N TS PER CUBIC FOOT IN 1909 IN A WESTERN DISTRICT OF CHICAGO. BUILDING A HOUSE OF MODERATE COST. 247 the construction of a simple, square cot- exterior tile walls. The 26 cent house tage costing $3,500 at Concord, Mass., had no furring or lath. The furring will the architect states that it cost but eight almost save its cost in the labor of cut- per cent, more than a shingled frame ting for pipes, conduits, etc., but the wall construction, according to compar- lath, preferably metal is, of course, an ative bids received. added expense. Our own practice recently indicated We have had tile cottages built as low on a fifteen thousand dollar hollow tile as fifteen cents, and I quote Mr. Law- and stucco finished house (the work be- rence Buck's published statement that ing done largely by day labor and bids his own charming story and a half hol- having been received for the same house low tile walled house at Ravinia cost but in frame and stucco) that 3 cents a foot eighteen cents, including a roof of heavy added to 23 cents for the latter covered interlocking red tile. the difference in cost. Brick veneered houses are warm and In any locality where this type is new durable, and in most localities cost and unfamiliar, only comparative bids somewhere between the price of frame on two sets of plans for the same house, and solid brick. On one eight thousand will clearly show the difference. To a dollar house we found a saving on com- certain extent this also applies to other parative bids of only one hundred dol- materials, but is particularly true of hol- lars in favor of brick veneers, so natural- low tile at the present time. ly used solid brick. It is not advisable to dispense with Stone is seldom used for wall con- wood furring and lath for the inside of struction in the house of moderate cost,

'

A SI.MIM.I;. j.\K.\ri:\s!Yi: TVI-K \r m:- >KI.IM:. MASS. IKSI;NKI> i:v KII.IIAM AM> HOPKINS 248 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

A HOUSE NEAR EAST ST. LOUIS. PICTURESQUELY DESIGNED BY WALTER HURLEY GRIFFIN. THE FLOATED STUCCO IS ALMOST PURE WHITE. A MORE EXPENSIVE DESIGN PER CUBIC FOOT THAN THE BROOKLINE HOUSE.

although in many localities, it will com- the question of expense involves only the pare closely in price with brick. cost of material and laying, eliminating Chicago, for example, has vast beds distant transportation. But in Rhode of excellent building limestone under Island, for instance, where all brick must and around it to the west and south- be transported by barge from New Jer- west down the Des Plaines Valley, yet sey, the total cost of the all-brick house it is little used in suburban residence would far exceed the cost of a field-stone work, except for basement walls. The house, even if the field-stone cost more to writer found that a fourteen thousand lay up. The following quotations, based dollar house at Riverside within a few on prices obtaining in the neighborhood miles of a good quarry could be built, in- of Philadelphia, show the comparative cluding a roof of red shingle tile, and costs of various kinds of masonry, and quarry and tile mosaic finished flooring illustrate the differences which must be over wood throughout the first story for allowed in "cubage" estimates for differ- 23 cents a foot. The stone, varying from ent localities. cream to gray, was laid with very wide A brick wall, laid, costs twenty dollars warm gray joints, with numerous long, per thousand brick, twenty brick to a narrow pieces and slanting instead of cubic foot. A field-stone wall, laid, costs vertical joints, to give a pleasing, hori- from five to six dollars a perch, which is zontal texture, most of our local work twenty-two cubic feet. In country being built in a hard and too accurate houses of moderate size, brick walls are bond, which lacks entirely the charm of usually thirteen inches thick, and stone the old Pennsylvania stone houses or wall eighteen inches. At the above the old heavily mortared boulder walls rate one hundred square feet of surface of New England. work in brick costs forty-three dollars [In the vicinity of Philadelphia brick and thirty-four cent-, and in field-stone, and stone are both readily obtainable, and at five dollars a perch, thirty-four dol- BUILDING A HOUSE OF MODERATE COST. 249 lars. Hollow tile and concrete walls are to follow, concerning the various in this Philadelphia locality cost about cardinal features and elements of house the same as brick but necessitate the building. additional expense of stucco finish. None of the cubic foot costs enum- Editor.] erated make allowance, either for archi- The cost of foundation material is de- tects' fees or the work which must be cidedly a local question as between brick, done upon the grounds about the house. rubble stone or concrete. For a small And; in attempting to use them to wet- house hollow tile or hollow concrete blanket -your hopes for that ideal little blocks are strong enough and some- house,, please remember that prices vary times cheaper. with. totality, with building activity and The cost of a good shingle roof cov- with ifasign as well as with materials, ering is roughly from 7 to 8 cents a and that you will in the end have to pay square foot, or $7 to $8 a square, as not always merely what it actually costs builders estimate it. Shingle tile are your several contractors to do the work, worth from sixteen to twenty dollars a plus a fair profit for their time and square, including trimming and flash- pains, but whatever the lowest trustwor- ing depending upon the character and thy bidder equipped to do work in your size of the surfaces to be covered. Slate particular locality is willing to accept, costs somewhat less varying with qual- and that sometimes, if he is very busy, ity and surface exposed to weather. he wants a stiff premium for his serv- And so we might go on through the ices, unless you are willing to wait until list of comparative cost questions com- his work is "slack." monly put to architects by the men of Also remember that in the country and moderate means who want to build well, in small towns, ordinary builders' work, if the expense is not prohibitive. particularly carpentry, plastering, paint- The cost question, however, can be ing, etc., is from ten to twenty-five per better disposed of and with more direct cent, cheaper than in large cities and application in the several articles which suburbs. 4. EXAMPLES ^ORNAMENTAL

