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THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
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 ENJOYMENT OF 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 BY 
 
 TALBOT FAULKNER HAMLIN 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 1916 
 
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 ••• • 
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 by Duffield & Company 
 
 370? f& 
 
To H. B. H., M. F. H., and A. T). F. H. this 
 book is dedicated with sincere gratitude for 
 their constant aid and inspiration. 
 
 3707-j,, 
 

 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Appeal of Architecture 3 
 
 II. Laws of Form in Architecture 29 
 
 III. The Architect 's Materials 73 
 
 IV. The Architect's Materials (continued) . . Ill 
 V.^The Decorative Material of Architecture . 137 
 
 VI. - The Criticism of Ornament 184 
 
 VII. Planning 220 
 
 VIII. . „The Meaning of Style 263 
 
 IX. The Social Value of Architecture .... 298 
 
 Epilogue 335 
 
 Bibliography . . * 337 
 
 Index 341 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 Saint Peter's, Rome, Italy (Interior) Frontispiece 
 
 „ . ■ _ M OPPOSITE PAGE 
 
 Colosseum, Rome, Italy 22 
 
 Pennsylvania Station, New York City (Concourse).... 26 
 
 United States Capitol, Washington, D. C 32 
 
 Theseum (Temple of Theseus), Athens, Greece 40 
 
 Vendramini Palace, Venice, Italy 46 
 
 Cathedral, Amiens, France (Interior) 56 
 
 Public Library, Boston, Mass 66 
 
 Pantheon, Paris, France 78 
 
 Santa Sophia, Constantinople, Turkey 90 
 
 Carlisle Cathedral, England (Two Bays of the Choir) . . 102 
 
 Santa Sophia, Constantinople, Turkey (Interior) no 
 
 Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice, Italy (Interior).... 116 
 
 Westminster Hall, London, England (Interior) 120 
 
 Pantheum, Rome, Italy (Interior) 126 
 
 Vestibule to the "Hall of the Two Hundred," Palazzo 
 
 Vecchio, Florence, Italy 134 
 
 Cloister, Santa Maria della Pace, Rome, Italy 134 
 
 Tomb of Count Ugo, The Badia, near Florence, Italy.. 144 
 
 Cathedral, Lincoln, England (Interior) 150 
 
 Riccardi Palace, Florence, Italy 158 
 
 Water Leaf, Egg and Dart, and Anthemion from the 
 
 Erectheum, Athens, Greece 170 
 
 Roman Acanthus Frieze from the Lateran Museum, 
 
 Rome 170 
 
ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Cathedral, Chartres, France (Transept Porch) 178 
 
 Cantoria, Formerly in the Cathedral, Florence, Italy 194 
 
 Post-Office, Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Third St., New 
 
 York City 202 
 
 Door of the Escuelas Menores, Salamanca, Spain 208 
 
 Door of the Gardner-White-Pingree House, Salem, 
 
 Mass * 212 
 
 Saint Peter's, Rome, Italy (Exterior) 216 
 
 Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City, Missouri (State 
 
 Stairway) 236 
 
 Opera House, Paris, France (Grand Stairway) 242 
 
 Chateau of Maisons Lafitte, France 284 
 
 Merchants National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa 294 
 
 Hunting Lodge, Clemens werth, Germany 294 
 
 New Office Building, New York City 330 
 
 LINE DRAWINGS IN THE TEXT 
 
 Fig. Pagi 
 
 1 The National Gallery, London, England 35 
 
 2 Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, France 44 
 
 3 Cathedral, Chartres, France 49 
 
 4 Chapel 52 
 
 5 Old House in Kennebunk, Maine 84 
 
 6 Newton Hall, Near Cambridge, England 86 
 
 7 Cathedral of Saint Nazaire, Carcassonne, France... 100 
 
 8 Harvard House, Stratford-on-Avon, England 102 
 
 9 Gothic Ribbed Vaulting 129 
 
 10 The Pendentive *30 
 
 1 1 Mouldings *43 
 
 12 Temple Gateway at Karnak, Egypt 145 
 
 13 A Typical Classic Cornice J 47 
 
 14 The Most Common Decorated Mouldings 153 
 
 15 Cornice from the Wing of Francis I Chateau of 
 
 Blois, France *59 
 
LINE DRAWINGS IN THE TEXT iii 
 
 16 Capital from Southwell Minster, England 177 
 
 17 French Gothic Capitals. . . . , 179 
 
 18 A House in New Haven 232 
 
 19 Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City, Mo 236 
 
 20 Plans of Amiens Cathedral 248 
 
 21 Plan of a Library and Art Gallery 254 
 
 22 Plan of a Library and Art Gallery 256 
 
 23 The Final Solution 259 
 
 24 Two Possible Elevations of the Scheme Shown in 
 
 Figure 23 260 
 
 25 Early Cypriote Ionic Capital 275 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Murphy 
 and Dana, architects, for the plan of the house 
 in New Haven; to Messrs. Tracy and Swart- 
 wout, for the plan and the drawing of the State 
 Stairway of the Missouri State Capitol ; to Mr. 
 Edwin A. Park, for the cover design; to Miss 
 Genevieve Hamlin, for the illustration of the 
 Karnak gateway; to Mr. Irving Underhill, for 
 permission to publish the photograph of the 
 Concourse of the Pennsylvania Station ; to Mrs. 
 M. E. Hewitt and Miss F. R. Johnston, for the 
 photograph of the New York Post-Office, and to 
 the Columbia University School of Architecture, 
 for the use of its collection of photographs for 
 illustrative purposes. 
 
THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
The Enjoyment of Architecture 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTUBE 
 
 The days are swiftly passing when to the 
 normal American art was valued as something 
 distinctly secondary to the practical matters of 
 life. We have grown into the precious heritage 
 of appreciation, and music and painting and 
 sculpture and literature bring us a real joy. But 
 there is one enormous source of artistic pleasure 
 of which too few are as yet aware ; there is one 
 art whose works confront us wherever man 
 lives, which all too many of us daily pass blindly 
 by. That source is to be found in the buildings 
 all around us ; that art is the art of architecture. 
 This blindness is the more strange since new 
 avenues of pleasure are constantly opening to 
 one who has even a slight measure of appreci- 
 ation of architecture. To him a city is no grey 
 prison, shutting him in from God and Nature ; 
 it is rather a great book on which is written 
 
 3 
 
:| TBE'ENJPYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 large the history of the aspiration, the struggles, 
 and the constant striving for beauty of all man- 
 kind. To him a building may no longer be 
 merely stone and brick and iron and wood; it 
 may become vital with beauty, a symphony 
 thrilling in its complex rhythms of window and 
 door and column, enriching all who are willing 
 to look at it appreciatively with its message of 
 beauty or peace or struggle. 
 
 Architecture is of all the arts the one most 
 continually before our eyes. To hear music at 
 its best we must go to concerts or operas of one 
 kind or another; to enjoy literature we must 
 read, and read extensively; our best painting 
 and sculpture are segregated in museums and 
 galleries to which we must make our pilgrim- 
 ages, but architecture is constantly beside us. 
 We live in houses and our houses may be works 
 of architecture. We work in office buildings or 
 stores or factories, and they may be works of 
 architecture. Nine-tenths of our lives are spent 
 in or among buildings, yet how many of us feel 
 a distinct warmth of pleasure as we pass a 
 beautiful building? How many of us give one 
 hour's thought a month to the beauty or ugli- 
 ness, the architectural value, of the buildings 
 
THE APPEAL OF AECHITECTURE 5 
 
 surrounding us ? Wherever there is the slight- 
 est attempt to make a building beautiful, there 
 is the touch of architecture, and if we pass by 
 this touch unnoticed, we are by just so much 
 depriving ourselves of a possible element of 
 richness in our lives. 
 
 Architecture, then, is an art, and any art must 
 give us pleasure, or else it is bad art, or we are 
 abnormally blind : and to architecture as an art 
 and the joy it brings we are too callous. It is 
 the constant proximity of architecture during 
 our entire conscious existence that has blinded 
 us in this way. We forget that it is an art of 
 here and now, because it is with us every day, 
 and because we have to have houses to live in 
 we are too apt to think of them solely as abiding 
 places. Therefore we think of architecture as 
 some vague, learned thing dealing with French 
 cathedrals or Italian palaces or Greek temples, 
 not with New York or Chicago streets or West- 
 chester suburbs, and this fallacious doctrine has 
 strengthened in us until our eyes are dulled and 
 our minds are atrophied to all the beauty that is 
 being created around us today, and we lose all 
 the fine deep pleasure that we might otherwise 
 experience from our ordinary surroundings. 
 
6 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 This pleasure is of several kinds and comes 
 from several different sources. Many of us 
 have felt its call, and, unknowing, turned away, 
 perhaps perplexed. We feel it vaguely, and 
 accept it as something vague ; with strange lack 
 of curiosity we have never tried to find out why 
 we choose some streets to walk on and shun 
 others. We can be sure that this vague feeling, 
 if it is real and worth while, will not die on 
 analysis, like a flower picked to pieces, but will 
 rather, as we examine it, take on definiteness 
 and poignancy and be reborn in all sorts of new 
 ways. 
 
 First of all among the pleasures that archi- 
 tecture can give is that which anything beauti- 
 ful brings to an understanding heart, which 
 warms the whole being, and sends one about his 
 work gladder and stronger and better. Then 
 there is the satisfaction that comes from the 
 realization that a thing is perfectly fitted for the 
 work it is to do, a satisfaction akin to that which 
 the engineer feels in his locomotive, or a sailor 
 in his vessel. There is, besides, the pleasure that 
 comes from the fact that good architecture is 
 always a perfect expression of the time in which 
 it was built, not only of that time's artistic skill, 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 7 
 
 but also, if it is interpreted correctly, of its re- 
 ligion, its government, even of its economic and 
 political theories. Still another pleasure arises 
 from the perception of the specific emotional 
 tone which each building sounds, from the 
 austere power of an armory to the light playful- 
 ness of a good cafe. And last and greatest of 
 all, the best architecture brings us real inspira- 
 tion, a feeling of awestruck peace and rever- 
 ence, a feeling of the immense glory and worth- 
 whileness of things that comes only in the 
 presence of something very great indeed. 
 
 All these different pleasures and more are 
 open to one who will walk our streets with a 
 seeing eye and even an elementary knowledge 
 of what architecture is, what it is striving for, 
 how and under what laws it works. And this 
 knowledge we can each possess at a trifling cost 
 of time and study, but to our great advantage. 
 It is by examining these pleasures that we shall 
 gain a clearer understanding of precisely what 
 architecture is, and of how we can obtain such a 
 knowledge of it as to enjoy it to the utmost with 
 no lack of spontaneity in our appreciation. 
 
 The first kind of pleasure we have mentioned 
 is that which comes to one from anything beau- 
 
8 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 tiful. It is one of the hardest of all to analyze, 
 for it is the deepest, and it goes so far into dif- 
 ficult questions of psychology that we can 
 only give examples and analogies. This joy in 
 the pure beauty of architecture is precisely 
 similar to that in the pure beauty of music or 
 painting or poetry, irrespective of the intellec- 
 tual content of that music or painting or poetry. 
 It is a pleasure primarily of the senses, but in 
 the educated man it touches through this sensu- 
 ous appeal an immense category of intellectual 
 thoughts and emotions. It is a pleasure primar- 
 ily exterior, but through exterior qualities it 
 touches the deepest in us. It is a thing of 
 rhythm, of balance, of form. It comes from the 
 perception of anything which fulfills certain 
 innate laws of beauty that are well nigh uni- 
 versal. It is irrespective of styles, even of criti- 
 cal discriminations ; a man feels it in looking at 
 the Parthenon, at the Cathedral of Amiens, or 
 at the Capitol at Washington. He may feel it 
 as thrillingly in a colonial farmhouse or in an 
 apartment hotel as in a great cathedral. The 
 confirmed modernist in music, if he is at all 
 candid with himself, feels it in a Bach fugue; 
 the confirmed secessionist in painting feels it in 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 9 
 
 the glorious composition of a Tintoretto or the 
 blazing colour of a Rubens. It is a universal 
 pleasure, the capacity for which is inborn in 
 every normal person, and it is always aroused 
 by the perception of anything which fulfills cer- 
 tain requirements of form for which the mind is 
 constantly athirst. It is the satisfaction of this 
 thirst that is at the very basis of all artistic 
 pleasure, and it will, therefore, be necessary 
 to understand at least the fundamentals of these 
 requirements of form in order to have any real 
 intelligent appreciation of architecture. 
 
 The next pleasure which architecture gives 
 us arises from the perception that a building is 
 supremely suited to its purpose. Everyone has 
 at some time been irritated by a house, which, 
 though beautiful, was nevertheless so built that 
 the kitchen odours penetrated everywhere; or, 
 perhaps, by a theatre full of charm and colour 
 where one could not hear; or by a city hall 
 where every office which one seeks seems at the 
 far end of long and tortuous hidden corridors. 
 In buildings such as these the architect has 
 failed, at least partially, and the irritation 
 arises as much from his failure as from its 
 actual effects. On the other hand, there is 
 
10 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 always a soothing satisfaction in a library 
 where the appearance of the building itself ex- 
 presses what use each part serves ; or in a sta- 
 tion where entrance leads to waiting room, and 
 waiting room to ticket office, and ticket office to 
 trains, direct and clear. There is a somewhat 
 similar satisfaction about a bridge where every 
 stone and every girder seems to do its work per- 
 fectly, with each smallest part necessary. The 
 satisfaction that one feels in buildings like these 
 is entirely due to the architect 's success in solv- 
 ing his problem economically and well, because 
 architecture must always be based upon the 
 most careful consideration of the practical 
 needs of our complex life. 
 
 For architecture is a science as well as an art, 
 and the architect must not only build beauti- 
 fully, but he must see that his buildings are 
 strong and durable and efficient, to be proof 
 against the weather, and to fulfill all the prac- 
 tical purposes for which they were built. Good 
 architecture must, therefore, be always sane 
 and practical. Architecture is not only an art 
 of cathedrals and tombs and monuments — 
 though even these must be built to stand and 
 endure — but it is also an art that deals with 
 
THE APPEAL OP ARCHITECTURE 11 
 
 every phase of the most ordinary businesses of 
 men. Our houses must be as convenient and as 
 roomy as possible. Our office buildings must be 
 economical, with the greatest possible renting 
 space, and they must be provided with all the 
 necessary elevators and toilet rooms and heat- 
 ing apparatus. Our factories — for even fac- 
 tories should be architectural — must have fresh 
 air and floods of light, and be so constructed as 
 to minimize noise and vibration. Our theatres 
 must be so arranged that from every seat there 
 will be an unobstructed view of the stage, and 
 no echoes or undue reverberation to destroy the 
 sound, and so planned that in case of accident 
 the theatre can be emptied in the shortest pos- 
 sible time. 
 
 When one considers that architecture em- 
 braces every one of these points, and more ; that 
 plumbing and heating and electric wiring and 
 ventilation and the design of steel columns and 
 girders all come under its control, it is not likely 
 that he will accuse it of being an art esoteric 
 and aloof. Indeed, it is of all the arts the one 
 that touches life at the greatest number of 
 points; the architect must always be in our 
 midst, hard-headed, clear-thinking, careful, to 
 
12 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 fill our daily needs, whatever they are ; to build 
 dwellings and shops and railroad stations and 
 factories and theatres and churches ; to see that 
 each is as useful and as convenient as science 
 can make it ; and then to crown it with beauty, 
 to be a constant delight. 
 
 There are always these two factors in good 
 architecture, the practical and the beautiful, the 
 scientific and the artistic; and the great archi- 
 tect must be both dreamer and engineer. In- 
 deed, it is from the constant interreaction of 
 these two sides of architecture that its peculiar 
 value arises. For instance, an architect may 
 have aesthetic ideals which would, left to them- 
 selves, work out into thin delicacy, or an ana- 
 chronistic grandeur, or in some other equally 
 fantastic way. When such an architect comes 
 actually to design a building, he is instantly 
 confronted by such a host of intensely modern 
 necessities that the final result must be modern, 
 must be expressive of his own time and his own 
 nation. 
 
 Let us look for an example of the results of 
 the interreaction of these two qualities in the 
 chaotic mass of buildings that crowd the lower 
 end of Manhattan Island. There are simple, 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 13 
 
 square, many-windowed boxes, colossally ugly; 
 there are granite bank buildings, superbly dig- 
 nified; there are great towers standing high, 
 some lovely with intricate carving and spiky 
 pinnacle, some more severe, with mighty col- 
 umn and bold cornice ; and around the skirts of 
 the big business buildings there are massed the 
 low and dingy tenements, shadowed and drab. 
 Each one of these various structures is a com- 
 plex whole embodying within itself all the thou- 
 sand factors of our lives which it is meant to 
 serve ; each building has a form and a character 
 directly determined by some of the myriad 
 needs of our many-sided civilization. The re- 
 sult is a group of buildings entirely expressive 
 of our national spirit. Look at the dauntless 
 daring of those soaring towers ! Notice the way 
 the decorative motives have been borrowed 
 from all the past; in one place the plaid of 
 windows is overlaid with the lacy Gothic of 
 France, in another are piled high the stately 
 columns of Greece and Eome, in still another 
 the pyramid of Egypt, plumed with fleecy steam, 
 rises strongly in the air. It is all, indeed, a com- 
 plete expression of this nation's youth, of its 
 debt to all the past, of its exuberant vitality, of 
 
14 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 its respect for wealth and its ostentation, of its 
 young idealism, of its chaos and its faults and 
 its sentimentalities. And on an autumn even- 
 ing, when the white towers loom pink in the 
 afterglow, and lights are twinkling in the win- 
 dows, and the October haze lies purple over all, 
 it is passing fair, radiant with a beauty due not 
 only to the soft and shimmering atmosphere, 
 but also to the effort of our builders and the 
 skill of our architects. 
 
 It is significant that these buildings are almost 
 entirely commercial buildings of one kind or 
 another. It is not likely, therefore, that they 
 are wild dreams of an unfettered imagination; 
 that their beauty has no grounds in our real and 
 everyday life. The men who have spent the 
 enormous wealth necessary to produce them are 
 not the kind of men one would expect to sink 
 their millions in any scheme that was not eco- 
 nomically sound. Indeed, one element of the 
 unique beauty of all these mighty buildings lies 
 in the fact that their entire form is the direct 
 result of the particular needs of the activities 
 which they house. Their character, in other 
 words, is produced by the two-fold character of 
 architecture ; for the attempt of the architect to 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 15 
 
 produce a building which shall perform its work 
 in the most efficient possible manner determines 
 many points of the building's general shape, 
 and his desire to create a thing of beauty com- 
 pels him to treat this shape in the most beautiful 
 possible way, and to decorate it with the love- 
 liest forms at his command. 
 
 It is the combination of these two qualities 
 which has produced this result, in the case of 
 these buildings on the lower end of Manhattan 
 Island so uncannily expressive of our American 
 life. And architecture, because of this twin 
 basis in practical needs and aesthetic idealism, 
 has always been the art which most completely 
 expresses the life of the people who produce it. 
 In this fact lies the next pleasure one may 
 obtain from architecture, the pleasure of read- 
 ing in buildings the whole history of mankind, 
 its struggles, its ideals, its religions. In the 
 rise and fall of Roman architecture one may 
 read the rise and fall of the Roman power, and 
 in the continual use of Roman decorative forms 
 for the last five hundred years one may feel 
 some small measure of the powerful influence 
 which the Roman genius has exerted through- 
 out the world. Similarly, the architecture of 
 
16 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the modern countries is a revelation of their de- 
 velopment; in the careful and painstaking but 
 uninspired and frankly imitative buildings 
 which the English loved to build a hundred 
 years ago there is a fine expression of the smug- 
 ness and of the lack of originality that charac- 
 terized the birth of English industrialism, and 
 in the gradual development from a common her- 
 itage into the diverging and divergent national 
 styles of today there is a concrete evidence of 
 that tremendous development of nationalism 
 which has been such an important feature of 
 European history during the last century — a de- 
 velopment which bore such terrible fruit in the 
 summer of 1914. 
 
 In architecture, then, always keenly conscious 
 of the influence of the past, yet always su- 
 premely expressive of the present, there is a 
 continuous and vivid commentary on human 
 existence. Whether in the inscrutable immen- 
 sity of the many-columned temples of Egypt, or 
 in the virile delicacy of the refinement of the 
 best Greek work, or in the rich and powerful 
 splendour of Eoman thermae, or in the mys- 
 terious aisles of a Gothic cathedral, or in the 
 free gaiety of a modern French theatre, or in 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 17 
 
 the rugged, almost ruthless power of some of 
 the recent German monumental work, — in all of 
 these one with a seeing eye may discern the 
 fascinating tale of national characters and their 
 aims and struggles. What a treasure house of 
 broadening and cultural knowledge architecture 
 becomes when it is seen in this light! Every 
 building becomes eloquent of its own day, and 
 of all its background in the past. Of course it 
 is only the archaeologist and the careful student 
 of styles and history who can enjoy this pleas- 
 ure to the greatest extent, but it is a simple 
 matter for anyone to learn about the principal 
 styles, how they arose and why they grew or 
 died. Moreover, there is all the lure of romance 
 in any such study of architecture, for it peo- 
 ples the great monuments of the art with all the 
 pageantry of the fascinating past. A true ap- 
 preciation of architecture can only be gained by 
 always studying it in relation to the history of 
 the people who produced it, and to one gifted 
 with such an appreciation every city becomes 
 a living history of the past and the present, 
 and sometimes even an indication of the future. 
 Another pleasure to be derived from archi- 
 tecture is that which comes from the perception 
 
18 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of a building's emotional tone. For architec- 
 ture is an emotional art, as truly emotional as 
 music or painting or poetry. As an art it must 
 have this emotional tone. Too often we forget 
 this, and in such architectural appreciation as 
 we attempt, we adopt an attitude strangely cold 
 and intellectual. It is hard for the average man 
 to conceive of anything whatsoever emotional in 
 stone and steel and cement. Because architec- 
 ture cannot tell stories or represent actual 
 events, because it cannot work as directly on 
 our sympathies as words or pictures, because 
 (and perhaps this is the most important of all), 
 although there are love poems and love stories 
 and love pictures and love music, love archi- 
 tecture is inconceivable — because of all these 
 things we forget that there are a great number 
 of emotions which architecture can express, and 
 express with all the greater poignancy because 
 of the abstract means at its disposal. 
 
 This poignancy is the result of the fact that 
 in architecture the form, that is, the element 
 which acts directly upon the eye, and the matter, 
 that is, the element which acts upon the spirit 
 or intellect, are so inextricably intertwined. 
 Walter Pater, in his essay on the School of 
 
THE APPEAL OP ARCHITECTURE 19 
 
 Giorgione, says that all art is constantly aspir- 
 ing to the "perfect identification of form and 
 matter. ' ' Music, in his opinion, is the art which 
 most perfectly realizes this ideal. "In its ideal, 
 consummate moments, the end is not distinct 
 from the means, the form from the matter, the 
 subject from the expression ; they inhere in and 
 completely saturate each other ; and to it, there- 
 fore, to the condition of its perfect moments, all 
 the arts may be supposed constantly to tend and 
 aspire." It is precisely in this matter of the 
 identification of the form and the matter, the 
 subject and the expression, that architecture is 
 most closely analogous to music. Architecture 
 has been called "frozen music,' ' not because 
 of any mystical similarities between musical 
 forms and architectural forms, or between musi- 
 cal rhythms and architectural rhythms, but be- 
 cause in both great architecture and great music 
 it is impossible to conceive of the existence of 
 the matter apart from the form. In this re- 
 gard these two arts stand alone. For instance, 
 the landscape or the figures which the painter 
 paints have a real and definite existence out- 
 side of the artist's work, and the same landscape 
 under the same atmospheric conditions, or the 
 
20 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 same figures posed in the same positions, would 
 produce emotions at least partially the same, 
 no matter how treated. But in architecture or 
 in music, if the form is removed, the emotion 
 which the form expresses is at once destroyed as 
 well. A simple concrete example will show the 
 truth of this assertion. Imagine a lofty-aisled 
 Gothic cathedral. The light, mellowed by the 
 glowing colour of the stained glass windows, 
 is rich and soft ; high piers soar up to the arch- 
 ing vault in the shadows overhead; on distant 
 altars at the ends of long vistas through clus- 
 tered shafts candles burn with a warm radiance ; 
 and the effect upon the beholder is an overpow- 
 ering emotion of peace and quiet, reverent awe. 
 Then imagine a church architecturally amor- 
 phous; take away the stained glass, the clus- 
 tered shafts, the pointed arches, the shadowed 
 vault — the emotion has fled with them, for it is 
 inherent in them, its existence is one with their 
 existence, and the poignancy of the effect is 
 directly due to this complete identification of the 
 emotion with the forms which produce it. 
 
 It is true that the number of emotions which 
 architecture can produce is limited, but those 
 which it does arouse are usually of the highest 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 21 
 
 and most beneficial kind. There is the impres- 
 sion of immense power, for instance. Surely 
 everyone has felt it at some time in the presence 
 of some great building; perhaps in the sunny 
 courts of Thebes or Karnak, perhaps before the 
 mighty vaults and serried arches of the Roman 
 Colosseum,* perhaps under the high roofs of 
 Rheims or Westminster, perhaps, as one hur- 
 ried through the narrow streets of lower 
 New York, when he suddenly saw rising before 
 him the massive arches of Brooklyn Bridge. It 
 is a sort of fine pride, externalized and purified, 
 a consciousness that in these, at least, mankind 
 shall live ; that these, at least, of his works shall 
 endure and stand, as so many have, their thou- 
 sand years and more. This sense of power is 
 one of the commonest and most obvious of the 
 architectural emotions, because all really good 
 buildings should have it to some extent. There 
 is something of permanence in every building ; 
 building materials themselves — stone and brick 
 and tile and well-worked wood — if properly 
 treated, will give this impression; it only re- 
 mains for the architect to use them in a simple 
 and expressive way, and his building will ap- 
 pear strong. Moreover, it is an emotion that is 
 * 5ee the Plate opposite page 22, 
 
22 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 dear to the heart of all mankind, for it serves to 
 mitigate, at least to some degree, the much hid- 
 den but all pervasive sense of the poverty and 
 the futility of the individual life. 
 
 Another emotion which architecture can pro- 
 duce is the emotion of peace, an emotion more 
 subtle than the sense of power and more benefi- 
 cent. Where heavy weight is strongly sup- 
 ported, where there is simplicity in design and 
 a careful harmony of proportion, there is al- 
 ways a source of repose ; there is always a sub- 
 tle influence making for rest. One may at any 
 time see a small crowd of people sitting around 
 the base of the Boston Public Library, resting. 
 People hurrying to or from the subway across 
 One Hundred and Sixteenth Street in New York 
 will suddenly check their pace, confronted all at 
 once with the imposing simplicity of long, white 
 steps backed with the green of trees, and 
 crowned with the wonderful colonnade of the 
 Columbia Library. Indeed, wherever there is a 
 really beautiful building in a little open space 
 one is likely to find people slowing their hasty 
 walk, sitting down if they can, resting. And 
 why? Because there the mind of the architect 
 has been at work; there good architecture is 
 
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THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 23 
 
 pouring over them the continuous blessing of 
 its peace. 
 
 There are lighter and more concrete emotions, 
 too, which have their place in architecture. The 
 architect can express gaiety, playfulness, relax- 
 ation, as well as the musician or the painter. 
 There are theatres, for instance, that invite the 
 passerby to enter ; with gay colour and exuber- 
 ant ornament they seem to give promise of a 
 feast of enjoyment within. The best of these 
 amusement places seem almost vocal, so full 
 of a gay abandon are they. Our exhibition ar- 
 chitecture has a large amount of this quality, 
 and certain portions of the San Francisco Ex- 
 position of 1915 were like solidified laughter. 
 We must always remember that the architect is 
 only a man ; he need not always be solemn, nor 
 need he foreswear gaiety, provided only that he 
 make his gaiety beautiful. 
 
 All good architecture should have this gift 
 of expressiveness. Every building, every well- 
 designed room, should carry in itself at least 
 one message of cheer or rest or power. One 
 should always study the buildings around with 
 this in mind. Soon some will take on new val- 
 ues; whatever they are they will become vital 
 
24 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 with their message ; and a great number of oth- 
 ers will remain as before — vague, grey, lifeless 
 things. In the buildings which seem alive with 
 some message the architect has succeeded ; they 
 are true works of art. All the others may not of 
 necessity be actually very bad in design, but 
 they are never great, for their architecture has 
 failed in one of its most important duties. 
 
 By far the most important of all the pleasures 
 which architecture can produce is the deep joy 
 of true and noble inspiration : that big sense of 
 awe and reverence that comes only when some- 
 thing has struck deep at the foundations of our 
 souls. It is the feeling that thrills one as he en- 
 ters from a blustering autumn day into the dim, 
 tremendous quiet of Notre Dame at Paris ; it is 
 the joy which sings in the gorgeous glow of the 
 richness of Saint Mark's at Venice. It is most 
 frequently associated with religious buildings, 
 such as Saint Peter's in Eome, or Westminster 
 Abbey, or some of our own great churches, but 
 it is by no means confined to them. Nor is it 
 limited to buildings of large size. It can come 
 from small structures as well : for it would be a 
 cold person, indeed, who did not thrill as he 
 turned a corner in Athens and suddenly saw ris- 
 
THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 25 
 
 ing in front of him out of squalid slums the lit- 
 tle Monument of Lysikrates, so delicate, so per- 
 fect, so shining with a candid purity in the 
 midst of all that drabness. 
 
 This inspirational quality is as independent 
 of a building's age as it is of its size; it is a 
 result of perfection, and it may exist in a build- 
 ing a year old as strongly as in one a thousand 
 times its age. When one lifts the leather cur- 
 tains of the door of Saint Peter's, and enters 
 for the first time the hushed immensity of its 
 great interior,* the inspiration of its nobil- 
 ity sweeps over one like a compelling tide ; but 
 exactly the same emotion may overwhelm one 
 in the concourse of the Pennsylvania station in 
 New York — that great strong-vaulted interior 
 which swallows up its crowds and stills their 
 tumult, and dignifies them.t It is a thrilling 
 feeling of awe, a reverence for God and man, a 
 sudden keen realization of the worth-whileness 
 of life and the smallness of the individual. 
 
 Architecture has always this crowning reve- 
 lation as its end, and when it strikes this note it 
 has succeeded in saying its greatest word. 
 When, as you stand before some building, or in 
 
 * See Frontispiece. 
 
 t See the Plate opposite page 26. 
 
26 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 some grand interior, you feel rising within you 
 this wave of thrilling inspiration, this emotion 
 of quiet reverence, then you may rest assured 
 that you are in the presence of something truly 
 great, a veritable architectural masterpiece. 
 Such a joy as this can never be taught or 
 learned; for just as it takes giants to design 
 buildings that produce it, so those alone can ap- 
 preciate it fully who keep their souls unspoiled 
 and sensitive and their sensibilities alert and 
 keen, those who know what faith and reverence 
 are, and who have not lost amid the turmoil of 
 modern life the thin clear music of the soul's 
 singing. 
 
 These, then, are the gifts which architecture is 
 always ready to give you freely, will you but 
 keep your minds active and your eyes open. 
 Begin at once, whether you think you know 
 anything about architecture or not. Study the 
 building you work in and try to decide whether 
 it pleases you, and why. As you leave your 
 home, look back, and see if it is a residence you 
 are proud to live in ; if it expresses in some way 
 the joy you feel in returning to it; if it looks 
 inviting, comfortable, homelike, beautiful. And 
 on your daily business, wherever it may take 
 
pennsylvania station, new york city 
 (concourse) 
 
 (Copyright by W. Irving Underhill, N. Y.) 
 Thoughtful and imaginative design makes this modern interior instinct with 
 noble inspiration. See page 25. 
 

THE APPEAL OF ARCHITECTURE 27 
 
 you, by library or school or apartment house or 
 church or farmhouse or villa, look at them, be 
 they good or bad, with a new interest, and know 
 that in them, and in the emotions they arouse 
 in you, there is an immense store of vivid and 
 broadening pleasure awaiting your enjoyment. 
 As you do this, there will gradually grow over 
 you a grey feeling of fatigue and displeasure 
 when you pass street after street of thousand- 
 windowed boxes with rusty tin cornices atop 
 and horribly ornamented hallways below — the 
 homes of thousands upon thousands of city 
 dwellers — or you may feel a glow of pleasure or 
 quiet rest or even awe where some really beau- 
 tiful building rears its walls. 
 
 When even this measure of appreciation is 
 yours, you may know that you have begun to 
 open the great book of architecture, and every 
 successive page you will find filled with more 
 and more of interest and value. And the pleas- 
 ure you get from your growing appreciation 
 will not be its only result, for you have joined 
 the continually growing number of those who 
 realize the enormous value of good architecture, 
 and in the place of the terrible architectural 
 blunders of which we have been too often guilty, 
 
28 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 demand architectural masterpieces. Thus you 
 will be helping in the task of the gradual raising 
 of the standard of our national taste, and so 
 adding to the health, the happiness and the 
 spiritual enrichment of yourselves and the 
 Americans of the future. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 There is no greater obstacle to the appreciation 
 of architecture than the fog of criticism that 
 hangs all about it. The architects themselves 
 are largely to blame for this. Forced to close 
 contact with its infinite complexity, they have 
 been so occupied with questions of style and of 
 structure that their minds have become obsessed 
 with these, to the almost complete neglect of the 
 broad, basic criteria of criticism which under- 
 lie all styles and all methods of construction. 
 The critics have in general followed in their 
 steps. There are histories of architecture ga- 
 lore, and books and lectures supporting this, 
 that, or the other style ; but the amount of ser- 
 ious and simple architectural criticism has been 
 small indeed. Conditions have improved little 
 even in this critical and self-consciously dis- 
 criminating day. A few books there have been 
 that strove to pierce the fog and show the real 
 values of a building, but in too many cases an 
 
 29 
 
30 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 attempt at broadmindedness with regard to 
 styles has led to an almost complete lack of 
 any discrimination whatsoever. The popular 
 magazines devoted to building and landscape 
 gardening murmur through an intellectual 
 vacuum of the charm of this or the charm of 
 that, and beautiful photographs strive in vain to 
 take the place of real criticism in telling the 
 reader what is good and bad in architecture. 
 
 T^or there is a good and bad in architecture as 
 in all the arts. Popular taste may wax and 
 wane; it may demand now Gothic arches and 
 now Greek columns, but beneath all this change 
 there is a substratum of what seems to be uni- 
 versal law. Architecture, as an art of form and 
 colour, can as surely be criticised according to 
 the approved laws of form and colour as any of 
 its sister arts, and it is on these laws that all 
 criticism of architecture must be based. 
 
 It is not our purpose to go into the origin of 
 these laws. That is the concern of the psycholo- 
 gist and the philosopher. Whatever may be 
 their basis, the fact remains that certain laws 
 seem to be followed by all works of painting or 
 sculpture or architecture that the consensus of 
 opinion of mankind has judged beautiful. Not 
 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 31 
 
 only are these laws deducible in painting and 
 sculpture and architecture, the arts of form and 
 colour, but the working of the same laws, or 
 laws closely analogous to them, can be found in 
 the arts of sound — in good literature and good 
 music. They seem to be general rules, in ac- 
 cordance with which a man's mind always works 
 when he strives to create something which shall 
 have that quality which makes it pleasing to his 
 senses — the quality of beauty, or when he tr^es 
 to think about that which has appealed to him 
 as having this quality. 
 
 The first of these laws is so universal and so 
 important that compliance with it has often been 
 recognized as the sole necessity of beauty. 
 Pythagoras and Aristotle voiced it in Greece 
 over two thousand years ago, and almost 
 every philosopher since has recorded it and 
 restated it when dealing with the subject of 
 beauty. Beauty, according to these authorities, 
 is a characteristic of any object composed of 
 varied elements that produces a unity of effects 
 upon the sensations of the beholder. > It sounds 
 simple enough, this formula, but as it is exam- 
 ined, its meaning will become so full, and so 
 far-reaching, that the simplicity of the phrasing 
 
32 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 will seem deceptive. Even so, this definition 
 covers only a small part of the whole field of 
 what men call beautiful; it neglects the entire 
 emotional and associative value of beauty. It 
 considers beauty merely as an external quality, 
 as a matter purely of the senses rather than 
 of the heart. Allowing all the onesidedness of 
 this definition, however, it will still be necessary 
 to discover its meaning and its application to 
 architecture, particularly as we are dealing in 
 this chapter with architecture purely as form. 
 What is unity? (JDnity is the quality of an 
 object by which it appears as definitely and or- 
 ganically one single thing. ) It is possessed by 
 any building that at once strikes the beholder as 
 a single composition. No matter how complex 
 the parts of a building may be, or how large the 
 whole, if the complex parts at once take their 
 place as component parts of the whole, the build- 
 ing is unified, and is thus far a good building. 
 As an example of a complex yet unified build- 
 ing, take the Capitol at Washington.* The 
 Capitol was built at several different per- 
 iods, with several quite distinct parts — the two 
 end wings, the central block, the portions that 
 connect them, and the dome, and with each part 
 
 * See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
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LAWS OF FOEM IN ARCHITECTURE 33 
 
 itself composed of many varied elements — col- 
 umns, windows, doors, pediments, balustrades 
 and so forth. Each of these, in turn, might be 
 analyzed into its own several elements, mould- 
 ings, spots of bright light and shade, carved or- 
 nament, until the building is seen to be com- 
 posed of thousands of pieces of carved or cut 
 stone, and myriad openings through the stone, 
 each stone and each opening contributing its 
 own special note of dark or light to the whole. 
 Nevertheless, in spite of all this tremendous 
 complexity, this enormous number of differing 
 parts, when the whole is seen, there is no sense 
 of confusion, of multiplicity; there is, on the 
 contrary, only an impression of great size and 
 impressive dignity, even of simplicity, and the 
 great dome above seems to bind the whole into 
 one mighty composition. The skill of the archi- 
 tects who have worked successively on the build- 
 ing has been equal in each case to its task. By 
 keeping the main lines simple, and by judicious 
 repetition of the main motives — pediments, col- 
 onnades, and steps — these architects have suc- 
 ceeded in making a unity out of complexity, and 
 so have produced a building that fulfills per- 
 fectly the first and perhaps most important re- 
 
34 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 quirement of beauty. It is a living expression 
 in stone of our country's motto, "E pluribus 
 unum." 
 
 And yet how easy it is to lose this precious 
 touch of unity ! In New York there has been re- 
 cently built a costly and lavish office building 
 with a fagade composed of eight stages of Ionic 
 colonnade, with three stories to each stage. The 
 material of the front is rich and simple, the 
 execution is nearly perfect, the ornament is 
 graceful and well applied. Even the Ionic col- 
 umns and their entablatures are in themselves 
 beautiful, studied and refined to the last de- 
 gree. At first thought it might oecur to one 
 that this repetition of the same motive would 
 give unity to the building, but in reality, how 
 different is the case ! Far from giving the build- 
 ing unity, this repetition of the same order, 
 stage on stage, produces a monotonous and os- 
 tentatious confusion, and the building, sawed 
 into pieces by the strong cornices that cut 
 across it at each three stories, appears not one 
 but several buildings, piled interminably one 
 on the other. It is, therefore, a building that 
 lacks the saving grace of unity, and however 
 charming its detail, and lovely its parts, as a 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 35 
 
 whole it fails of beauty. This failure is made 
 all the more evident by the contrast with the 
 charming simplicity of the colonial Saint Paul's 
 Church beside it, with its simple lines, its digni- 
 fied colonnade, and its graceful spire. 
 
 The National Gallery, London, England. 
 
 Fig. 1. Multiplicity of motives, and dissimilarities 
 in their treatment, destroy the unity of this building. 
 
 As an even better example of the loss of unity 
 and its disastrous results, take a still simpler 
 building, the National' Gallery in London. 
 This building is particularly suited for com- 
 parison with the Capitol at Washington, be- 
 cause it uses so many of the same motives 
 — domes, columns, and a pediment. Indeed, 
 
36 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 it has fewer motives and simpler elements. 
 In place of the many windows of the other 
 building, it has long stretches of cut stone 
 wall, the strongest and most dignified form in 
 architecture. Yet, even with this simple and 
 dignified series of forms at his disposal, the ar- 
 chitect has failed to give unity to the building. 
 In place of the great dome of our national Capi- 
 tol there is a small excresence above the main 
 entrance, a dome so small in size and so puny 
 in design, that it becomes, not the building's 
 crowning glory, but rather an ugly superfluity, 
 a useless appendage that instead of binding the 
 whole building together by its compelling gran- 
 deur, seems only to add to its confusion. The 
 same lack of appreciation of unity, the same in- 
 decision, appears in the whole front. Standing, 
 as it does, at the head of a great square, one of 
 the most important in London, this building 
 ought to have a magnificent dignity. In reality, 
 its central eight-columned portico is small and 
 meagre in effect, and its pediment above too 
 low ; like the dome, it completely fails to centre 
 one's interest, or even adequately to suggest its 
 purpose. On either side of its ineffective col- 
 umns the design is still worse. On either side 
 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 37 
 
 there is a stretch of wall, and then a sudden 
 ornamented projection with columns and cor- 
 nice, as if the wall were to end here, in this 
 strongly marked end pavillion. But no, beyond 
 it stretches on, to fade away in another pavil- 
 lion similar to the first' but much weaker, and 
 still further beyond it appears once more in a 
 third and final pavillion, the weakest of all, the 
 indecisive close of an indecisive building. De- 
 spite the simplicity of its motives, the build- 
 ing is a hodge podge — wall, pavillion, wall, pa- 
 villion, ineffective and meagre entrance, puny 
 and insufficient dome; and because of its lack 
 of unity, this home of one of the world's great- 
 est art collections is a building that laymen 
 pass by without a second glance and that archi- 
 tects think of with scorn. 
 
 All these buildings, good and bad, have a cer- 
 tain amount of complexity, and they must have 
 this complexity, not only for practical, but for 
 aesthetic reasons as well. Absolute unity, were 
 such a thing possible, might excite wonder, 
 amazement, awe, but never that pleasure that is 
 one of the signs of beauty. For instance, let 
 the reader think of that monument of prehis- 
 toric effort, Stonehenge. If it is beautiful, it is 
 
38 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 beautiful only in so far as it has complexity. 
 Where the lintel stones remain in place, the re- 
 sult is more beautiful than where only the up- 
 right piers are left; where several of these 
 stand side by side, in some semblance of order, 
 the result is more beautiful than where one is 
 left upright, alone, forbidding. The simplest 
 obelisk is beautiful, not because of its simplicity, 
 but because of the subtle relationships between 
 the several parts of it — the width at the base, 
 the width near the top, the slope of the sides, 
 the relations between the height of the pyra- 
 midal part at the top and the part below. There 
 is great complexity of form in an obelisk, simple 
 as it appears, and complexity in aesthetic dis- 
 cussion always refers to complexity of form, 
 not of function or number. Let the reader 
 try to imagine something totally without com- 
 plexity, as large or small as he pleases. It is 
 impossible; on the one side is the geometric 
 point — a pure abstraction, and surely not beau- 
 tiful — on the other, infinity, equally an abstrac- 
 tion, equally unbeautiful. The nearest approach 
 to such a concept possible to the human imagi- 
 nation is conceivably a huge, colourless sphere, 
 hanging in nothingness. Surely that would 
 
/ 
 
 LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 39 
 
 not excite the pleasurable warmth of beauty in 
 one. The feelings at such a vision realized 
 might be feelings of fear, or awe, or wonder, 
 perhaps even of religious reverence, or terror, 
 but beauty has flown, for there is little of beauty 
 in the purely abstract. 
 
 Unity and variety , then, are both necessary 
 to beauty, in architecture as in everything else. 
 Variety is absolutely necessary in architecture ; 
 the architect need not be concerned over that. 
 A host of practical requirements necessitates 
 windows, doors, chimneys, porches, roofs. The 
 disposition of the rooms and several parts of 
 even the simplest building requires projections 
 or variations of the exterior. Even in tombs 
 or commemorative monuments inscriptions and 
 ornament necessitate a certain complexity. It 
 is, therefore, impossible for any architect to de- 
 sign a building without complexity. I fc is the 
 binding of all the various units into a single 
 work that is his greatest resthejic jrob lem, the 
 correlating of all, so that each shall perform 
 its required aesthetic service, so that each shall 
 bear its proper relationship to every other, and 
 to the whole work. How, then, may he do this ? 
 
 The best way to answer this question, so im- 
 
40 THE ENJOYMENT OF AKCHITECTURE 
 
 portant to one who attempts to appreciate archi- 
 tecture, as well as to the designer, is to find out 
 the dominant qualities that are common to all 
 beautiful and unified buildings. This has been 
 often done, and the results have been so uni- 
 form that they have been codified into laws, or 
 perhaps more really, rules of artistic composi- 
 tion. If they are once understood and applied, 
 sound criticism is the inevitable result, so it is 
 necessary that they be carefully considered. 
 They are, in brief, the laws of balance, rhythm, 
 good proportion, climax (centre of interest), 
 and harmony. Some people would add grace to 
 the list, but it is better to consider grace as 
 a result of the working of the other rules. 
 Strangely enough, these laws or rules, deduced 
 from good buildings, are practically the same 
 as the laws that govern good literature or good 
 music; that seems sufficient commentary upon 
 their validity. One might write a book of 
 rhetoric based upon them, or a book on musical 
 composition, but it is their application to archi- 
 tecture that is of first interest here, so that 
 time will be well spent in investigating them in 
 detail and considering them in all their architec- 
 ural implications. 
 
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LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 41 
 
 The first aesthetic law is, then, the law of bal- _ 
 ance, which may be stated as follows: Every 
 building should be so composed that the parts 
 of it on either side of an imaginary line ex- 
 pressed in some manner in the design, shall be 
 of apparently eguaJL weight. The most simple 
 application of this law is seen in symmetrical 
 buildings, so it will be well to consider these 
 first, and leave the more difficult applications in 
 so-called picturesque and non-symmetrical 
 buildings till later. Symmetry — the exact cor- 
 respondence of the two halves of a building — 
 can only exist when a building is in perfect bal- 
 ance. This is self-evident, but it is not all. 
 Symmetrical buildings may themselves be di- 
 vided into classes, corresponding to several dif- 
 ferent schemes of design, more or less complex. 
 The simpler schemes are the most universally 
 successful, and it becomes increasingly difficult 
 to manage the whole composition as motives are 
 added, since the increasing complexity makes it 
 difficult for the eye to seize at once the inherent 
 balance, which is such a large element in the 
 beauty of the whole. 
 
 The simplest of these symmetrical masses is, 
 of course, the plain rectangular front, with or 
 
42 THE ENJOYMENT OF AKCHITECTURE 
 
 without a gable. Such a front can be seen in 
 any Greek temple — the Parthenon, for example, 
 or the temple of Theseus at Athens.* The 
 latter is chosen for illustration because in 
 mass, at least, it exists in nearly its original 
 form. The front of this temple consists simply 
 of a row of six columns, crowned with a low 
 gable — a pediment. The symmetry is perfect, 
 and hence the balance ; the axis of balance, the 
 pivot, as it were, is just sufficiently expressed 
 by the peak of the gable above, and the door 
 below. The whole, in absolute, easily grasped 
 balance, is reposeful, satisfying and beautiful. 
 A second scheme, a shade more complex, con- 
 sists of a simple rectangular form in the middle, 
 usually, but not always, long and low in effect, 
 with a smaller, but strongly accented form at 
 each end. It is seen to perfection in the new 
 Post-Office on Eighth Avenue in New York 
 City t and in the Bureau of Printing and En- 
 graving at Washington — a long open colonnade, 
 stopped at each end against a projecting 
 feature or pavillion of heavy masonry. In a 
 slightly more subtle form the same scheme is 
 seen in the Palazzo Vendramini at Venice. :£ 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 40. 
 t See the Plate opposite page 202. 
 JSee the Plate opposite page 46. 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 43 
 
 In this case the end pavillions are treated 
 exactly like the portions between them, with 
 the exception of the coupling of the columns 
 on either side of the end windows, and the 
 flat wall that shows between these coupled col- 
 umns. These little changes at the ends of the 
 building give it at once a dignity and a distinc- 
 tion that it could never have had if the end bays 
 had been the same as those between. Without 
 this additional weight at the corners the build- 
 ing would have had an undistinguished, indecis- 
 ive air. There would have been always the 
 feeling that there was no reason for the build- 
 ing ending where it did, as though it might just 
 as well have been two or four or six windows 
 larger. The same thing is true of the New York 
 Post-Office — a colonnade of that length without 
 strong end pavillions to stop it would have been 
 disastrously amorphous, beginning nowhere, 
 ending nowhere. 
 
 The aesthetic value of these end features in a 
 large and complex building can be seen in the 
 apparent weakness of so many of our modern 
 American loft buildings. Symmetry they may 
 have, but demand for light and show window 
 space has reduced walls to mere piers of terra 
 
44 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 cotta or brick ; economy in the use of steel neces- 
 sitates the regular spacing of these piers, so 
 that all too many of them seem mere unfinished 
 shells — slices of building, as it were, sawed in 
 sections out of some huge and perhaps beauti- 
 ful composition, and then dumped hit or miss in 
 our streets. 
 
 Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, France. 
 
 Fig. 2. An example of the second scheme of sym- 
 metrical design, with the end motives — the towers — 
 as the dominating features. 
 
 However, there are dangers, too, in the use 
 of end pavillions. The main danger is that they 
 may become too large for the whole, large 
 enough to distract the attention from the central 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 45 
 
 portion of the building, and yet not large 
 enough to be the main features of the design, as 
 they are in Notre Dame in Paris,* or the Cathe- 
 dral of Cologne, or Saint Patrick's Cathedral 
 in New York. This is a fault that spoils 
 great numbers of American churches ; the tow- 
 ers, that ought to dominate, have been reduced 
 and spread apart, with a mediocre porch be- 
 tween, so that the final result is confusion, three 
 units of equal aesthetic weight crowded to- 
 gether, all fighting for the observer's attention. 
 This scheme of tripartite symmetry is closely 
 allied to the next scheme, also of three units. 
 In this scheme the central unit is much more 
 strongly emphasized; it is usually higher and 
 broader than the rest of the building, so that 
 the effect, instead of being that of a unit re- 
 peated several times in the middle, and stopped 
 at the ends by heavier units, is that of a strong 
 unit in the middle, with weaker elements at each 
 side. The effect of the two schemes might be 
 compared to two families out walking; in the 
 first the father and mother walk on opposite 
 sides of the road, with all the children hand in 
 hand between them ; in the second the father is 
 alone in the middle, with a child or two on either 
 side of him. 
 
 * See Fig. 2, page 44. 
 
46 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 This last scheme is a favourite one for the 
 smaller types of formal building. It is illus- 
 trated by hundreds of colonial houses, such as 
 the Craigie (Longfellow) house in Cambridge, 
 Massachusetts, and by endless small libraries, 
 where the central, dominant portion suggests 
 the welcome of the entrance, and the less domi- 
 nant portions on either side the various rooms 
 to which the entrance leads. The Minneapolis 
 Art Museum is an example of the same treat- 
 ment applied to a larger building. In this 
 scheme the danger is that the side portions shall 
 become unduly important, through size, or deco- 
 rative treatment, so that the effect of the centre 
 is lost, and again confusion results. 
 
 A fourth symmetrical scheme is well illus- 
 trated by the United States Capitol.* It consists 
 of a main central portion, subsidiary connecting 
 links, and, at the ends, strongly marked pavil- 
 lions. It might almost be considered a com- 
 bination of the two foregoing types. It is the 
 most formal and monumental of all, and is, per- 
 haps, the most successful manner of treating 
 large and important buildings. Hundreds of ex- 
 amples suggest themselves, the colonnade of the 
 
 *See the Plate opposite page 32. 
 
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LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 47 
 
 Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 
 New York, many of our best state capitols, 
 and on a smaller scale, certain monumental 
 mansions of Virginia, such as Jefferson's 
 Monticello, or the earlier Shirley. Here again 
 the central portion, to be successful, must 
 be strongly dominant. If the end portions be- 
 come equal to the centre in apparent weight, 
 the eye will be tempted to fix on any of the three 
 as the important feature of the building, will 
 strive to fix the axis of balance in the end in- 
 stead of in the centre, and confusion will result. 
 
 The reader will notice that in the successful 
 examples of every scheme, except, perhaps, the 
 second, the axis of balance is strongly accented 
 by the dominant central portion. In the case 
 of the second scheme, illustrated by the New 
 York Post Office, and the Vendramini Palace, or 
 by Saint Patrick's Cathedral, the ends are heav- 
 ily and equally weighted, and consequently, so 
 strong is the sense of balance, that the axis of 
 balance need not be expressed, because its po- 
 sition is grasped the moment the building is 
 seen. 
 
 All of the best symmetrical buildings can be 
 
48 THE ENJOYMENT OF AECHITECTURE 
 
 grouped under one of these four heads. The 
 moment a building becomes so complex that its 
 motives will not fall into any of these four 
 groupings, in other words, when the system of 
 the building divides into over five distinct mo- 
 tives, the probabilities are all against its being 
 a success. There is a limit to what the human 
 eye can perceive and the human mind appre- 
 hend in a moment, and a beautiful building must 
 stand forth as beautiful on the most cursory 
 observation. This accounts for the ineffective- 
 ness of the National Gallery in London ; its sys- 
 tem of walls and triple end pavillions is too 
 complex to be grasped at the first glance. S To 
 avoid confusion, the main divisions of any build- 
 ing must not be so many in number as to make it 
 difficult instantly to understand their system.^ 
 
 It is a more difficult matter to understand the 
 application of the law of balance to non-sym- 
 metrical buildings. At first sight a non-sym- 
 metrical building may appear out of balance, 
 yet beauty cannot be denied it. What a bald 
 place this earth would be if every building in 
 it were absolutely symmetrical ! We should lose 
 Chartres Cathedral, for instance, and Amiens, 
 and most of the early French Renaissance 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 49 
 
 chateaux, and countless lovely modern houses 
 and country churches, and myriad other build- 
 ings — and to be denied all those buildings gifted 
 with that free and appealing charm which we 
 term "the picturesque" would be an unimagin- 
 able loss. 
 
 Cathedral, Chartres, France. 
 
 Fig. 3. Balance is produced in a non-symmetrical 
 building by careful proportioning of the unsymmetric 
 portions. 
 
 The simplest class of non- symmetrical build- 
 ings is that in which the axis is very clearly 
 felt, in which there exists a kind of free, though 
 not absolute, symmetry. Chartres and Amiens 
 Cathedral are examples. In both the lack of 
 
 i 
 
50 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 symmetry is in certain details, rather than in 
 scheme. If well carried out this scheme is 
 always successful, but balance and beauty 
 result only when the mass of the two un- 
 symmetrical parts is kept almost the same. For 
 instance, in Chartres Cathedral, one of the most 
 beautiful buildings of this type, balance is pre- 
 served and beauty made certain by the fact that 
 the greater sturdiness and solidity of the older 
 tower on the right is compensated for by the 
 added height of the left hand, lighter, more 
 airy tower. The present aspect of the front of 
 Rouen Cathedral, on the other hand, shows 
 the unfortunate effect of this quasi sym- 
 metry when wrongly handled. Whatever is 
 thought of the glorious doorways and the lacy 
 late Gothic openwork all over the central por- 
 tion, it is certainly true that as a whole the 
 front is not perfectly beautiful, for the heavy 
 mass of the famous " butter tower" on one side, 
 with nothing adequate to counterweight on the 
 other side of a front otherwise symmetrical, 
 throws the whole out of balance, and conse- 
 quently produces a strong feeling of dissatisfac- 
 tion, of restlessness, whenever the whole is con- 
 sidered as one single work of art, rather 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 51 
 
 than as a combination of exqnisite details. 
 
 In these cases of non-symmetrical but nearly 
 symmetrical buildings, the balance is obvious, 
 but in the more complicated " picturesque' % 
 buildings, the question becomes more difficult. 
 It is impossible to codify these " picturesque' f 
 buildings as most symmetrical buildings have 
 been codified; they are too different from one 
 another, and possible schemes of design are in- 
 finite. Yet it is absolutely important that every 
 beautiful building have balance, whether it is 
 symmetrical or not, and if one is to look with 
 knowledge for beauty in buildings, he must 
 know something about this difficult question. 
 
 The best that can be done is to indicate and 
 to illustrate a few of the basic principles that 
 govern balance in so-called "picturesque" 
 buildings. First, the axis of balance must be 
 expressed in some way, by door, or balcony, or 
 porch, or some interesting feature. This, per- 
 haps, is the most important point of all. If the 
 axis of balance is so expressed by such a feature 
 of the building, the eye will be drawn to it at 
 once, and, resting on it, will feel that the mass 
 of building on each side is approximately equal. 
 A sense of repose results at once, and conse- 
 
52 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 quently the building appears beautiful. To 
 illustrate this point, here is a sketch of the front 
 of a small country church. 
 
 Fig. 4. The chapel "a" has balance, because the 
 axis of balance is expressed by the porch. Chapel 
 ' * b, ' ' with the porch shifted to one side, is out of bal- 
 ance, and therefore unbeautiful. 
 
 In this case the porch, being the most salient 
 feature, attracts the eye at once, and when the 
 eye rests on that, the mass of the building on 
 each side seems equal; balance is the result. 
 The higher, heavier mass of the tower, close to 
 the axis, balances the longer, lower gable, with 
 its greater leverage. Then notice the awkward 
 result that follows if the interesting point is far 
 away at one side. In the second case the eye is 
 again attracted by the porch, but this time it 
 finds the whole mass of building upon one side, 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 53 
 
 with only sky on the other ; the balance is lost, 
 and an inevitable restlessness and awkward- 
 ness, which destroy one 's artistic pleasure, fol- 
 low. Of course, this is an extremely simple 
 case; it is given merely as a hint to stimulate 
 further observation. In reality the architect 
 must keep in mind not only the front but the 
 sides and the rear. He must imagine the build- 
 ing as it appears to a person walking all around 
 it, with reference to all existing trees, or slopes 
 of ground, or shrubs near by. From every pos- 
 sible view a really good building must have 
 balance, and this accounts for the comparative 
 failure of some of our informal American coun- 
 try houses. They seem manifestly to be de- 
 signed with one view point, or two, in mind; 
 from these points they are good, perfect in bal- 
 ance and composition, but from other points 
 the same buildings are a mere hodge podge, 
 and they lack that little accent on the centre of 
 balance given by a chimney or flower box, or 
 some little point of interest, that would have 
 made the whole seem balanced and in repose. 
 That is why the architect is, as a rule, so sus- 
 picious of the " built picturesque"; on one side 
 it is likely to be in almost too studied a balance, 
 
54 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 on another a mere confusion of changing line 
 and restless mass. 
 
 There are a few points about the balancing 
 of masses that it is well to make clear. First, 
 there is in this matter an artistic analogy to the 
 law of leverage. That is, a heavy member close 
 to that interesting feature which expresses the 
 centre of balance — the pivot, as it were — will 
 counterbalance and be balanced by a long, low, 
 lighter member further from that point. Sec- 
 ondly, the shapes and positions of the masses 
 themselves affect the balance. For example, a 
 member that projects always seems heavier than 
 a receding member. That is, in a building of 
 the "L" type, with one arm longer than the 
 other, the best place for the centre of interest 
 is on the long side near the angle, for then the 
 projecting wing, nearer the eye, seems heavier 
 than the rest, and requires a longer portion to 
 balance it. A high mass usually appears pro- 
 portionally heavier than a low mass. So, in the 
 chapel mentioned above, although there is more 
 area- in the gable, the tower seems heavier be- 
 cause of its added height. 
 
 So far we have been dealing merely with 
 mass, but artistic balance has another compli- 
 
E&WS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 55 
 
 cation. There is a balance of interest, as well 
 as a balance of mere apparent weight. That is 
 the architect's salvation, for when he is con- 
 fronted with a plan that seems to demand a 
 treatment hopelessly unbalanced, he can give 
 beauty to the whole by making the lighter side 
 of his composition so interesting, by means of 
 ornament, or window boxes, or a projecting 
 bay window, or a lattice, that the attractiveness 
 to the eye of both light side and heavy side 
 seems almost the same, and consequently the 
 eye is at rest, and repose and beauty are the 
 result. 
 
 This is not an attempt to treat the difficult 
 subject of balance exhaustively but rather to 
 set down the main principles, and to give a 
 working basis for the understanding of the 
 matter, so that the reader may be able, as he 
 looks at the buildings all around him and at 
 their settings to form on these foundations a 
 criterion of criticism for himself. 
 
 The second great artistic law is the law of 
 rhythm, and it may be stated thus : Every beau- 
 tiful building should be so composed that its 
 units shall bear some rhythmic relation to one 
 another. The term " rhythm' ' is applied to ar- 
 
56 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 cliitecture in a very broad sense. In most cases 
 there does not exist throughout a building any 
 set repetition of groups of the same form with- 
 out a break. There are exceptions, such as 
 the Colosseum in Rome,* where the contin- 
 ued repetition of the same rhythmical form, 
 the same measure almost, consisting of the 
 broad, dark mass of the arch, with the smaller, 
 lighter mass of masonry between, broken by 
 the projecting columns, gives a tremendous and 
 overwhelming dignity. In the interior of a 
 Gothic cathedral, Amiens,t for instance, there 
 is the same dignity produced by the repeti- 
 tion of a rhythmical measure of the same 
 sort, broad arch and narrow pier, only in this 
 case the unit is in three tiers, and each tier 
 varies in rhythmical structure from the others. 
 First, low down, there is the broad arch that 
 leads from nave to side aisle. Above this is a 
 narrow band of arcading, the trif orium gallery, 
 and above this still the great clerestory window 
 that corresponds in vertical divisions to the 
 triforium, but dominates in richness. Each of 
 these complex units is repeated the whole length 
 of the nave, and in the wonderful rhythmical ef- 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 22. 
 J See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
cathedral, amiens, france 
 (interior) 
 
 An example of the impressive effect of strongly marked rhythmical design. 
 See page 56- 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 57 
 
 feet that results lies one reason for the poetry 
 of the whole. 
 
 It is in this matter of rhythm that certain 
 people have tried to find an absolute analogy 
 between architecture and music, but this is an 
 analogy that must not be pushed too far. Archi- 
 tecture is analogous to music, but the analogy 
 is in ''the intellectual vagueness, the emotional 
 certainty" of both arts, as J. A. Symonds puts 
 it, and in the abstract character of the forms 
 used, rather than in any mere tricks of tech- 
 nique, or any hidden and mystical twinship of 
 form. 
 
 To try to find musical analogies to archi- 
 tectural forms is amusing and stimulating, but 
 to push this effort too seriously and too far, to 
 try to distinguish actual chords and pitches and 
 complex musical rhythms in architecture, so 
 that a symphony might be built, or Saint Peter's 
 played, that is an absurdity; that is losing the 
 particular charm of both arts. No, architecture 
 has not been called * 'frozen music" because 
 there are scales and chords and measures and 
 rests in great buildings, but because both arts 
 strive to obtain emotional effects of the same 
 sort, that is, emotional effects of the graver, 
 
58 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 deeper, vaguer, and less distinctly discrimin- 
 ated, more sublime sorts, by means that are ab- 
 stract, that exist by reason of their own virtue, 
 and in which representation of actual sights 
 and sounds bears but a secondary place. 
 
 Furthermore, if we are to look for an accu- 
 rate analogy to most architectural rhythm, we 
 shall find it in the rhythm of good prose rather 
 than in that of music. Architecture has more 
 of the rhythm of a Gregorian chant, or of Plain 
 Song, than of a Beethoven symphony; it has 
 more the rhythm of the flowing English of a 
 Pater essay than of the poetry of Burns or 
 Keats. This is a point that must be insisted on, 
 for if an attempt is made to find in every beau- 
 tiful building the absolute metrical scheme of 
 music or poetry, disappointment can be the only 
 result. For an analogy to help the better un- 
 derstanding of rhythm in architecture, we 
 must, therefore, turn to prose. Take a Steven- 
 son essay, for instance, such as "El Dorado.' 9 
 When a sentence from it is read out loud, it 
 falls naturally into groups of syllables, phrases 
 and clauses, freely balancing each other, each 
 leading gracefully into the next, the whole effect 
 rising in waves of sound into climaxes, or melt- 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 59 
 
 ing softly into rests. The rhythm of a good 
 building is much the same, except that in place 
 of syllables we have all the play of light and 
 shadow and colour over its various surfaces and 
 openings. As the sentence divides itself into 
 freely balancing phrases and clauses, so the 
 building divides itself into freely balancing 
 units — porticoes, doors, projecting wings, or 
 sometimes even the mere pleasing alternation of 
 window and wall. As in the sentence the phrases 
 lead gradually and gracefully from one to an- 
 other, so the units of the good building lead one 
 to another. As the sentence has its climaxes 
 and its rests, so the lights and darks of a build- 
 ing surge into climaxes, and soften into vague- 
 ness. The Capitol at Washington might be con- 
 sidered a building with three climaxes — the 
 three great porticoes, and two rests — the sim- 
 pler wings between them. The "White House 
 has at each end a simple element of wall and 
 window that changes in the middle to a climax 
 produced by the insistent alternation of light 
 and dark in the strongly projecting colonnade 
 in the centre. 
 
 But this is not all. All the different phrases, 
 or units, into which a building seems to sepa- 
 
60 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 rate, may themselves be strongly rhythmical. 
 So the repeated alternation of light and dark 
 in colonnades is rhythmic; so, too, is any re- 
 peated change of wall and window; and the 
 ornamental details of a building have usually 
 the strongest felt, the most strictly metrical 
 rhythm of all. The reason that the cornice with 
 brackets has always been so popular lies in the 
 fact that the strong rhythmic repetition over 
 and over again of the light brackets and the 
 shadows between binds together into one whole 
 all the looser rhythms of the building it crowns, 
 as the insistent bass of a Spanish dance binds 
 together its flowing melodies. For the same 
 reason, in a complex building of varied rhythm 
 unity is produced by the repetition here and 
 there of units with strong rhythmic character ; 
 for example, a group of windows spaced 
 equally, or a colonnade of the same number of 
 columns, or sometimes merely bands of repeated 
 ornament, with the result that the eye every- 
 where glimpses some element that sets, as it 
 were, one rhythmic tone for the whole building. 
 To these horizontal rhythms there must be 
 added vertical rhythms, before a complete idea 
 of the rhythmic content of a building can be 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 61 
 
 gained. These vertical rhythms, caused by hori- 
 zontal divisions, intermediate cornices, tiers of 
 windows, and the like are of particular import- 
 ance in tall buildings ; and where there are many 
 stories of the same height, as in so many of our 
 office buildings or apartment houses, monotony 
 must be avoided by grouping the stories in some 
 way, by making the bottom stories count to- 
 gether as a basement, and the upper ones as a 
 crowning feature. This gives at once a pleas- 
 ing variety to the rhythm, without destroying it. 
 One may see a simple example of vertical 
 rhythm in the front of the Vendramini Palace.* 
 
 Closely allied to this question of rhythm is 
 the next great law of building beautifully, the 
 law of proportion. According to this law, a 
 beautiful building should be well proportioned. 
 The apparent vagueness of the law will disap- 
 pear as its terms are denned and amplified, and 
 it can be stated in no more definite form that is 
 not unduly long. 
 
 Good proportion, broadly speaking, is the 
 quality possessed by any building whose several 
 parts are so related as to give a pleasing im- 
 pression. It is primarily a quality of the re- 
 lationship of all the units in a building, rather 
 
 *See the Plate opposite page 46. 
 
62 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 than a quality of the units themselves. Indeed, 
 it might be truly stated that between certain 
 very wide limits there can be in a single element 
 of a building no such thing as good proportion. 
 For instance, in some cases a high, narrow win- 
 dow, like the great clerestory windows of 
 Amiens, is in perfect proportion, but imagine 
 the awkwardness of such a window in the base- 
 ment story of a long, low building. It would 
 look hopelessly out of proportion. 
 
 It has been claimed that the feeling of good 
 proportion is produced when the parts of a 
 building are in simple arithmetical ratios, like 
 that of two and three, or two and four, and with 
 this in mind attempts have been made to codify 
 arithmetically what good proportion is.* For 
 instance, it has been claimed that the typical 
 Gothic cathedral is based on the equilateral tri- 
 angle; that Greek temples were designed ac- 
 cording to complex geometric principles; that 
 the height of the best door is exactly twice its 
 width, and so forth, but this can be considered 
 true only to a limited extent. It is better to 
 consider architectural proportion, as its name 
 suggests, rather as the relationship between the 
 
 * See, for a statement of this theory, G. L. Raymond's, 
 "The Essentials of Aesthetics." 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 63 
 
 diverse ratios of height and breadth, etc., of all 
 the units of a building taken together than as 
 any innate beauty in simple ratios themselves. 
 The architect may have definite ideas of ratio in 
 his mental background, but the best design is 
 always produced by the constant free adjust- 
 ment of size and ratio in the units of a building 
 until the whole takes shape as a single, beau- 
 tiful object, until "good proportion" is secured. 
 It is this larger side of the subject of propor- 
 tion, this question of the relationship of various 
 units, doors, windows, etc., to each other and to 
 the whole, that the observer of architecture 
 must keep in mind, rather than the ratios of the 
 units themselves. In a good building, each unit, 
 however beautiful in itself, is in reality only a 
 part of the whole, and it is as such that it should 
 always be judged. 
 
 When proportion is regarded in this larger 
 light, it will at once be evident that the law of 
 proportion is closely related to the next great 
 aesthetic consideration, the law that a building 
 must be harmonious to be beautiful. Indeed, if 
 harmony were merely a matter of proportional 
 harmony, we might consider the subject already 
 covered; but harmony in a building covers a 
 
64 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 wider field than the mere harmonious propor- 
 tion of the various parts. There must be har- 
 mony of expression as well, and to a certain ex- 
 tent harmony of style. In a word, in a beau- 
 tiful building, not a single element must be so 
 designed as to appear disturbingly distinct and 
 alone and separate from the whole, for the mo- 
 ment this occurs, unity is lost, and without unity 
 there can be no beauty. Harmony, then, is 
 threefold, harmony of proportion, harmony of 
 expression, and harmony of style. 
 
 By harmony of expression is meant a har- 
 mony in the character and purpose of a building 
 as seen in its exterior forms. For instance, in 
 a building intended to express intimacy, se- 
 clusion, privacy in all of its parts, as in a ma- 
 sonic hall, or a small country cottage, it would 
 be a mistake to have an enormous entrance, sug- 
 gesting the ingress and exit of great crowds of 
 people. It is the one blot upon the beauty of 
 most of the English cathedrals, even the, best, 
 that there exists a distinct discord of expres- 
 sion in their west fronts ; for all their tremen- 
 dous length and all their richness, their feeling 
 of enormous size, of spiritual invitation and of 
 democracy is contradicted by the forbidding im- 
 
- LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 65 
 
 pression given by the tiny doors through which 
 most of them are entered. 
 
 By harmony of style is meant a harmony in 
 the forms used, not so much in their general 
 proportion as in their details, such as mould- 
 ings, carved or modelled ornament, the use of 
 different materials, and so forth. That is, the 
 moment two forms are used in the same build- 
 ing which belong to obviously different categ- 
 ories, harmony of style is lost. For instance, 
 a building in which great Gothic windows and 
 pinnacles were used in one part, while another 
 part was severely classic, would give a feeling 
 of restless incoherence, fatal to any beauty. 
 By harmony of style it is not meant that a 
 building must be rigidly in one of the so-called 
 historical " styles,' ' for stylistic purity is some- 
 thing vastly different from aesthetic harmony. 
 There are many charming buildings of mixed 
 historic style that, nevertheless, possess this 
 quality: a notable example is the church of 
 Saint Eustache in Paris. In this case a church 
 absolutely Gothic in conception, with lofty 
 vaults and small piers to support them, with 
 great window space and little wall, is treated 
 with detail of a distinctly classical kind, pan- 
 
66 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 elled pilasters, Corinthian capitals, ornament of 
 a renaissance character, hut so skilfully have 
 these details heen modified, and so frankly have 
 they been adapted to the Gothic form of the 
 building, that there is no feeling of discord. 
 Very many of our best American buildings are 
 equally free ; Eoman arches are combined with 
 Greek mouldings, and the whole treated in a free 
 and modern manner. For an example of per- 
 fect architectural harmony, consider the front 
 of the Boston Public Library.* Its universal 
 popularity is sufficient evidence of the har- 
 mony of its proportions; and the harmony 
 of expression is evidenced by the quiet dignity 
 of every detail, from the restful lines of the 
 tile roof to the strong and simple basement. 
 Harmony of style is also evident. The cornice 
 seems an adequate crown to the whole, the round 
 arches fall most happily into the scheme, every 
 smallest moulding seems studied and designed 
 in the same spirit of quiet and reposeful deli- 
 cacy. It is this unity, this harmony and the ap- 
 parent simplicity that results, which are the 
 main reasons for the delightful and appealing 
 charm of this library; its perfect harmony 
 makes it one of the best loved of all modern 
 American architectural masterpieces, 
 
 * See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
eft .tJ 
 
 o 3 
 
 b -a 
 . s 
 
 si 
 
 U ~ 
 
 i * 
 
 B 2 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 67 
 
 There remains but one more aesthetic rule 
 or canon to be considered : the law, as we have 
 stated it, of climax. The necessity for some cli- 
 max, some spot in a building more interesting 
 than the rest, has already been suggested in the 
 discussion of balance. The eye, as it wanders 
 over a large building, grows tired if there is no 
 single feature on which it can rest, and any eye 
 exhaustion is fatal to beauty, just as mental 
 exhaustion is fatal to beauty in a long piece of 
 prose in which there is no climax on which 
 the mind can fix. But in architecture the 
 need of a centre of interest is slighter, and in 
 some buildings this climax is so subtly treated 
 as entirely to escape notice. In the New York 
 Post Office, for instance, there seems no cen- 
 tre of interest, no climax. In reality, the 
 whole magnificent colonnade is itself the centre 
 of interest; its large size is compensated for by 
 the regularity of the repetition of the motives. 
 In particular, this is seen to be true when one 
 considers the building as a four-sided whole, 
 and not as a single facade, for the simple, un- 
 broken rhythm of the back and sides leads the 
 eye inevitably around the corners until the main 
 front comes into view, and the eye rests, re- 
 freshed and enriched, on the noble colonnade, 
 
#. 
 
 68 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 a worthy climax to the whole. So the dome of 
 the Capitol at Washington * binds the whole 
 complex building together because of its beauti- 
 ful dominance ; and in the case of Saint Peter 's 
 at Rome, that superlatively lovely dome fulfills 
 a similar and still more difficult service, for here 
 the greater portion of the exterior is bald, con- 
 fused, and out of scale; yet all is passed over 
 and forgiven because of the perfect beauty of 
 the centre of interest, the great dome, t 
 
 A failure to fulfill this condition of beauty is 
 one of the greatest faults of our modern Ameri- 
 can architecture. Lost in the multitude of win- 
 dows our modern exigencies demand, or often 
 overwhelmed with ideas of bigness and gran- 
 deur, the American architect too often produces 
 dreary monotony, when, if he had concentrated 
 his richness on one spot to fix and delight the 
 eye, he would have produced a truer and simpler 
 beauty. If only our architects and builders had 
 kept this idea always in mind, how different our 
 streets would have been ! Instead of that dreary 
 succession of windows, windows, windows, set 
 in walls covered, often, with meaningless and 
 ill-applied ornament, there would have been an 
 entire simplicity, with here and there an ele- 
 
 *See the Plate opposite page 32. 
 f See the Plate opposite page 216. 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 69 
 
 ment of real beauty and grace ; perhaps a door- 
 way, perhaps merely one little carved plaque 
 or shield to centre one's wandering interest. 
 Then such a street would be restful and charm- 
 ing, like some of the old alleys of Philadelphia, 
 or the lovely-doored byways of Portsmouth or 
 Salem. 
 
 There is one corollary and result of these 
 greater laws which deserves notice because of 
 its apparent universality. This is the fact that 
 every beautiful building as a whole, and many 
 of its decorative elements in themselves, have 
 a threefold composition, a beginning, middle 
 and end. Most of the pleasing columns, for ex- 
 ample (with the one exception of the Greek 
 Doric column), have this tripartite character — 
 a base, a shaft and a capital. The Boston Pub- 
 lic Library* has a strong basement story, a 
 higher, more graceful portion above this, and 
 a crown of roof and cornice. As one analyzes 
 the buildings that please him, he will be more 
 and more struck with the universality of this 
 threefold composition. From the tall sky- 
 scraper with its strong stone basement, its sim- 
 ple brick shaft of many stories above, and its 
 cap of richly ornamented cornice, or pierced 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 66. 
 
70 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 parapet, or upward pointing roof, to the simple 
 classical entablature, with its architrave, frieze 
 and cornice, he will find everywhere this three- 
 fold form. 
 
 The explanation of this is simple. It is analo- 
 gous to the ideal structure of an essay or a 
 speech, with its introduction, its body of argu- 
 ment and exposition, and its conclusion. When 
 one looks at anything beautiful, his eye demands 
 that this object be definitely limited at the ends, 
 and at the top and bottom, for if there is no lim- 
 itation save the mere unadorned top and base of 
 the building, a feeling of indecision will prob- 
 ably be produced, a feeling that the whole is 
 weakly indeterminate. That is why whenever 
 one sees a building without some little base 
 moulding or band, or a building chopped off 
 square at the top, hard, uncompromising, 
 straight, there is always a certain shock 
 produced: however beautiful in itself is the 
 shaft of a building, without some base and some 
 cap it will be inevitably unsatisfactory. On the 
 other hand a strong base and a rich cap go far 
 towards making up for poor design in the rest 
 of a building. A glance at the Capitol at Wash- 
 ington, or the Louvre colonnade, or the New 
 
LAWS OF FORM IN ARCHITECTURE 71 
 
 York Post Office, or the Boston Public Library 
 will reveal this principle at once. 
 