^ 'uane L^man Author 'Photography ~^_jthe te JQVVJLANDS

SOME OF THE QUAINTEST and most and even in one case human figures. unusual ornamental plaster work of Eng- These designs are raised on the surface land is located in the little town of Saf- of the wall and are not necessarily sym- fron Walden in the county of Essex. metrical but are worked in wherever This exterior plastering" or "parge- there is a blank space to be ornamented. work" plaster as it is called in England One of the illustrations show a gable is confined almost entirely to the low- ornamented with a slightly flowing de- lands occurring very seldom in other sign of flowers and birds, another shows - of the country. a space between the first and second These plastered buildings were prob- story windows filled in with a quaint coat ably built in the seventeenth century, al- of arms. though the dates 1625 and 1600 in the The next gable to this bears a date pla-tcr. may. of course, refer to periods with a grotesque head above. Still an- of redecoration. other illustration shows a gable over a They were built in the usual manner gateway to a courtyard which is orna- Buildings of their period of English mented with the figures of two men, the Architecture, with liable roofs, overhang- one with chain and armor, a great sword, ing second story carried on quaintly and a shield and the other wearing dif- curved brackets or pilasters, and case- ferent armor and carrying a huge club. ment windows in groups. Contrary to Between the two figures is a sun-dial. The the usual custom however, they were not second floor over this gateway is carried half timbered but nearly the wbo'e ex- on beams \\itb plaster between. terior of the building was covered with Part of this interesting group of build- plaster. ing is called The Old Sun Inn and was The ornamentation of the plaster is tisrd at one time as a hostlcry, but now nied entirely to the second stor. it is a private house and shop. ^ the ornamental woodwork in the half These specimens of parge-work plaster timber style and is either in a di-si^n in are among the most interesting in Kni; panels which repeats all over the plaster land and show clearly the very unusual surface, or in more elaborate desj-ns in originality of the period in which they which occur flower patterns, quaint birds. were executed. g 5

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- b. Ofa ORNAMENTAL PLASTEK Wd:K IN SAKKKo.N \\ XQLAND. DETAIL OF HKI.IKF Fl< ;r I: KS IN rLASTKi:. <>VI-:U COURT- VAItD ENTRANCE, SAFFRON WALDEN, SUSSEX, ENGLAND.

Photo by G. I'. King.

THE FIRST CHURCH. SPRINGFIELD, MASS. II

THE FIRST CHURCH

Springfield. Mass.