 This discussion of the fundamental basis 
 of aesthetic composition in architecture does 
 not pretend to be final or complete. In such 
 a personal thing as artistic pleasure there are 
 bound to be wide differences of opinion. Even 
 the so-called laws that have been stated may- 
 phrase themselves differently to different peo- 
 ple, and other new requirements of beauty add 
 themselves to the list. There can be no dogma 
 stated to which all will agree, consequently the 
 laws that are given above must be applied with 
 latitude and freedom; they must be considered 
 not as formulae, but as mental stimulants; the 
 truly appreciative critic of architecture will not 
 stop with them, but will use them as a basis for 
 making his own decisions with regard to the 
 buildings he attempts to value. 
 
 After all, good and bad are relative terms, and 
 particularly in such a complex art as architec- 
 ture, and in such a complex object as a building 
 it becomes dangerous to point to this as good 
 and that as bad. The enjoyment of architec- 
 ture is a personal matter, and the person who 
 attempts for himself sincerely to form his own 
 
72 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 judgments about the buildings he sees, and who 
 attempts to find reasons for his judgments on 
 real and thoughtful convictions, is doing more 
 for the growth of architectural taste than the 
 one who accepts blindly the taste of the most 
 competent critics. The reader must remember, 
 too, that in this chapter but one side of the 
 broad art of architecture has been treated; it 
 has been considered as bald and bloodless form, 
 void of other content. But just as architecture 
 is more than bald form, just as it is bald form, 
 clothing and expressing and growing out of 
 human life. 50 architectural appreciation must 
 include this human, subjective, and expressive 
 side as well as the purely aasthetic. On the 
 other hand, just as there can be no architecture 
 without form, so architectural criticism, unless 
 it be founded on a strong and sane aesthetic 
 basis, becomes vague and sentimental. It is a 
 framework for this aesthetic basis that this 
 chapter has tried to give, and it only remains 
 for the reader to clothe the framework with his 
 own personality and by his own observations, 
 until beauty is seen neither as a matter of geo- 
 metric ratios, nor of vague and cloudy intui- 
 tion. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 It is one of the charms of architecture that its 
 component elements are in themselves few in 
 number and simple in structure. The very fact 
 that all the beauty of a building lies in relation- 
 ships of simple and easily comprehended parts 
 has forced the architect to study these relation- 
 ships to the last degree, so that a really great 
 building has in it more absolute perfection of 
 pure design than any other of man's works, 
 with the possible exception of the world's great- 
 est music. The architect can invent so little that 
 his effort must be closely concentrated ; his ap- 
 peal to the public is so carefully circumscribed 
 that it must be made with all the more poig- 
 nance, and the materials at his disposal are so 
 limited that each one of them must be as per- 
 fect as he can possibly make it, for no charm of 
 face or human form, no allure of lovely senti- 
 ment, can blind one to a badly designed build- 
 ing's artistic faults. 
 
 73 
 
74 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The appeal of a building to the senses is pro- 
 duced by two things only, the play of light and 
 shade over its varied surfaces, and the colour 
 of the materials of which it is composed. This 
 play of light and shade, in turn, is produced by 
 the treatment of simple, surprisingly simple, 
 elements, that are necessitated by the require- 
 ments of the building itself. The human mind 
 always works up from the necessary to the beau- 
 tiful. Primitive man had to make a hut before 
 he could make it a delight to the eye. It is 
 much the same now ; the architect must make a 
 building before he can make it a work of art, and 
 one feels instinctively that the most beautiful 
 buildings are those in which the necessities of 
 the building are most clearly observed, and 
 most clearly expressed. It follows, then, that 
 the beautiful building is produced by the ar- 
 rangement, in accordance with the require- 
 ments of beauty, of elements primarily struc- 
 tural. 
 
 The first homes of mankind may well have 
 been caves, walls and roof of rough rock, 
 smoothed crudely, perhaps, but with little of 
 real architecture about them, despite attempts 
 at mural decoration, evidences of the love of 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 75 
 
 beauty that seems coextensive with humanity. 
 Nor were the simple huts of bushes and rush 
 and wattle of great architectural moment. 
 Their lines were too simple and their require- 
 ments too small to admit of great composition. 
 They are, nevertheless, interesting to the archi- 
 tectural critic, because they show us the ele- 
 mental necessities of a building — walls and 
 roof : a roof to keep out the wind and the rain, 
 and walls to support the roof and give height 
 inside, as well as to keep out the cold. 
 
 To this day, these two things, walls and roofs, 
 are the most fundamental and the most import- 
 ant of the architect's materials, for they deter- 
 mine the whole shape and size of the building. 
 Country house, office building, church, factory, 
 all demand walls and roofs, and the wall shapes 
 and heights, projections and recesses, that a 
 building requires determine absolutely its aes- 
 thetic composition and therefore its effect. 
 Their importance is at once apparent. They are 
 the framework of the whole artistic scheme of 
 the building, and to them will be due a great 
 deal of a building's effect. 
 
 The first thing that is required of a wall is 
 solidity. Whatever the material, stone, brick, 
 
76 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 wood, metal, the wall must be strong enough to 
 do its work, and solid enough to keep out the 
 weather. This should be at once apparent to 
 the observer, and any simply treated, well-built 
 wall will give this effect. There is nothing more 
 dignified, more restful to the eye, than a cut 
 stone wall correctly used ; it is only when there 
 is too much attempt at ornamentation, so that 
 the apparent strength of the wall is decreased, 
 that restlessness results. 
 
 The most successful treatments of a wall, 
 then, are those in which the structure of the wall 
 is expressed. Take an old New England 
 eighteenth century farmhouse, nestling in lilac 
 bushes and old elms. It has a wall of wide clap- 
 boards, grey and weather-beaten, and corner 
 boards sheathing the corners, perhaps with dec- 
 orated capitals. It is delightful, unassuming, 
 sincere, and a great part of the reason for this 
 lies just in that simple, restful expanse of grey 
 wood, so obviously designed for its purpose, 
 with the corner boards giving just a touch of 
 vertical feeling. Then try to find some house 
 of the period of 1870, with jig-saw work scrolls, 
 and the shingles of the walls carefully cut into 
 patterns, zigzags, or wavy curves or what not ? 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 77 
 
 or go through our cities and pick out some os- 
 tentatious office building or apartment house 
 whose walls are covered with a maze of terra 
 cotta ornament, and see how unsatisfactory the 
 effect is. The wall is lost, there is no repose, 
 only a restless wandering of the eye. In a 
 Gothic cathedral, such as Notre Dame, where at 
 first sight the wall seems covered with orna- 
 ment, clear spaces are left, and the decorative 
 lines are all strongly structural in feeling, so 
 that the expression of wall is given. There must 
 always be this restful strength somewhere in 
 every good building.* 
 
 The same facts apply to brick walls; here, 
 also, there must be quiet repose. Too obvious 
 pattern in the brick work, too great variations 
 of colour are bad, because by them the wall is 
 broken up and its apparent strength reduced. 
 Quiet patterns of subtle colour tones, such as 
 are used in much Tudor English work, Hampton 
 Court Palace, for instance, are pleasing; they 
 vary the monotony, without detracting from the 
 strength: but they must be unobtrusive. For 
 the same reason, it is dangerous to mix brick 
 and stone, or brick and terra cotta to such an ex- 
 tent that the unity of the wall is marred. Ac- 
 
 *See the Plate opposite page 78. 
 
78 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 cents of stone in a brick wall are good, if they 
 are in important structural positions, key- 
 stones over arches, for example, or architraves 
 — frames — around openings, or courses of stone 
 at the corners of a building — quoins — or wall 
 caps or cornices or bases, for if rightly treated, 
 they appear to strengthen the wall. Sometimes 
 even a shield or a panel of stone set in an in- 
 teresting or important position is exceedingly 
 charming, but the hit-or-miss insertion of panels 
 and garlands and shields that is so much prac- 
 tised by our cheaper architects and real estate 
 builders is productive of nothing but confusion. 
 Better, every time, a monotonous but sincere 
 and simple wall than an ostentatious eyesore. 
 
 For the same reason the panelling of stone 
 walls is dangerous, unless the panelling is kept 
 very quiet and unobtrusive. Simple, shallow 
 panels are often charming: their delicate lines 
 seem to emphasize the strength and solidity of 
 the wall, but the moment they become coarse, 
 and are framed by too heavy mouldings, the 
 restfulness of the wall is gone. Panelling of 
 walls of wood is quite another matter, for the 
 structural qualities of wood, the comparatively 
 small size of the pieces obtainable, and the fact 
 
M O 
 
 < ^ 
 
 < « 
 
 C t- 
 
 8^ 
 
 oft 
 
 J8(8 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 79 
 
 that it warps and shrinks continually demand 
 some treatment expressing this quality. Wood 
 panelling, therefore, is a correct expression of 
 material, and is good in general, but even with 
 wooden panelling the panels can be too deeply 
 sunk, and too heavily moulded. 
 
 All walls, then, should be treated so that their 
 function and their structure are expressed. 
 They should be ornamented sparingly, and such 
 ornament as they have should be carefully de- 
 signed, so as not to diminish their apparent 
 strength. Eepose is an absolute necessity. Or- 
 namented caps they may have, and accented 
 bases to express foundation, and the corners or 
 the borders of openings may be accented by 
 mouldings, or bands of differing materials. 
 They may even be panelled, provided the pan- 
 elling be delicate and quiet, but a wall can never 
 be beautiful without that quiet dignity and that 
 restful simplicity that only careful proportion 
 and sincere expression can give. 
 
 Yet there can be too much wall. Common 
 sense must be our mentor in architecture as in 
 morality, and always the use to which a build- 
 ing is put must determine its design. Our mod- 
 ern world demands light, and floods of it, and 
 
80 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 our buildings demand adequate doorways for 
 entrance and exit. A building where there is 
 obviously too much wall and too little window 
 for its purpose will look like a tomb — gloomy 
 and repelling — just as a building where there 
 is an excess of window looks light-headed and 
 unstable. But whatever the amount of wall, it 
 must be simply treated and its nature sincerely 
 expressed. 
 
 A walk through any of our cities will reveal 
 the woeful lack of regard for this that has been 
 rife in our country too long. We are improving 
 little by little, and the value of restful wall is 
 coming to be more and more appreciated, but 
 there is still far to go. For one building like 
 the Ethical Culture Meeting House in New 
 York, with all its stalwart, strong-walled dig- 
 nity, or the simple, restful masses of some of 
 the new houses in the suburbs of Chicago, 
 there are thousands which add to the ner- 
 vousness of our life and our mental exhaustion 
 by forcing upon us immense areas of meaning- 
 less ornament. It is no wonder that we have 
 grown to appreciate with even too great an en- 
 thusiasm, the simple, unassuming English cot- 
 tage in a Cotswold valley, or the rugged houses 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 81 
 
 of our own bleak New England countryside ; for 
 in them, at least, in the crude half -timbering or 
 stuccoed masonry or hand-wrought shingle, 
 there is more than the mellow beauty of age and 
 sentiment : there is the true charm and clear re- 
 pose of unbroken areas of simple wall. 
 
 The matter of roofs is more complex. At 
 some time the cave or the rush hut that was his 
 first home became insufficient for primitive man, 
 and he discovered that he could lay tree trunks 
 flat on earthen walls, and thus make himself a 
 flat roof. So there are two main classes of 
 roofs, flat roofs, and roofs with sloping sides or 
 vaults. Assyrian bas reliefs show us domed 
 houses, recalling the conical form of the primi- 
 tive hut. Egyptian roofs, on the other hand, 
 seem always to have been flat. 
 
 The two classes of roofs have widely differ- 
 ing uses. The flat roof was developed chiefly 
 among those peoples living in hot, dry countries. 
 It furnished a most useful outdoor living room. 
 As such we find it used universally in nearly all 
 the Oriental countries, particularly in the 
 tropics. In colder climates where outdoor life 
 had less charm, and in countries where there is 
 excessive rainfall, or heavy snow that must be 
 
82 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 disposed of quickly, we find the sloping roof 
 most used. 
 
 The simplest sloping roof is the gable roof, 
 but this roof is capable of endless modifications. 
 There is a whole gamut of varying effects and 
 expressions between the dignified formality of 
 the low roof of the Greek temple, with its gables 
 — pediments — decorated with sculpture, and the 
 fantastic and romantic effect of a German 
 mediaeval village, with its myriad steep roofs 
 and peaked gables. In the north of England — 
 in Yorkshire — the stone built houses nestle low 
 and sturdy to the ground; the gables are low, 
 and the roofs comparatively flat. The effect 
 is quite in harmony with rolling moor and bleak, 
 wind-swept uplands. In Switzerland the same 
 solidity, the same strength, the same kinship 
 with wild and bleak Nature, is given to the 
 chalets by the same wide and gently sloping 
 roofs. That is the reason a Swiss chalet, so 
 lovely, so perfect in its place, seems always so 
 fantastic and meaningless, set down in flat civi- 
 lization. 
 
 For roofs, so absolutely essential to our pro- 
 tection from the wildness and bitterness of Na- 
 ture, have, for that reason, an especial relation 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 83 
 
 to natural conditions, and all the natural con- 
 ditions of any situation must be taken into ac- 
 count in the design of a roof to suit that situa- 
 tion. There are flat-roofed Italianesque villas 
 on our Maine coast, but they look cold, wind- 
 shaken, uncompromisingly naked, like a Philip- 
 pino shivering in Coney Island. Any roof that 
 looks, as these do, strangely uncouth and out 
 of place, is a roof ill-designed. The good roofs 
 are those which seem to have grown where they 
 stand, in perfect harmony with their surround- 
 ings. 
 
 The material of which a roof is built is an- 
 other important factor that must be taken into 
 account in any consideration of roofs. Tile is 
 sunny, warm, full of interest, and it seems to 
 demand a low roof, for too much tile would be 
 too interesting, and the building itself would 
 lose its value, be merely an appendage to a roof, 
 like a very little girl in a very large hat. Slate 
 is colder but more adaptable, formal as well as 
 informal, suitable for the steeper roofs, and its 
 increasing use is a hopeful sign of our times. 
 Shingles, also, treated simply and unobtru- 
 sively, are attractive in texture. Thatch may be 
 used on small garden houses and the like, but 
 
84 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 it is perishable and heavy, and it would be 
 painfully out of place in our workaday world. 
 There are a thousand varieties of gabled 
 roofs, and their change and variety is a contin- 
 ual joy. Our broad New England gambrels — 
 gabled roofs with a double slope — are the charm 
 of many a fascinating old town. Small or large, 
 there is about them all such a comforting solid- 
 ity, such a simple and beautiful homeliness, that 
 it is not strange they are coming to be so widely 
 
 Old House in Kennebunk, Maine. 
 
 Fig. 5. This house owes much of its charm to the 
 simple lines of its gambrel roof. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 85 
 
 imitated. It only needs the artist's touch in the 
 relation of the slopes, so that they shall be 
 neither too much the same, nor yet too different, 
 with the lower slope too vertical — a touch, alas, 
 all too rare in our modern speculative suburbs 
 — to make a gambrel roof an object of distinc- 
 tion to a whole community, like the Warner 
 House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, or the 
 old farmhouse that is here illustrated.* 
 
 There is another type of roof coming more 
 and more into use that is, perhaps, even more 
 adaptable, the hipped roof. Here the roof 
 slopes up from all four sides at once, instead of 
 from two only, as in the gabled roof house. The 
 result is that the line of demarcation between 
 roof and walls is a continual horizontal line on 
 all four sides of the building, without the trian- 
 gular wall spaces of a gable. This produces 
 at once a great dignity and restfulness of feel- 
 ing that is tremendously valuable. The French 
 chateaux of the Loire valley, perhaps the most 
 dignified group of country houses in the world, 
 all have hipped roofs. Most of the Italian villas 
 have them as well, and so have many of the most 
 beautiful Georgian mansions of England. The 
 simplicity of the wall surfaces that these roofs 
 
 ♦See Fig. 5, page 84, 
 
86 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 produce, and the variety and charm of their own 
 form — the difference, for example, between the 
 actual slope of the roof itself, and the slopes of 
 the intersections, or hips, between its adjacent 
 sides — make a whole composition, dignified and 
 quiet, attractive and interesting, with just a 
 shade of pleasant formality. 
 
 /3L3« 
 
 ^3&St 
 
 Newton Hall, Near Cambridge, England. 
 
 Pig. 6. An example of the quiet formality of the 
 Georgian hipped roof. Note the pediment over the 
 entrance. 
 
 There are as many possible varieties of 
 hipped as of gabled roof, produced by the in- 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 87 
 
 tersections of hipped roofs over projections of 
 the building, and by the varying slopes. The 
 difference in expression, for instance, between 
 the hipped copper roofs of the Cohimbia Uni- 
 versity buildings, low and simple, and the great 
 slate roof of Chenonceaux, or between either of 
 these and the quietness of an English Georgian 
 manor, will give some idea of the adaptability 
 of the form. Combinations of hips and gables 
 can be delightfully used, too, as when the en- 
 trance wing or pavillion of a building is capped 
 by a gable or pediment, while the rest of the 
 building's roof is hipped.* 
 
 Last of all in our list of roof forms comes 
 the curved vault, and especially the dome. The 
 dome is, perhaps, the most monumentally beau- 
 tiful element in all architecture, for its height, 
 its appearance of breadth, its solidity give it 
 a unique position. It combines the soaring 
 lightness of the spire with the solid strength and 
 breadth of a Greek temple. Yet, like all pre- 
 cious things, it must not be misused. Its form 
 suggests size, suggests tremendous spaces cov- 
 ered, tremendous power and dignity. A small 
 dome on a large building, unless a mere unac- 
 cented and minor feature, like the dome on the 
 
 * For a French Renaissance hipped roof, see the Plate 
 Opposite page 284. 
 
88 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 observatory tower of the Paris Sorbonne, is al- 
 most a contradiction in terms. A glance at the 
 National Gallery in London will show the mean- 
 ness of such a dome. Not that a small dome 
 can never be good ; there are many lovely domed 
 tombs, but in every case where such a building 
 is beautiful, the design is such that the dome is 
 all inclusive, such that there is no roof but 
 dome, so that relatively it seems very large. In 
 large buildings the dome must be large ; it must 
 dominate or fail. This is seen in some of our 
 early state capitols. The architects had grasped 
 the beauty of the form itself, but they had not 
 grasped the fact of its necessary domination; 
 they made it too small. The dome should al- 
 ways dominate, for it is such a strong motive in 
 design that it must be made the crown and head 
 of all. A dome playing second fiddle is irra- 
 tional, inconceivable, confusing, bad. 
 
 The charm of a dome seems to lie in its con- 
 tinuous and ever-changing curvature, and yet 
 the fact that it is the same seen from all sides. 
 It is at once the most varied and at the same 
 time the most unified form at the architect's 
 command, and as such its fascination has laid 
 hold of us all. It has built itself into our litera- 
 ture, even into our fairy lore, 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 89 
 
 "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree," 
 
 wrote Coleridge, and when an artist paints 
 heaven, or some fairy city of his dreams, he 
 paints it many domed. The Taj Mahal in Agra, 
 that incomparable mausoleum, Santa Sophia 
 crowning the rising profile of Constantinople,* 
 Saint Peter's seen from over the Campagna, 
 like an iridescent dream, Saint Paul's rising 
 grey and powerful out of the London smoke, the 
 Columbia University Library crowning its many 
 columned entrance so graciously and power- 
 fully, all these bear witness to the superlative 
 influence the dome has had over the imagination 
 of the world. 
 
 It is powerful over our imaginations still. It 
 is not without reason that our national Capitol 
 is crowned with a mighty dome, and that our 
 states are following its example. More and 
 more we shall see domes built over our churches 
 and halls. Modern tile construction has made 
 the dome reasonable in cost and easy to build, 
 and as our national mind gets more and more 
 sensitive to aesthetic values, more and more ap- 
 preciative of the true worth of strong grace and 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 90. 
 
90 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 decorative simplicity, more and more anxious 
 to see its dreams realized, it will more and more 
 demand domed buildings; and if the national 
 mind demands domes, one may rest assured that 
 domes will come to be increasingly built. The 
 idea of the dome is too deeply implanted in the 
 human imagination to be long denied its right- 
 ful expression; there is in the dome too much 
 of the simple beauty of over-arching blue sky, 
 and too much of the majestic strength of 
 rounded hills, for it ever to be forgotten. 
 
 Such are the main types of roof at the archi- 
 tect's command, and such is their fascination. 
 And yet you may walk our city streets for 
 miles, and see no roof at all. Our skill in mak- 
 ing our buildings watertight has destroyed the 
 necessity for the sloping roof to shed rain and 
 snow, and our close economy, our demand for 
 space, and our hatred of spending a cent more 
 than is absolutely necessary have forced our 
 buildings into cubes — cubes topped with spider- 
 legged water tanks, and shoddy sheds, a chaos 
 of ugliness. Let us outgrow this ugliness. Let 
 us build as many sloping roofs as we can. Let 
 us educate ourselves and our neighbours until 
 we realize the shame of our present roofs and 
 
m ^ 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 91 
 
 their excrescences, and demand that this condi- 
 tion be ended, for when we demand beauty we 
 shall get it. There is an immense feeling of 
 relief produced when, in any of our cities, one 
 comes to a building, be it church or house or 
 office building, with a real roof appearing and 
 the spidery tanks concealed. All praise to our 
 newer skyscraper architects who have given 
 New York the Woolworth Building, and the 
 Metropolitan Tower, roofed in the sight of men 
 as well as of birds. Their good influence will 
 grow, and in the future we shall have cities 
 many domed and many roofed ; where flat roofs 
 are necessary, they will be treated with lovely 
 parapet and airy pergola ; they will be busy all 
 day with playing children or resting mothers. 
 The city of the future will be a city with its 
 roofs redeemed, made into objects of pleasure 
 to the eye, and of use to the community ; a city 
 whose roofs will be its crown, and not its dis- 
 grace. 
 
 But a building, we have seen, must have more 
 than walls and roof; it must have means for 
 entrance and exit, and means for admitting light 
 and air; it must have doors, and, in most cases, 
 windows. The door is a development from the 
 
92 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 simple hole for entrance of a cave or a hut. As 
 men began to build more skilfully, they came 
 naturally to build these holes square, by putting 
 two upright members at the sides, and one on 
 top horizontally. Eventually, they began to 
 decorate these three members, and the orna- 
 mented doorway was the result. Later, as they 
 grew still more imaginative and daring, they 
 began to widen the size of the opening, until a 
 point was reached at which they could no longer 
 procure a stone or wooden beam strong enough 
 to span the door and support the wall above. 
 At this point, then, they stayed until some gen- 
 ius had the brilliant idea of placing two stones 
 over the opening, inclined towards each other, 
 resting on the sides of the door, and leaning on 
 each other above in the middle, thus forming 
 a triangular opening. Then they probably used 
 three instead of two stones, and then more, until 
 they had developed the arch. This we can only 
 conjecture, as the history of the arch is lost in 
 obscurity. The famous Lion Gate in the city 
 walls of Mycenae is such a primitive triangular 
 arch ; but either from love of decoration, or be- 
 cause of the tradition of square-headed doors, 
 the builders put an ordinary beam or lintel of 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 93 
 
 stone under the arch, and rested on that a trian- 
 gular stone carved with two lions, that fills en- 
 tirely the opening above. The more developed 
 types of arch, semicircular, segmental or 
 pointed, have been favourite doorway forms 
 ever since. 
 
 The doorway, or gateway, round or square, 
 became early one of the chief places for deco- 
 ration. Particularly was this the case in great 
 buildings like temples or palaces. There may 
 have been a desire in the builders to awe one 
 approaching, to give notice to him of the divine 
 or human majesty into whose presence he was 
 entering, so that the doorway was made the 
 most tremendous and beautiful portion of the 
 whole exterior. So the mediaeval artists carved 
 their church doorways with saints and virgins, 
 virtues and vices, or set the last judgment 
 streaming across above, surrounding the en- 
 trance with all the pageantry of beauty and fear 
 of their wild and tender Christian mythology. 
 
 There is another reason, too, why the door 
 should be decorated. The doorway is the en- 
 trance, and the effect of a building should be 
 such that one approaching would go instinc- 
 tively to the door, rather than to a window or 
 
94 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 around the corner. For this reason the door 
 is made, often unconsciously, the artistic mag- 
 net of the outside of a building, so that one is 
 not confused by varied interests, but attracted 
 inevitably, though unconsciously, to the door, 
 the most beautiful feature of the whole. Our 
 apartment house architects have grasped this 
 bit of psychology only too well, but, alas, their 
 idea of magnetic attractiveness is too often os- 
 tentation, their idea of beauty too often mere 
 florid and ill-considered ornament ; and a badly 
 designed, over conspicuous door is like the 
 clothing clerk in a slum store who seizes you 
 by the arm as you pass, shouting, beseeching, 
 almost threatening you to enter and buy. With 
 what relief after such an experience you go to 
 a high-class and well-served shop, or listen to 
 low and modulated voices! It is with such a 
 feeling of relief that one turns from the hideous 
 monstrosities of many of our apartment house 
 entrances to a truly noble doorway like the great 
 doorway of the Pantheon. 
 
 The decoration of all doors is of two types. 
 It can be either a frame around the opening, as 
 in the Pantheon doorway, with or without a 
 cornice above, or it can emphasize the support- 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 95 
 
 ing character of the sides in some more definite 
 way. The first scheme is the quieter of the two, 
 and it can be just as monumental in effect ; it is 
 certainly the commoner. It can be seen in the 
 wooden trim of almost any modern door. The 
 difference between good and bad in these decor- 
 ative door frames is impossible to define ; it lies 
 in a general way rather in a question of propor- 
 tion than in any rules of what decoration may 
 or may not be used. The frame, or architrave, 
 as it is called in the classic styles, must not be 
 .so wide as to seem to overload the door, and 
 press it in, for a door, above all else, must never 
 appear constrained. Nor must the frame seem 
 attenuated and wire drawn. Hardly more than 
 that can be said ; it is for the reader to investi- 
 gate door frames for himself, noticing always 
 the proportions between frame and opening, 
 and in the frame itself looking for a certain 
 element of strength and quiet dignity, and, 
 besides, a subtle play of light and shade over 
 the mouldings and faces, usually more complex 
 on the outer side of the frame, that modulate 
 between the dark of the opening and the quiet- 
 ness of the wall. 
 In the second form of door decoration, the 
 
96 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 decoration does form a frame around the door, 
 but this frame is not continuous, the uprights 
 and the lintel, or arch, above them being treated 
 in differing manners. For instance, the up- 
 rights may be decorated with pilasters or col- 
 umns and the lintel above treated like a little 
 entablature. In Gothic church work the prin- 
 cipal doors are usually treated with columns, 
 and the arch above them carved into bold mould- 
 ings ; this is but a variation of the same scheme. 
 It was very popular in the early Eenaissance 
 in Italy, and to a certain extent here in the 
 United States in Colonial times for front doors, 
 in a charmingly gracious way which is worthy 
 of our emulation. 
 
 Very often these two schemes of decoration 
 were combined. That is, some treatment of 
 columns and pilasters, with arch or entablature 
 above, is placed around a very well marked and 
 continuous frame that encloses the opening ; and 
 the projection of this from the wall may be in- 
 creased until there is produced a genuine lit- 
 tle porch, and this may be crowned with a gable 
 or a pediment. 
 
 Even the richness from this double decora- 
 tion, however, did not satisfy certain splendour- 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 97 
 
 loving peoples, for whom the door was the all- 
 important feature of the exterior of a building. 
 Consequently, they made the door itself a mere 
 centre for an immensely rich piece of decora- 
 tion that often ran several feet on each side of 
 it and the entire height of the building. Moham- 
 medan nations seem to have done this first; it 
 is almost universal with them. In certain of the 
 Persian mosques, for instance, the door itself 
 is set into an arched niche often forty or fifty 
 feet high, and the whole is encrusted with won- 
 derful coloured tiles. So, in Constantinople, 
 many of the mosque courtyards are entered by 
 gateways set into decorated niches running up 
 the entire wall, and often there is still further 
 importance given to the composition by crown- 
 ing the whole with a dome. The grandeur pos- 
 sessed by such an entrance set in a long stretch 
 of simple wall is very great, and the beauty of 
 this accent and this contrast is exceedingly ef- 
 fective. Among all the Moorish influences upon 
 Spanish architecture this method of door treat- 
 ment is preeminent. The Spaniards seem to 
 have felt at once the impressive charm of the 
 great Moorish doors, and set out to adapt it to 
 their own uses and their own forms. In this 
 
98 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 they succeeded to a remarkable degree ; and per- 
 haps the most beautiful things in all Spanish 
 buildings are the doorways and gates, masses of 
 delicately frosted ornament framing the dark 
 door, mounting tier on tier to the cornice itself, 
 set in a severe and unornamented cut stone 
 wall.* Even in the worst days of the Spanish 
 baroque, when contortion of every form and 
 complexity of every surface were the vogue, the 
 gateways still retained a compelling power and 
 loveliness. The main building of the San Diego 
 Exposition of 1915 bore convincing evidence to 
 the beauty of this doorway treatment. Its ex- 
 uberant ornament, so wild and florid and yet so 
 carefully studied, piled high around the door 
 against an absolutely plain wall, makes this 
 building perhaps the most valuable architec- 
 tural gem of both California Expositions. 
 
 Growing, as they do, out of similar original 
 and primitive holes, it is not strange to find the 
 decorative treatment of windows closely analo- 
 gous to that of doors. But given the same two 
 schemes, frame and post and lintel, it is re- 
 markable how the treatment of doors and win- 
 dows grew apart, for while the purpose of a 
 door is to admit people, the purpose of a win- 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 208. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 99 
 
 dow is to admit light, and the shapes suitable 
 to one are not necessarily suitable to the other. 
 
 In Rome and Greece, where so much outdoor 
 life was possible, windows were small and in- 
 conspicuous, and it was not till the application 
 of glass to window design that they became im- 
 portant. Pliny tells us that in Rome, in his 
 time, at least, glass had come to be used for win- 
 dows, and that in villas they had sometimes an 
 important function to perform. The true de- 
 velopment of window design, however, did not 
 come until the Middle Ages, and is completely 
 bound up with the development of the Church. 
 Windows in a classic temple were not neces- 
 sary, for the great sacrifices and public cere- 
 monials were always out of doors. But Chris- 
 tianity demanded places of worship capable of 
 receiving crowds of people, and a prime require- 
 ment of this new form of worship was light. So 
 windows were increased continually in size and 
 number, till some of the later Gothic churches 
 are scarcely more than walls of glass.* 
 
 At first these windows may have been mere 
 openings, unglazed. Later, as glass came to be 
 more common, the windows were filled with 
 glass, probably in very small pieces, joined in 
 
 * See Fig. 7, page 100. 
 
100 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 a pattern by little ' ' H ' 9 shaped lead bars. Such 
 a window is never strong ; it can be made only 
 in narrow widths, even when reinforced with 
 iron bars. The whole development of Gothic 
 architecture from the dark, heavy-walled 
 
 t ^tawa f$g££&eu 3K«S%^ 
 
 Cathedral of Saint Nazaire, Carcassonne, Prance. 
 
 Fig. 7. Gothic window development at its climax. 
 "Wall surfaces are reduced to a minimum, with enor- 
 mous arched windows occupying their place. 
 
THE AKCHTTECT'S MATERIALS 101 
 
 Eomanesque churches of southern France to the 
 brilliance and airy lightness of King's College 
 Chapel in Cambridge, England, or the cathedral 
 of Carcassonne in France, was one long strug- 
 gle to get much window area, much outside light, 
 into a stone-vaulted church.* 
 
 One of the early innovations in this struggle 
 was the grouping of two or three long, narrow 
 windows under one great arch. Later, a cir- 
 cular window was placed above these smaller 
 windows to fill up the space — or lunette — under 
 the arch.f This was the origin of tracery ; with 
 this beginning it was but a step to the entire re- 
 duction of the wall between the grouped win- 
 dows and the rose above them to a mere 
 framework, and then the elaboration of this 
 framework into the glory of the best Gothic 
 tracery, as seen in the transepts of Notre Dame 
 in Paris, or the west front of York Minster in 
 England. In Germany, tracery was developed 
 to an even greater extent, but without such con- 
 sistent success ; for the German longing for the 
 bizarre and the grotesque came finally to over- 
 balance good taste; tracery was forced into 
 weird and fanciful naturalistic forms, such as 
 
 * See Fig. 7, page 100. 
 
 f See the Plate opposite page 102. 
 
102 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 branching trees or the national eagle; and the 
 novelty of these can in no way compensate for 
 the loss of the dignity, the strength, and the 
 simplicity innate in the more structural tracery 
 of the French and English. 
 
 Of course, the churches, the monuments of the 
 community, enjoyed the luxury of glass to a 
 
 • amzmnnq 
 
 Harvard House, Stratford-on-Avon, England. 
 
 Fig. 8. Small-paned, leaded windows add greatly 
 to the charm of quaint half -timbering. 
 

 CARLISLE CATHEDRAL, ENGLAND 
 (TWO BAYS OF THE choir) 
 
 An interesting example of early "plate" tracery (two small windows under 
 one large arch), and the elaborately developed "perpendicular" tracery side by side. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 103 
 
 large extent before its use came to be common 
 in the house. Even in many comparatively re- 
 cent English cottages in out-of-the-way villages 
 one may see windows few in number and tiny in 
 size, made so because glass was prohibitive in 
 cost. But in towns and in the great houses glass 
 was used more and more extensively, until 
 Francis Bacon, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, 
 complained that some of the houses of his day 
 were built of glass rather than of brick or stone, 
 so that in them was neither shade in summer 
 nor sufficient shelter in winter. 
 
 The great charm of most of the early glass 
 lies in the fact that it is always used in small 
 panes, separated by lead or wooden bars, which 
 break up the surface, and thus prevent the win- 
 dows from looking like mere black holes in the 
 wall.* This is an effect all too frequent in our 
 modern architecture. Our ability to make large 
 sheets of clear, unruffled glass has led us in 
 some cases astray, for in little houses we find 
 large, unbroken panes where the use of the small 
 panes of our ancestors would be immensely 
 more attractive. Imagine a modern half-tim- 
 bered house, or a modern Colonial house with 
 sheets of plate-glass in the windows. Then look 
 
 * See Fig. 8, page ioz. 
 
104 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 for a real old New England house, with its 
 small oblong panes, or a house more severely 
 in the old English fashion, with each window 
 subdivided into myriads of tiny pieces by sim- 
 ple leading, and compare the results. There is 
 a true texture, a feeling of continuity about the 
 small panes totally lacking in the others ; there 
 is, besides, a certain charm of simple homeliness 
 that is most appealing. Of course, there are ex- 
 ceptions; in the presence of a wonderful view, 
 for instance, of sea or highland, or far flung city 
 streets, where bars or divisions would break up 
 the whole, a large sheet of plate glass may be 
 quite excusable, and seem the correct solution. 
 In such cases small panes would be an osten- 
 tation. 
 
 Our cities are wildernesses of many windows 
 that are mere black holes in the wall because 
 there is so little subdivision. In business build- 
 ings, particularly store and loft buildings, our 
 builders seem to have striven, with disastrous 
 results, to see who could use the most plate glass 
 to the least area of wall space. The new Lord 
 & Taylor store in New York shows how beauti- 
 ful a show window can be made with a decent 
 regard for the apparent strength of the build- 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 105 
 
 ing; yet just a few streets below, with this 
 lovely example so near, another architect has 
 constructed a monstrous building the entire 
 weight: of whose heavily-ornamented walls 
 seems supported on one unbroken stretch of 
 plate glass. Would we had another Bacon to 
 complain as eloquently about this unnecessary 
 and ugly ostentation, for his strictures are even 
 truer of buildings like this than of the many- 
 windowed manors of which he was writing. 
 
 There still remains to be considered the last 
 of these exterior structural necessities, in some 
 respects the most fascinating of all, the chim- 
 ney. Primitive man had to have a fire. At first 
 it was probably outdoors; but further to the 
 north where it was needed as well for heat as 
 for cooking, men came to build fires inside their 
 houses. Then came the necessity of letting out 
 the smoke ; and so men came to build chimneys. 
 Chimneys are of comparatively recent date in 
 the history of mankind ; primitive tribes are still 
 content with holes in the roof. In the uplands 
 of lower Hungary the peasants' houses are 
 chimneyless to this day: as one winds through 
 the fascinating valleys of that picturesque land 
 one can see from the very train windows village 
 
106 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 after village apparently on fire, for every cot- 
 tage has a wisp of blue smoke curling out from 
 the top of each deep-eaved gable; those open- 
 ings are the cottage chimneys. One hates to 
 imagine the condition of the inmates of such a 
 smoke-filled house. Such a solution of the in- 
 door fire could never satisfy a more sensitive or 
 more inventive race of mankind. The smoke 
 rose; so over the hearth men came to build a 
 vertical chimney. It is not known when chim- 
 neys were first used; but in the Middle Ages 
 they became common, and their artistic possi- 
 bilities came to be recognized. 
 
 It is in the northern countries of Europe, as 
 one might imagine, that chimneys came to be 
 most highly developed. To this day Italian 
 chimneys are tiny, unimportant affairs, made 
 as low and unobtrusive as possible. The French- 
 man or Englishman, on the other hand, de- 
 manded more fires than his southern neigh- 
 bours, and it was but natural to group all the 
 flues from rooms above one another into one 
 large chimney. The result was a mass entirely 
 too large to be neglected ; and the artistic gen- 
 ius of the people welcomed the opportunity that 
 was thus furnished. Indeed, it seems to have 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 107 
 
 been a particularly attractive problem, for chim- 
 neys exist in numberless forms ; often in build- 
 ings otherwise severe and simple, there will be 
 a little touch of fantastic playfulness in the 
 chimneys that cheers and wonderfully warms 
 the whole effect. 
 
 There are no rules for good and bad design 
 in chimneys, save, of course,, the one rule that 
 a chimney should look like a chimney. There 
 are certain Elizabethan houses, built when the 
 classic orders were just coming into fashion, 
 in which the chimneys are little Doric orders, 
 each flue built as a separate column, and the 
 flues of each chimney grouped under a little en- 
 tablature for a cap. The result is amusing, but 
 certainly not beautiful or satisfactory ; the roof 
 of Burghley House, 1570-1583, for instance, 
 looks like a plateau covered with some great 
 columnar building, roofless and ruined ; to dis- 
 cover that this group of columns is made 
 up only of chimneys is a decided shock. Earlier 
 and later than this date the English were more 
 fortunate in their chimney design; they were 
 immensely skilful in the use of brick and stone, 
 twisting the chimney shafts, making them poly- 
 gonal, varying the design all over the house, so 
 
108 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 that in every shaft it was different; building 
 this lightness up from a solid base, and crown- 
 ing it with a moulded cap. Later, when they 
 built their chimneys solid, they were equally 
 successful, often emphasizing each flue with a 
 little terra cotta chimney pot above the cap, and 
 panelling delicately the sides of the whole. In 
 France the art of chimney design was equally 
 advanced during the Eenaissance; but the 
 French chimney was always more monumental 
 and less informally charming than the English ; 
 the French loved high stone chimneys, panelled 
 in formal designs, and topped by architrave, 
 frieze and cornice, so modified as to appear 
 frankly what they are, chimney caps.* 
 
 We city-dwelling Americans are losing the 
 chimney feeling. With gas ranges and steam 
 heat, chimneys are almost a rarity in most of 
 our cities ; that is one reason for the dreariness 
 of New York or Chicago roofs, when compared 
 with the roofs of Paris or London or Strass- 
 burg. There are no crowded, smoking chimney 
 pots by thousands to make one dream of the 
 cheerful fires below and the thousand homes. 
 Somehow the vent pipes to our drains do not in- 
 vite dreams ; charm in them is hard to find. No, 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 284. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 109 
 
 to us who dwell in cities the romance of chim- 
 neys is of another kind ; it is the romance of in- 
 dustry, of towering, slender columns seen over 
 grey, busy harbours, belching their billowing 
 smoke across an evening sky. 
 
 Therefore, it is all the more important that 
 when we Americans build our homes in the coun- 
 try, summer houses or farmhouses, we should 
 build an adequately chimneyed house. We must 
 remember the comfortable and dignified houses 
 of our elders, with their massive brick chimneys 
 and all the charm of endurance and homeliness 
 they bring. We must not be satisfied with little, 
 insufficient chimneys scattered willy nilly over 
 the roof ; we must see to it that the house is so 
 planned that its flues will group into massive 
 and dignified chimneys that compose well with 
 the whole design. 
 
 These five classes practically complete the 
 structural elements with which the architect 
 deals in the exterior of a building. Walls, roofs, 
 doors, windows, chimneys ; it is from these sim- 
 ple elements that the designer, by careful treat- 
 ment of the forms themselves and by their 
 careful combination and composition, and the 
 addition of a certain amount of decoration, 
 
110 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 evolves a whole to delight our eyes and to sat- 
 isfy our minds. The simplicity of the list is the 
 architect's limitation, but it is at the same time 
 the reason for the tremendous beauty of archi- 
 tecture when it is good. Architecture, because 
 it deals with such simple elements that every- 
 one can understand, should, of all the arts, have 
 the most universal appeal. 
 
santa sophia, constantinople, turkey 
 (interior) 
 
 The walls are entirely sheathed with sheets of veined marble. 
 Byzantine use of intricate surface ornament. See pages 114, 176. 
 
 Note the 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 the architect's materials — Continued 
 
 It has been the custom of architectural histor- 
 ians to lay entirely too much stress upon ex- 
 terior architecture. One might almost suppose 
 from their writings that architecture was 
 mainly the construction of a mere artistic shell, 
 whose kernel was of no importance. Half of 
 those who are not interested in architecture 
 base their lack of interest upon the fact that ar- 
 chitecture is something dealing with luxurious 
 and inessential external ornament which con- 
 cerns them and their interests but slightly. In 
 reality, the whole evolution of architecture 
 proves the contrary; almost every important 
 development of architecture was produced not 
 by any desire for mere external grandeur, but 
 because changing conditions had rendered 
 necessary new internal requirements. Egyp- 
 tian architecture is largely a matter of interior 
 design, for the temple courts are almost inter- 
 iors, the hypostyle halls certainly so. The ex- 
 
 111 
 
112 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ternal grandeur of Greek temples arose from the 
 desire to give fitting expression to the supreme 
 glory that resided within. The greatest con- 
 tribution of Eoman architecture to civilization 
 — their great vaulted halls, and the systematic, 
 elaborated planning of their colossal structures 
 — is a result of the demand for impressive in- 
 teriors. The Byzantine tradition of great 
 domes was the result of the attempt to produce 
 a tremendous church, and the whole develop- 
 ment of Gothic architecture was a striving for 
 the perfect church interior. It is the same 
 throughout the ages; and those who consider 
 architecture as a matter purely of exteriors are 
 considering only a small portion of the whole 
 great field. 
 
 In studying the structural materials at the 
 architect's command, then, it is important to 
 consider the internal requirements of a building, 
 as well as the external requirements. There are 
 great similarities between the two, but there are 
 great differences as well, for the whole purpose 
 of the exterior of a building is to protect the in- 
 side from the weather and from objectionable 
 people, while the entire interior, being so pro- 
 tected, must be so treated as to fulfill most per- 
 fectly its specific needs. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 113 
 
 The similarities lie, then, in the main abso- 
 lute necessities which confront the architect, 
 and the differences mostly in their treatment. 
 As before, the first main requirement is wall, 
 and in general the same apparent solidity of 
 treatment is required on the inside as on the out- 
 side. 
 
 But a greater freedom is allowable in the 
 treatment of all interior features, for several 
 reasons. In the first place, the interior of a 
 building is protected from all attacks of the 
 weather; and this at once allows the architect 
 great latitude in the material he uses, and sug- 
 gests a greater richness and delicacy of surface. 
 In the second place, when one is inside a room, 
 the whole scheme of a building is not usually 
 evident, as it is to one outside, and consequently 
 there need be no such expression of structural 
 strength to satisfy the eye. And lastly, inside 
 a building you have usually a closer view of 
 all the architecture of the interior than one 
 outside is likely to get of the exterior. 
 
 For these reasons, then, a great deal of free- 
 dom is allowed the architect in his design of a 
 building's interior. Stone walls may be pan- 
 elled deeply, and broken with many rich mould- 
 ings. Sheets of white or coloured marble may 
 
114 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 be used to produce tremendously rich and va- 
 ried effects, as in Santa Sophia in Constanti- 
 nople,* or the church of Santa Maria dei Mira- 
 coli in Venice,t or the walls may be mosaiced in 
 rich and gorgeous colours, or painted. 
 
 In smaller, less formal buildings, a sheathing 
 of wood panelling may be used, or a simple sur- 
 face of plaster, plain or tinted or papered. All 
 of these varied treatments are good in their 
 places; but in all the feeling of wall should in 
 general be preserved and the best mosaic and 
 the best wall painting is usually that in which 
 there is some touch of conventionalization, some 
 flat unrealism of colour or drawing that gives a 
 feeling of continuous solidity and strength to 
 the whole decoration. There are exceptions: 
 there are informal places where a realistic deco- 
 oration that frankly makes a "hole in the wall" 
 is very beautiful ; it may serve to lighten a dark 
 room, or enlarge a small room, but as a general 
 rule the greatest of the decorators have always 
 considered and emphasized the fact of the solid- 
 ity of the wall. 
 
 Of all the less expensive and more informal 
 types of wall treatment, there is none more 
 
 ♦See the Plate opposite page no. 
 f See the Plate opposite page 116. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 115 
 
 adaptable than wood panelling. The rich gor- 
 geousness of a Louis Quinze boudoir and the 
 simple homeliness of a Colonial kitchen are ex- 
 amples of the extreme variety of effects that 
 can be produced in it. One reason for this lies 
 in the fact that wood panelling is in itself a 
 structural form: a form developed naturally 
 from the qualities of the wood itself. In addi- 
 tion, almost every wood has such an interesting 
 texture of veining, such subtle variations of 
 surface and colour, that it is in itself a delight 
 to the eye, and a delight we must cultivate and 
 demand. Let us, by all means, have more pan- 
 elled rooms, for a well designed Georgian hall, 
 with tall and stately panels, or a small and cosy 
 library wainscotted high with small panels of 
 dark oak, might each be more than rooms ; they 
 might be real works of art, sincere and unos- 
 tentatious and beautiful, to be treasured by our 
 children as we treasure the panelled rooms of 
 our ancestors. 
 
 Above all else one must be wary of fads in the 
 treatment of wall surfaces. Let curtains and 
 hangings and furniture be futuristic, impres- 
 sionistic, realistic, radical, reactionary, what 
 you will, decorated with all the "isms" of art, 
 
116 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 if you wish; but when one comes to the choice 
 of a wall treatment, he had best cast aside all 
 thoughts of " style," or period, or theory, or 
 fad, and think only of what will be strongest in 
 appearance, most beautiful, most suited to its 
 purpose and to his pocketbook, and above all, 
 of what will possess the most repose. 
 
 If repose is a sine qua non of wall design, it 
 is even more indispensable in the design of 
 floors. The floor in the landing of the grand 
 staircase of the Ducal Palace in Venice, for in- 
 stance, is of black and white marble so designed 
 that it seems, despite its real flatness, to be made 
 of cubes set cornerwise — a myriad of points 
 sticking into the air. Such a floor is an abomi- 
 nation; one is almost afraid to step on it for 
 fear of hurting one's feet. Similarly, any floor 
 in which the appearance or sense of flatness is 
 lost, is a bad floor. This is true whatever be the 
 material. Mosaic designs realistically pictur- 
 esque are bad ; so also are loud-coloured carpets 
 or those in which the pattern is so pronounced 
 that it seems to rise from the background. The 
 charm of good Oriental rugs lies in the fact that 
 despite the richness, even the gorgeousness of 
 the colours, sometimes mingled bright **eds and 
 
i? 1 
 
 y 2 ti 
 
 — . r - +-» 
 
 2 .2 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 117 
 
 yellows and even whites, they are so interwoven 
 and blended in the intricacies of the convention- 
 alized design that the rug never seems to be any- 
 thing except one flat plane. So, coloured mar- 
 ble or tile floors are only successful when they 
 have this appearance of being absolutely flat. 
 
 This, then, is the one criterion of floor design. 
 Stone or brick, wood or marble, tile or carpet — 
 this one requirement must be fulfilled, for it 
 was in the desire to give himself a flat and dry 
 surface to walk on that primitive man first 
 smoothed his cave's earthen floor, and later 
 covered it with flat stones, or boards of wood, 
 or skins or cloths; and this flatness that man 
 has with so great effort perfectly attained, he 
 will not, even in appearance, forego. 
 
 But man needs not only walls around and 
 a floor below, he needs even more than these, a 
 covering above ; so, corresponding to the roof on 
 the outside, there is the ceiling within, as the 
 next structural requirement of a building. In 
 some cases, as in certain churches and great 
 halls that extend the full height of a building, 
 the ceiling is merely the interior of the roof. If 
 the roof is a sloping one of timber all the struc- 
 tural parts are exposed — the rafters, the under 
 
118 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sides of the roof boards, the trusses that sup- 
 port the whole — and these may be treated so 
 richly that the effect becomes not one of pov- 
 erty, but of luxury. There is something tre- 
 mendously impressive in such an "open 
 timbered" roof: the combination of the naked 
 all apparent strength of the supports, with the 
 richness of light and shade of their criss-cross- 
 ing, complex yet systematic, in the shadows 
 above, is well nigh irresistible. Memories of 
 Westminster Hall in London, or the Hall of 
 Hampton Court Palace, of English Tudor 
 churches, of the rich colours of the San Miniato 
 ceiling in Florence throng to the mind in con- 
 firmation, and make one wonder why for so 
 many years this form has been so rare among 
 us. Lately it has come into renewed favour; 
 and churches and halls and libraries more and 
 more throughout the country bear witness to its 
 puissant charm. The chapel of the Union Theo- 
 logical Seminary in New York City, the great 
 dining-hall of Yale University in New Haven, 
 the simple and dignified Protestant Cathedral 
 in Albany are but a few examples ; the list might 
 be extended tremendously, and, it is to be hoped, 
 will grow each year. 
 
 ♦See the Plate opposite page 120. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 119 
 
 Somewhat the same charm of strength and 
 complexity exists in a frank treatment of steel- 
 framed roofs, particularly when combined with 
 glass. The train concourse of the Pennsylvania 
 Station in New York is a superlatively lovely 
 example of the kind of thing which should be 
 common. The truth is, we are not used to steel, 
 even yet. It has been the origin of so much 
 engineering ugliness, that one forgets that it 
 can be made a means of architectural beauty. 
 Our aesthetic hatred of steel is a heritage from 
 those pre-raphaelite days when steel and iron 
 meant system and machinery, and machinery 
 meant all that was evil. This prejudice, more- 
 over, is not lessened by those extreme radicals 
 who shout for steel everywhere, those who, like 
 the Italian futurists, and still more like the 
 proverbial small boy with his new toy, would 
 write "wanting" against every old established 
 architectural form of the past, and upon that 
 vacuum evolve a colossal architecture of steel 
 monstrosities. No, this prejudice against steel 
 can only be successfully overcome by the in- 
 creased careful use of steel by our architects 
 themselves ; and the use of it with restraint and 
 common sense. All praise, then, to the design- 
 
120 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ers of that lovely miracle of lightness and se- 
 curity and grace in the Pennsylvania Station 
 just mentioned, in which stone and steel and. 
 tile and skylight seem combined in almost per- 
 fect proportion. May there be more like them, 
 working on the same problem and developing its 
 possibilities further, with equal success ! 
 
 The ceilings we have treated of so far have 
 been merely the insides of roofs, but there is an 
 immensely larger number of buildings whose 
 ceilings are below the roofs, and to a large ex- 
 tent, separate from them. There are, besides, 
 the ceilings that are the under-sides of floors. 
 There is one large class of ceilings in which the 
 floor itself forms the ceiling and all the beams 
 and girders which support the floor boards are 
 exposed. In rooms of a certain size and height 
 there is the same structural charm in a 
 ceiling of this kind that there is in an open- 
 timbered roof. In the Palazzo Davanzati in 
 Florence there are several ceilings where two 
 or three great girders span the room, with 
 smaller beams closer together running from one 
 girder to the next ; and almost unif ormally such 
 ceilings are handsome. They have a sober dig- 
 nity about them that neither the vault, more 
 
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THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 121 
 
 grand or more graceful, as the case may be, nor 
 the flat plaster ceiling can ever have. But they 
 have their drawbacks, too. In the first place, 
 anyone who has lived in an unceiled country 
 cottage knows that such a ceiling is tremend- 
 ously noisy ; the drop of a pin on the floor above 
 reechoes as if it were a spike, the fall of a shoe is 
 an explosion. In addition, such rooms are cold, 
 and there is no space for running electric wires 
 or pipes, so that it is small wonder that some 
 sort of covering below the beams has come to be 
 almost universal. In some cases it is possible 
 to combine the delight of one with the comfort 
 of the other, by plastering directly under the 
 small beams and letting the larger project 
 below, or, by putting the plaster at a level half 
 way between the floor and the bottom of the 
 beams. Sometimes the effect is imitated by 
 building false beams below the ceiling. This is, 
 strictly speaking, hardly legitimate ; it savours 
 too much of the "fake," but at times effects can 
 be produced so delightful, and apparently so in- 
 dispensable to the design of the room, that it 
 is quite excusable. It is at best a means to an 
 end; at the worst, it is an artistic insult; as 
 when the speculative builder puts tiny sticks two 
 
122 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 inches square across a ten-foot apartment room, 
 and thinks thereby to produce "atmosphere." 
 Better a thousand times the inoffensive simplic- 
 ity of plain plaster than this. 
 
 The beamed ceiling was developed in the 
 Renaissance to a splendid perfection. The Ital- 
 ians found in time that the simple method of 
 the Davanzati ceilings could be varied. They 
 made all the beams of the same depth, and 
 crossed them at right angles to each other, fill- 
 ing the spaces between with square or rectangu- 
 lar panels, painted and moulded. Often the 
 under side — the soffit — of the beam was itself 
 decorated; and sometimes the beams were so 
 arranged as to give large panels in the centre, 
 decorated with huge " mural' ' paintings, with a 
 frame of simpler, smaller pattern around. Then 
 came the use of diagonal beams, and curved 
 beams, until there was no limit to the variety 
 of designs possible, with octagonal or square or 
 oblong or star-shaped or oval panels. Such 
 ceilings have a richness that is most effective in 
 large rooms : and as they developed frankly into 
 decorations at the end, one feels no qualm at 
 seeing the beams used merely as a decoration, 
 and not at all as a support for the next floor. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 123 
 
 The colour of the wood, the shadowed panel 
 mouldings, dull gold, perhaps, the paintings in 
 the centre ; here is an alphabet of decoration, in- 
 deed. Go to the New York Public Library, and 
 look at the ceiling of the main exhibition room ; 
 then go upstairs to the main reading room, and 
 look up. There is richness, there is strength, 
 there is delicacy, there is warmth, there is dig- 
 nity. No other type of ceiling in the world could 
 give just that effect of studied charm and rich 
 simplicity. 
 
 Still more interesting than these flat ceilings 
 are those curved ceilings we know as vaults. 
 The vault is, in its simplest form, merely a con- 
 tinuous arch. This is the form in which it was 
 first used ; in the beginning for drains, and later, 
 in those countries in which beams of stone or 
 wood were hard to get, as a covering for build- 
 ings. The long, narrow halls of the great As- 
 syrian and Babylonian palaces were undoubt- 
 edly ceiled with barrel vaults ; but these vaults 
 were built of such perishable sun-dried brick 
 that they have all vanished, and only the great 
 thick walls remain. This Assyrian tradition of 
 vault building had an intermittent influence on 
 the builders of western Asia; but it is entirely 
 
124 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 to the Komans that we moderns owe the origin 
 of all European vaulting. The Eomans soon 
 appreciated the immense opportunity offered 
 by the vault for roofing in a majestic way 
 great unencumbered halls; and with their cus- 
 tomary ingenuity and sound sense they devel- 
 oped this new method of building to the limit. 
 Not satisfied with the plain barrel vault, they 
 used with greater and greater skill all kinds of 
 intersecting vaults and domes, and so started 
 that great tradition of vault building which has 
 flowered so gloriously again and again all 
 through Gothic and Eenaissance and modern 
 times. 
 
 Before going further into the design of vault- 
 ing, it will be necessary to explain a few points 
 about the forms of the vault, and its influences 
 upon design as a whole. In the first place, any 
 and every vault, whatever its form, exerts, like 
 the arch, not only a downward weight upon its 
 supports, but a sidewise thrust as well. A vault 
 is like a card house built upon a slippery table ; 
 unless the cards are prevented from spreading, 
 the whole will fall. The typical arch consists 
 of many wedge-shaped stones built together; 
 and the weight on each of these tends to drive it 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 125 
 
 in and so widen the arch opening, more and 
 more, until the whole collapses. The same thing 
 is true of a vault. It is always tending to 
 spread; and this tendency, this thrusting so 
 strongly outwards, is called its " thrust.' % In 
 a barrel vault this thrust is continuous along 
 the whole length of the vault, and therefore the 
 walls along the sides that hold it up must be 
 extremely heavy, to keep the vault from spread- 
 ing and collapsing. Such heavy walls are ex- 
 pensive, however, and the barrel vault is conse- 
 quently seldom used at the present time, except 
 in minor positions and over small spans. 
 
 The dome is a continuous arch in another 
 sense. The barrel vault is formed when an arcli 
 is continuous over a line at right angles to its 
 own span. Imagine this same arch pivoted 
 throught its centre and highest point, and then 
 spun around; the result would be a dome, a 
 hemisphere on a circular base. This beautiful 
 form has been spoken of before, and we need 
 not therefore particularize any more here, for 
 the same facts apply to the interior that apply 
 to the exterior dome ; and the resultant artistic 
 effects of grandeur and strength and lightness 
 are much the same. But it will be well to keep 
 
126 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 in mind that there are several classes of domes. 
 First, there is the Roman dome, as seen in the 
 Pantheon at Rome.* This dome is designed with 
 the interior effect supreme in the designer's 
 mind ; the exterior of the Pantheon depends for 
 its effect not on the dome, but upon the entrance 
 portico, the doorway, and the great unbroken 
 stretch of circular wall. From nearby the dome 
 itself is completely invisible ; and it is only when 
 one enters that superb building and sees the 
 great dome rising from all sides above him to 
 the "eye," the open space in the centre, that one 
 grasps the full effect of that splendid concave 
 curve above, with its many coffers and its per- 
 fect relationship to the walls below. 
 
 The Byzantine architects, the next great dome 
 builders, strove for a dome equally impressive 
 inside and out. They accomplished this by rais- 
 ing the dome high up on a series of smaller half 
 domes and subsidiary vaults, so that from both 
 inside and out there is a wonderful effect of 
 height and spaciousness, dome building into 
 dome, vault into vault, up to the crowning glory 
 of the whole, the principal dome. In Santa 
 Sophia this form of design reached an early per- 
 fect expression,! so that centuries after, when 
 
 * See the Plate opposite this page, 
 t See the Plate opposite page 9 o. 
 
pantheum, rome, italy 
 
 (interior) 
 
 This matchless interior shows the compelling dignity of a simple dome 
 when rightly treated. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 127 
 
 Constantinople was conquered by the Turks, 
 they used that church as a model for their 
 greater mosques — and the glory of their domes 
 is only second to that of Santa Sophia itself. 
 
 In the Renaissance, the architects strove after 
 still different effects. They sought for a dome 
 lower proportionately than that of Santa So- 
 phia, more like the dome of the Pantheon; yet 
 because of the length of their churches it was 
 necessary to have a higher dome to give exter- 
 nal effect. Consequently, the dome of two or 
 even three shells was developed, in which the 
 interior dome was proportioned with sole ref- 
 erence to interior effect, and the exterior one 
 with sole reference to exterior effect. Between 
 these two shells there was sometimes a third, 
 built to carry the weight of the "lantern," the 
 small, many-windowed cupola which took the 
 place of the "eye" of the Roman dome. Such 
 domes are those of Saint Peter's in Eome, of 
 Saint Paul's in London, of the Pantheon and 
 Les Invalides in Paris, and of most of the 
 American capitol buildings. 
 
 There was another objection to the simple 
 Roman dome besides its exterior littleness; it 
 had the same fault as the barrel vault ; it exerted 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 216. 
 t See the Plate opposite page 78. 
 
128 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 a continuous, strong sidewise thrust, which had 
 to be counteracted by a tremendously heavy 
 wall. The Roman builders constantly strove 
 for some method of roofing a large space that 
 avoided the necessity of this heavy wall; and 
 they soon arrived at the solution, the groined 
 vault. The groined vault consists of two vaults 
 intersecting one another at right angles. In 
 other words, imagine a square room roofed with 
 a barrel vault. Two walls will have arched 
 tops and two straight tops. Now let us take 
 another vault of the same size, and place it 
 across the room at right angles to the other. 
 Then let us cut out all the superfluous matter. 
 The result will be a groined vault ; the four walls 
 of the room will all have arched heads now, 
 and the whole weight of the vault and all the 
 thrust will be concentrated at the corners, at 
 which points it is easy to build masses of ma- 
 sonry to counteract the thrust without making 
 the whole wall thick. At the same time this 
 form of vault gives a feeling of height and gran- 
 deur, and a pleasant play of light and shade 
 over its varied surfaces, that the simple barrel 
 vault could never have. Consequently, the Ro- 
 mans adopted this form of vault as their favour- 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 129 
 
 ite, and their great public baths became im- 
 pressive and tremendous palaces because of 
 its use. 
 
 Gothic Ribbed Vaulting. 
 
 Fig. 9. "a" shows the ribs alone; "b" shows the 
 vault after the ribs have been covered in. 
 
 All through the Middle Ages the groined 
 vault was the greatest form in architecture; 
 and the development of Gothic architecture is 
 primarily dependent on its requirements. But 
 the Gothic architects had difficulty in raising 
 great vaults like the Roman ones; they sought 
 for some means of lessening the surface that 
 had to be built at one time. Consequently, they 
 adopted the ribbed vault. In the true ribbed 
 vault all the ribs were built first ; each, being an 
 arch, was self-supporting.* Then they filled in 
 
 * See Fig. 9, a. on this page. 
 
130 THE ENJOYMENT OF AECHITECTURE 
 
 the framework with very light masonry, each 
 space left between the ribs being built sepa- 
 rately.* Later, particularly in England, the ar- 
 chitects grew so fond of the decorative effect 
 of these ribs that they multiplied their number 
 enormously, first in a simple way, as in Lincoln 
 Cathedral choir,t and then, as they grew more 
 skilful, into a complex network — called lierne 
 vaulting, as in Gloucester Cathedral. But in 
 this development the richness of the result came 
 to be an end in itself, and the structural char- 
 
 
 The Pendentive. 
 
 Fig. 10. "a, a," are the pendentives, "b" is the 
 
 dome built upon them. 
 * See Fig. 9, b, page 129. 
 tSee the Plate opposite page 150. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 131 
 
 acter of the ribs was lost, until at last, in the 
 glorious mazes of fan vaulting, so exquisitely- 
 seen in the JHenry the Seventh Chapel in West- 
 minster, or in King's College Chapel in Cam- 
 bridge, the mazy ribs are merely decorations 
 carved on the stones of a vault as uniform and 
 non-Gothic as the old Roman vaults themselves. 
 It is due to this non-structural nature, as well 
 as to the lavish cost of these fan vaults, that 
 they are little copied in our day. We try, and 
 rightly, for richness in more structural ways. 
 
 The Renaissance vault builders went back to 
 Roman examples for their inspiration, but the 
 ribbed vaults of the Gothic builders had left, 
 particularly in France, an impress too strong 
 to be forgotten. As a result the vaults of the 
 Renaissance are much more free and varied 
 than those of Roman days ; the builders learned 
 alike from Roman and Byzantine and Gothic 
 sources, and applied their knowledge with con- 
 tinually growing skill. From the Romans they 
 took the groin, from the Byzantines the penden- 
 tive* — that simple method of supporting a dome 
 over a square — from the Gothic builders the 
 rib; and the result is seen in the charm of the 
 loggia of the Farnesina Villa or the Villa 
 
 * See Fig. 10, page 130. 
 
132 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Madama in Home, in the entrance hall of the 
 Boston Public Library, in the glory of Saint 
 Peter's and the richness of Saint Paul's in 
 London.* 
 
 Our own age is witnessing a new renaissance 
 of the vault. For a time, the ease with which 
 large spaces could be roofed by the use of steel 
 caused the almost entire abandonment of the 
 vault ; but our growing skill in building is resur- 
 recting it. Certain builders and engineers dis- 
 covered that a strong, light and beautiful vault 
 could be built cheaply of tile, and more and more 
 these tile vaults are coming into use. With this 
 tile it is simpler to build domical vaults than 
 vaults of any other sort, so the dome is coming 
 into its own ; and there is a certain new sort of 
 Byzantine character produced by its use. These 
 tile vaults and their proper treatment are a new 
 thing ; they are a truly original contribution of 
 modern America to the stream of architectural 
 development; therefore let us appreciate duly 
 their beauty and sincerity. The growing use of 
 the tile vault is one of the most hopeful aesthetic 
 signs of our times ; and we may look confidently 
 forward to the time when they shall beautify 
 
 * For another fine Italian Renaissance example, see the 
 Plate opposite page 134. 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 133 
 
 not only our churches and monuments, but our 
 homes as well. 
 
 Of the interior treatment of doors and win- 
 dows, little need here be said, for all that is 
 true of their exterior treatment holds true of 
 their treatment within, save that, as in the case 
 of the wall, a greater freedom is allowable. 
 There remains, then, but one more structural 
 requirement to consider, the pier and the col- 
 umn, and of the column most of what is to be 
 said belongs in the next chapter, for at the pres- 
 ent time the use of the column is almost entirely 
 decorative. As for the pier, it is in essence 
 merely a post, placed as an intermediate sup- 
 port where the width of a room is too great to 
 be spanned by one beam or one vault, or placed 
 to subdivide a large room into separate units 
 that shall still be part of the whole. As time 
 went on men came to cut the corners off, to allow 
 more ease of communication around the post; 
 later still they rounded the whole into a col- 
 umn. In the great temple halls of Egypt these 
 columns were used by the hundred, giving an im- 
 pression of tremendous mystery and size. In 
 the more northern countries, where wood was 
 more abundant, the column was probably de- 
 
134 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 veloped from the use of a tree trunk as a sup- 
 port. The round column has a grace that the 
 square pier lacks; on the other hand, the pier 
 has a strength and simplicity beyond that of the 
 column. Each is good in its place, and some of 
 the most impressive buildings in the world owe 
 a great deal of their success to the careful use 
 of both pier and column, each contributing its 
 particular note to the beauty of the whole. For 
 an example, see the lovely cloisters of Santa 
 Maria della Pace in Rome.* Note how the con- 
 trast of pier and column is used on the second 
 story to suggest the pier and arch below; and 
 see, too, how exquisite is the balance and the 
 rhythm of the whole. 
 
 The pier is such a simple element that little 
 was done to elaborate its form greatly, save in 
 details as by giving it a cap and base- — except 
 by Gothic architects. The Gothic architects 
 were avid of structural expression; and once 
 given their ribbed vaults, it was but natural 
 for them to wish to see the feeling of the ribs 
 carried down to the floor. This they did by 
 making the pier very complex in plan, with a 
 strongly marked projection under each rib. The 
 accumulated richness of the vertical shadows 
 
 ♦See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
si 
 
 "SE 
 
 CD j« 
 
 c.2 
 
 o - 
 > w 
 
 § . 
 
 o 
 
 j S >: 
 
 < u 5 
 
 W W H 
 5 > ~ 
 
 §3 
 
 5 o 
 
 1 
 
 03 TO 
 O ^ 
 
 ■J 
 
 1* 
 
 "5. en 
 
THE ARCHITECT'S MATERIALS 135 
 
 on such a moulded pier led them eventually to 
 treat this complex pier for its own sake, and to 
 mould it richly without regard to the ribs above 
 it. Their successors, the people of the Renais- 
 sance, went back to the simple pier, breaking 
 it only slightly, with pilasters — as in the Santa 
 Maria della Pace cloisters — or even treating it 
 as a simple rectangular piece of masonry, un- 
 broken. 
 
 These, then, are the structural requirements 
 that an architect must treat in his design ; these 
 are the usual units of every building that he 
 must make beautiful : wall, roof, door, window, 
 chimney, ceiling, vault, supports; these are the 
 things he must supply. These, too, he must 
 compose and arrange in a beautiful form before 
 he even thinks of the details of his decoration; 
 and it is these necessary elements which those 
 who wish to appreciate architecture must under- 
 stand first and analyze first and appreciate first ; 
 for though the greatest buildings are not only 
 beautifully composed, but beautifully decor- 
 ated as well, decoration is secondary, and no 
 amount of ornament, however lovely, can ever 
 compensate for bad composition. The essen- 
 tials of a building, the necessary parts, and their 
 
136 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 relations and arrangement, must always be first 
 in the minds alike of architect and critic; only 
 thus can fine architecture be conceived and ade- 
 quately appreciated. 
 
A CHAPTER V 
 
 THE DECOBATIVE MATERIAL OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The two last chapters have attempted to show 
 how the structural necessities of a building were 
 used to produce an artistic end by their compo- 
 sition and grouping in accordance with the de- 
 mands of beauty. This use of structural ele- 
 ments, if rightly handled, will produce a build- 
 ing that has beauty; such a building may even 
 have great and striking beauty, because of its 
 absolute simplicity. Such a building, however, 
 even in its beauty, has a kind of naked, unfin- 
 ished look about it ; although it may appear to 
 have a great and rugged strength, it will seem 
 to be rather a work of engineering than of 
 art. From the earliest times mankind has dec- 
 orated those things which are useful, letting 
 his imagination play over the forms he requires, 
 until he makes of his necessity a thing of beauty 
 as well. 
 
 137 
 
138 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 This tradition of decoration, which has be- 
 come almost a psychological necessity, does not 
 lose its force when the necessary object is beau- 
 tiful in itself; indeed, quite the reverse is the 
 case; for the beauty innate in it furnishes the 
 decorator with a tremendous inspiration to 
 start with, and gives him the supreme oppor- 
 tunity to show his genius. This is the case 
 in architecture; always the purely necessary 
 part of the building, the structure, however 
 beautiful in itself, has been an invitation and 
 an inspiration to the world's architects, and has 
 furnished them opportunities for creating beau- 
 tiful works of a great art that forms, next to 
 literature, the most perfect expression and the 
 most perfect evidence of the world's life. 
 
 The position of this decorative element in 
 architecture is very large. To some critics, of 
 whom Kuskin is the foremost, architecture is 
 merely decoration, nothing more; and they 
 judge architecture merely by its ornament. This 
 point of view is as one sided as that of some 
 engineers, who think all architecture a waste of 
 time and money, because they could build build- 
 ings equally strong more cheaply. To the great 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 139 
 
 majority of men and women either extreme 
 point of view is equally absurd. To them al- 
 ways the beautiful building has meant a place 
 to work or play or rest, as well as an artis- 
 tic emotion, and a house has meant not only a 
 roof above, but beauty within and without, as 
 well. 
 
 It is true, therefore, that an adequate appre- 
 ciation of good architecture can come only from 
 the double knowledge of structural and of artis- 
 tic elements, from an appreciation of ornamen- 
 tation as well as an appreciation of building in 
 itself. This double knowledge is particularly 
 necessary because in the greatest buildings of 
 the world these two sides of architecture are 
 most inextricably combined, so that it is diffi- 
 cult to say just what is purely structural and 
 what purely decorative. 
 
 Of course, the decorative material of architec- 
 ture cannot be codified in any such simple man- 
 ner as the structural material. It is far too 
 wide in scope. Almost every conceivable form 
 has at some time been used to decorate a build- 
 ing ; geometry, the world's flora and fauna, man, 
 woman, child, all the mythologies of the nations, 
 
 > v 
 
140 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the heavens above and the earth beneath have 
 been called npon to furnish decorative forms. 
 The best that can be done, and even so there will 
 be exceptions, is to make the broadest sort of 
 classification, into two kinds, non-representa- 
 tional ornament and representational ornament. 
 By these names nothing as regards history 
 and origin is implied. By non-representational 
 ornament is meant simply that ornament, what- 
 ever its ultimate origin, which seems obviously 
 not to seek to depict any one thing, or any group 
 of things, in the world around. By represen- 
 tational ornament is meant that ornament which 
 depicts, naturalistically or conventionally, some 
 natural or recognizable object. Under the first 
 head we shall include geometric ornament, and 
 certain of those forms, which, though originally 
 developed from representations, have come to 
 have a form almost absolutely conventional and 
 imaginary. So the egg and dart ornament, 
 which though originally developed from the 
 lotus, has come to have a well known form al- 
 most absolutely conventional, we shall class as 
 non-representational ornament. On the other 
 hand, all those myriad forms of classic and 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 141 
 
 Gotnic art which, though unrecognizable as de- 
 picting some one plant or animal, are yet ob- 
 viously and unmistakably plants and animals, 
 like the anthemion, the acanthus, the gryphon 
 or the sphinx, we shall class as representational 
 ornament. 
 
 The most important kind of non-representa- 
 tional ornament is at the same time the most im- 
 portant kind of ornament in architecture. This 
 is the moulding. The word " moulding" is a 
 broad term applied to any modulation of a sur- 
 face, either projecting or receding, or both, such 
 as would be described if a straight or curved 
 profile — the section of the moulding — were 
 drawn along a given line. In fact, many mould- 
 ings are made in precisely this way; a knife is 
 cut with an edge formed to the profile of the de- 
 sired moulding, and this knife, by means 
 of a plane, or a hammer, is driven through 
 the material, and what it leaves is the "mould- 
 ing." 
 
 The origin of mouldings is lost in the past. 
 As far back as we know they have been used 
 to decorate buildings. Perhaps their origin was 
 manifold, due in some places to one cause, in 
 
142 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 others to something else. In Egypt, it has been 
 suggested that mouldings were developed from 
 the early method of building with reeds and 
 clay; several reeds bound together into a cyl- 
 inder, acting as a framework around the top 
 and corners of a hut, forming a moulding them- 
 selves. In countries farther north, such as 
 Lycia, or Greece, there seem evidences that 
 mouldings were derived from wooden forms; 
 from the projection of tree trunks used as beams 
 in the frame of the wooden roof. Whatever 
 their origin may have been, they were at once 
 appropriated universally and developed and 
 refined and modified continually, and used with 
 ever increasing freedom, so that the sole distinc- 
 tion and the crowning beauty of many a build- 
 ing consists entirely in the mouldings, in their 
 perfection of form and placing. 
 
 Mouldings, like any class of forms used again 
 and again by mankind, have little by little come 
 to be classified into different classes. Of course, 
 the sections possible are infinite in number, but 
 infinite as they are, there are in all certain eas- 
 ily recognized elements. These are briefly as 
 follows : 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 
 
 143 
 
 
 
 Mouldings. 
 
 
 
 Fig. 11. 
 
 a. 
 
 Fascia 
 
 f . Cyma Recta, as cap 
 
 b. 
 
 Fillet 
 
 g. Cyma Recta, as base 
 
 c. 
 
 Ovolo 
 
 h. Cyma Reversa, as cap 
 
 d. 
 
 Scotia 
 
 i. Cyma Reversa, as base 
 
 e. 
 
 Torus 
 
 
 The fascia — a flat band projecting or reced- 
 ing from the face of the wall. 
 
 The fillet — a flat band narrower than the fas- 
 cia. 
 
 The ovolo — a quarter round, convex. 
 
 The scotia — a concave curve of the same gen- 
 eral cylindrical type, usually elliptical in sec- 
 tion. 
 
 The torus — a semi-cylindrical mould, convex. 
 
 The cavetto — a quarter round, concave. 
 
144 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Then, finally, perhaps the most important of 
 all, the cyma reversa, a complex curve, convex 
 above and concave below, and 
 
 The cyma recta — concave above and convex 
 below. 
 
 It is surprising how much of the effect of good 
 architecture depends upon these few mouldings 
 and their proper combination and placing. The 
 reason for this lies in the fact that their effect 
 on the eye is that of long bands of modulated 
 light and shade; and architecture is in general 
 an art that deals primarily with light and shade, 
 and only secondarily with colour. It is not 
 strange, therefore, that these long bands of 
 light and shade and half-light, incisive as they 
 are, determine to a large extent the final success 
 or failure of a building, and its specific char- 
 acter. 
 
 Take, for instance, an Egyptian entrance.* 
 Note how its cornice, that great sweeping ca- 
 vetto, with its broad shadow and the light, nar- 
 row shade of the torus below, sets perfectly the 
 note of the simple, massive dignity of the whole. 
 Then, for contrast, look at a late Fifteenth Cen- 
 tury Italian tomb, chiselled and carved with a 
 delicacy like that of silverware, and note its 
 
 * See Fig. 12, page 145. 
 
TOMB OF COUNT UGO, THE BADIA, NEAR FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 This tomb by Mino da Fiesole illustrates the luxury of delicate ornament, 
 and particularly of ornamented mouldings, which was a salient feature of the 
 early Italian Renaissance. See page 144. 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 
 
 145 
 
 Temple Gateway at Karnak, Egypt. 
 