THE FIRST CHURCH in Springfield, 1812 on until his death he was con- Massachusetts, was also designed by stantly engaged in public or semi-public Isaac Damon and is a much more elabo- work, and in addition to designing build- rate piece of work, although the build- ings, acted as a sort of overseer or gen- ing committee in the instructions which eral contractor without assuming the they received on appointment were re- financial responsibility of the general quired "to procure plans for a church contractor. His drawings were very well with a decent plain front." This archi- executed, much better in fact than most tect. Captain Isaac Damon, was one of of the contemporary architectural draw- the most interesting figures in the archi- ings which we have had preserved until tectural world of the early part of the this day, and some of them are well 19th century in this country. The first rendered in India ink. church building which he constructed The building cost $15,000, and \va> was at Northampton, which was begun built in 1818 and still stands in the green in 1X11 ,-md finished in 1812. It was the at Springfield in good repair. The in- and one of the most elaborate in terior is not dissimilar to that of many of u-husetts, but unfortunately was the other early churches, although the burned in 1878. At the time of his first organ has been placed behind the pulpit mmission he was twenty-eight years since the original construction of the old and is reported to have studied archi- building in a somewhat awkward and tecture under Ithiel T"\vne. who was the ineffective manner. It is certainly worth ier of the Center Church at New remark that in many of the early Haven, and the old ( 'u-tom- Mouse churches where the designer took pretty which preceded the one now u-ed by good care of his ceiling treatment and the National City Hank. Xew York. Mi's handled the balconies and entrance early training in architecture wa- ap- tremely well, the treatment around the parently as a draughtsman in Ithiel pulpit should have been so very unarchi- s T'-wne'- office, and he was called to tectural in ( , man re, of Northampton from New York, both to course, few Classic motives which could make the plans and direct the work of be adjusted to meet the condition, but thi- church, which if nt the only coni- when the towers were so well it. re- litliculty. should have been so far minds Us i 'f mediaeval methods. inferior. -7- I MKKTIN.; i TIII:

I '-Hl-KCHi. ! MASS. THE MEETING HOUSE (THE FIRST CHURCH), LENOX. MASS. EARLY AMERICAN CHURCHES. 261 THE MEETING HOUSE (The First Church) Lenox. Massachusetts

THIS LITTLE CHURCH, one of the plainest halls, as well as being one of the first in New England, was built in 1814, men who understood the use of the real probably from the designs of Isaac truss and made it part of the bridge Damon, who was also the architect of work. the countv court house, which was built This church at Lenox is severely <>f brick, in Lenox in the same year. simple, the interior showing superim- Isaac Damon was perhaps the leading posed orders carrying the balcony and architect in Western Massachusetts roof, the lower order being a very curi- from 1812 to 1840 and influenced public ous variety of Doric, while the upper is work in much the same way that Asher Ionic. The interior of the church has Ik-njnmin did domestic work. He built been modified only above the pulpit since thirteen or more churches in Western its construction in 1814, and the exterior Massachusetts, and nearly all the town has been modified not at all.

GLORIA DEI" OLD SWEDE'S CHURCH

Philadelphia. Pa.

THIS CHURCH also known as Old years later. Vaults were constructed for Swedes was one of three churches burial beneath the church floor, and the erected by the old Swedish congrega- galleries were added at some date which tion- which settled along the Delaware. is not at present known to me. It seems This building was begun in 1697 and strange that this little structure, inter- dedicate. 1 in July 2, 1700: the congrega- esting rather through its quaintness and tion i- one of the oldest in America, picturesqueness than through its size and dating from 1667, the time of the first strictly architectural merit, should have Swedish emigration to this country. The been described by its pastor in 1700 in church was sixty feet long, thirty feet the words "through God's blessing we wide and twenty-one feet high at the have completed a great work and have it . and when was begun the west built a church superior to any in this wall was left unfinished until it could country so that the English themselves, mud whether a chime of bells who now govern this province and are could he procured in Sweden for the beyond measure richer than we are, building, in which case the intention was wondr at what we have done." In fact, to add a belfry. The tower and the ves- these same English were allowed for a tibule <>f the entrance door were added number of years to worship in the same in 17<>4. and the little belfry at present church after the Swedish services were in place was probably also constructed finished, and gradually the English lan- at this time, although it- de-igu would guage was adopted as that of the ser\ k'. :<> indicate that it was built inanv of the original congregation. "GLORIA DEI" OLD SWEDE'S CHUlfH. rim.Ai -Ki-rniA, PENNSYLVANIA. "GLORIA DEI" OLD SWKl PHILADELPHIA. N '^ -