 Fig. 12. The simple, strong cornices are character- 
 istic of all Egyptian work. 
 
 crowning cornice — a group of differing mould- 
 ings, topped with a delicate cyma recta — each 
 moulding carved till it sparkles.* 
 
 Of all the categories of mouldings, the most 
 important is that which is comprised within 
 the classical tradition, for no nation before the 
 Greeks developed mouldings beyond an elemen- 
 tary beginning, and all the nations after have, 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 144. 
 
146 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 directly or indirectly, drawn inspiration from 
 the classic civilizations of Greece and Rome. 
 It is also a tradition particularly important to 
 ns, because, of all moulding systems, the classic 
 system is the simplest, the clearest, the easiest 
 to understand and the most adaptable. 
 
 The reader will recall that mention has sev- 
 eral times been made of the triple character of 
 many architectural features. In classic mould- 
 ings, this tripartite characteristic appears 
 again. In the cornice, for instance, which is in 
 many cases the most important moulding group 
 of a building, there are three main portions ; a 
 crowning moulding, called the cymatium, which 
 is usually a cyma recta ; below this, a flat band, 
 the corona, which projects markedly from the 
 wall, and casts a deep shadow down it, and 
 finally, under this corona, and supporting it at 
 its juncture with the wall, a moulding or a group 
 of mouldings, called the bed mould. This is 
 the typical classical cornice; and this system 
 holds, whatever be the modifications of the de- 
 tails. The cymatium, the crown mould, is 
 usually a cyma recta, because this moulding 
 has the most delicate profile, and because the 
 lights and shades and half-lights are so grace- 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 147 
 
 fully modulated on its ever-changing surface. 
 The corona, its flat band catching the light, runs 
 straight and strong around the whole building, 
 
 H "" w ' ),8l|,tll "^)llmHli!vlllll|M 
 
 Fig. 13. A typical classic cornice. 
 
 binding it together like a snood. Below this, 
 in its shadows, are the playing half-lights on the 
 bed mould, that relieve the darkness, and give 
 strength and support to the whole cornice, so 
 that it may form, with its many bands of differ- 
 ing value, a crown to the building or feature it 
 decorates. 
 
 In playing with this idea the classic design- 
 ers devised many variations. They elaborated 
 the bed mould, made it double or triple, or in- 
 serted a row of dentils, whose flat, narrow 
 blocks and deep spaces between gave a pleasing 
 
148 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 accented note. In Roman times modillions or 
 scrolled brackets were added under the corona, 
 and the Corinthian cornice was produced, a 
 form that has the richest and most complex 
 light and shade of any of the various classes of 
 cornice. The Romans appreciated early, too, 
 the value of contrast in moulding design ; of al- 
 ternating square and round, and convex and 
 concave; the value, for instance, of a narrow, 
 flat band or fillet between two curved mouldings ; 
 and in the possible combinations of these square 
 or flat and receding or projecting curves they 
 became so expert that at the present time it is 
 hardly possible to invent a new beautiful com- 
 bination ; all we can do is to study and restudy, 
 to refine and rerefine the elements left us by the 
 past. 
 
 During the centuries, say, from 1200 to 1550, 
 when Gothic architecture was the prevailing 
 style in all the European countries, save Italy, 
 new uses for mouldings gave a fresh impetus to 
 moulding design. The earlier Romanesque 
 methods of building had begun this develop- 
 ment, particularly the use of the stepped arch.* 
 
 * A stepped arch is such a combination of concentric 
 arch rings, one within and behind the other, that a section 
 through them would be a series of steps. 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 149 
 
 It was the simplest thing in the world to round 
 the corners of the successive projecting con- 
 centric arch rings, and once this was done the 
 door was open to a thousand further complica- 
 tions and modifications. The whole develop- 
 ment of Gothic mouldings is as intimately con- 
 nected with the development of these arch forms 
 and sections as that of the classic mouldings is 
 with the development of the horizontal cornice. 
 The Gothic moulding designer recognized no 
 rules. Gothic moulding profiles are infinite in 
 variety. In general, however, they may be eas- 
 ily differentiated from classic mouldings by the 
 small use made of the fillet, or in fact, of any 
 flat members at all, and secondly, by the use of 
 deeply cut, receding members, that give very 
 dark shadow lines. "Quirking," that is, the 
 bringing of the top or bottom of a moulding 
 strongly and suddenly out or in, to give em- 
 phasis, is the rule, rather than the exception. 
 In addition, the Gothic architect liked to com- 
 bine all sorts of mouldings, projecting and re- 
 ceding, into one band, much wider and more 
 complex in light and shade than the classic 
 architect would have permitted; indeed, no 
 small part of that air of impressive and com- 
 
150 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 plex mystery which is so characteristic of a 
 Gothic church comes from precisely the com- 
 plexity of surface of these elaborate mouldings, 
 with their lack of flat surfaces. 
 
 This lack of fillets, and the resulting round- 
 ness and softness of effect, was sometimes car- 
 ried to extremes. In English "decorated 
 Gothic," which is the style of the choirs of Ely 
 and Lincoln,* the arch moulds became mere se- 
 ries of almost meaningless curves, this one pro- 
 jecting and the next receding, and though there 
 is a certain mysterious charm in the continuous 
 changing light and shade of such a moulding, 
 the trained eye feels the need of some flat sur- 
 face on which to rest. Between the cornice of 
 the Erectheum at Athens and the arches and 
 piers of an English decorated Gothic church, 
 there is the same difference as that between a 
 dialogue of Plato and a mediaeval romance. 
 
 During the Renaissance, classic mouldings in- 
 evitably came back into use, with the rest of the 
 classic forms. But there was a difference. The 
 eye of the architect had been too long trained 
 in the freedom and subtleties of the Gothic 
 moulds to be entirely satisfied with the Roman 
 or the Greek forms ; so it is in the mouldings of 
 
 * See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
s t 
 2£ 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 151 
 
 the Renaissance, particularly those of early 
 date, in which lie the greatest differences be- 
 tween Renaissance work and the earlier build- 
 ings of the Greeks and Romans. Thus, in the 
 tomb mentioned earlier, there are a hundred 
 subtleties and peculiarities of moulding profile, 
 for which it is impossible to find an exact prece- 
 dent. 
 
 Gothic architecture struck off the shackles of 
 the moulding designer ; but it remained for the 
 Renaissance to instill personality into mould- 
 ings; and personal they have remained ever 
 since. All the most successful architects have 
 been very careful with mouldings, and if one 
 could look into the office of a great architect 
 when a building is being detailed and see with 
 what loving care every moulding is studied and 
 restudied, again and again, by itself and in re- 
 lation to its surroundings, by means of drawings 
 and models, until exactly the right section is ar- 
 rived at to give the proper band of light and 
 shade ; if one could see all this, he would realize 
 more clearly why the good building — the Bos- 
 ton Public Library, for instance — is more pleas- 
 ing than a bad one. He may realize that the 
 apartment house next door is ugly ; but he does 
 
152 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 not realize that that crowning cyma is thrice 
 too big and flaring and soft, stamped cheaply 
 out of a cheap metal, or that mouldings around 
 the door are big where they should be small, 
 and small where they should be big. If he did 
 realize this, it is certain that when he came to 
 build for himself, he would see to it that he had 
 his house designed, and designed well, by an ar- 
 chitect, and not merely thrown together by an 
 underpaid builder's draughtsman. 
 
 There are some mouldings which do not de- 
 pend for their effect upon their profile alone, 
 for their surface is itself broken up by intricate 
 carving. From the earliest times the decora- 
 tive instinct of man was never entirely satisfied 
 with the plain curved surface of a moulding. 
 Throughout the long course of Egyptian art the 
 one important moulding, the great cavetto cor- 
 nice, was painted in brilliant colours that va- 
 ried the monotony of the long, simple shadow. 
 The Greeks, even in very primitive times, seem 
 to have painted almost all their mouldings, and 
 as their skill grew, they came at last to carve 
 the mouldings in patterns similar to those they 
 had painted before. To them we owe the egg 
 and dart, that most common of decorated mould- 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 153 
 
 ings ; the water leaf, and the successful use of 
 dentils — small rectangular blocks, placed close 
 together, which give, with their alternating light 
 faces and deep shadowed clefts, such life and va- 
 riety to a cornice. To the decoration of their 
 mouldings the Greeks applied the same subtlety, 
 the same insight, the same delicate refinement of 
 
 Fig. 14. The most common decorated mouldings: 
 
 a. Greek egg and dart 
 
 b. Roman egg and dart 
 
 c. Greek water leaf 
 
 d. Roman water leaf 
 
 taste, and the same beauty of workmanship that 
 they applied to their sculpture, and, working as 
 they did with such mental tools, they stumbled 
 almost immediately upon the prime principle of 
 moulding decoration. They discovered that the 
 most beautiful decorated mouldings were those 
 in which the very form of the decoration ex- 
 presses and emphasizes the profile of the mould- 
 ing.* 
 The egg and dart is one of the most univer- 
 
 * See also the Plate opposite page 170, 
 
154 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sally popular mouldings, because it illustrates 
 this principle so absolutely. It is a form de- 
 vised to decorate the ovolo, the convex quarter 
 round ; and the most cursory glance at it shows 
 every accented line emphasizing this convex 
 curve. The sides of the egg are of this shape, 
 and they are emphasized strongly by a frame. 
 The egg itself has a pleasing roundness that em- 
 phasizes the roundness of the moulding ; and the 
 straight darts between the eggs serve merely 
 to accentuate the roundness on either side. It 
 is this absolute correspondence between the 
 shape of the moulding and the shape of its 
 decoration, coupled with the exquisite rhythm 
 of accented and unaccented, of wide and nar- 
 row, lights and darks which has made this egg 
 and dart moulding so universally appreciated. 
 The water leaf is another example of similar 
 correspondence. The water-leaf moulding is ap- 
 plied to a cyma reversa moulding; and every 
 line in it is a line of double curvature that re- 
 calls the double curve of the profile.* Conse- 
 quently, next to the egg and dart, the water-leaf 
 moulding has been the most popular of all dec- 
 orated mouldings ; and at the time of the dawn 
 of the Renaissance in Italy, it was these two 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 170. 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 155 
 
 mouldings which took fastest hold of the imagi- 
 nation of the Fifteenth Century sculptors and 
 architects, and tomb and altar piece and door 
 and cornice were embellished with them.* 
 
 This principle of the correspondence of pro- 
 file with decoration is not limited to the archi- 
 tecture of Greece, Rome and the Renaissance ; it 
 is universal, for to try to decorate an object 
 which has a peculiar and accented surface, like 
 a moulding, with a form which neglects and con- 
 tradicts the shape of this surface is manifestly 
 illogical. In Gothic architecture the principle 
 is somewhat hidden by the Gothic artist's love 
 for naturalistic representation, but in the best 
 Gothic work one will find the shape of the 
 moulding always carefully considered and sub- 
 tly expressed in the design of its decoration. It 
 is only a sign of decadence in the florid Gothic 
 of Germany or Spain that the pure form of the 
 moulding is forgotten, and naturalistic exuber- 
 ance runs riot, forming mouldings into twigs 
 and branches, hiding forced and uncouth forms 
 under a gorgeous luxuriance of intricate carv- 
 ing. 
 
 The study of mouldings themselves is inter- 
 esting and full of fascination. Their myriad 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 144. 
 
156 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 delicacies of form and the subtle play of light 
 on their changing surfaces may be a continual 
 delight. And it is not necessary to go far afield 
 to begin the study. In one 's own home there are 
 undoubtedly many mouldings : door trims, pic- 
 ture frames, table tops, book-case cornices. Be- 
 gin with these, running your thumb over them, 
 follow their curves, watch them under differ- 
 ing lights. You will soon learn to notice slight 
 differences, to find that some please, and some 
 leave you cold, to see that some are coarse, and 
 some delicate and refined. That is true appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 It is, however, only when mouldings are stu- 
 died with relation to their position that their 
 importance and significance can be grasped. A 
 moulding may be good in one place and bad 
 in another, coarse in one position and refined 
 in another. It will be worth while, therefore, 
 to summarize briefly the principal uses of the 
 moulding, and show what bearing they have 
 upon its design. 
 
 Perhaps the most important of all is the use 
 of the moulding, or a group of mouldings, as 
 a cornice. We have already touched upon the 
 importance of the cornice; and a walk among 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 157 
 
 any buildings whatsoever, will prove it if there 
 are still doubts. If in the neighbourhood there 
 is a house of that awful time in American archi- 
 tecture, known as the " jig-saw' * period, notice 
 in it the way the projecting cornice, with its mul- 
 titudinous tiny mouldings, hangs out like a shelf, 
 and how the stringy, inconsequential brackets 
 below only emphasize its weakness and its ill- 
 proportions. Then find some garish business 
 building, or apartment house, just built on a 
 narrow city lot. It has a great, much-decorated 
 cornice, stamped out of sheet metal, sawn sharp 
 off at the ends; the whole, cheap, awkward, 
 glued willy nilly to the building, an obvious ex- 
 crescence. These are examples of how a cor- 
 nice may ruin a building ; these are illustrations 
 of a lack of imagination and an artistic insin- 
 cerity all too common. For contrast, study the 
 Kiccardi Palace in Florence,* but there are, for- 
 tunately, examples almost as good in any 
 American city, and their number is increasing. 
 Whenever the cornice seems an integral part of 
 the building, necessary and inevitable, either as 
 a structural necessity to support the roof and 
 take the gutter, or as an artistic necessity to 
 crown and terminate fittingly an otherwise in- 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 158. 
 
158 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 complete wall ; when, in addition, its proportion 
 is good, and its mouldings well studied, so that 
 the light and shade on it are interesting and 
 varied, without being complex and restless, then 
 the cornice is well designed. 
 
 It is hard to be more definite than this in the 
 criticism of cornices; the possibilities are too 
 varied. It seems true, however, that, in general, 
 a cornice should have the lighter, more delicate 
 moulding, like the cavetto and the cyma recta, 
 at the top, and mouldings stronger and simpler, 
 like the ovolo, and the cyma reversa below; 
 and that usually it is a good thing to have at 
 least one strongly marked flat face running 
 through, to bind the whole together and give it 
 accent. It is well, too, to keep in mind that 
 the cornice has two separate functions, an artis- 
 tic one, as the cap to the wall, and a structural 
 one, as a finish to a roof, that is, as eaves. In 
 criticising any cornice, both functions must be 
 kept in mind, for if there is a strongly marked 
 roof its relation to the wall will, to some extent, 
 determine the cornice. The chateaux of the 
 Loire valley, almost all dating from the time 
 of Francis the First, owe a great deal of the 
 
RICCARDI PALACE, FLORENCE, ITALY 
 
 A facade which is distinguished by great simplicity and a majestic crowning 
 cornice. See page 157. 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 159 
 
 beauty of their cornices to this relation ; the cor- 
 nices are kept extremely flat because the roofs 
 above are so steep, and interest is given by elab- 
 orate decoration of nearly flat surfaces, where 
 bold projecting mouldings and a deep shadow 
 would have cut the building in two, and de- 
 stroyed the connection between walls and roof, 
 instead of emphasizing it, as do these lovely 
 flat cornices. 
 
 Fig. 15. Cornice from the wing of Francis I 
 Chateau of Blois, France. 
 
 Mouldings are also very important at the 
 base of a building, or a wall, inside or outside, 
 to mitigate the harshness of the angle between 
 wall and ground or wall and floor. Any build- 
 
160 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ing looks stronger if it has an adequate base. 
 It follows from the very position of this feature 
 that its mouldings must be strong in effect, not 
 weak and indecisive. A weak base is almost 
 worse than none. Often in brick-work the base 
 consists merely of one or two small projections, 
 unmoulded, sometimes further accented by a 
 row of bricks on edge ; a solution that is entirely 
 satisfactory because so absolutely in harmony 
 with the material. But in stone buildings there 
 is a much greater flexibility of treatment, the 
 only requirement being apparent strength and 
 adequate size. The next common moulding for 
 this use is the cyma recta upside down; for in 
 this position it is as strong and sturdy as it is 
 light and graceful in the cornice. There is some- 
 thing about the cyma reversa too abrupt for a 
 base; it lacks just that touch of horizontality 
 which makes the cyma recta so successful. In 
 wooden buildings the structural problem is dif- 
 ferent, for the masonry foundation wall usually 
 recedes from the face of the shingle or clap- 
 boards, instead of projecting, and in this case 
 the wall covering is merely given a little curve 
 out at the bottom, with a simple moulding be- 
 low; and somehow this simple base, or water 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 161 
 
 table, always seems ample for the building 
 above it. 
 
 Moreover, mouldings are often used as 
 frames. This is, perhaps, their commonest use ; 
 door trim, window trim, panelling, are a few of 
 the many places where they are so used. As a 
 general rule mouldings used for frames must be 
 more delicate and flatter than cornices or bases, 
 for too large mouldings cast such a heavy 
 shadow that they cut off the opening or panel 
 with too great a distinctness. It is one of the 
 chief faults of Victorian architecture, both in 
 this country and in England, that all its trim 
 mouldings are monstrously heavy, full of bold 
 curves and deep cuts, piled one on another, till 
 the frame becomes forbidding, rather than dec- 
 orative. Equally unsatisfactory is that trim 
 used so commonly at a later period, and still 
 used, consisting of straight boards scratched 
 with a few ineffective half-rounds down the cen- 
 tre and joined at the corners of the opening 
 with square blocks on which are carved mean- 
 ingless circles. Good trim is generally of three 
 sorts ; either flat, or with one main moulding of 
 delicate section on the outside, and flat faces 
 diminishing in width within, or so moulded as 
 
162 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 to give one easy and delicate sweep from out- 
 side to inside. And no frame, no matter what 
 its scheme or use, must ever be so large as to 
 overbalance the space framed, or so heavy in 
 projection as to appear to be an excrescence, 
 and not a decoration of the surface on which it 
 is placed. 
 
 The case of panel moulds is different. Here 
 the moulding is often an integral and necessary 
 part of the design, and its size and projections 
 are, to a certain extent, already determined. 
 Then, too, its size is usually so small that any 
 complicated system like that of the trim is im- 
 possible. The same rule, however, that gov- 
 erns the design of trim governs panel moulds ; 
 and this, coupled with general delicacy and 
 beauty of profile and shadow, forms the only 
 criterion of good and bad design. 
 
 In masonry walls openings or niches are 
 often framed with decorative systems of mould- 
 ings analogous to the trim. These systems are 
 termed architraves ; many of the most beautiful 
 doorways of the world owe a large part of their 
 beauty to architraves. And if flatness and ap- 
 parent unity are necessary in interior door 
 frames, how much more so are they in monu- 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 163 
 
 mental architraves ! For there is a playfulness 
 allowable in wood or plaster that in dignified 
 stone would appear frivolous and out of place. 
 
 Some there may be who will object to this 
 rule of frame design, and point triumphantly 
 to a superb Gothic gateway as an example of a 
 heavy series of mouldings used successfully as 
 a frame, the doorway of Notre Dame, for in- 
 stance. This objection is more apparent than 
 real, for in good Gothic the mouldings never 
 project far in front of the wall ; they are cut on 
 the thickness of the wall itself, revealing its 
 depth and giving mystery and charm to the door 
 within. In reality, these myriad mouldings are 
 a frame only incidentally : primarily, and most 
 important, they are an expression of the pow- 
 erful arch that supports the great wall or gable 
 above. Exactly the same is true of the intricate 
 mouldings on the nave arch of a Gothic church ; 
 they are less a frame than an expression of the 
 arch idea itself.* Notice how strong and virile 
 are the lights and shadows and how the arch line 
 is repeated over and over again in lines of light 
 and dark. 
 
 The last main use of the moulding is its use 
 as a "string course," that is, its use in horizon- 
 
 * See the Plates opposite pages 56 and 150. 
 
164 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 tal bands across a building between base and 
 cornice. The string course may be used to ex- 
 press floor levels, or it may be used merely 
 decoratively to cut the building into pleasing 
 vertical relationships. There is often one above 
 the first or second floor, to make the bottom 
 stories count as a base, and one near the top of 
 the building to form with the cornice an ade- 
 quate crown, while the shaft between is un- 
 broken. String courses themselves are of com- 
 paratively little importance; it is by position 
 that they gain their significance. In general, in 
 small buildings they are to be avoided; and in 
 large ones to be used with restraint. Of the 
 design of the string course itself there is little 
 to be said; a hundred different buildings may 
 require a hundred different profiles, and their 
 effect is their sole test. They ought never to 
 conflict with the cornice, nor to seem to cut the 
 building into too distinct parts; beyond that, 
 the architect's only limitation is the propor- 
 tion and the style of the rest of the building. 
 
 No attempt has been made in this chapter to 
 give an absolutely complete list of the use of 
 mouldings, nor to treat of them exhaustively. 
 Such a treatment would be beyond the scope of 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 165 
 
 this work; it would demand a book in itself. 
 The foregoing discussion is given merely as a 
 suggestive outline, to point out certain salient 
 features of moulding design, so that the reader 
 may start out for himself to study mouldings, 
 and thus lay the foundations for a clearer and 
 truer personal appreciation. 
 
 There are, of course, other kinds of non-rep- 
 resentational ornament, but there is not much 
 that need be said of them. There is the whole 
 field of geometric ornament, the use of squares, 
 ellipses, checker-boards, frets, either in bands 
 or over broad fields. There is just one kind of 
 ornament to which reference must be made, be- 
 cause of its sincerity, its beauty, and its grad- 
 ually growing use; and that is the kind of or- 
 nament produced by the combination of differ- 
 ent materials; such as brick and tile, or brick 
 of differing colours, or brick and stone. It is an 
 old method, but for many years out of fashion. 
 We find it on Tudor houses in England, in the 
 form of lozenge-shaped patterns, produced by 
 the insertion of dark and light bricks in certain 
 places; the pattern usually charmingly irregu- 
 lar, wandering naively over a gable end, and 
 then dying away, or changing abruptly where 
 
166 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the width of the brick work made it difficult to 
 make the pattern come out straight. There is 
 an especially good example of this treatment 
 on the front of Hampton Court Palace, near 
 London, and a modern example in the Duncan 
 house, recently built in Newport, Ehode Island. 
 Lately, the increasing careful study of the ar- 
 chitecture of the past has showed us the possi- 
 bilities latent in this sort of thing, and more 
 and more, with greater freedom and skill, we 
 are beginning to have buildings with the charm- 
 ing texture that a subtle pattern gives; and 
 more and more, we are substituting for cheap 
 and ugly metal cornices bands of gaily-coloured 
 brick or tile, or terra cotta, to fulfill their aes- 
 thetic purpose in a saner and more sincere 
 manner. 
 
 Of all kinds of ornament, however, it is the 
 ornament of representation that has the strong- 
 est grip on human sensibilities, and that touches 
 with the greatest poignancy the depths of ar- 
 tistic appreciation. Ever since our ancestors 
 painted buffaloes and mammoths on their cave 
 walls, or carved them on bones, humanity has 
 delighted in pictures. Almost every child draws 
 pictures of the things that appeal to him most ; 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 167 
 
 engines, and boats, and horses, and houses, and 
 people; and however deeply buried by later 
 training and daily tasks, in most of us this pic- 
 ture-making instinct lives always. It is this 
 picture-making instinct applied to architecture 
 that produces representational ornament, and 
 makes us warm to a beautifully carved flower 
 frieze more readily than to a Greek fret. 
 
 From the earliest times, this picture-making 
 instinct has been bound up inextricably with the 
 religious instinct. The savage often endows his 
 pictures with a magic life and a deep symbol- 
 ism, and traces of this feeling linger yet. That 
 is why Mr. Kuskin laid such stress upon repre- 
 sentational ornament, looking at it with a relig- 
 ious earnestness. Ornament was to him more 
 than decoration; it was a form of worship, al- 
 most sacramental. Its appeal to him was as 
 much moral as aesthetic ; and from this attitude 
 of his he developed his queerly coloured views of 
 architecture, and his queerly warped theories of 
 ornament. All praise to him for the serious 
 and reverent nature of his criticism! A great 
 deal more of that spirit in our American design 
 would give us better, freer, more beautiful 
 buildings. And yet appreciation of Kuskin 's 
 
168 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 earnestness and sincerity must not blind us to 
 the errors of his one-sided viewpoint ; nor need 
 we follow him in every detail, and we may rest 
 assured that the lovely fall and the swaying 
 curves of a piece of hung drapery are as prop- 
 erly decorative as the similar curves in a twin- 
 ing vine; the beauty of the ornament lies 
 primarily in line, and balance, and light and 
 shade, and not in subject. 
 \i But to deny that the subject has anything to 
 do with the effect of ornament is as illogical as 
 to go to the other extreme with Ruskin. The 
 Egyptians felt an awe and a thrill at their 
 painted lotus that is foreign to us ; but the 
 mediaeval peasant's pleasure at seeing his native 
 plants carved on his church door we might have, 
 if we would. To tell the truth, the modern 
 architect, under the present professional sys- 
 tern, is so occupied with structural details, and 
 the main questions of composition, that he can- 
 not afford to study every bit of ornament from 
 nature; he turns naturally to ornament of the 
 past that he knows is beautiful, and the rele- 
 vance of its subject to modern life is lost sight 
 of. This is not a permanent condition ; it is the 
 inevitable result of the suddenness of our ses- 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 169 
 
 thetic growth, and the immense amount of work 
 to be done in a short time. Already there are 
 signs of a healthier attitude ; already our archi- 
 tects ' are beginning to consider classic orna- 
 ment more as a basis, and less as a set of forms 
 to be slavishly followed. More and more on our 
 best work touches of native flora, bands of oak 
 leaves or the like are appearing, and only re- 
 cently a firm of New York architects worked 
 out with their modeller, for the Mary Baker G. 
 Eddy memorial, near Boston, a set of forms 
 classic in feeling, but based on the morning 
 glory and the wild rose, that, as ornament, are 
 nearly perfect. These friezes and panels have 
 the delicacy and grace of ornament of the best 
 Eoman or Renaissance work, but in addition 
 they are alive with the freshness of real crea- 
 tion, and instinct with an appeal which the pure 
 classic would never have possessed. It is to be 
 hoped that this example is but the beginning of 
 a movement in American architecture towards a 
 new appreciation of the opportunity that our 
 native forms offer, and a new freedom in the 
 treatment of the skill of the past. 
 
 Historic ornament has, nevertheless, a tre- 
 mendously important place in the understand- 
 
170 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ing of our art at the present time, and an under- 
 standing of it is vitally necessary to the appre- 
 ciation of architecture, not only because of its 
 important relation to the work of this day, but 
 also because of its inherent importance in the 
 monuments of its own times. Of Egyptian, 
 Babylonian, and Persian ornament little need 
 be said, for, interesting as they are, and beauti- 
 ful in their own place, their symbolism is so im- 
 portant that it is impossible to begin to under- 
 stand them without at least some knowledge of 
 the mythology on which they are based, and that 
 it is beyond the scope of this book to give. 
 Egyptian ornament is interesting from two 
 sources; the use of decorative conventionaliza- 
 tions of the sacred lotus, and the use of colour 
 as a decoration for architecture. 
 
 Forms, to the Egyptians, as to all primitive 
 peoples, are fluid, susceptible of infinite change, 
 provided certain formulae are observed. Thus, 
 the lotus was changed into a thousand forms, 
 into capitals for columns, into ornaments for all 
 kinds of furniture, into decorative spots, to be 
 formed into rosettes or bands or all-over pat- 
 terns. Thus the human figure was gradually 
 conventionalized from the fine naturalism of the 
 
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DECOEATIVE MATERIAL 171 
 
 earlier dynasties ; and the size of the figures was 
 determined, not by reality or the demands of 
 perspective, but by the ideal importance of the 
 figures represented. A king filled a whole tem- 
 ple front, while his slave was scarce two stones 
 high. But these figures were always grouped 
 in serried ranks and combined, big and little, 
 with hieroglyphic inscriptions, into a whole that 
 was beautiful, well composed, and carefully exe- 
 cuted. The Egyptian, for all his symbol- 
 ism, was always an artist; the magnificence of 
 his buildings in their ruin bears eloquent wit- 
 ness to the fact that his symbolism and his aes- 
 thetic creativeness walked always hand in hand. 
 This decorative ability, this innate feeling for 
 beauty, is equally evidenced by the colour deco- 
 ration of the Egyptian buildings. We, who have 
 lived always in the quiet, cloudy north, can 
 never realize the absolute necessity for colour 
 in the architecture of the sun-steeped south. 
 The blaze of tropic day on stone or stucco de- 
 mands colour to mitigate its dazzle, and colour 
 the Egyptians gave it, blues and greens, browns 
 and reds, and a very little yellow and white, for 
 in the use of colour the Egyptian was as con- 
 ventional as in his use of form, The colour, 
 
172 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 whether outdoors or in, is always in flat masses, 
 so that the solidity of the decorated surface is 
 never lost. Therein lies the lesson to us ; if we 
 wish to produce that decorative greatness, that 
 quietness, that solidity, that air of ever-living 
 strength, there is but one way to do it, to make 
 our ornament, whatever it is, pictorial or other- 
 wise, primarily decorative ; to keep it always an 
 integral part of the surface to which it is ap- 
 plied. 
 
 But decoratively skilful as the Egyptians 
 were, their ideas of composition and design 
 were merely elemental. It was only with the 
 Greeks that we see the beginning of a real grasp 
 of the value of line. It is true, they built largely 
 on Egyptian origins, but what with the Egypt- 
 ians was a mere incident became for the Greeks 
 the foundation of their system. This was the 
 S curve, "the curve of beauty," as Hogarth 
 called it. There is something about its contin- 
 ually changing curvature particularly fascinat- 
 ing, so that, once discovered and applied, it 
 could never again be forgotten. And the Greeks 
 used it to the full ; and along with it discovered 
 the value of gradually changing the curvature in 
 every line they used. There is scarce a Greek 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 173 
 
 vase, or a Greek moulding, or a Greek ornament 
 which has any circular curves in it at all ; every 
 curve is something subtly fascinating, starting 
 nearly a straight line, becoming more and more 
 curved throughout its length, ending with the 
 sharpest curve of all. This wonderful mastery 
 of curved lines was combined with a delicacy of 
 feeling and a perfection of execution unpar- 
 alleled to this day.* 
 
 It is also to the Greeks that we owe several 
 forms that have been father to a tremendous 
 tradition; the conventionalized, acanthus leaf, 
 the anthemion, and the combination of these 
 forms with a branching scroll. The acanthus 
 leaf especially, at first spiky and flat, later 
 rounded and deeply cut, with its serrated 
 edges, and strongly modelled surface, forms a 
 motive admirably suited for almost any decora- 
 tive purpose, as its long history proves. 
 
 Probably, however, it is for their skill in 
 using the human figure decoratively that the 
 Greeks were best known. A thousand people 
 know the Parthenon frieze where one knows the 
 anthemion. They were supreme in this field; 
 no such flat conventionalizations as those the 
 Egyptians used pleased these truth-seeking, 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 170. 
 
174 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 beauty-loving people ; their figures must be real, 
 they must be as perfect in truth and beauty as 
 their carvers could make them. Now it is much 
 more difficult to use naturalistic figures in a 
 decorative way than it is to use flat and conven- 
 tionalized figures, but the difficulty was not too 
 great for the Greeks because they were always 
 pressing on toward an ever-growing ideal. Al- 
 most all the early Oriental peoples were con- 
 servative, priest-ruled, superstitious, and their 
 ornamental forms developed naturally into 
 standardized sacred types, with which they were 
 satisfied. A thousand years produced less 
 change in the art of Egypt than a hundred in 
 Greece or Eome, because in Egypt the priestly 
 ideal had been attained at the start. In Greece, 
 however, the ideal was never attained. As their 
 philosophy was an eager, passionate, unceasing 
 attempt to get at the facts of nature, an attempt 
 that grew and broadened as the years passed, 
 always searching, searching, and never attain- 
 ing ; so their art was a continual and eager de- 
 velopment, ever pressing on to ideals never 
 attained, because as the art developed, so did the 
 ideal; always striving after new beauty, never 
 satisfied, even in its decadence trying for new 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 175 
 
 forms of splendour never before achieved. 
 Therein lies the secret of Greek greatness. 
 
 There was something of the same eager ideal- 
 ism, though of a more homely kind, in the 
 Romans who followed the Greeks as the fore- 
 most people of the world. They realized the 
 beauty of the Greek art ; but if one is tempted to 
 say it satisfied them, let him study a little some 
 of the myriad fragments of Roman friezes that 
 remain to us.* They are unsurpassed. To be 
 sure, they use the acanthus — a Greek form, and, 
 perhaps, the branching scroll, also a Greek form. 
 But there is about them a splendour of light and 
 shade, a forceful modelling, a saving natural- 
 ism, that is new. True, the Romans could never 
 carve a Parthenon frieze or the Phidian frag- 
 ments; but on buildings of the great scale the 
 Romans loved, it was an impossibility to use 
 figure sculpture; sixty feet of perfectly sculp- 
 tured figures are wonderful ; three hundred feet 
 would be monotony. That the Romans had a 
 different theory from that of the Greeks is no 
 argument against it; and the ornament of the 
 mediaeval and modern world owes infinitely 
 more to the Romans than to the Greeks. In 
 particular, the Romans were the first people to 
 
 ♦See the Plate opposite page 170. 
 
176 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE . 
 
 \ use natural foliage extensively as ornament, ' 
 treated in a natural way; and the first people 
 to appreciate the value of varied relief in carved 
 ornament. The relief in all Roman ornament is 
 in places high and bold, at other times almost 
 dying into the background; and the resulting 
 light and shade, though with less precision, per- 
 haps, than Greek relief, has a life and variety 
 which the Greek never knew.* 
 
 It is just at these two points that our modern 
 ornament is lacking. We have learned line from 
 the Greeks, and from the Eomans, splendour 
 and variety; but the Roman use of natural 
 forms we pass by, and too often our ornament 
 is flat and uninteresting in relief, as if stamped 
 out of metal or sawn from wood, rather than 
 modelled in clay or carved out of solid stone. 
 .' The Byzantine artists had still another dec- 
 orative idea ; their mouldings were flattened and 
 often soft and coarse in profile and their relief 
 is flat and hard. Nevertheless, Santa Sophia 
 in Constantinople is gorgeous in decorative ef- 
 f ect.t The Byzantine used his ornament to cover 
 large surfaces with patterns of extreme intri- 
 cacy, and for this purpose too interesting a re- 
 
 * Compare the Plates opposite page 170. 
 fSee the Plate opposite page no. 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 177 
 
 lief had to be avoided. Of Romanesque carving 
 it is not necessary to speak, for all that is good 
 in it is similar in spirit to either Roman or By- 
 zantine models, or else was developed to a far 
 higher level in the ornament of the Gothic 
 period. 
 
 Capital from Southwell Minster, England. 
 
 Fig. 16. Note the naturalistic treatment of the 
 foliage. 
 
 This Gothic ornament has already been 
 treated at some length, and it will not, therefore, 
 be necessary to add much more concerning it. 
 Suffice it to say that in Gothic ornament we get 
 the lovely flowering of the whole Gothic spirit ; 
 its delight in good craftsmanship, its slow 
 growing but insistent individualism, its naive 
 sincerity, even its reverent mysticism. At times 
 
178 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 it suffers from the lack of the classical grasp of 
 line. This is particularly true of English 
 Gothic; the capital illustrated has, for in- 
 stance, a somewhat bulbous silhouette, and 
 the wreathed effect contradicts absolutely the 
 supporting function that the best capitals 
 express. But however many flaws we may pick 
 with details of line, no fault can be found with 
 this capital as an interesting and sincere inter- 
 pretation of the ever fascinating, ever delight- 
 ful outside world. 
 
 French Gothic ornament is often as beauti- 
 fully structural as the English is beautifully 
 naturalistic. This is particularly true of figure 
 sculpture, which is, perhaps, the most success- 
 ful architectural sculpture in the world, next to 
 the Greek. French Gothic decorative figures 
 are always strong, upright, structural, and al- 
 ways, too, the best are beautiful by themselves, 
 with well modelled heads and masterly drapery. 
 Conventionalization in these figures never goes 
 so far as to make them bad sculpture although 
 good architecture? like all the best ornament, 
 they are both good in themselves and in their 
 place.* 
 
 The development of Kenaissance ornament is 
 
 * See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
CATHEDRAL, CHARTRES, FRANCE 
 (TRANSEPT porch) 
 
 Gothic architectural sculpture at its best. The figures are full of structural 
 feeling, but beautiful in themselves as well. See page 178. 
 
DECOBATIVE MATERIAL 179 
 
 the story of the gradual struggle of classical 
 ideas, the classical feeling for line and relief, to 
 a new ascendancy. But the Gothic influence 
 never completely died. Kenaissance ornament, 
 particularly in France and England, was never 
 completely like the ornament of Greece and 
 
 French Gothic Capitals. 
 
 Fig. 17. Notice the strong structural vertical feel- 
 ing and contrast with Figure 16. 
 
 Rome, because the Middle Ages had left an in- 
 delible influence upon men's minds. There is 
 no classic prototype for the heavy garlands of 
 very real fruit and flowers that the English ar- 
 chitects of the Eighteenth Century loved so 
 dearly. There is certainly no classic prototype 
 for the " strap' ' ornament and the carved 
 shields and curved cartouches so popular in 
 
180 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 France at the same time. It was only in periods 
 of frank artistic decadence that rigid copying 
 was indulged in; the dreary period of the 
 Roman and Greek revivals of the Eighteenth 
 and early Nineteenth Centuries and the formal 
 classicism of the Eighteenth Century in Italy. 
 Then, too, the whole development of Renais- 
 sance art was influenced by the great individual- 
 ism of the times, the new humanism. Particu- 
 larly in Italy, each artist had his differing style ; 
 the history of the art is the history of successive 
 men of genius ; from the time when Brunelleschi 
 reared the Pazzi Chapel, and Desiderio da Set- 
 tignano and Mino da Fiesole put up their lovely 
 tombs and altar pieces,, to the time when Michel- 
 angelo, by the very force of his misunderstood 
 tremendousness, ushered in all the good and bad 
 of the Baroque, until all Italian art thundered 
 in stucco splendour and plaster profundity to 
 its wild and riotous decay. 
 
 Of post-Renaissance ornament, there are 
 three or four influences it may be necessary to 
 mention. First, there are the French "pe- 
 riods," known by the names of the reigning 
 kings, Louis Quatorze, Quinze, Seize, and Em- 
 pire, and the corresponding trends in the orna- 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 181 
 
 ment of other countries. In them, for the first 
 time, the artist seems to consciously seek his 
 ends in an abstract way, unrelated to the past. 
 In them, for the first time, the artist seems self- 
 conscious ; and though there is a loss of naive 
 charm, there is also a corresponding gain in 
 abstract skill. 
 
 There is system in these periods, too. They 
 are illustrative of the continual conflict of two 
 contrasting ideals, the restrained and " classic,." 
 and the free, unrestrained and often erratic "ro- 
 mantic." In the so-called Louis Quatorze and 
 Louis Quinze styles, although exteriors, are se- 
 verely classic, the lighter, freer style had full 
 sway in interior design, resulting in that com- 
 bination of sweeping, graceful curves, and gilt 
 and white and light colours that all of us know 
 too well; but too often know only from out of 
 place and misunderstood modern caricatures. 
 Could we see a real interior of the style at its 
 best, furnished in perfect tone, and peopled 
 with the joyous costumes of the day, we 
 should appreciate more its strength, its grace, 
 its wonderful grasp of abstract line, the perfec- 
 tion of its curves. Later, there came the in- 
 evitable reaction to the restraint of Louis Seize, 
 
182 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and the Adam brothers, and then to the severity 
 of the Empire — periods, losing more and more 
 the talent for ornament in itself and for itself. 
 This tendency developed finally into the long 
 and dreary monotony of the revivals, from 
 which we have scarce yet emerged. 
 
 Even more important for us is the so-called 
 1 i Art Nouveau, " u Secession ' 9 art, or whatever 
 you may call it. This is a development of the 
 self -consciousness of the artist to the point of 
 morbidity. The artist is so conscious of his 
 aims, his theories, his ego, that he is scornful 
 of the past ; so proud of his own nationalism or 
 his own superior culture, that he deems it more 
 than sufficient to fill all the demands of art. 
 Though he pretend to appreciate the art of the 
 past, his own vanity, or his nationalistic afflatus 
 forces him to neglect its opportunities for this 
 modern age. Originality is his god, not beauty ; 
 and he must forget the language the past has 
 furnished him to forge a new language all his 
 own. 
 
 And yet, it must not be thought that there is 
 no praise due the many thinking artists who are 
 labouring in this new way, or the ideals of sin- 
 cerity and true expression which they uphold. 
 
DECORATIVE MATERIAL 183 
 
 To bring about any reform extremists are neces- 
 sary: perhaps even the Eeign of Terror was 
 necessary to the future health of the French 
 nation. So, in ' ' Art Nouveau, ' ' we must see not 
 a new style that is the artistic salvation of the 
 world, but rather a protest against the slavish 
 imitation of the past, a protest movement that 
 will act and react with the innate conservatism 
 of the human crowd, to produce at last an art 
 renaissance that shall be truly as great as that 
 of Athens, or of Rome, or of Florence, grateful 
 and reverent towards the past, but keenly alive 
 to the present, and with its mind ever dream- 
 ing of the future, using the past as a means to 
 a beautiful present and a more glorious future. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 
 
 There has been so much discussion of orna- 
 ment, and it is such an important part of the 
 art of architecture, that it will be worth while 
 to devote a little more time to it, and to 
 try to get at the question of what is good and 
 what is bad in any ornament, whatever the style 
 or subject. Ornament can be judged in two 
 ways ; first as a thing in itself, and secondly, in 
 relation to the building which it adorns. 
 
 Ornament as a thing by itself should be beau- 
 tiful. This should be self-evident; for orna- 
 ment is by its very interest the element of a 
 building on which the eye dwells longest, and 
 on which its attention becomes at last fixed. In 
 a way, ornament is, therefore, a sort of climax. 
 At a distance the whole of a building is seen as 
 a mass, even a silhouette ; as one approaches, in- 
 teresting details begin to show themselves; 
 doors, windows, columns ; but when one is very 
 close to a large building, even these may be over- 
 
 184 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 185 
 
 looked, and the eye dwells on the swelling curve 
 of a base mould, or a beautiful bas-relief over a 
 window, or the soft texture of varied brick. 
 And it is an interesting fact that the larger the 
 building the more this is true ; the more the ef- 
 fect of the thing as a whole is lost on a close 
 view, and, therefore, the more the eye seeks in 
 what it can see for interesting ornament. This 
 explains why it is that a small house can be 
 beautiful with no ornament at all; whereas a 
 large building equally barren of relief would 
 be inexcusably dull. 
 
 Ornament, therefore, from its very function 
 to beautify must be beautiful, and it must con- 
 sequently follow all the demands of beauty 
 which have been already enumerated, unity, bal- 
 ance, rhythm, climax, grace, harmony, and so 
 forth. The criticism of ornament as an entity 
 by itself consists, then, of the application to the 
 ornament of these requirements. But that is 
 not all. The demands enumerated in Chapter 
 II are demands of pure form, and most orna- 
 ment is more than this. Architecture is pure 
 form based on good structural sense, and orna- 
 ment is pure form based on a just and sincere 
 spirit, for with ornament, and the idea of rep- 
 
186 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 resentation, there has entered a new element. 
 This element is the direct appeal of the repre- 
 sentation to our emotions ; that is, the emotional 
 effect of that complex of emotions, sensations, 
 memories, and associations, that the forceful 
 representation of anything, beautiful or unbeau- 
 tiful, produces in us. 
 
 Of course architecture, too, has a certain 
 amount of this element; a Gothic church pro- 
 duces a very definite, direct emotional effect in 
 us; so may a building in any of the styles. 
 In a Doric column we see Athens, before a 
 Corinthian colonnade we are in Rome, in a 
 Louis XIV room there rises before us the pic- 
 ture of that gorgeous silk-clad court. But this 
 is a delight more intellectual and more senti- 
 mental than the direct emotion at good orna- 
 ment; it requires a mind well trained, keenly 
 alert, stocked with such a store of the past as 
 only education can give. 
 
 Ornament is more democratic ; a good repre- 
 sentation of their brother men strikes a chord 
 and sets it thrilling in those to whom Athens is 
 unknown, and Rome only a vague word. It fol- 
 lows, then, that the subject represented is im- 
 portant to the effect of good ornament, and 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 187 
 
 more important than most of our present-day 
 architects realize. In the foregoing chapter 
 there has already been discussed one aspect of 
 this question, the matter of the material on 
 which the designer may draw. But there 
 are other aspects besides this on which it is 
 necessary to make our minds clear, and it is 
 these with which this chapter must deal. Chap- 
 ter V was concerned with material ; this chap- 
 ter will deal with artistic theory. 
 
 Eepresentational ornament, whatever the sub- 
 ject, must first of all be suitable. It must have 
 a subject suitable to the material out of which 
 it is made, suitable to the medium with which 
 it is made, and suitable for its place on the build- 
 ing and to the building's purpose. 
 
 Ornament must have a subject suitable to its 
 material. This is not such a strange fact as it 
 may at first seem. Consider for a moment the 
 qualities of the materials, granite and bronze. 
 Granite is hard to cut, heavy, with a coarse and 
 interesting texture. Bronze is metal poured 
 molten into a mould which is formed from a 
 model prepared probably in clay, soft, easily 
 modelled, capable of the most delicate varia- 
 tions and modulations of surface. Bronze has, 
 
188 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 in addition, a glossy, shiny surface when it is 
 finished, that reflects a changing light from 
 every slightest curve. Is it strange that what 
 would be a fit subject for one material should 
 be ridiculous in the other? 
 
 True, human figures could be carved in each, 
 but not figures dressed alike or doing the same 
 thing. The granite figure should be a tremend- 
 ous Colossus, with simple angular features, and 
 draperies falling in simple, severe lines. It 
 should be posed strong and upright, or seated 
 with enormous dignity and repose, with an age- 
 long quality in the posture like the age-long 
 character of the material. The bronze figure 
 may be dressed in intricate folds, or be nude ; it 
 may dart hither and thither at the artist's 
 fancy, it may be in a posture of swift motion, 
 and yet there is something in the ductile quality 
 of the material that seems perfectly appro- 
 priate. 
 
 Or consider the effect of different plants fash- 
 ioned in different materials. For instance, the 
 English loved to decorate their great iron gates 
 with a conventionalized vine, with delicate, 
 twisting lines, thin curling leaves, tiny tendrils, 
 curving in spirals. Can this be imagined 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 189 
 
 in granite ? The very grain of the stone would 
 be coarser than the tendrils ; in the play of light 
 over its granular, multi-coloured surface the 
 delicate shadows would be lost, and the whole 
 seem weak and pointless. A branch of white 
 oak, on the other hand, with its strong leaves, 
 and its hard, round acorns, could be carved in 
 granite more effectively than cast or wrought in 
 metal. 
 
 It is a universal rule, in fact, that the harder 
 and more durable the material of the ornament, 
 the severer and more dignified must be the ob- 
 ject represented. And, in general, the order 
 from the hardest and most durable to the soft- 
 est and most cheerful seems to run in some such 
 fashion as this : First, granite, suitable for se- 
 vere, somewhat conventionalized figures, and 
 plants with hard, strongly marked lines ; next, 
 marble, though here there is a tremendous va- 
 riety of textures and surfaces, suitable to a 
 great number of differing subjects. It must, 
 however, be noted that any marble with strongly 
 marked colour and veining is even less fitted for 
 delicate ornament than granite. Next, lime- 
 stone, the ordinary white stone of our Ameri- 
 can buildings. This is, like marble, a very va- 
 
100 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 riable material, and is midway in the scale, so 
 that almost any well designed ornament seems 
 suitable. Next, Caen stone, very soft and eas- 
 ily cut, suitable, therefore, for all sorts of nat- 
 uralistic ornament. Then wood, again a rich 
 and varied material, especially suitable for sub- 
 jects in low relief, but also, if the subject is 
 naturalistic, for high relief. And last, the met- 
 als, in which a freedom of line and subject, a 
 riotous play of fancy, are permitted such as no 
 other material allows. 
 
 Of course, this list is approximate only; but 
 it is significant, and it is based on truth. And 
 there are so many cases in our modern work 
 where the different qualities of different mate- 
 rials is forgotten, that it seems necessary to in- 
 clude it. We are always tempted to try to do 
 two things at once ; love for rich materials and 
 rich ornament often leads us to forget the sim- 
 ple demands of good design. Let the reader 
 take this to heart, and look at the ornament 
 around him with this in mind ; and the sense of 
 the necessary fitness of ornament and material 
 in good architecture will soon make itself felt. 
 
 Ornament must be suitable to the medium 
 in which it is executed. This is a simpler and 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 191 
 
 more obvious truth than the foregoing ; it needs 
 little explanation. It is absurd that painted 
 ornament, with all the richness of colour as its 
 field, should have the same kind of subjects as 
 carved ornament; though this has been done 
 times enough. The artists of the Baroque pe- 
 riod were particularly to blame ; they revelled in 
 monotonous paintings of carved garlands and 
 reliefs, and in sculpture full of strained and pic- 
 turesque motion, and the result, no matter how 
 skilfully done, is almost always unsatisfactory. 
 We are less sinners than they, but we must al- 
 ways be on our guard. 
 
 Last of all, the subject of ornament must be 
 appropriate to the purposes of the building 
 which it decorates. And here again we are lack- 
 ing. There seems a spiritual blindness about us, 
 to carve exactly the same things on our 
 churches as we do on our theatres. Think of 
 the added life and zest our architecture would 
 have if always the modeller and architect had 
 fixed ineradicably in their minds the purpose of 
 the building whose ornament they were design- 
 ing. It may be right to carve or paint plant 
 forms almost anywhere; the world of green 
 nature seems always at home ; but the moment 
 
192 THE ENJOYMENT OP AKCHITECTURE 
 
 the human element enters in, then we nmst be 
 careful ; and this human element ought to enter 
 in a great deal more than it does. Surely we are 
 missing something in our architecture when we 
 decorate the frieze of villa, courthouse, theatre, 
 and church with the skulls and sacrificial rib- 
 bons of the Roman temple. If we could only 
 more use architecturally the figures our sculp- 
 tors are doing so well! There is a continually 
 growing excellence in our American sculpture, 
 but the architects — and their clients, too, for it 
 is their wishes that the architects must mate- 
 rialize — seem lagging in their appreciation of 
 the value of this sculpture and these sculptors 
 to them. 
 
 In Arcadia, in that perfect society where ar- 
 chitect, painter and sculptor collaborate in 
 every building, things will be vastly different. 
 All the theatres there, not merely one or two, 
 will be decorated with reliefs and unusual paint- 
 ings typifying, perhaps, the great plays of the 
 world's literature, perhaps merely the exuber- 
 ance of the youth-giving joy that produced them. 
 All the churches will have written large upon 
 them in frieze and group and picture the glory 
 of the saints and martyrs and prophets and 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 193 
 
 apostles of all the ages, and the constant strug- 
 gle between the forces of light and happiness 
 and the forces of greed and decadence. And the 
 schools — in England they are making more 
 of a beginning at school decoration than we ; a 
 glimpse into one of their new schools with its 
 class rooms decorated with soft mural paint- 
 ings is a revelation. But in Arcadia even that 
 beginning will seem crude; the school fronts 
 will be gay with friezes of happy children, like 
 those glad children that sing everlastingly from 
 the famous Cantoria of Luca della Robbia.* The 
 corridors will be bright with paintings of all 
 those trades and professions to which the pupils 
 aspire ; and in the assembly hall there will be a 
 great glorification of Life. Even the houses in 
 Arcadia will reveal something of the character 
 of their owner from the decorative subjects 
 which he suggests that his architect embody in 
 the design. 
 
 Let us hope that this unrealizable Arcadian 
 ideal will be striven after here and now. It is 
 not so impracticable as it seems; one of the 
 great New York High Schools is being little by 
 little decorated by a number of artists in some 
 such similar way. Our ancestors have seen and 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 194. 
 
194 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 appreciated the value of living, relevant orna- 
 ment, and produced it; there is no inability in 
 us; our sculptors have the skill, our architects 
 are awaiting the chance. There is only one thing 
 lacking — the desire; for one must remember 
 that what the mass of people want, that they 
 get. It is only because the person who is build- 
 ing does not know what he wants that the archi- 
 tect is usually compelled to exert such complete 
 sway over the building. Let us hope, then, that 
 the day may come when the great mass of peo- 
 ple will come to appreciate the value of this live, 
 human ornament, and demand it; for then our 
 American architecture will blossom into new 
 beauty, and our common life contain a new ele- 
 ment of richness and joy. 
 
 It is even more important that the treatment 
 of the ornament be entirely suitable to its ma- 
 terial, medium, and purpose, than that the sub- 
 ject be suitable. For treatment, that is, the 
 handling of the subject, is a technical matter ; it 
 is entirely dependent upon the material and 
 medium, and yet it can make or mar ornament. 
 It is, however, less interesting than the subject 
 of ornament, for while the subject deals with 
 the spirit and the soul, treatment deals merely 
 
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 with the externalizing of that soul. It is, there- 
 fore, in this matter of treatment that we must 
 most diligently study the past; it is for this 
 reason that in the historical summary in the 
 last chapter the treatment was in every case em- 
 phasized to such an extent. 
 
 The most salient fault of the treatment of the 
 ornament of present-day America is a fault that 
 is not confined to our incompetent architects; 
 it is universal. Indeed, it is often in the work 
 of the lesser known men, even in some of our 
 purely commercial architecture, that one sees 
 the signs of a recognition of this fault, and an 
 attempt towards something better. This fault 
 is the treatment of ornament in terra cotta. 
 
 It is a great misfortune that terra cotta can 
 be manufactured in so close an imitation of 
 stone. It has warped our whole attitude to- 
 wards it, and bred in too many of us an insid- 
 ious artistic insincerity. All over the country 
 terra cotta is being used to simulate the more 
 valuable material; and every attempt is made 
 by even our best architects to make this simu- 
 lation as exact as possible, in colour and in text- 
 ure. Ornament in terra cotta so considered is 
 treated absolutely like cut stone ornament. In- 
 
196 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 deed, a building faced with this sort of terra 
 cotta seems a deliberate attempt to hoax the 
 public into believing that it is faced entirely 
 with cut stone. 
 
 We cannot but condemn this practice. Is it 
 a sign of some innate insincerity in our minds 
 that we have done it so much? Not altogether, 
 it is to be hoped; it is rather a sign that our 
 architects have thought so long in terms of cut 
 stone, under present conditions the costliest and 
 most durable building material there is, that it 
 is hard for them to think in terms of another 
 material less durable and less costly. And yet 
 terra cotta has enormous possibilities of its own. 
 Here are a few of the qualities that terra cotta 
 possesses which are unique: First, it is not 
 carved, but cast in moulds from models ; so that 
 from one model there can be made a very large 
 number of terra cotta blocks. This at once sug- 
 gests repeated ornament of some complex kind ; 
 some fine delicate pattern over each block that 
 will give to the building a distinct texture, and 
 differentiate it from a stone building. Second, 
 since terra cotta ornament is not carved, but 
 moulded and cast, it becomes possible to treat 
 this ornament in a much freer way than would 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 197 
 
 be possible in stone. We can vary the relief 
 endlessly, using deep holes of shadow and bold 
 projecting masses of high light, or making the 
 ornament so delicate as to almost disappear, 
 with a cheerful f orgetfulness of the more string- 
 ent demands of stone work. And thirdly, as 
 terra cotta has to be baked, it can be glazed and 
 coloured at little extra cost. What this fact may 
 mean to us fifty years from now it would be idle 
 to guess ; the only surprise is that it has meant 
 so little to us up to the present time. This is the 
 more surprising since in the Italian Renais- 
 sance, which all of our architects study so care- 
 fully, there was a virile school of decorators in 
 coloured terra cotta. Luca della Eobbia, Andrea 
 della Robbia ; these are magic names in the his- 
 tory of the early flowering of the Renaissance 
 in the north of Italy, names of men whose fame 
 and wares travelled to France and far England ; 
 yet for all one can see of the effect of their lives 
 and works in the buildings around, they might 
 never have lived. Here and there, it is true, an 
 architect has the temerity to use bits of coloured 
 terra cotta on a building, here and there is a 
 faience wainscot or fountain; but the endless 
 possibilities that lie in a free, sincere treatment 
 
198 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of ornament in coloured or glazed terra cotta 
 have been strangely neglected. Let us hope this 
 neglect will soon come to an end ; that colour and 
 terra cotta will eventually gain together their 
 true place in our modern American architecture, 
 and the day of imitation stones, from the cast- 
 iron of 1856 to the cast terra cotta of 1916, will 
 sink to an unregretted end. 
 
 There is one great class of ornament that it is 
 needful to mention in any discussion of the criti- 
 cism of ornament, because probably more has 
 been written with regard to its merits and de- 
 merits than with regard to those of any other 
 class. This class consists in the ornament that 
 is formed by the use of elements originally 
 structural necessities for a' purely decorative 
 purpose. Myriad examples will occur to one im- 
 mediately ; columns, niches, gables, domes — like 
 the exterior shells of the Renaissance domes, 
 such as St. Paul's in London — arches, and the 
 like. The column and the forms closely related 
 to it, the pilaster and engaged column are, per- 
 haps, the most obvious. Originally, the column 
 was a purely structural member, used as a sup- 
 port, where a support was necessary. Later, 
 columns and colonnades were used merely deco- 
 
THE CRITICISM OF OENAMENT 199 
 
 ratively, because there is nothing that can take 
 the place of the restful rhythm and strong grace 
 of the colonnade. Of course, in some places the 
 colonnade has a true function as a real porch; 
 as in the Capitol at Washington, which has been 
 so often cited before. But even in this case 
 there is more colonnade than the actual de- 
 mands would require; the decorative reason 
 for the colonnade is really more important than 
 the structural reason. And when we get ex- 
 amples of a colonnade like that of the Louvre 
 or the State Education Building in Albany, the 
 porch idea is practically non-existent, and the 
 colonnade is frankly decorative; and it is as 
 decoration wholly that it must be judged. 
 
 The Eomans began another decorative use of 
 the column. They used engaged columns, that 
 is, columns partly built into a wall, in conjunc- 
 tion with arches. This combination is seen espe- 
 cially in their theatres and amphitheatres like 
 the Colosseum,* but it was used on other build- 
 ings as well ; on the Basilicas, for instance, and 
 the Tabularium, the Roman governmental build- 
 ing, which rose high above the Forum on the 
 Capitoline Hill. This combination of arch and 
 column or pilaster was extensively used all 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 22. 
 
200 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 through the Eenaissance period; naves of 
 churches, palace fronts, cloisters, all were 
 treated with it from time to time ; the interior 
 of St. Peter's* is a great example, as is the 
 Vendramini Palace.t During the Eenaissance 
 the Italians began to use columns and pilasters 
 — "orders" as they are called, in still another 
 way, closely allied; that is, they decorated a 
 plain, unbroken wall with engaged columns or 
 pilasters, one, two, or three stories high. 
 
 There has been a world of abuse flung at this 
 decorative use of the "orders." Critic after 
 critic has assailed it as non-structural, insin- 
 cere ; critic after critic has pointed out that these 
 applied "orders" contradict the whole feeling 
 of the wall and has claimed that they are a base 
 practice of a decadent and hypocritical civiliza- 
 tion which has poisoned our architectural taste, 
 and directed us away from the true virtues ex- 
 emplified in the glorious Gothic. 
 
 This charge, so often repeated, has been as a 
 rule defied consistently by the architects, who 
 continue to use these criticised methods of deco- 
 ration with great frequency. It seems neces- 
 sary, therefore, to look somewhat closely into 
 
 * See Frontispiece. 
 
 f See the Plate opposite page 46. 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 201 
 
 the merits of this criticism, and see what are 
 the real facts of the controversy. 
 
 The difference seems to lie in the point of 
 view. If we are willing to accept the point of 
 view of these critics, we arrive inevitably at 
 their conclusions; similarly, if we accept the 
 architect's point of view, we shall continue to 
 use these "insincere" decorations. The crux 
 of the matter seems to be that the critics, who 
 have so denounced this decorative use of struc- 
 tural members, have too much intellectualized 
 the art of architecture. They have deified the 
 virtue of sincerity, and applied it with a strict- 
 ness entirely unwarranted. It is true that col- 
 umns are in essence supporting members; and 
 that to use them as decorations is to forget this 
 original function. But, on the other hand, the 
 column is a very beautiful object in itself, aside 
 from its function as a support. Its strong, ver- 
 tical lines, with its decorated cap and base are 
 an architectural note that is unique, that can be 
 obtained in no other way. Why, then, if the 
 purpose of architecture is to create beautiful 
 buildings, should the architect not use this 
 uniquely beautiful motive, solely because of its 
 beauty? 
 
202 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Let us look for a moment at one of the most 
 criticised uses of the orders ; their combination 
 with the arch, as in the Colosseum. The beau- 
 tiful rhythm of this building has already been 
 analyzed ;* and nothing that critics can say can 
 destroy that. The critics' condemnation is a 
 theory; the wonderful, stately rhythm of the 
 building is a reality. Moreover, although the 
 arches really do the supporting of the wall, and 
 although the columns are a mere decoration, 
 notice how the vertical lines of the columns ex- 
 press support, how they seem to make still 
 stronger the strength of the arcaded wall. Simi- 
 larly, the deep shadowed entablatures over the 
 columns express the story heights, and tie the 
 whole enormous circuit of columns and arches 
 together. Now architecture is an art that ap- 
 peals to the sight first and foremost ; and it is, 
 therefore, the things one sees, and their expres- 
 sions, that are in fact more aesthetically real 
 than the actual construction of the building. 
 Therefore, it seems logical to conclude that 
 whatever has an expression proper to its posi- 
 tion is good architecture, provided it is beauti- 
 ful ; and consequently, the columns and entabla- 
 tures of the Colosseum are good architecture, 
 
 * See page 56. 
 
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THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 203 
 
 because in effect and expression they merely ac- 
 centuate the actual supporting of the piers, 
 and the actual division into stories. 
 
 A somewhat similar method must be em- 
 ployed in judging the use of colonnades. One 
 must use common sense; and where common 
 sense tells one that the colonnade is not an ac- 
 tual contradiction of or detriment to the needs 
 of the building, and his aesthetic sense tells him 
 it is pleasing as well, he may accept it as good 
 architecture. The colonnade of the Louvre in 
 Paris is such an example. The majestic ranks 
 of coupled columns set on the strong basement, 
 and broken just sufficiently by the corner pavil- 
 lions and the central pediment, are manifestly 
 pleasing; strong and graceful, this colonnade 
 forms a fitting ornament to the square on which 
 it faces. Nor does it offend structurally, for 
 although it is not a necessary porch, and al- 
 though it has little actual relation to the build- 
 ing behind, the spacing of the windows gives it 
 an apparent relation, and the building itself is 
 not of a character to demand any marked struc- 
 tural expression. Equally satisfactory is the 
 colonnade of the New York Post Office, already 
 illustrated.* But colonnades can become actually 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 202. 
 
204 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 detrimental. The New York State Education 
 Building in Albany has probably the largest 
 permanent colonnade in this country ; it is also 
 one of the greatest architectural monsters of the 
 last few years. In the first place, situated as it 
 is on a comparatively narrow avenue with a 
 steep slope, there is no such opportunity for 
 getting the effect as a whole as there is in the 
 case of the Louvre colonnade, and, therefore, no 
 such reason for sacrificing the structure of the 
 building to decorative effect. And the building 
 itself, a great office and administration building, 
 would seem to demand a treatment expressive 
 of its official and educational purpose; a pur- 
 pose that would apparently indicate many win- 
 dows, and floods of light and air, and in addition 
 a monumental and inviting entrance to typify 
 the democracy of the state. In the building as it 
 exists the strong projection of the colonnade 
 throws a deep shadow over the wall behind, and 
 the main entrance is marked only by an insignifi- 
 cant flight of steps, so that windows and en- 
 trance alike are lost in the dark; every possible 
 expression of the building's purpose concealed; 
 and the one thing prominent is a regiment of 
 enormous columns, close to the ground at one 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 205 
 
 end, and at the other mounted on a high base- 
 ment, because of the slope of the ground. Here 
 the sacrifice of structural expression has been, 
 indeed, too great, and in the colonnade itself, 
 with its over-ornamented, crowded Corinthian- 
 esque capitals, and the heavy, box-like entabla- 
 tures above, there is no supreme touch of beauty 
 or dignity to compensate. Here, then, orna- 
 mental use of structural features has gone too 
 far; here is a building where love of grandeur 
 and exterior effect have led to an insincerity 
 manifestly mistaken. 
 
 From this discussion, it would, therefore, ap- 
 pear that in the criticism of the decorative use 
 of structural architectural members there can 
 be both good and bad. We must neither en- 
 tirely condemn nor entirely commend ; each ex- 
 ample must be judged on its own merits. 
 Pierced Gothic gables over pointed arches, with 
 no roof behind, colonnades, engaged columns or 
 pilasters, are not of themselves either right or 
 wrong. If there is no absolute structural con- 
 tradiction entailed by their use, if they are not 
 an absolute obstacle to the proper use of the 
 building, one may excuse them, and, if they are 
 beautiful, and fulfill a true aesthetic function, 
 
206 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 accept them as good architecture. If, on the 
 other hand, their use seems to actually veil and 
 contradict the purpose of the building, or to 
 fulfill no imperative artistic demand, then one 
 is at liberty to condemn them bitterly for their 
 patent insincerity, as an architectural blunder. 
 In these few pages devoted to the decorative 
 use of structural members, the reader has al- 
 ready been brought face to face with another 
 great fact in the criticism of ornament, which 
 must be elaborated further, the relation of or- 
 nament to the building it decorates. In some 
 ways this relation is a more important fact in 
 the valuation of ornament than the criticism 
 of ornament by itself and for itself ; for many a 
 great building has some ornament that is far 
 from perfect, and even the loveliest ornament 
 cannot redeem a building if this ornament is 
 badly placed, or manifestly unsuitable. That 
 side of the relation that might be termed intel- 
 lectual or even spiritual, the matter of suitabil- 
 ity of ornament to the purpose of a building, for 
 instance, as regards both subject and treatment, 
 has already been discussed at some length ; but 
 the other great side of this relationship, that is, 
 the purely decorative side, needs some further 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 207 
 
 study. In other words, we must determine what 
 are the relationships between a building and its 
 ornament that produce good architecture. 
 
 The most obvious relationship between build- 
 ing and ornament is probably that of quantity. 
 As one walks through any city, that difference 
 between buildings may be the first to strike him. 
 He will notice that while some buildings have 
 a great deal of ornament, others have very lit- 
 tle ; and he will, at first, see no relationship be- 
 tween the amount of ornament and the merit 
 of the building. Some buildings almost covered 
 with ornament may be good, and some with an 
 equal amount bad; some of the plain, unorna- 
 mented buildings may seem bald and uninter- 
 esting, and some may be instinct with sturdy 
 beauty. 
 
 Indeed, there is a great latitude in the amount 
 of ornament that is good on a building. There 
 is no general rule for determining this amount 
 any more than there is a general rule for de- 
 termining the proper number of adjectives in 
 a novel. Ornament is one of the most individual 
 and personal things about a building, and in it 
 all the personality of its designer should enter, 
 freely. There are some men born with Baro- 
 
208 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 que minds, and some born with the artistic re- 
 straint of the Puritan. It does not behoove any- 
 one to call names ; to claim the baseness of the 
 one nature or the perfection of the other ; there 
 is beauty alike in abandon and in restraint. 
 
 Nor does there seem any inevitable connec- 
 tion between the amount of ornament and the 
 purpose of the building. At first thought it 
 might appear that a theatre should be more or- 
 namented than a church, that in general the 
 gayer and lighter the purpose of a building, 
 the greater the amount of ornament that might 
 be permitted. But even this simple statement 
 will not bear close analysis or universal appli- 
 cation, for the character of a building is deter- 
 mined by the general scheme of its composition, 
 and the kind, not the amount, of its decoration. 
 Some architects are such masters of the subtle 
 emotional values of pure shape and form, that 
 the amount of ornament becomes a secondary 
 matter; one architect can make a gay theatre 
 front of one great arch and one frieze of terra 
 cotta, and the next can make a solemn and im- 
 pressive church in the style of the most florid 
 Spanish baroque. In the amount of ornament 
 suitable to a building there is no one rule, and in 
 
DOOR OF THE ESCUELAS MENOKES, SALAMANCA, SPAIN 
 
 This beautiful doorway is all the more effective for being placed in an un- 
 ornamented stone wall. Note how the decoration fills the entire height of the 
 wall. See pages 07, 212. 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 209 
 
 the criticism of the amount there is only one cri- 
 terion and that of the vaguest; the amount 
 should seem neither too great nor too small. 
 Particularly, the ornament must not seem too 
 great ; better every time the under-ornamented 
 than the over-ornamented building. Restraint 
 is as valuable in ornament as in any other field 
 of endeavour, and in any building that gives the 
 impression that the designer has put into it 
 every scrap of ornament his brain could con- 
 ceive, there is, inevitably, a quality of ostenta- 
 tion and vulgarity. Dignity lies always in quiet- 
 ness, and quietness in restraint. 
 
 This must always be kept in mind in judging 
 the amount of ornament on a building. Some 
 of our architects seem to think that by the intri- 
 cate play of light and shade over surfaces orna- 
 mented with too much luxury they will blind 
 the eyes to the poverty of imagination behind 
 the whole design. They do not realize that the 
 difficulty of designing good ornament increases 
 directly with the amount, and that the only way 
 to keep a much-ornamented building from vul- 
 garity and ostentation is by the most careful 
 consideration of the ornament itself, with re- 
 gard to its absolute fitness and absolute unity. 
 
210 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 If the amount, the quantity, of ornament is, 
 therefore, comparatively unimportant in judg- 
 ing architecture, the placing of ornament be- 
 comes just so much more important. One rea- 
 son over-ornamented buildings are likely to be 
 ineffective is because the great amount of the 
 ornament prevents its being placed in some one 
 spot to give accent and interest. Upon the plac- 
 ing of ornament depends a great deal of its 
 merit or failure. 
 
 Ornament should, first of all, be placed where 
 the composition of the masses of the building 
 demands it. The value and necessity of this 
 use of ornament in the consideration of balance 
 has been pointed out.* Ornament may be equally 
 necessary to give rhythm, or harmony, or cli- 
 max. This is the reason buildings designed by 
 decorators are often singularly unimpressive; 
 the decorator, used to dealing in small things, 
 enthusiastic in his use of ornament, has had no 
 such training as the architect in grasping the 
 composition of large masses, and lacking this 
 grasp, he misplaces his ornament. The true 
 architect, as soon as the general scheme of his 
 building is determined, will realize at a glance 
 where the composition calls for ornament, 
 
 ♦See page 55. 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 211 
 
 whether as a cresting for the roof, or on the 
 cornice, or around a porch or door or bay win- 
 dow; and the ornament placed where it is in per- 
 fect composition gains value both by j.tself and 
 for the building. 
 
 In large buildings the placing of the orna- 
 ment becomes all the more important. In lav- 
 ish buildings built at great cost, in which it is 
 desirable to emphasize the note of dignified 
 magnificence, the ornament may be diffused 
 pretty generally through and over the whole 
 building, provided always that it is never so 
 placed as to apparently weaken the structure, or 
 diminish the sense of strong power. But in 
 buildings less formal, and buildings in the de- 
 sign of which the element of economy inevitably 
 enters to a great degree — by far the largest 
 class of buildings that surround us — ornament 
 becomes a luxury and must be used, therefore, 
 with all the greater care and restraint in order 
 to produce the desired effect of richness and 
 beauty with the least possible expenditure. 
 This can only be done by concentrating the or- 
 nament in a few places, and in particular in 
 placing it around the main entrance door and 
 around the cornice or the roof. This method of 
 
212 THE ENJOYMENT OF AKCHITECTURE 
 
 design by concentration was carried to the 
 greatest lengths in Spain, where we find again 
 and again great stretches of simple wall, capped 
 either with a bold, painted wooden cornice or 
 an open loggia, and decorated with one great 
 crust of intricate detail mounting around and 
 above the door.* 
 
 This is a style of design that is growing into 
 continually greater favour. The best of the 
 Colonial houses were fine examples of it ; in them 
 the general scheme was a simple, undecorated 
 wall of brick or stone, with a delicate cornice 
 to crown it, and a beautifully detailed door in 
 the middle.t The ornament is absolutely con- 
 centrated, and the simple wall throws the door 
 into a delightful prominence. 
 
 This tradition of concentrated ornament, 
 never entirely dead among us, has been 
 strengthened during the last few years not only 
 by study of the Spanish and Mohammedan 
 buildings designed in this way, but also because 
 of reasons of economy ; a teacher we have been 
 all too slow to heed, for in this case it teaches 
 a sane, artistic truth. The fact is that a build- 
 ing whose ornament is concentrated at one or 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 208. 
 f See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
DOOR OF THE GARDNER- WHITE-PINGREE HOUSE, SALEM, MASS. 
 
 The fact that the doorway is the only decorated feature of this house-front 
 adds immensely to its charm. See page 212. 
 
' THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 213 
 
 two or a few places is more effective than a 
 building in which the same amount of ornament 
 is scattered over the whole structure. 
 
 The kind of ornament that a building demands 
 has already been considered and its neces- 
 sary suitability for the purpose of the building 
 and to the material in which it is executed. It 
 only remains, then, to speak of the size of the 
 ornament. The size of ornament is important, 
 because it is this that plays a large part in one's 
 unconscious realization of a building's length 
 or height. In the architect's phrase, the size 
 of the ornament helps to give " scale" to the 
 building. 
 
 The great front of St. Peter's at Rome is a 
 monumental example of false scale set by the 
 size of the ornamented parts.* In the first 
 place, it is decorated by a range of perfectly 
 gigantic pilasters and engaged columns, each 
 as high as a building itself. This order is 
 capped by a correspondingly enormous entabla- 
 ture, on top of which is a balustrade at least 
 seven feet high. All the windows and niches 
 of the front are of correspondingly gargantuan 
 proportions, and the statues are colossal. Now 
 a balustrade is normally used as a railing, and 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 216. 
 
214 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 as such its height is rarely over four and a half 
 feet, and the eye is used to windows and niches 
 of a moderate size, and statues used as these are 
 used only slightly larger than life. What the 
 result of the enlargement of all these forms on 
 the front of St. Peter's is can be seen at once; 
 they dwarf it tremendously, and its enormous 
 size shrinks to apparently modest dimensions. 
 One cannot believe the balustrade is larger than 
 the usual balustrade, that the statues are over 
 twenty feet high, and consequently he can have 
 no conception of the true size of the great build- 
 ing in front of him. The first view of the front 
 of St. Peter's is almost always a disappoint- 
 ment, and it is a great shock to see a crowd pour 
 out of the doors ; people look like ants, not men. 
 It is a shock, too, to see a little bell high up on 
 the front, a bell apparently the size of a locomo- 
 tive bell, begin to swing, and to hear proceeding 
 from it tones deep and low, like the tones of 
 "Big Ben." It is only after repeated visits 
 that the true size and greatness of the building 
 begin to dawn slowly on one. An equally force- 
 ful example of false scale is the front of the 
 Grand Central Station, in New York City; the 
 great stone group on the top, with its thirty-foot 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 215 
 
 figures, destroys at once the effect of size that 
 the building should have had. Both are exam- 
 ples of the scheme of composition and the 
 scheme of decoration of a comparatively small 
 building used for a large building by simply in- 
 creasing every part proportionately; a scheme 
 that is necessarily imperfect, and leads to false 
 judgments. 
 
 The first rule of the size of ornament, is, then, 
 that ornament on any building should be so pro- 
 portioned as to make the building appear its 
 true size. This is to be done by keeping archi- 
 tectural forms such as balustrades, etc., as 
 nearly as possible to those sizes which are nor- 
 mal and usual, and by never unduly changing 
 the size of representational ornament from the 
 true size of the object represented. 
 
 There is a second rule which governs the size 
 of ornament which sometimes modifies the strict 
 application of the first rule. This can be stated 
 somewhat in these words : the size of ornament 
 should be consistent with its distance from the 
 eye. That is, ornament near the level of the 
 eye ought to be smaller and more delicate than 
 ornament far above it. This is a rule equally 
 forgotten in St. Peter's, for all the front has 
 
216 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ornament of a similar size and one walks into 
 the same gigantic type of mouldings that are 
 used a hundred feet in the air. 
 
 Nor are we guiltless in this respect, here in 
 America. Too often the upper part of other- 
 wise beautiful buildings is covered with a maze 
 of intricate ornament whose effect is totally lost 
 from the street. The use of terra cotta leads us 
 often astray, for terra cotta is cast from moulds, 
 and for the sake of economy the temptation is 
 strong to use the same moulds for similar de- 
 tails at both top and bottom, with the result that 
 the scale of the ornament is bound to be lost in 
 one place or the other. 
 