266 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. THE MONUMENTAL CHURCH

Richmond. Virginia

THIS CHURCH, one of the most unusual Revival began to make itself felt, and in architectural design in the United that its designer while recognizing the States, was built in 1812 in memory of beauty of the Greek order hesitated to seventy-two people who were killed by transform the tall slender columns of the burning of a theater on December the Colonial work into the heavy and 26th, 1811. The urn in front of the por- solid variety used by the Greeks. tico is supposed to contain the ashes of There are many cases of early Ameri- the victims. can churches in which the flat dome The design is so very unusual as forms the ceiling, but this is one of the to make the name of its designer of very few in which the dome is suggested especial interest, and I have unfor- in the exterior, and where it seems to tunately not been able to discover any- to have a real and logical reason for thing at all about him. The building is being. Yet at the same time the corre- very evidently strongly influenced by the spondence between the interior and ex- Classic movement which was then just terior treatment is in a measure super- beginning, and yet the design is handled ficial, since the plaster domed ceiling of with such freedom and vigor that we the auditorium is completely inside the are compelled to admit that its architect lines of support and was evidently con- was a great and original thinker. The sidered simply as a ceiling treatment and columns in antis, are. of course, the well- not as a structural feature. The treat- known Greek motive, but the columns ment of the interior is exceedingly sim- themselves only suggest the Greek, while ple, the reredos most exquisitely de- the limitation of the architrave to the signed. The octagonal form is rather space betwen the antae is certainly not what we are accustomed to consider as in the least Greek, while the cornice and the auditorium plan than a genuine pediment above are much what we ex- church plan, and in this respect re- pect to find in some of our advanced sembles more nearly the early \\-\v modern work. It seems to me that this England churches than the Southern is perhaps one of the first buildings in ones, which from the earliest times were the United States in which the Greek comparatively long and narrow. N O T E S A D C O M W I N T S

In the Exposition of Details as to the re- Municipal Institutions, suit of the International commonly called the Competition for plans for I- UK "Cities Fair," Diissel- Australia's new Capital CITIES dorf is pointing the way WINS THE city have been slow In I:\IM>SITIOX. I to such an exhibition as I'ICI/ . coming to this country we in America are where the first prize was surely tending toward. won. It was awarded We have had several trials at it notably in to Walter Burley Griffin, an architect of the Congestion Exhibition in New York Chicago, a member of the class of 1899 in the some years ago, in the exhibitions of the architectural course at the University of Architectural League of New York, in the Illinois, who has not 'been heretofore identi- City Planning Exhibition at Philadelphia, a fied with the City Planning movement in the year ago last spring, and In the Municipal United States. The prize was 1,750. The Exhibition at Chicago last September. All second prize, which was a thousand pounds of these have been successful, both from the less, went to M. Ellel Saarinen, of Helsing- point of view of popularity and of interest, fors, Finland, and the third prize to M. e\.-n ->f education. But we have not yet had Alfred Agache of Paris. the courage to do Just what Diisseldorf has The awards were made by a Jury been so successfully doing this summer. of three Australian Federal officers an The "Cities Pair" opened on June 29 in the engineer, an architect and a surveyor. presence of the mayors of about fifty Ger- Accounts differ as to the number of man cities, and it is to remain open until plans sent in. One report is that there November. It covers an area of about a were more than eight hundred competitors. square mile. The main building and the cen- France and Germany sending the greatest t.-r i.f the Exposition is the City Art Pal- number. English town planners were de- ace, overlooking the Rhine. The exhibits are barred from competing by the disapproving divided into five great groups. The first has attitude of the Royal Institute of British to do with the enlargom.-nt. improvement Architects. Thus the competition was really ami mbellishment of cities. Here there are between the United States and the Conti- about 750 exhibits from about 200 munici- nent of Europe. The submitted designs were palities. The second group has to do with hung In the ballroom of the Federal Gov- municipal sanitation. The third, with hos- ernment House and, of course, represented pitals, poor-houses, etc. The fourth group every kind of Town Planning. <>ted to the building department. All It is said that the Germans led "In the kinds of public and s. mi-public structures modern conception of new cities," the French are shown in plans and models, the exhibits "in artistic tr.-atm. m." and the United States numbering nearly 4"0. The fifth wn.up is "in boldness of design." No checkerboard plan

1 t" industrial concerns. Hut to an . (1 a prize, owing In part at least to American visitor, the best part of th. i:\ the peculiarities of the sit. and to climatic

ti is the ,.f the i. beautiful up-to-date city of conditions. Inscription i minted I.b.rf itself. design will be K:\.-D n- xt month. 268 THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD.