 Of course, both these rules have their ex- 
 ceptions; they are frequently violated in the 
 best buildings. But if they are violated there 
 must be a strong enough resultant gain to coun- 
 teract the lack of scale that results. For in- 
 stance, there may be a good and sufficient rea- 
 son why the architect may wish to consciously 
 falsify the scale of a building to make it appear 
 larger, or smaller, than it really is. The archi- 
 tect of the front of St. Peter's may have been 
 striving for just that result in order to produce 
 the shock at the final realization of its true size 
 
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 S3 
 
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THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 217 
 
 mentioned before. Similarly, it may be desir- 
 able to make a small building appear large, to 
 give it commanding position ; or to make it com- 
 pose better with its neighbours. Still, the con- 
 scious and voluntary falsification of scale is al- 
 ways a dangerous thing, and the gains it pro- 
 duces often visionary; there is about it an in- 
 sincerity that persists in giving continuous of- 
 fence to a trained eye after the trickery has once 
 been perceived. , 
 
 There is a great freedom permitted in the use 
 of natural forms in interior design that seems 
 to contradict this rule. For instance, there are 
 the reliefs on the outside of the choir screen of 
 Notre Dame in Paris, charming compositions 
 with figures about three or four feet high that 
 make a wonderfully decorative band around the 
 aisles that encircle the choir. They do not of- 
 fend the sense of scale, either, for, although they 
 are very much under life size, they are just on 
 the level of the eye, carefully worked out in 
 every detail, and frankly miniatures. That is 
 the secret of using naturalistic ornament at a 
 size smaller than the reality, it must be frankly 
 a miniature, there must be no pretense about it, 
 ^or pretense is insincere, and insincerity is bad 
 
218 THE ENJOYMENT OF AECHITECTURE 
 
 art. That is, perhaps, the reason that near the 
 eye things smaller than reality are so much 
 more successful, as a rule, than those larger 
 than reality ; for it is easier to make a miniature 
 than an enlargement. There are some cupids 
 holding a holy water vessel at the entrance of 
 St. Peter's which are good examples of this; 
 they are close to the eye, and carved cleverly 
 with a masterly truth to the child form.* Yet in 
 size they resemble everything else in that 
 church. They are gigantic, seven feet high, per- 
 haps, and somehow their size seems an insult, 
 and fills one with a sort of unconscious stubborn 
 anger, a desire to shout, "No, I'm not as small 
 as you make me out to be, you overgrown and 
 Eabelaisian infant" — a sentiment hardly relig- 
 ious. These cupids are bad ornament and worse 
 art, because of their patent theatrical insincerity. 
 In analyzing and criticizing ornament, then, 
 one must study it from these points of view: 
 First, it must be beautiful in itself. Secondly, it 
 must be suitable ; to the purpose of the building 
 it adorns, to the material in which it is executed, 
 and to the artistic medium. Thirdly, if it con- 
 sists of architectural, structural members used 
 for a decorative purpose, there must be some 
 
 * See Frontispiece. 
 
THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 219 
 
 sufficient aesthetic demand for them, and they 
 must not actually contradict the structure of the 
 building, or detract from its actual usefulness, 
 although it is not necessary for them to express 
 absolutely the hidden construction of the build- 
 ing. Fourthly, ornament must be correct in 
 amount, sufficient to give the desired richness 
 consistent with the building's design, but not so 
 great as to give any appearance of vulgar os- 
 tentation. Fifthly, ornament should be placed 
 where it will give the maximum of effect because 
 of the composition of the building ; and sixthly, 
 it should be of a size consistent, first with the 
 size and design of the building, and second, with 
 its distance from one looking at it. And in ex- 
 amining ornament from any of these view- 
 points, we must always keep in mind that great 
 demand of all true art : sincerity tempered with 
 common sense. 
 
 Ornament is a subject so large, and with im- 
 plication so broad, that it really demands a book 
 in itself. It is at the foundation of many of the 
 arts besides architecture, and it is the side of 
 architecture that enjoys the most universal ap- 
 preciation, and excites the most universal in- 
 terest, because it appeals most directly to that 
 decorative need at the basis of all the arts. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 PLANNING 
 
 Up to this point this book has dealt with archi- 
 tecture entirely as an art of aesthetic design, 
 whose effects are at once apparent to the eye of 
 a beholder. It has dealt with composition and 
 with the material which the architect nses to 
 produce his effects, structural and decorative. 
 Now it must broaden its scope and delve deep 
 into a side of architecture which is less appar- 
 ent, and, perhaps, less superficially interesting, 
 but upon which all the rest, in a way, is founded. 
 There can be absolutely no true appreciation 
 of architecture, without some appreciation of 
 planning, and it is a lack of attention to this 
 great subject which has led so many architec- 
 tural critics like Ruskin, far astray into airy 
 fields of fantastic theories. In the first chapter 
 an attempt was made to show the double nature 
 of architecture ; its growth from two ideas, the 
 idea of utility and structural strength, and the 
 idea of beauty ; and to point out the unique char- 
 
 330 
 
PLANNING 221 
 
 acter of the art produced by the interreaction of 
 the two ideas. So far, most of the book has 
 dealt with beauty, but this chapter must deal 
 largely with matters of utility and structure, 
 in order that one may gather a clearer notion 
 of the close implication of the two sides of 
 architecture, and their constant interpenetra- 
 tion of each other. For although planning is 
 mainly a matter of utility and strength, it must 
 not, therefore, be imagined that the true archi- 
 tect is engineer when he plans, and artist only 
 when he composes and decorates. The true ar- 
 chitect is both artist and engineer all the time, 
 and he must keep his artistic imagination as 
 busy when he is planning, so that his plans may 
 build beautifully, as he keeps his structural 
 sense when he decorates, in order that his work 
 may be saved from caprice and inconsistency. 
 Planning is not the dull puzzle that it is often 
 considered. The word suggests strange and in- 
 comprehensible diagrams of black lines and 
 white areas, and lines of black dots. Planning 
 means much more than a "plan" or many 
 "plans," for planning is merely the science 
 and art of the distribution of all the varied 
 parts of a building, rooms, corridors, etc., with 
 
222 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 regard, first, to utility, and secondly, to beauty. 
 A "plan" is merely a diagram to show the ar- 
 rangement of parts arrived at by means of this 
 art and science. 
 
 Planning is a subject which touches modern 
 life at every point ; which has always so touched 
 life. The designer of a hospital must know ab- 
 solutely the requirements of a hospital, how it 
 is managed, what its equipment is, how the parts 
 of it are related. An architect may spend hours 
 in a newspaper office with a notebook, watching, 
 watching, absorbing the methods of administra- 
 tion, because he has the problem before him of 
 laying out a newspaper office. In order to plan 
 proper apartment houses, or tenements, the ar- 
 chitect must know just how the people live who 
 are to inhabit them, and what are their greatest 
 needs. And so it goes in the case of all kinds of 
 buildings ; the planner must keep in the closest 
 and most practical touch with the life around. 
 It is this that gives planning, when it is rightly 
 understood, such an appealing and fascinat- 
 ing interest, for every building offers a dif- 
 ferent problem whose solution requires a 
 constantly changing knowledge of people and 
 affairs. Seen in this light, even a plan — de- 
 
PLANNING 223 
 
 spised diagram — may take on a new life and 
 interest. 
 
 A plan is a horizontal section through a build- 
 ing, taken at any desired level. It is as though 
 some giant were to take a knife, cut square 
 through an unfurnished building in a horizontal 
 direction, and lift off the upper portion. What 
 he saw when he looked down would be a plan of 
 that building. Walls would be solid lines of 
 greater or less thickness according as the walls 
 were thick or thin. Doors would be blank spaces 
 between spaces of wall, and windows would be 
 similar blank spaces with one or more thin 
 lines, the section of the glass, with the sill below, 
 columns would be solid circles, and so on. The 
 whole arrangement of the building would be re- 
 vealed at a glance; the relationship of all the 
 rooms and corridors to each other, all the open- 
 ings, the doors, the windows, the courts — every- 
 thing. 
 
 A plan is, therefore, the architect's best 
 method of presenting the results of his appli- 
 cation of the science of planning to the particu- 
 lar problem of the building in hand. In a way 
 it is an abstraction ; it is a diagram, but more 
 than any other means at his disposal it makes 
 
224 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 clear the results of his skill, and the desires 
 in his mind, to the builder and to the layman as 
 well. To the architect a plan of a building is 
 often as valuable as photographs or sketches, 
 for by the relation of thick walls and thin, wide 
 rooms and narrow, columns and piers, he can 
 at a glance gain a complete idea of the whole 
 construction of the building, as well as its ar- 
 rangement. 
 
 A plan, like any diagram, must be looked at 
 with imagination. The observer, if he wishes 
 to gain the total value of the plan, must build 
 in his imagination walls over the solid places, 
 columns over the dots or circles, he must imag- 
 ine doors hung in the doorways, and windows 
 placed complete, he must try to imagine the 
 ceiling overhead, and the lighting, and he may 
 then walk from room to room, or through the 
 towering colonnades, master of the building 
 from its plan. In architectural plans there have 
 come to be certain conventions employed to help 
 the imagination. A dotted line from one sup- 
 port to another indicates usually an arch above ; 
 so in the plan of a Gothic church the criss-cross 
 dotted lines indicate the intersections of the 
 arches which form the ribs of the vaulting. A 
 
PLANNING 225 
 
 dotted circle in a square indicates a dome over- 
 head and even the design of beamed ceilings is 
 sometimes indicated on a plan in dotted lines. 
 Furniture may or may not be shown, according 
 to the purpose for which the plan is to be used. 
 Often the projecting base of the walls is indi- 
 cated by a single line just outside the solid 
 portion, and the bases of columns are similarly 
 shown. Border lines can be often drawn around 
 rooms to emphasize their shape, and arrows or 
 axis lines may be used to bring out main en- 
 trances, or lines of important communication. 
 With all these aids a plan becomes a very im- 
 portant record of what a building is, and an in- 
 valuable indication of its structure. 
 
 The science of planning whose results are thus 
 shown demands first of all a careful analysis of 
 the uses of a building as a whole, be it house, 
 store, factory or city hall and an analysis of 
 the uses of all the several portions of which the 
 building is composed. These may be briefly 
 classified as follows : 
 
 1 — Public Kooms. This class consists of 
 those rooms which are open to the public, or at 
 least to a large number of people. In govern- 
 mental buildings they are represented by pub- 
 
226 THE ENJOYMENT OF AKCHITECTURE 
 
 lie offices and the like, in theatres by the audi- 
 torium and foyer, and in houses by the recep- 
 tion-room, or even, by stretching the meaning 
 of the word public, by the living-room. 
 
 2 — Private Booms. This class consists of 
 those rooms given up to the particular use 
 of the people for whom the building is designed. 
 Such rooms are private offices and libraries, 
 studies, bedrooms, morning rooms, etc. 
 
 3 — Means of Communication. This import- 
 ant class consists of corridors, vestibules, 
 halls, staircases, rotundas, and the like. All of 
 these are of importance architecturally, because 
 on their right design and arrangement depends 
 a great deal of the building's convenience, and 
 their aesthetic effectiveness is tremendously 
 important, particularly in public buildings, be- 
 cause so many people are constantly using them. 
 
 4 — Service. This class consists of all those 
 parts of a building that minister to the lower 
 and humbler wants of man, such as toilets, clos- 
 ets, boiler-rooms, fuel-rooms, store-rooms, pan- 
 tries and kitchens. 
 
 The first thing, then, which the architect has 
 to do in designing a building is to classify the 
 different rooms which the client demands under 
 
PLANNING 227 
 
 some such heads as the foregoing. In some 
 cases he may also have to decide himself 
 what are the rooms required, but usually 
 the client has very definite notions of his own 
 on this point. This preliminary classification 
 has a very important place in the science of 
 planning, for the classification of any room 
 may determine its position; service rooms de- 
 mand subordinate positions; public rooms de- 
 mand positions readily accessible, and so 
 forth. And this classification is by no means 
 always an easy matter. A dining-room is 
 usually a private room, but in a family that 
 entertains a great deal, it may come to have 
 almost a public significance. Similarly, a living- 
 room may be at one time a private room, and 
 at another time a public room, and its position 
 has to be considered with regard to both func- 
 tions. 
 
 Once this classification is made, another must 
 follow, a classification of the rooms as regards 
 their importance. In general the public rooms 
 are the most important, but by no means is 
 this always the case. In some houses, for in- 
 stance, it is the private portion that needs em- 
 phasis, and the public room, the reception-room, 
 
228 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 is a very minor room somewhere near the door. 
 This classification with regard to importance 
 is even more necessary in arriving at the ac- 
 tual plan of a building than the first classifica- 
 tion, for it determines at once what rooms shall 
 occupy the most prominent positions. 
 
 For there are important positions and unim- 
 portant positions, and this is the key of the 
 whole matter. The most important position 
 of all is exactly opposite the main entrance. 
 This should be self-evident, for the position op- 
 posite the entrance has these unique character- 
 istics: First, it can be approached without a 
 single turn, and second, it is the first thing that 
 strikes the eye of one entering. If there are 
 two rooms of an equal importance, greater than 
 that of any of the rest of the building, the most 
 important positions for them are at the two ends 
 of a broad, straight corridor which has the main 
 entrance on one of its sides in the middle. This 
 arrangement allows them to be approached and 
 entered with but one turn and also places them 
 at the ends of the important vista of the cor- 
 ridor. If there are three main rooms of nearly 
 equal importance, one can be placed across a 
 corridor, opposite the entrance, with the other 
 
PLANNING 229 
 
 two at the corridor's ends, or the three can be 
 placed on three sides of a square or circle, with 
 the entrance on the fourth side. 
 
 The most important positions in a building 
 are, then, always positions at the ends of vistas, 
 or axes, and from this fact can be deduced the 
 importance of these axes. In planning a formal 
 building the architect usually starts with a line 
 — his "main axis' ' — and on this axis he plans if 
 possible his main entrance, and his most import- 
 ant features. Now this axis at once implies a 
 certain symmetry, and this symmetry, system- 
 atized and ordered, marshalled around a main 
 axis, leading to the most important feature, is 
 at the basis of a great deal of successful plan- 
 ning. 
 
 This is because of no mystical metaphysics, 
 but because of the simplest of facts already 
 hinted at. The axis is merely an abstraction of 
 the simplest line of sight.* An open, well-defined 
 axis in a plan leading to an interesting and im- 
 portant room or feature, means an open, well- 
 defined symmetrical view, with an interesting 
 feature as its climax, and such a view is always 
 more beautiful than a view that is absolutely 
 lacking in this orderly character; that is, than 
 
 * See Fig. 19, page 236, and the Plate opposite page 236. 
 
230 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 a view in a plan that has not been well studied 
 with regard to axis. A well-defined axis usually 
 signifies simplicity and directness as well, for 
 it is always easier to walk in a straight line than 
 to turn many corners. If the axis, then, means 
 usually not only an attractive interior view but 
 directness as well, it is not strange that the 
 architect strives to get this axial feeling in such 
 a large amount of his work. The layman does 
 not sufficiently appreciate this. To him sym- 
 metry means very often money wasted, unneces- 
 sary monumentality, cold formality. He sees 
 some old-time house in the country built at any 
 number of periods, with an old part there, and 
 a room added here, and another there, and a 
 lean-to shed around the corner, and the pictur- 
 esque atmosphere of it strikes him at once. It 
 seems to him beautiful, with its huddling roofs 
 and grey walls and many-paned windows and 
 wandering plan. He cannot understand why the 
 architect tries so often to get a formal sym- 
 metry, when such wandering lines as those of 
 the old house are so charming. The layman 
 does not appreciate that behind the architect's 
 desire for symmetry lie those two important 
 
PLANNING 231 
 
 considerations : interior effect, and directness of 
 access. 
 
 These two considerations are, of course, more 
 important in formal public buildings than in 
 houses. So much of the interior effect of a 
 house depends upon its furnishings and decora- 
 tions, that any overpowering architectural ef- 
 fect is out of place, and such a comparatively 
 small number of people use a house that direct- 
 ness of access is relatively unimportant. The 
 house, then, may be unsymmetrical, provided 
 that no obvious sacrifices are made to produce 
 picturesqueness. The picturesque house which 
 is architecturally — and practically — a success, 
 is the house whose rambling lines seem to grow 
 naturally from the real demands of its separate 
 parts and of its site. If, on the contrary, a 
 house has to be forced into picturesque outlines 
 by making its rooms of unnatural sizes and 
 strained shapes, and related to each other in 
 queer and crooked ways, the house is bad; too 
 great a sacrifice has been made to picturesque 
 effect. In an old English manor, built at four 
 or five different periods, and added to grad- 
 ually, as its changing owners wished, there is 
 
232 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 some excuse for this crookedness, due to the 
 changing demands on its use and the changing 
 methods of construction, and where a rambling 
 house has so grown, it often has a compelling 
 atmosphere of charm, because it so eloquently 
 expresses its long history. But in a new Ameri- 
 can house, built all at one period, by one archi- 
 
 Fig. 18. A house in New Haven. 
 
 tect, for one owner, there is no excuse for any 
 such crookedness. When the atmosphere of age 
 and unstudied picturesqueness is too much 
 
PLANNING 233 
 
 sought, there results inevitably a certain 
 " stagey' 9 quality, a certain lack of reality, that 
 is as unpleasant and insincere as its probable 
 owner 's newly manufactured coat-of-arms. This 
 kind of informal picture squeness is best when 
 it is a result of the problem presented to the 
 architect, and not when it is the end for which 
 he must seek. 
 
 Even in informal houses the architect must 
 never lose sight of his axes. They are particu- 
 larly important where one or two rooms open 
 into each other. Here is an example, an actual 
 house in New Haven. The plan of its main 
 portion is shown in Fig. 18. Here there were 
 to be arranged a library, a reception-room, a 
 dining-room, a study and a stair hall. The 
 house was to be used for entertaining a great 
 deal, so that the reception-room had to be large, 
 and arrangements were required for throwing 
 the greater part of the first floor together. The 
 library, on the other hand, was to be kept pri- 
 vate, as a family living-room. The problem was 
 solved as the plan shows. When a guest en- 
 ters the front door, which is on a landing raised 
 three steps above the rest of the floor, he is con- 
 
234 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 fronted immediately by the wide arch that leads 
 to the reception-room, on the axis of the door 
 and hall, and in the middle of a symmetrically 
 panelled hall. The reception-room opens 
 through three large windows onto a brick ter- 
 race so that there is immediately an interesting 
 view on the axis — arch, room, window, terrace 
 and garden behind. The reception-room itself 
 is a large and rather formal room with a fire- 
 place at the centre of one end, and a wide door- 
 way in the centre of the other, that leads into 
 the dining-room. The dining-room has its fire- 
 place directly opposite this door and opposite 
 the reception-room fireplace. When dining-room 
 and reception-room are thrown into one, this 
 strongly marked axis through them both, with 
 the fireplace — each room's most interesting 
 architectural feature — at its ends, binds 
 both rooms into one whole; and produces at 
 once a spacious, quiet dignity. Now this axis is 
 crossed by the axis of the front door at a point 
 exactly in the middle of the reception-room, so 
 that anyone in the reception-room anywhere 
 near its centre, commands four differing, inter- 
 esting, and yet studied and composed views: 
 the dining-room fireplace, the reception-room 
 
PLANNING 235 
 
 fireplace, the front door and stairs, and the brick 
 terrace and garden. Such a result could never 
 be obtained in an absolutely unsymmetrical 
 plan, for, if the relation of the parts were kept, 
 the beauty of each would suffer, and vice versa. 
 If these axes are so important in simple 
 houses, it may be readily appreciated how tre- 
 mendously important they become in public 
 buildings where a great impressiveness is one 
 of the important ends to be achieved. It is one 
 of the chief faults of our earlier American ar- 
 chitecture that this important question of plan- 
 ning was so woefully neglected. Building after 
 building still exists, which, though beautiful 
 without, has no coherent plan, no strongly 
 marked axis, no impressive interior. The Court 
 House at Springfield, Mass., is an example ; the 
 conception of the picturesque exterior, with its 
 turrets and gables, has been the ruling idea, and 
 the plan is chaotic, with the various necessary 
 rooms scattered anywhere. In time this lack of 
 planning sense became almost a tradition in 
 American architecture, and our country is filled 
 with court houses, and city halls, and post-of- 
 fices, in which the exterior design has absolutely 
 controlled the interior arrangement, to the utter 
 
236 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 loss of both convenience and interior effect, 
 where entrances are mean, and corridors narrow 
 and dark, and stairs ill-placed and crooked. 
 It is only during the last thirty years that we 
 have begun to learn how to plan. Now things 
 are changed from those old days, and for con- 
 trast let the reader look at the entrance and 
 
 
 - W *ib^i*^r 
 
 now* 1-flKjSHJ: 
 
 SENATE 
 
 -»•■• 
 
 Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City, Mo. . 
 
 Fig. 19. Note the careful " axing'' of all the im- 
 portant corridors, etc., and in the plate note the value 
 of the main axis in making an impressive interior. 
 
 rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol,* and 
 then at the plan. Here, interior impressiveness 
 has been sought and effectively achieved and 
 
 * See the Plate opposite this page. 
 
... 
 
 
 MISSOURI STATE CAPITOL, JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI 
 (STATE STAIRWAY) 
 
 Compare this with the plan, and notice how the planning of State Stairway, 
 Rotunda, and Library produces a composed and impressive view. 
 
PLANNING 237 
 
 the plan is well arranged, accessible, clear, and 
 monumental, befitting the Capitol's purpose and 
 dignity. 
 
 Imagine, then, the architect who is planning 
 a building to have embodied in his plan all the 
 foregoing principles. He has decided which are 
 his most important rooms, and placed them in 
 the most important positions, and he has de- 
 cided on the axes which they determine. He 
 must now begin to study the plan in more detail, 
 so that each portion of the building shall be 
 fitted to perform its purpose in the best and 
 simplest way. To do this, he must keep fixed 
 fast in his mind the actual use that each small- 
 est portion is to receive, and know just how this 
 use must affect his plan, and what arrangement 
 it demands. This, again, is a question of the re- 
 lationship of the parts of the building. It is 
 merely carrying the method of the architect's 
 preliminary analysis one step further and ap- 
 plying it, not to the building as a whole, but 
 to each separate portion of the building. 
 
 He will probably begin this analysis by the 
 consideration of the most important rooms — 
 the public rooms. Now these have certain defi- 
 nite requirements, which it is well to keep in 
 
238 THE ENJOYMENT OF AECHITECTURE 
 
 mind. The first requirement is, of course, 
 safety. Safety in a public room means more 
 than strength of construction. It means safety 
 of health, it means liberal exits in case of fire 
 or panic, it embraces a number of questions of 
 heating, of ventilating, of arrangement. The 
 second requirement is convenience, fitness for 
 use. That is, in a lecture hall, or theatre, each 
 person should be able to command an unob- 
 structed view of the stage ; and the hall should 
 be so planned that each person can hear with- 
 out effort. In a public office, convenience de- 
 mands that each person shall be able to enter, 
 to attend to his business, and to leave in the 
 easiest possible manner. In a library, conven- 
 ience demands such a relation of parts that 
 anyone may enter, obtain the desired book, read 
 it in comfort, and depart with little effort and 
 delay, and yet always be under the librarian's 
 control, so that thievery will be almost impos- 
 sible. And so on for every kind of public room ; 
 the architect must imagine its every use, and 
 make arrangements for it. 
 
 In general, then, the following questions will 
 arise in the design of a public room which may 
 affect the planning of the building: 
 
PLANNING 239 
 
 First: How many people will use the room? 
 The answer to this question will decide the 
 number and size of entrances and exits and the 
 amount of corridor space necessary to take care 
 of the people. 
 
 Second : How long will it be used at a time ? 
 The answer to this will settle the amount of 
 ventilation necessary; it will also determine 
 whether or not public toilets should be near at 
 hand, and if so, how many. 
 
 Third : Exactly what is its purpose? The an- 
 swer to this will determine whether it shall have 
 a banked or level floor, or a stage, and if so, of 
 what kind and size, and it may bring up the 
 whole question of acoustics, a science in itself 
 so complex that only the merest reference to it 
 is possible here. Acoustics may often be the 
 governing feature in the shape and size of a 
 room. If the portion under consideration is a 
 suite of public offices, the answer to this ques- 
 tion will decide their exact relation to each 
 other, the relative size of public and private 
 parts, the number of doors, and sometimes the 
 exact force and direction of the lighting. 
 
 This outline will make plain at once the inti- 
 macy of the connection between planning and 
 
240 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 life ; it should also show how absolutely the ar- 
 chitect is governed by the needs of the buildings 
 he is designing, and how the arrangement of a 
 good building is a direct result of these factors. 
 When the architect has solved these questions 
 of the use of the public portions of the build- 
 ing, he may turn to the next great question, 
 closely connected, the question of corridors and 
 halls and means of circulation. Here he is less 
 bound down by complex questions of particular 
 use than in the design of the public rooms them- 
 selves, but even in corridor design he must al- 
 ways keep dominant the factors of safety and 
 convenience. Corridors should always be as 
 straight as possible, and always wide, airy, and 
 light. A cramped, close corridor, lighted by 
 electricity in mid-day, is an inexcusable feature 
 where room is plentiful and money not stinted. 
 A corridor with steps that are unexpected and 
 not expressed in the design so that their exist- 
 ence may be readily grasped from a distance 
 may be dangerous; in a panic it may be the 
 cause of many deaths. Even in corridor design 
 the architect must keep its use clear in his mind- 
 We have already considered the importance 
 of corridors and rotundas and the like in giving 
 
PLANNING 241 
 
 impressiveness and grandeur to a building and 
 the bearing of this upon planning. It is equally 
 true that stairs are of tremendous importance. 
 Their practical use is self-evident and so should 
 be the qualities their use demands in them ; di- 
 rectness, simplicity, such a slope and steps as 
 will" be comfortable to ascend or descend, light — 
 everyone knows, probably, from experience the 
 danger and discomfort of a dark stair — and ease 
 of access to all portions of the floors it connects. 
 The aesthetic importance of stairs* is less evi- 
 dent, but experience and open eyes will soon 
 show it. There is an appeal about a beautiful 
 and well-planned stair that impresses uncon- 
 sciously the most callous observer. A good stair 
 is an invitation to ascend ; it suggests all kinds 
 of interesting features above; it fills one with 
 the zeal of the explorer and an instinctive love 
 of the unknown, where the poorly designed 
 stair, crowded into a dark corner, repels. There 
 is, besides, an innate grace in the relation of the 
 sloping and level lines of the railing or balus- 
 trade that is lovely, and curved stairs are a de- 
 lightful feature that the French are particularly 
 skilful in using. 
 Even in the simplest stairs of our houses this 
 
242 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 is true. The simple straightforward stairs of 
 the Colonial houses of our ancestors bear elo- 
 quent witness, climbing direct and true with 
 carved newel and twisted baluster to a broad 
 landing lighted by a wide and often beautifully 
 decorated window near the top. Such a stair 
 gives at once the impression of fine large rooms 
 to live in on the floors above. It serves 
 not a little to give that impression of dignified 
 homeliness which is so well nigh universal in 
 those houses, and in public buildings, where im- 
 portant rooms are often necessarily on the sec- 
 ond floor, and where sometimes this second floor 
 is the main floor, the "piano nobile" of the 
 building, stairs are of even greater importance.* 
 For example, take the great stairhall of the 
 Opera at Paris.t These great flights, with easy 
 steps, and sweeping balustrades, though per- 
 haps over-ornamented and ostentatious, give at 
 once an effect of majesty, an impression of being 
 built for crowds of spectators, that is usually 
 totally lacking in our American theatres, where 
 the patrons of the cheaper seats are forced up 
 interminable dreary stairs, rough, uncouth, un- 
 inviting, ugly. In the Paris Opera, with a truer 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 236. 
 fSee the Plate opposite this page. 
 
OPERA HOUSE, PARIS, FRANCE 
 (GRAND stairway) 
 
 One of the best examples of the monumental and decorative treatment of a necessity 
 -the stairwav. 
 
PLANNING 243 
 
 democracy, the topmost galleries open on this 
 same great stair ; all the spectators are consid- 
 ered one great beauty-loving crowd. Or take 
 the Boston Public Library, with that majestic 
 wide flight leading up between the two guardian 
 lions, and then dividing into two symmetrical 
 flights that climb by painted wall to the marble 
 arcade above ; that is a staircase that is not only 
 convenient, but one of the most beautiful fea- 
 tures of a beautiful building as well. The stair 
 correctly planned and conveniently arranged is 
 one of the most salient examples of how archi- 
 tecture takes necessary requirements and con- 
 verts them into objects of beauty and delight. 
 
 There remain to be considered two classes of 
 rooms, private rooms and service rooms. In 
 these the architect has less complex problems to 
 solve than in the case of public rooms and means 
 of circulation. In their design, however, the 
 good architect should use as busy an imagina- 
 tion and as careful a judgment as in the more 
 important rooms. He will see that the private 
 rooms are accessible to those who use them and 
 that every requirement of comfort or use has 
 been met. He will see that their privacy is pre- 
 served, that each has just the right outlook for 
 
244 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 its purpose, and that each is properly related 
 to its dependences, and the hall which serves it. 
 The architect 's care must extend to every hum- 
 blest room ; he must see that his arrangement of 
 service rooms makes an easy building to run. 
 He must be thousand minded; he must think 
 with the mind of cook,- of chambermaid, of 
 boiler tender, of coal heaver. He must furnish, 
 if possible, a separate and concealed service en- 
 trance, so that all the necessary materials to 
 be used in the service portion of the building can 
 be delivered promptly and directly without in- 
 terruption of the more important functions of 
 the building, without intruding unduly or with 
 an unfortunate ostentation. If he can do this, 
 and induce his client to accept the plan he has 
 produced with so much care and forethought 
 and imagination, he will not only have helped 
 to produce a beautiful building, but he will have 
 made it possible for everyone connected with the 
 building to lead more efficient and useful lives. 
 A good plan for any building must be ar- 
 ranged to fulfill in the best way all the condi- 
 tions required by its varied parts. But good 
 planning must accomplish more than this: it 
 must make an arrangement that is not only 
 
PLANNING 245 
 
 practical to build, not only easy to run, but 
 strong. And this requirement demands a tre- 
 mendous amount of study. The architect has to 
 see to it that all his supports are heavy enough, 
 and so spaced as to permit a simple and easily 
 constructed floor or roof above ; he must see that 
 chimneys run as directly as possible and that 
 plumbing is simply located. 
 \i^ .With the growing use of steel, the construc- 
 f tion element of planning has been both simpli- 
 fied and complicated, for although it is possible 
 to carry heavy loads over long spans by the use 
 of steel beams, there is an immense amount of 
 calculation and study required in their use. So 
 complex has steel construction grown, that it 
 has become quite a science of its own, with its 
 own specialists, and the steel construction of 
 most large buildings is usually designed by such 
 structural engineers. Steel has made possible 
 the high buildings of our cities ; it has made fire- 
 proof buildings relatively cheaper to build than 
 they have been for many centuries. In a way it 
 has set the architect free from many stunting re- 
 quirements of wood and masonry construction, 
 and allowed him to realize dreams of lightness 
 and soaring height never before conceived, so 
 
246 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 that our great cities are little by little develop- 
 ing sky lines which remind one of illustrations 
 to fairy stories. 
 
 And yet steel has architectural disadvantages. 
 Modern forms of steel construction lead to rect- 
 angular, uninteresting plans. Its own self-con- 
 tained strength is a disadvantage, for part of 
 one's pleasure in the great architecture of the 
 past lies in the manner in which the architects 
 of Koman and Mediaeval days made the obstin- 
 ate requirements of their structural materials 
 into things of beauty. The vaults of Eome, the 
 buttresses of Gothic France, the open-timbered 
 trusses of English halls, are examples of com- 
 plex structural necessities transformed into ob- 
 jects of enduring beauty. But the essence of 
 steel construction is merely a cross beam rest- 
 ing on two columns at the ends ; it exerts no side 
 thrust; it requires no buttresses. It is a 
 straight, starkly simple system and leads to 
 straight, starkly simple plans. It is not an 
 interesting form in itself; it has neither the 
 curved grace of the vault nor the exuberant com- 
 plexity of an old wooden truss ; like many a puri- 
 tanical mind, it is unassuming, strong, and 
 cruelly unbeautiful. 
 
PLANNING 247 
 
 Of course, there are cases where it has been 
 beautifully treated — some have already been 
 noted — but this has been done at great cost and 
 by forcing the material into other forms than 
 those it first suggests. In the great majority of 
 cases steel architecture is an architecture sim- 
 ply of beam and column, and as such it provides 
 buildings often of an uncompromising rectangu- 
 larity. It still remains for the architects of the 
 future to transform this uncompromising rect- 
 angularity into a new and natural beauty. 
 
 Even in smaller work, the use of steel often 
 leads into minor insincerities. There are many 
 country houses built to-day where fireplaces on 
 upper floors have absolutely no relation to the 
 plan below; convenient steel beams allow them 
 to be swung almost in mid-air. Sometimes 
 chimneys entirely false, supported on steel 
 beams, put in merely to give balance, begin just 
 under the roof. This is not good architecture, it 
 is a mechanical trick, and a good plan is never 
 a tricky plan ; the good plan is straightforward 
 and simple, without "fakes." 
 
 The good plan always expresses construc- 
 tion; small house or large, cathedral or town 
 hall or parliament building, the plan should re- 
 
248 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 veal at least the essence of the way it is built. 
 Heavy walls should run through where the 
 weight is heavy, and, if possible, the main divi- 
 
 Plan of Amiens Cathedral. 
 
 Fig. 20. A plan that is both economical and 
 effective. 
 
 sions of the plan should follow these main con- 
 structive lines. Arches should be amply but- 
 tressed and the plan should reveal the but- 
 tress. Notice this plan of Amiens Cathedral, 
 and see how the heavy cross buttresses at the 
 
PLANNING 249 
 
 sides are placed where they best do their work, 
 with their long axis parallel to the cross thrust 
 of the vaults. And notice how around the apse 
 the great main buttresses are used to divide the 
 chapels and how the crossing of nave and tran- 
 sept is emphasized by the heavier piers that are 
 necessary to carry the great square vault above 
 them. It is a perfect plan ; every part does its 
 work simply and easily ; and every part is made 
 to work in as many ways as possible. 
 
 This is an ideal that every plan should strive 
 to emulate. There should be a constructive 
 reason for every important feature, and a prac- 
 tical reason behind each constructive feature. 
 Breaks in the outside wall should indicate 
 changes in function within, and important struc- 
 tural walls should separate important rooms, if 
 possible. This is an ideal that is impossible 
 of absolute realization, particularly in small 
 houses, where the demands are so complex and 
 the construction so simple, but it is an ideal that 
 is always in the architect's mind consciously or 
 unconsciously, and it is an ideal that has had a 
 tremendous power in the development of archi- 
 tectural forms throughout the ages. 
 
 Planning has still a third requirement to ful- 
 
250 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 fill. It is the science of the solution of the prob- 
 lem of a building with regard first, to practical 
 use; second, to constructive simplicity and 
 strength; and thirdly, to beauty.* Indeed, in 
 planning, as in every other branch of the art of 
 architecture, the question of beauty is so impli- 
 cated and bound up with all the other questions 
 that confront the architect, that it is impossible 
 to consider them entirely apart. So, in our con- 
 sideration of the practical side of planning, we 
 are led inevitably into this structural question ; 
 so the constructive element was considered from 
 the point of view of beauty as well. It will, 
 therefore, not be necessary to consider the sub- 
 ject at any very great length again. 
 
 There is one point, however, that must be in- 
 sisted upon. And that is the fact that the archi- 
 tect 's solution of the plan determines absolutely 
 the general character of the outside appearance 
 of a building, and its interior effect. The reverse 
 is also true. If an architect, or his client, de- 
 cides that a certain style of exterior or interior 
 design is required for a building, by reason of 
 the adjacent buildings, or the character of the 
 site, or tradition, or for any other reason, then 
 this choice of style is bound to exercise a tre- 
 
PLANNING 251 
 
 mendous influence over the planning of the 
 building. The layman often forgets this. He 
 thinks of the walls and roof of the building 
 merely as a shell, and the interior arrangement 
 as a separate and unrelated kernel. He may 
 desire for himself a simple Colonial house out- 
 side and a complex arrangement of rooms in- 
 side which is directly contrary to the Colonial 
 straightforward simplicity. And then he won- 
 ders because his architect, in striving to meet 
 both demands, creates a result that satisfies 
 neither demand absolutely. If every educated 
 man and woman in the country once truly real- 
 ized the absolute interdependence of planning 
 and exterior design, there would at once develop 
 a sane tradition of popular criticism of architec- 
 ture, a development which would raise our ar- 
 chitectural standard more than any other one 
 thing. 
 
 And this interdependence of planning and de- 
 sign is equally important in the interior, and 
 perhaps more so, for there even more strongly 
 the arrangement not only suggests but actually 
 creates interior effect. This has been already 
 referred to at some length, but it cannot be 
 stated too often, or too strongly. Our country 
 
252 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 has been filled with houses that are mean and 
 gaudy within just because the designer has at- 
 tempted to produce effects his plan contra- 
 dicted ; he has made elaborate doors lead to nar- 
 row and congested halls or he has treated tiny 
 rooms with miniature columns and entablatures 
 all complete, thinking thereby to gain an effect 
 of grandeur. 
 
 The good architect, on the other hand, will 
 not try to force effects his plan does not war- 
 rant, nor will a client, if he is wise, attempt to 
 make him do so. The architect will always keep 
 in mind the interior effect he wishes to produce, 
 be it grand or modest, and he will make his plan 
 with this idea clearly before him. He will see 
 that the effect is suitable to the purpose of the 
 room, and not attempt to give us living-rooms 
 like the state reception-rooms of an eighteenth 
 century palace, nor dining-rooms too coldly 
 monumental, nor churches like barns, nor great 
 public halls that are bare and undignified. He 
 will plan always to give an interior effect that is 
 absolutely in harmony with the use of the in- 
 terior, with the plan, and with the exterior. 
 
 It should be evident by this time how infin- 
 itely complex is the science of planning. It is 
 
PLANNING 253 
 
 like some of those mathematical problems which 
 algebra cannot solve because there are too many 
 variables, problems that yield only to calculus. 
 In the case of planning the variables are four : 
 practicability, constructive demands, exterior 
 effect, and interior effect. And they ought all 
 to be always in the architect's mind at once; 
 not at one point one of them, at another point 
 another; for every smallest detail of a plan 
 must be considered from all four standpoints. 
 And it is this fourfold attitude that the good 
 architect always adopts. 
 
 The best way to illustrate and clarify a few 
 of the principles of planning is to gain some in- 
 sight into the way an architect goes to work to 
 plan a building. This is easiest done by con- 
 sidering an actual problem of some simple sort 
 and attempting to solve it. 
 
 Let us take such a problem. Imagine a 
 wealthy man with a large library and art col- 
 lection which he desires adequately to house in 
 such a way that the public can be admitted at 
 certain times. He has formulated the problem 
 in some such way as this : 
 
 Kooms desired: 
 
 Large gallery for pictures and sculpture, 
 
254 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 about 80 feet by 30 feet ; perhaps with an up- 
 stairs gallery. 
 
 Library about 20 feet by 30 feet. 
 
 Upstairs offices for repairing, binding, etc. 
 
 Private entrance vestibule, for his own use. 
 
 Public entrance and vestibule. 
 
 Style desired: No absolute style to be fol- 
 lowed, but the ideas of grace, of solidity, and 
 dignity to be emphasized. 
 