It is interesting and of dormers in the roof, . . . the one abso- significant to note how lutely fitting decoration to an otherwise large the subjects of over-plain surface. And how harmoniously Bourara town and these flt AMD planning gar- high-pitched roofs into the general cities loomed at the effect of the how it PHILANTHROPY. den city they help to climb Second Annual Confer- the heights upon which it is built. Indeed ence on the Prevention this marvelous hill-city, aspiring ever sky-

of Destitution held this ward, . . . could not possibly have been summer in London. There was a separate roofed in any other way." Into this picture housing section in which was represented of the city appropriate and beautiful, as a every housing association in the country. striking, even as a dominating, note, fits, Subjects of sessions included the following: he says, the comparatively new Chateau "The Creation of New Towns," "Town Frontenac the great hotel, whose har- Planning." "Rural Housing," "Slum Clear- mony with its surroundings he ascribes to aix-r," "Housing Problems in Agricultural the co-operation and artistic sympathy of Areas." and "The Casual Relation Between Bruce Price, "the artist-architect," and Sir Housing and Health." Among those who Wiliam Van Home, then president of the read papers on the subjects were Henry Canadian Pacific Railway, "the artist- Vivian, Ewart G. Culpin, J. S. Nettleford magnate." and Alderman Thompson. It would seem a In New Orleans, the architects' problem safe prediction that our National Confer- was exactly the reverse of that in Quebec. ence of Charities and Corrections must soon There was sun to guard against, and "the Include a discussion of .town planning and natural reply to this was found in wide- garden cities. When it does, our progress flung eaves and broad verandas. These in the actual execution of such schemes may verandas mounted story upon story to the be expected to be more rapid. very roof-line." The need of stout railings on the upper levels led to the use of decora- "Three Beautiful tive ironwork. "As a result of this, the Cities" was the alluring piazza railings of New Orleans are unique. title of an article by . . . The patterns are infinitely varied and

I Mid I Birge Harrison in a the design almost always intricate and HIM i ii i I. summer number of "Art graceful. The strongest impression which CITII.v and Progress." The the aesthetic pilgrim carries away from New cities are Quebec, New Orleans is that of a city whose houses are Orleans and Charleston, seen through bands of lace." each with a distinctive architectural charm But of the three cities, he thinks the most of which Mr. Harrison writes with enthu- beautiful is Charleston, "which floats like a siasm. Significantly, he points out. in these white sea-bird on the blue harbor behind old three cities the architecture of pre-revolu- Fort Sumter." Here again the need of tionary days has come down to us undis- large areas of shade led to the use of turbed. He believes them the most beauti- verandas which cover the whole facade of ful cities in the country, and thinks this is dwelling houses from ground to roof-line. largely due to their having been built to But now "the ironwork is absent, and its meet certain social and climatic conditions place is taken by classic columns and rail- which could not be overcome or avoided. "In ings, and an occasional classic portico, fill- accepting the limitations which were thus ing the central space. . . . As in the mansions imposed and working within them, the old of old Virginia, the general form of the architects achieved a character, a beauty Charleston houses is very simple, and they and a harmony which could have been se- depend for their beauty upon the fine bal- cured in no other way." ance and spacing of doors and windows, the Note, he says, of Quebec, "how every ray character of the cornice and above all upon of sunlight has been courted how every the dignified beauty of the classic porticos porch, every projection which could cast a and galleries which adorn one side of each shadow, has been rigidly suppressed. And structure." And Charleston, the author how admirable also are the high-pitched says, "has another and quite unique ;m hi roofs, made obligatory l>y the heavy Cana- tectural feature in the arched and ornate dian snowfall. It would seem as if just walls of moss-grown brick, which close in that acute angle of roof-line were aesthe- all the fine residences; and the highly deco- r.itiv.' tically necessary to give character to these wrought-iron gateways. . . . These flat-sided houses, with their well-spaced s of wrought and beaten iron were windows. Tht-n note the two or three tiers all the work of local smiths. I was told NOTES AND COMMENTS. that no two gates of the city were of sipnilar In order to make town planning seem design, and I certainly saw no single ex- practical, and through wish to appeal to ample which was not in itself beautiful." the "hard headed business man," who is Then over the whole city, its business sec- assumed to have no regard for aesthetics. ti"M as well as its residence quarter, he finds it has become the fashion to open such arti- the special silver-white color scheme, broken cles and such papers with a sneer at the here and there by a note of "weather-stained City Beautiful. Mr. Atterbury, then, In by rose of sulphur yellow," and "the inde- no means alone. Arnold W. Brunner opened scribable something: which gives the "subtle his paper at the last City Planning Confer- Southern flavor everywhere." ence with a similar attack; Cass Gilbert has Because, Mr. Harrison remarks, the great made it before the Institute; and small men wave of prosperity which swept over the have followed such distinguished lead. This rest of the country in the last half century, article in "Scribner's" Is cited only because passed by these three cities, they escaped it is the latest. that "terrible transition period which de- Mr. Atterbury 'begins by saying, "Let as stroyed most of the old-time charm in the state clearly certain things which a model more thriving cities of the North and West. town is not. Let us at once, for example, Poverty was in this case truly a blessing." disentangle the 'Model Town' from the 'City Yet he Is full of faith in the present and Beautiful' that fateful euphemism which, hope for the future, because new problems, like Helen of Troy, has brought such tribu- he believes, are being met with intelligence lation upon those who would possess them- and taste. He cites, in proof, the New selves of beauty without due process of law York skyscraper, "often as graceful and -who would deck out our modest villages in beautiful in design as it is "well fitted to its Paris finery and ruin their complexion with essential needs;" the growth in New York architectural cosmetics." This sounds very of a new domestic architecture in which the brave and very practical, but one does not old brownstone front gives way to fagades have to read far to see that in bald literal- "simple, unpretentious and often truly beau- ness it overshoots the mark. A wish for tilul in design." the admirable new subur- irrational city beauty is bad; but as any

< hi lecture of California with its semi- irrational desire is foolish, "the man In the Spanish c-haracter; "and the frank accept- street" is not likely to suppose that the ance of the Puritan gambrel roof or the old serious writer, who protests so valiantly, Colonial type as the best models for our own means only that. He takes the words at suburban residences." their full value and begins to repent that in using the phrase, "City Beautiful." and Qrosvenor Atterbury believing in it he made it popular. Mr. At- contributed to "Scrib- terbury, when he has shot his big gun at the ner's" for an ex- turns the and feels niSSKVMM. July City Beautiful, page ceptionally valuable that he can be frank. "What we decry In FROM \ article. "is - His subject was the American town," he aays, the ugli- I'HO'I I I "Model Towns in ness of discord, waste, and unhealthfulness. America." It is a long What we ask is only that which is suitable discussion, but full of to its place and purpose. 'The foundation -t and suggestion. Starting out with of beauty,' says a gentleman named PhHe- itfin'-ni that one of the definitions for bus, Ms a reasonable order addressed t<> the towns that had ben suggested to him imagination through the senses,' from which failures," he shows very convincingly I gather that he must have given some that the time is at least approaching when thought to city planning and the subject of

in... I- -I towns can be expected to 'be successes. model towns." The problem of the model :. who has the task of designing a towns, he says, "is to toe solved along three suburban or industrial community can fail lines the aesthetic, the social and econ< tii stimulus and assistance from So the doughty warrior who started out by Mv Atterlmry's arti'-I.-. Ami yet, when all disentangling the model town from aesthe- this is said, but not properly until it has tic aspirations or pretentious, gets down to -aid i-arnestly .itni emphatically, one the business of his article by putting niay rail attention to a discordant note. The aesthetk- problems first!

ImpurtaiK-i- of it lies in the fact that one An.l lu-re h,- is very Interesting and even fin. is this n

othi r articles of similar general character. . rity -..ll.-ctlve or co-operative

This is th.- attack on the aesthetics of town planning an. I he remarks, "can planning. operate f>r th- -fit of the town RECORD. 270 THE ARCHITECTURAL

ambition if such there be; but let us be in two ways: Negatively, on the principle a very careful to say it is only the irrational of the smoke ordinance, It may preserve we to. reasonably harmless aesthetic atmosphere object by putting some limit on the architectural The cities of the anarchy and lawless bad taste that runs cities which have riot in even the best governed of our Country the O\K made such a stir about to-day; while at the same time giving HUNDRED AND KM. ii i ^ and most misguided architectural efforts a better getting "city plans" merit as may MILLION FOR adopting a program of chance to show such poor they CITY of improvement to last possess. To show a mob the effectiveness IMI'HOVKMKXTS like over a term of years, discipline may seem dangerously giv- with in order that each ing them arms. But the truth Is that may any kind of control anarchy ceases. And be "the Paris of America," will do well to the to which so bad tsate, however brutal it may be. at study new Improvement project once becomes capable of better things if it Paris has now, with no great fuss, committed be ordered. The leavening element of de- herself. be- This the of sign and purpose appears. The noise contemplates expenditure comes music, however crude. With the J180.000.000 on municipal improvements, elimination of lawless eccentricity and dis- the expenditure to be spread over a period of fifteen to to be met regard of architectural decency the good eighteen years, and elements in the situation begin to count. by the issue of municipal loan stock. School However bad individually, a series f houses additions and improvements are to be one- that exhibit some mutual acknowledgment tenth of the sum; hospitals, $7,000,000; new of each other's right of existence has at construction connected with the water sup- once some aesthetic value. ... To demon- ply, $25,000.000; street work, $9.000.000; the strate the advantage to the individual of fight against tuberculosis, $6,000,000; public a reasonable self-restraint in the subordi- buildings, $5,000,000; and squares and gar- nation of his own architectural impulses to dens, $3.000,000, while the great sum of $86,- a general aesthetic scheme Is one of the 000,000 is set aside for what we call city- functions of the model development. Its planning work, to be used in the creation of I successful accomplishment will depend, extension of traffic arteries, etc. . feel sure, solely on the education of the With all the talk about the town-planning sense of beauty, already nascent in this act of Great Britain, the fact has been almost country." This is very well said. The other overlooked that France has its counterpart in way by which collective planning and con- the passage of the Beauquier town extension trol can operate advantageously is, he bill. The bill provides that within five years states, in producing "conditions under which from the date of its passage each urban dis- good aesthetic results may toe secured far trict containing ten thousand or more in- more easily and Inexpensively, whether the habitants shall prepare a plan for its im- designing >be individual or collective." All provement and extension. this the article fully explains, gaining from This shall "determine the position of pub- these explanations its value. lic squares, gardens, parks and open spaces; The point which we would make is that shall fix the width of roads, their direction, protest against the "City Beautiful." which the manner of constructing the houses, and, does not yet come at all from the public, is in general, shall establish the proper de- carried too far by those architects who velopment of the town on hygienic and think that in this way they can please the artistic lines." public. Because they say more than they The plan must be approved by the depart- mean in their protests, they find it difficult ment Bureau of Hygiene and by tin- commis- to be consistent. In the bottom of their sion for the pn-servation of sites and places hearts they do have City Beautiful ideals. of natural beauty or historic inii-r.-st. The That is the whole purpose of their train- plan must also be subject" for a year to ing. Can one think of Brunner, Atterbury public criticism and objection before the or Gilbert without them? If they had not Council of State shall authnri/.e its adoption. sm-h Ideals they would be in some other 06 adopted, it is to n-mnin in operation profession as railroad engineering or base- for 30 years, when It is, to be r.-n. w.-d, and ball. And with their training, their oppor- duriiiK all this period extensions and 1m- tunities and their obligations, are they true proM-nients must be made In accordance to themselves and their profession wh--n with it. Here Is a vigorous and practical thi-y il.-iiy th-ir Ideals? It is well to pro- grappling with what has now become a test against an Irrational "City Beautiful" problem of international intm-si.