 Site : A level piece of ground near his house, 
 upon a principal street. 
 
 This programme is the basis on which we must 
 begin. There are a few points immediately self- 
 evident which will help us in the solution of the 
 
 tSLJL 
 
 
 Fig. 21. A and B are both bad because of a false 
 balance between important and unimportant rooms, 
 a : The art gallery. 
 b : The library. 
 
 problem. First, the ideas of dignity and solid- 
 ity to be emphasized suggest at once a somewhat 
 
PLANNING 255 
 
 formal and symmetrical treatment. This pre- 
 vents us from stringing the rooms out in a line, 
 as in Fig. 21A. 
 
 In any such arrangement the main entrance 
 comes at a very awkward place in the gallery 
 and the exterior does not express the interior. 
 Equally bad is any attempt to make the library 
 balance the art gallery by putting both on either 
 side of a vestibule, as in Fig. 21B. In this so- 
 lution the front balances, but the building is a 
 queer shape, difficult and expensive to build. 
 This solution also suggests at once a corner lot, 
 and the building is not on a corner. 
 
 Let us try to analyze the problem, with regard 
 to the headings suggested in the early part of 
 this chapter, as follows: 
 
 Public Eooms — Art gallery, vestibule, possi- 
 bly, to a less extent, the library. 
 
 Private Eooms — Generally, the library, the 
 repairing and binding offices. 
 
 Corridors, etc. — Stairs to the upper floor. 
 
 Service — Heating, storage, etc. 
 
 Then let us make another analysis with re-! 
 gard to importance. The art gallery is undoubt- 
 edly the most important room when both public 
 and private use are considered and the library 
 
256 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 is the room of next importance. All the other 
 rooms are of minor importance. Now, the most 
 important position is the position on the main 
 axis, opposite the entrance. At once, therefore, 
 some such solution as this might be possible. 
 (Fig. 22A.) 
 
 : b 
 
 • • •• 
 
 A. 
 
 x>. 
 
 Fia. 22. A is a logical arrangement but unsuited 
 to the position of the building on an important street. 
 B is a better solution, but the rear portion of the 
 building is still not absolutely correct in arrangement. 
 
 a : The art gallery. 
 
 b : The library. 
 
 But this is also unsatisfactory, because the 
 short, uninteresting front is towards the street, 
 and the long facade stretches away from the 
 public. In addition, the building is of an un- 
 pleasantly long shape. What possible solution 
 is there remaining? Let us try a plan similar 
 
PLANNING 257 
 
 to the plan above, but somewhat different. 
 (Fig. 22B.) 
 
 This plan seems to answer all the demands 
 of the problem absolutely. It is dignified and 
 solid. The art gallery has the most important 
 position with the library correctly related. Li- 
 brary and art gallery are all near the entrance, 
 easily accessible. There is a private entrance 
 close to the library. Only one drawback to the 
 plan exists ; the fact that in a way the art gal- 
 lery is broken in two, and some valuable wall 
 space lost at the back, where the library comes. 
 This can be readily made up by slightly increas- 
 ing the length of the building. And an art gal- 
 lery can stand dividing in this way which gives a 
 little variety. In addition, the library will never 
 be so patronized by numbers of people that the 
 crowds entering and leaving it will disturb those 
 who are looking at the gallery. This objection 
 being disposed of, we may decide on this plan 
 as in general the correct one and begin to take 
 it up more in detail. 
 
 The Art Gallery: The prime necessity in a 
 gallery is unbroken wall space. It will, there- 
 fore, be necessary to cut all architectural 
 features in the room down to a minimum and to 
 
258 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 cut out windows. Sky-lighting is the thing to 
 use. 
 
 Library: Coziness, dignified richness, and 
 wall space for books are the prime requisites. 
 But sky-lighting in a library is very bad and 
 hard on the eyes. We must, therefore, have di- 
 rect window illumination for the library. A 
 fireplace might also be desirable. 
 
 Corridors, etc. 
 
 Vestibule : This need not be large, as no great 
 crowds will ever patronize the building; it 
 should, however, be dignified, and, if possible, 
 have small coat-rooms attached. 
 
 Connection between Library and Art Gallery : 
 To put the library close to the art gallery is too 
 architecturally brusque. A lobby might be bet- 
 ter, to make a softer, more graceful connection ; 
 a place where people might pause in their tour 
 of the gallery and sit down to rest. It might be 
 possible to put the upstairs gallery the owner 
 desires over this lobby. It would make a charm- 
 ing feature, just sufficiently interesting to miti- 
 gate the baldness of the gallery. 
 
 Service : Service stairs, perhaps also a small 
 dumbwaiter, are necessary to reach the repair- 
 
PLANNING 
 
 259 
 
 ing and binding rooms which we will place over 
 the library. A lavatory and coat-room adjacent 
 to the library seem advisable as well and the 
 rest of the service, heating and storage can go 
 in the basement, so that we need not be con- 
 cerned about them now. 
 
 "We have, therefore, arrived at the following 
 plan. (Fig. 23.) 
 
 The Final Solution 
 
 Fig. 23. There is ample lobby space, a vestibule 
 between gallery and library capable of very attractive 
 treatment, and, furthermore, a compactness of the 
 whole which gives large space for storage, toilets, 
 repairing, etc., on the first floor. 
 
 Now this plan at once determines our archi- 
 
260 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 tectural effect both outside and in. This is a 
 complex matter, so I shall only touch it here and 
 leave my readers to carry it as far as they 
 please, by imagining different possible interiors 
 
 Fig. 24. Two possible elevations of the scheme 
 shown in Figure 23. Of these B is the most ex- 
 pressive. 
 
 for these various rooms, and different possible 
 treatments for the front of the building. 
 Exterior treatment : The plan we have chosen 
 
PLANNING 261 
 
 limits us definitely to a treatment of two simple 
 blank walls, with a monumental entrance mo- 
 tive projecting in the centre. That is, we are 
 limited to one simple composition of shapes. 
 Also, since the gallery is sky-lighted, it might 
 be well to express the sky-lights, and attempt 
 to express the fact that there is but one long 
 room behind. For this reason, we might prefer 
 a treatment like Fig. 24B to one like Fig. 24A. 
 Fig. 24B undoubtedly contains one large gallery 
 with an entrance and vestibule in front; Fig. 
 24A might be two rooms with a corridor be- 
 tween. 
 
 Beyond this point the design becomes a ques- 
 tion of personal taste and preference, but thus 
 far it is the plan that has been the governing 
 factor. Similarly, in the interior, although there 
 are an infinite number of treatments possible, 
 the number of schemes is limited by the plan. 
 
 In this analysis of a simple planning problem, 
 no account has been taken of many other factors 
 which might influence the planning in one way 
 or another; such as the factors of cost, of 
 orientation, of material and so forth. These fac- 
 tors have been purposely omitted in order that 
 the problem might be kept simple and easily 
 
262 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 grasped. As it is, however this little attempt at 
 planning a simple building may have given the 
 reader some idea of the architect's real work, 
 some conception of the thousand things he must 
 decide, some idea of the fascination of his pro- 
 fession. 
 
 Planning is by no means the uninteresting and 
 abstruse matter that it is usually considered, 
 without importance save as a humdrum matter 
 of convenience. On the contrary, it is at the 
 very foundation of all good architecture; for 
 the plan determines the character of the build- 
 ing outside and in, and it is good planning, as 
 well as good design, which has made, and still 
 makes, the great buildings of the world not only 
 suitable for their purpose but also beautiful for 
 our eyes, and strong to endure, so that the art of 
 architecture, through planning, is the greatest, 
 the widest, the most practical and useful of all 
 the arts. 
 
CHAPTER Vni 
 
 THE MEANING OF STYLE 
 
 There is one of the many sides of architecture 
 that has been mentioned in the first chapter 
 which needs more discussion. Up to the pres- 
 ent we have been concerned to a large extent 
 with the material side of architecture. Archi- 
 tecture has been considered as a matter of form, 
 aesthetic and practical. It is one of the glories 
 of architecture that it is more than this form. 
 It has a spiritual and intellectual message for 
 us as well as an aesthetic stimulation. For be- 
 hind the forms which architecture uses, and 
 behind the plans which it adopts to solve the 
 needs of the people whose art it is, there lies a 
 meaning which is deeply bound up with the 
 whole history of mankind. And it is this mean- 
 ing which must be considered here. 
 
 Architecture is a key to history when this side 
 of it is rightly appreciated and understood. 
 Every quality of the builder is as truly mirrored 
 in his building as every quality of a writer is 
 
 263 
 
264 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 expressed in his poem or play or story. In- 
 deed, architecture is often even more relent- 
 lessly expressive than literature ; for the archi- 
 tect 's building is always the product of at least 
 two personalities, that of the architect and that 
 of the owner of the building, and oftentimes it is 
 the product of a great many more ; it may be the 
 expression of a collective personality, of a 
 guild, of a state, of a religion. 
 
 Moreover, the whole art of architecture, as 
 the last chapter sought to show, is absolutely 
 dependent upon planning, and planning, in its 
 turn, upon the practical needs of those people 
 whose art it is. Architecture, then, is always 
 the result in any one period of two main ideas : 
 the idea of the needs of the people, and the idea 
 of beauty which is prevalent at that period. 
 And these two ideas are bound together by a 
 common desire and purpose — the desire to cre- 
 ate a beautiful building — and are mutually in- 
 terdependent. 
 
 One may, therefore, very well see how prob- 
 able it is that architecture is one of the most 
 complete expressions of life that there is. 
 Poetry and music and theology give us an ex- 
 pression of the ideals of beauty and goodness 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 265 
 
 of the times that produced them; and political 
 and economical history furnish us with the 
 practical conditions of existence; but in archi- 
 tecture alone can we find an art which by its 
 own character, and because of its very nature, 
 expresses both great sides of existence and mir- 
 rors both the wealth and the dreams of hu- 
 manity. 
 
 This is a fact which most people uncon- 
 sciously appreciate. They begin when they are 
 children to think of the Middle Ages in terms of 
 castles and turrets, as well as of knights and 
 men-at-arms. Later, as they grow older, they 
 begin to think of cathedrals and monuments, 
 because in these buildings, more than in any 
 other work of the time, the spirit of the Thir- 
 teenth Century flourished complete. The Gothic 
 Cathedral is fascinating because its style is 
 what it is, and its style is the direct result of 
 the life of that far-off time. 
 
 Style in architecture is merely a manner of 
 building that is different from some other man- 
 ner of building. It includes in its scope not only 
 ornament, but methods of construction and 
 planning as well. The so-called "styles" of ar- 
 chitecture are thus named by a limitation of the 
 
266 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 word " style;" they signify merely convenient 
 heads under which we can classify buildings, 
 first according to date and nation and second 
 according to the forms originated at those 
 dates and by those nations. Thus one speaks 
 of the " grand" style in architecture, meaning 
 a large way of conceiving and ornamenting 
 buildings, and one may also speak with equal 
 propriety of the Koman style, or the Gothic 
 style, meaning either the style of Roman build- 
 ings, or Gothic buildings, or modern buildings 
 which use analogous forms. 
 
 This use of the word is very puzzling when 
 one attempts to apply it to modern architecture. 
 According to what has been said before, the 
 buildings that are being put up at the present 
 time ought to be in a modern style expressive 
 of our life and needs. Yet most of our modern 
 buildings are built in one of the historical styles, 
 Greek, or Roman, or Gothic, or Renaissance 
 styles developed in periods when the whole 
 tenor of life was vastly different from what it 
 is to-day. This seems at once an obvious con- 
 tradiction, and a contradiction which, if true, 
 imperils the entire validity of the thesis that 
 art is a complete expression of life, 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 267 
 
 There are many people who believe the con- 
 tradiction real, and, therefore, claim that our 
 modern architecture is false, and not expressive 
 of ourselves. They would like to see the Ameri- 
 can architects strive after originality at all 
 costs. They consider tradition the great bug- 
 bear of modern American art, and they have 
 visions of an American architecture to be born 
 suddenly, full grown, out of our national life 
 as Athena sprang, all armed, from the head of 
 Zeus. 
 
 Their claim seems at first well founded and 
 sound. Sincerity is a virtue in any art and it 
 seems self-evident that sincerity demands a dif- 
 ferent style for the building of a steel frame 
 hotel or office building from the style the Eo- 
 mans used in building a great temple, or the 
 French in building a cathedral or chateau. But 
 here it becomes necessary to proceed in our 
 thinking with great care, and to be absolutely 
 sure of the exact meaning of the word " style' ' 
 as we use it. The whole force of any argument 
 with regard to this matter will depend upon our 
 exact definition of this word. We must be sure 
 that when we use the words "American style," 
 we are using them in exactly the same sense as 
 
268 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 we use them in the expressions " Greek style/' 
 or ' ' Koman style, ' ' or * ' Gothic style. ' ' 
 
 It is in a failure to discriminate at this point 
 that there lies the fallacy which is the weak 
 link in the chain of argument of those who are 
 clamouring for originality, and accusing our ar- 
 chitects of subservience to an outworn tradi- 
 tion. For when they speak of the American 
 style, they mean simply, the American method 
 of building beautifully. They mean the Ameri- 
 can method of making the buildings our civili- 
 zation demands and produces, objects of beauty. 
 In short, they mean the whole American method 
 of architectural composition, both as regard 
 to planning and to exterior and interior effect. 
 But when these critics speak of Greek style or 
 Koman style, do they mean the same thing? 
 When they say that such and such an American 
 building is bad and insincere, because it is 
 built in such and such a style, which is foreign 
 to us and our wants, they mean that the building 
 in question is decorated with architectural 
 forms and details of the foreign style. In other 
 words, when they speak of an American style, 
 they are speaking in a large and inclusive way ; 
 and when they speak of Roman or Gothic or 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 269 
 
 Kenaissance styles, applied to modern work, 
 they refer merely to the forms of the architec- 
 tural detail with which a building is dressed. 
 There is no innate contradiction in the fact that 
 an American building may be a perfect example 
 of an American style, and yet be built in one of 
 the historical styles, for the word style is used 
 in two different senses. In one case it refers to 
 general facts of composition and structure, and 
 in the other, to an accepted architectural alpha- 
 bet of forms. 
 
 A single visit to any large city should prove 
 this at once. Let the reader select any two 
 large office buildings, or apartment houses, built 
 each in a different historical "style" from the 
 other. All the detail on the two buildings is 
 different ; one may have the pointed arches, the 
 delicate tracery, the crockets and finials of flam- 
 boyant French Gothic, and the other the stately 
 columns and entablatures and round arches of 
 Eome. 
 
 Yet if one could get a mile or two away from 
 these two buildings, they would look alike in 
 every general respect. Both would appear as 
 rectangular box-like masses, perhaps with small 
 and unimportant roofs ; with some sort of deco- 
 
270 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ration near the top and some sort of decoration 
 near the bottom. All between would be a sur- 
 face of wall emplaided with tiny windows, close 
 together. Anyone who has seen the silhouette 
 of New York or Chicago, or Pittsburgh, or San 
 Francisco, will appreciate the truth of this. All 
 the buildings are similar in general line and 
 effect ; all have the same hall marks of national- 
 ity. In their square shapes, in their height, and 
 in the size and number of their windows the 
 effect of the steel construction is revealed; the 
 spirit of modern America breathes through 
 them. They are unique, those silhouettes of our 
 American cities ; as different from the silhouette 
 of London, or Rome, or Paris, or Constanti- 
 nople as our life is different from the lives in 
 those great capitals, and it is our architects that 
 have made this silhouette. This unique outline 
 in all its strength and daring, and occasional 
 awkwardness, is one sign of the fact that they 
 have evolved out of our needs a national style 
 all our own. 
 
 Even this explanation, however, does not suit 
 some of the critics of our modern architecture. 
 They acknowledge the Americanism of it up to 
 this point ; but they are still not satisfied. They 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 271 
 
 look back over architectural history, and point 
 out the fact that the Greeks built in one way 
 and the Eomans in another, and the peoples of 
 mediaeval Europe in another, and so on, not 
 only as regards planning and composition and 
 outline and mass, but also as regards detail and 
 ornament. Each period of each nation seems 
 to have had its own alphabet of decorative ma- 
 terial, its own unique feeling for architectural 
 ornament. We, on the other hand, have devel- 
 oped no important new decorative forms; and 
 these critics consider this a sign of some strange 
 lack of creative ability on the part of our archi- 
 tects, and of artistic sensibility on the part of 
 the majority of the public. 
 
 And they go further than this. They point 
 out the example of modern Germany, of Aus- 
 tria, of the Scandinavian countries, and to a 
 less extent of Great Britain, where more and 
 more architects seem to be designing with a new 
 spirit of freedom, and seem more and more to 
 be passing by the architectural traditions; 
 where many successful new forms are being de- 
 veloped and used. If this Art Nouveau, this 
 Secessionism,, is so virile and successful 
 abroad, why is it that American architects are 
 
272 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 content with what is claimed to be a worn-out 
 tradition! 
 
 This question can best be answered by a con- 
 sideration of the history of architecture; per- 
 haps from a point of view slightly different 
 from that adopted by those who make these crit- 
 icisms of our art. They point to the developed 
 styles of certain nations and periods for exam- 
 ples to emulate; we must attempt to find the 
 causes and influences behind the developments 
 themselves that made the styles of the past 
 what they are. In this consideration we may 
 well omit the early oriental styles, as too little is 
 definitely known of their origin and develop- 
 ment, and as, moreover, they were early petri- 
 fied by civilizations dominated by priesthoods 
 whose traditional beliefs admitted of little gen- 
 uine progress. 
 
 In Greece, on the other hand, there was no 
 such static rule of tradition ; the Greeks, as has 
 been noted earlier, were always striving after 
 an unattainable and ever-growing ideal of 
 beauty, an ideal that grew as rapidly as their 
 powers of achievement. Furthermore, Greek 
 history is well known, and completely under- 
 stood ; so that it is not difficult to trace the de- 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 273 
 
 velopment of the Greek styles, and to discover 
 the causes which produced them. For instance, 
 it is definitely known, and proved beyond a 
 doubt by contemporary inscriptions, that in the 
 earliest days of Greek civilization, days before 
 the time when the tribes which made the histori- 
 cal Greek nation had reached their final homes, 
 the entire Eastern Mediterranean was inhabited 
 by peoples living in close commercial and cul- 
 tural relations. Even at that early date colonies 
 of the people from the Greek Islands had set- 
 tled in the rich country of Egypt, and that great 
 nation of sailors — the Phoenicians — drove a 
 thriving trade between one country and another. 
 It is not strange, therefore, to find that the 
 art of this early time had many common, inter- 
 national characteristics and motives. We find 
 identically the same patterns of scrolls and ro- 
 settes in Crete that we find in Egypt. We find 
 the lotus of Egypt and the palmette, or palm 
 leaf, of Assyria in every country; sometimes 
 modified, oftentimes used in a way which shows 
 that the origin was forgotten, or unknown. We 
 even find that the Assyrian palmette and the 
 Egyptian lotus, may have been two variations 
 of one and the same elementary form. 
 
274 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 And the differences between the styles of the 
 different nations are equally easy to explain. 
 They are due, first, to differing religious and so- 
 cial ideals of life ; second, to climate, and third, 
 to material. There was in the autochthonous 
 Greek art no attempt at making an original na- 
 tional style ; these early Greeks merely built as 
 their needs required and their materials sug- 
 gested. For their decorative details they bor- 
 rowed right and left. They used every motive 
 that seemed to them beautiful, whatever its ori- 
 gin, and then, because they were more skilful 
 at making pictures than most of their neigh- 
 bours, and because they enjoyed it, they added 
 to the borrowed forms certain natural forms 
 which they loved : fishes — particularly the octo- 
 pus — bees, and great long-horned cattle. 
 
 When the Hellenes — the people we know as 
 Greeks — came to Greece and settled it, either 
 peacefully or by conquest, they gradually ab- 
 sorbed a good deal of the aboriginal art. They 
 were a people of different origin, perhaps of 
 different race; they came from the dim North, 
 a people whose birth is lost in the fog of the 
 past; but they found in the goodly peninsula 
 which they came to inhabit an art and a civili- 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 
 
 275 
 
 zation more highly developed, in some ways, 
 than their own. And this they did not scruple 
 to adopt wherever it fitted their needs, nor did 
 they scruple to modify it to suit their own tra- 
 ditions. The result of this amalgam of native 
 and foreign influences can be seen not only in 
 
 Early Cypriote Ionic Capital. 
 
 Fig. 25. Many similar early capitals prove the 
 Ionic capital to have been developed from Asiatic, 
 non-Greek origins. 
 
 early Greek architecture, but in Greek mythol- 
 ogy and literature as well. The many loves 
 of Zeus may be but idealized stories of the grad- 
 ual combination and marriage of the pure Hel- 
 lenic religion with all the old local religions; 
 and the Doric order, though theories concern- 
 ing its origin are at best but hypothetical, seems 
 probably compounded of analogous Hellenic and 
 aboriginal traditions; perhaps the column is 
 
276 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 due to the first, and the entablature to the sec- 
 ond. Certain it is that there are resemblances 
 between the Greek Doric entablatures and those 
 used by the prehistoric peoples before them 
 quite as strong as are the differences between 
 the columns. 
 
 But Greek architecture is more than the Doric 
 order. The Greeks developed the Ionic and Cor- 
 inthian orders as well, and both of these seem 
 to have been non-Greek in origin. That they 
 were not developed to any very great extent on 
 Greek soil itself until comparatively late times, 
 while the Doric was used alone and unrivalled 
 for three hundred years, is due to the fact that 
 during those years the Greeks were a young 
 people occupied in settling their own questions, 
 and always confronted by the fear of the un- 
 known peoples, the unknown nations — the Bar- 
 haroL After the Persian wars, when the East 
 had ceased to be a menace, and become an in- 
 vitation, they were eager enough to seize upon 
 and develop Eastern art motives. No fear of 
 losing the national characteristics of their art 
 restrained them from adopting and developing 
 for their own use the Ionic capital — now univer- 
 sally recognized as of Asiatic origin — or the 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 277 
 
 dentils of Lydia, or recombining the lotus and 
 palm leaf forms into new elements of beauty. 
 For all the Greeks were eager always, as is 
 truly said in the Book of the Acts, " either to 
 tell or to hear some new thing;'' and equally 
 eager to adopt whatever pleased them and de- 
 velop it in their own way. 
 
 Greek architecture, then, which is held up as 
 a pure national style, sincere and worthy of 
 our emulation, is seen on analysis to be a de- 
 velopment of motives coming from many non- 
 Greek sources, with a few native Greek motives, 
 all combined and used in harmony with Greek 
 life, Greek materials, Greek religion, and that 
 overmastering artistic idealism which has made 
 Greek art what it is. The Greek never hesitated 
 to take the results of other peoples' develop- 
 ment ; he borrowed in his religion, he borrowed 
 in his philosophy, he borrowed in his art. He 
 modified what he borrowed not because of any 
 dogmatic desire to make his art a national 
 art, but because he could always make his bor- 
 rowed motives more beautiful by modification. 
 
 The history of Roman architecture reveals 
 the same underlying method of development. 
 The Romans came into contact with Greek civili- 
 
278 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 zation early in their career because of the Greek 
 colonies in Italy and Sicily and Greek com- 
 merce, which flourished at that time, as the 
 quantities of Greek vases and imitations of 
 them that are found in Italy testify. Further- 
 more, like the Hellenes, the Eomans were a 
 people who were occupied in their first few hun- 
 dred years as a nation by their own affairs, in 
 wars, and in social and political development. 
 Even in their earlier times, however, the Eo- 
 mans were builders, and long before their final 
 architectural development they had acquired no 
 small skill in building itself, in arch making, 
 and in the efficient use of their native materials. 
 And the Eomans were an art-loving people, 
 keenly sensitive to beauty. The rapidity with 
 which they assimilated Greek forms, after 
 years of provincialism, bears witness to that. 
 Consequently, when at last internal peace and 
 growing wealth brought them the opportunity 
 to develop their fine arts, they turned for in- 
 spiration to the most beautiful buildings they 
 knew — the Greek buildings, and adopted for 
 their own use the Greek forms they were wise 
 enough to love. These they combined with their 
 own forms and the closely allied Etruscan 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 279 
 
 forms, and out of this combination, by means 
 of their building skill, evolved their own won- 
 derful Roman architecture, with all its magnifi- 
 cent qualities of bigness and large conception 
 and careful planning and rich ornament, a com- 
 bination of qualities before unknown. 
 
 This is not the place to go far into the criti- 
 cism of the much misunderstood Roman archi- 
 tecture. Causes and methods of development 
 alone concern us here. That the result — Roman 
 imperial architecture — was a strong and virile 
 art, intensely expressive of every side of that 
 wonderful empire — is universally admitted. 
 The critics who tco strongly attack Roman taste 
 and Roman buildings are not — most of them — 
 architects ; they are mere followers in the tradi- 
 tion of attack on everything connected with the 
 Roman Empire — a tradition started by a Roman 
 himself — that supreme Tory and reactionary, 
 Tacitus. 
 
 One more example of a more recent develop- 
 ment of architectural style will suffice. When 
 Charles VIII, and later Louis XII and Francis 
 I, made their ill-fated expeditions into Italy to 
 lay claim to the thrones of Naples and Milan, 
 though they brought back no spoils of material 
 
280 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 conquest, they did bring with them into France 
 a tremendous and enthusiastic admiration for 
 the artistic products of the early Italian Renais- 
 sance, which was just in the first flush of its 
 exuberant beauty. They brought back, too, Ital- 
 ian artisans whose work was eagerly welcomed 
 by the French courtiers. But unlike ancient 
 Greece and Rome, when this new and beautiful 
 art came to their notice, the French already had 
 a magnificent and live and growing national ar- 
 chitecture of their own. The flamboyant Gothic 
 of the Fifteenth Century France was too dear 
 to French hearts to yield to a new style at once ; 
 too deeply filled with the French spirit to be de- 
 serted for a foreign art without a struggle. 
 
 And yet the grace and loveliness of the newly 
 discovered Italian decorative work appealed ir- 
 resistibly to these French courtiers, and particu- 
 larly to Francis I. His political aspirations in 
 Italy may have had something to do with his 
 enthusiasm for Italian things ; besides, an Ital- 
 ian city at this period was a far more orderly 
 and civilized place than the usual French city, 
 and the Italian Renaissance palaces far richer 
 and far more comfortable than the contempor- 
 ary French chateaux, Whatever the cause — po- 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 281 
 
 litical or social or aesthetic, and probably it 
 was a combination of the three — Francis I at 
 once set about building in the new style. He im- 
 ported large numbers of Italian artists, and 
 treated them royally, and naturally enough his 
 admirers and courtiers strove to imitate him as 
 far as they were able. 
 
 Of course, no absolute reproduction of Ital- 
 ian models was possible. In the first place, 
 the great guild of native stone cutters and mas- 
 ter builders, all bred in the tradition of flam- 
 boyant Gothic, was all-powerful, and it was but 
 slowly that they came to know well and use 
 correctly the Eenaissance detail, and it was 
 years before they came to adopt the style in 
 anything beyond detail — years during which 
 the whole spirit of humanism and individual- 
 ism, of which Renaissance architecture was but 
 one side, was making great strides in France. 
 France has always been a rapidly changing 
 country, given to idealistic enthusiasms, and in 
 the years from the death of Louis XI to the time 
 of Henry IV, it grew rapidly in homogeneity, in 
 national spirit, and in international trade and 
 liberal culture. Had this change not taken 
 place, the Renaissance in architecture would 
 
282 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 doubtless have been but a momentary flores- 
 cence, a mere fad, to die with French political 
 aspirations in Italy, and the French would 
 have continued for years and centuries longer 
 to build according to the Gothic traditions of 
 their building guilds. 
 
 But French growth did not allow this. In- 
 ternational communication was growing rapidly 
 in amount, travel was becoming more common, 
 humanistic culture was more and more spread- 
 ing over Europe, bringing with it a tremendous 
 admiration for classic accomplishment; so that 
 the delicate and lovely mixture of classic and 
 Gothic elements which is the style of Francis 
 I, and which is so full of the charm peculiar to 
 all transitional styles, like the charm of Spring 
 in April, died not into a recrudescence of Gothic, 
 but into a fuller appreciation of classic forms, 
 and a firmer touch and a finer skill in their use. 
 Even with the growing use of classical forms, 
 however, there was, in general,, but little ap- 
 proach to those forms of Italian architecture 
 which were the first inspiration of the French 
 Renaissance. Climatic requirements are the 
 most important reason for this; the necessity 
 in cloudy France for large windows and steep 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 283 
 
 roofs.* In addition, there was a certain consti- 
 tutional gaiety and exuberance of spirit in the 
 French people that found in cold classicism but 
 an imperfect expression. 
 
 It was the result of all these tendencies which 
 made French Eenaissance architecture the 
 strongly national style it is. There is always 
 a frank use of large windows; there is nearly 
 always a steep and well-developed roof: there 
 is always the same expression of the intellectual 
 classicism and the exuberant unrestraint as 
 well. French architecture of the seventeenth 
 century was a national style not because the 
 French did not copy for fear of denationalizing 
 their art, but because their artists were true to 
 their ideals, copying what they thought beau- 
 tiful, but building always in conformity to their 
 conditions, their materials, and their environ- 
 ment. 
 
 An analysis of the development of any other 
 historical " style' $ will reveal the same in- 
 fluences at work. It will reveal, for instance, 
 Eomanesque growing out of Roman and Byzan- 
 tine architecture, and Gothic out of Roman- 
 esque, not through any sudden revolution, not 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 284, and compare it with 
 the Plate opposite page 158, 
 
284 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 through any impetuous striving for originality, 
 but always through the mere efforts of the ar- 
 chitects and builders to build as best they could 
 under differing conditions of skill and the dif- 
 fering social make-up of civilization. In every 
 case architects have copied past forms and for- 
 eign forms as well as they could, when these 
 forms seemed beautiful, and in every case, 
 nevertheless, architectural styles grew up in- 
 evitably national, inevitably expressive of the 
 contemporary life. 
 
 Any true criticism of the spirit of present- 
 day American architecture must be based on a 
 similar analysis of the conditions, both past 
 and present, which have influenced the broad 
 streams of our national life and character. And 
 first of all, one must note a certain cosmopoli- 
 tan quality in American life. At its birth the 
 United States was but an unintegrated collec- 
 tion of separate states, whose inhabitants were 
 of differing social classes, from differing parts 
 of England, with differing educations and ideals 
 and culture. Furthermore, there was added a 
 strong French influence from Canada, and later, 
 directly from France, due to French sympathy 
 for the young country which had just revolted 
 from its hereditary enemy, England. Indeed, 
 
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THE MEANING OF STYLE 285 
 
 it was not until years after the Civil War that 
 the country had any true national conscious- 
 ness, and to this day local loyalties and local 
 consciousness persist in all parts of the United 
 States which make any centralized, narrowly 
 intellectual attitude impossible. Local provin- 
 cialism has preserved us to a large extent from 
 the dangers of national provincialism. 
 
 Furthermore, it must be remembered that this 
 continent was settled largely by people coming 
 from a country that had a strongly developed 
 architecture of its own, and that throughout 
 those years when InigQ Jones, Christopher 
 Wren and their followers were building the mas- 
 terpieces of English Renaissance, communica- 
 tion between England and the American colonies 
 was well nigh continuous. The English colo- 
 nists, therefore, as soon as they were able to 
 build, built as nearly as possible in the style 
 of the English Renaissance of their own time. 
 True, they modified details here and there, be- 
 cause they were compelled to work so largely 
 in wood, instead of brick and stone, but there 
 was no architecture at all among the aboriginal 
 Indians which they could adopt, and which 
 might thus change their style. 
 
 After the Revolution there was little attempt 
 
286 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 to modify this style in order to give it a na- 
 tional significance. Even President Washing- 
 ton, enthusiastic American that he was, had no 
 such ideal of a national style in his mind. He 
 had a Frenchman, Major L 'Enfant, lay out 
 Washington in accordance with the best Euro- 
 pean taste and skill of the day; and the oldest 
 portion of the present national Capitol is of a 
 severely classic type quite in harmony with the 
 contemporary tradition both of France and 
 England. A little later Thomas Jefferson — a 
 man of amazingly broad knowledge, wide cul- 
 ture, and of no little artistic skill — laid still 
 another foundation stone for the tradition of 
 American classicism. It has been definitely 
 established that this great gentleman was him- 
 self the architect of the University of Virginia 
 at Charlottesville, and of the original state Capi- 
 tol at Richmond ; the latter being built from de- 
 signs which he made as modifications of the 
 drawings originally made for the building by a 
 French architect or draughtsman, in Paris, 
 under his own direction. It is interesting to see 
 how in all his work, Thomas Jefferson was 
 striving in wood to imitate, or simulate, the glor- 
 ies of Roman architecture, and Italian Renais- 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 287 
 
 sance architecture, known to him principally by- 
 means of architectural books, particularly the 
 great work of Palladio. In other words, one of 
 the earliest of real American architects, who was 
 a much-travelled gentleman, and president of 
 the United States as well, deliberately strove in 
 all his work to imitate the beauties of a past 
 style which he knew and appreciated because 
 it seemed to him beautiful. It is little wonder 
 that the classical tradition so founded in this 
 country has never entirely perished. 
 
 The whole trend of American architecture 
 was thus at its commencement given a turn in 
 the direction of a classicism similar to the clas- 
 sicism of the Koman revival and the later Greek 
 revival in Europe. Similarly, the Gothic re- 
 vival in England had its reflection in this coun- 
 try ; producing some beautiful churches, such as 
 old Trinity, in New York City; but producing a 
 great deal that seems to us very unbeautiful; 
 because Gothic detail is so utterly unsuited to 
 the sort of wooden building that was commonly 
 built at that time. American architecture 
 throughout the period of the Civil War and the 
 period of reconstruction was a dreary waste; 
 all the energy of the country seems to have been 
 
288 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 absorbed, first by the terrible strain of the war, 
 and afterwards by the sudden industrial and 
 commercial development which followed. Dur- 
 ing all this time, however, there was a contin- 
 uously increasing flow of trade and culture to 
 and from Europe. 
 
 The last quarter of the Nineteenth Century 
 was remarkable for a sudden awakening of ar- 
 tistic taste that permeated the whole country, 
 and modern American architecture, as distinct 
 from that American architecture which grew di- 
 rectly from the tradition of Thomas Jefferson 
 and the earlier Colonial builders, may be said 
 to date only from about 1875 or '76, the year 
 of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. 
 But this same quarter century was also remark- 
 able for two other important features ; first, an 
 enormous influx of foreign immigrants from 
 every country in Europe, and second, an un- 
 precedented amount of European travel, on 
 the part of an ever-increasing number of Ameri- 
 cans. In addition, it must be remembered that 
 the thought of the closing years of the Nine- 
 teenth Century and the first years of the Twen- 
 tieth Century was dominated by a strongly in- 
 ternational cast. International congresses of all 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 289 
 
 kinds grew more and more common; interna- 
 tional finance became important; lasting inter- 
 national peace seemed a possibility, and almost 
 a probability. In other words, the forty years 
 which have seen the development of modern 
 American architecture have been years dur- 
 ing which the international ideal grew and 
 triumphed. 
 
 The effect of this internationalism upon our 
 American art can be readily realized. It has 
 made our artists, and especially our architects, 
 eager to welcome inspiration from any quarter, 
 especially since in the 1870 's American art had 
 reached such a low ebb and inspiration was so 
 totally lacking. In other words, just at the pe- 
 riod when the awakening artistic taste of Amer- 
 ica was groping vaguely for beauty, Europe, 
 with all its stores of art treasures new and old, 
 modern and ancient, lay especially open to 
 Americans; European art schools welcomed 
 American students, and European resorts wel- 
 comed American tourists. Naturally, there- 
 fore, it was from Europe that the American 
 architects drew their inspiration, from the ther- 
 mae of Rome, the palaces of Florence and Ven- 
 ice, the chateaux and cathedrals of France, the 
 
290 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 abbeys and manors and country villages of Eng- 
 land. In drawing inspiration from these chan- 
 nels, and in adopting forms developed in Eu- 
 rope, our architects committed no artistic sin; 
 they were merely following the same methods 
 that the architects of all the greatest ages have 
 followed. Beauty is an architect's aim and 
 beauty is a quality that knows neither race nor 
 nation. The Cretan copied Egypt, the Hellene 
 copied the Cretan, the Eoman copied the Greek, 
 the Renaissance copied the Roman, the modern 
 architect copies them all. Greatness or badness 
 in architecture depend not on the question of 
 originality as against copying, but upon the 
 success or failure of an architect to build beau- 
 tifully, to solve some concrete problem in har- 
 mony with conditions, with materials, and with 
 the ideals of contemporary culture. 
 
 Our architects must, therefore, adopt the 
 forms of past styles for our own use, as long 
 as our American civilization is what it is to- 
 day. Our architecture must be based on the 
 architecture of the past as long as our culture 
 is based on the culture of the past, and the forms 
 that the architects copy and adopt will inevi- 
 tably be forms developed by those people on 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 291 
 
 whose achievements our culture is based. Just 
 as every great national architecture has arisen 
 through years of slow development, never blind- 
 ing itself to the past, yet never losing in rever- 
 ence for the past the call of new problems and 
 new human needs to be met, so must American 
 architecture arise; so it is arising before our 
 eyes. Our architects are not using Roman or- 
 ders or Gothic arches because they are too in- 
 efficient to design new forms; but because the 
 forms they adopt are beautiful, and have been 
 so judged for centuries. With our history and 
 our make-up we can rightly claim any of the 
 European styles as our own, because we are 
 able to understand it. More than any other 
 country of the world to-day, the United States 
 is heir to all styles, and all cultures, and just 
 as Greek philosophy and Roman law, and Feud- 
 alism, and Renaissance individualism, and the 
 rationalism of the Eighteenth Century have all 
 contributed to our institutions — our law, our 
 education, our religion, our political economy — 
 so our architecture must needs be based on the 
 architecture that all these different peoples have 
 developed. 
 Nor is the case of modern America analagous 
 
292 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 to the case of modern Germany, or Austria, or 
 England, where separate and modern national 
 styles seem to have suddenly developed during 
 the last twenty years, for in all these European 
 countries nationalism, perhaps even chauvin- 
 ism, has been far more deeply cultivated, and 
 has attained a far more luxuriant growth than 
 would be possible in this country. Naturally 
 enough, this great development of national feel- 
 ing — one of the most outstanding facts of recent 
 European history — has, like all great and 
 deeply felt spiritual movements, been expressed 
 in architecture, and the particular trend that 
 this nationalistic thought has taken can in every 
 case be read plain in the architecture of the 
 countries under consideration. Furthermore, 
 those critics of our modern American architec- 
 tural traditionalism who find in these new na- 
 tional styles of Europe examples for us to em- 
 ulate, lose sight of another important fact, the 
 fact that upon analysis these new nationalistic 
 styles lose much of their novelty ; in every case 
 their elements are much the same as similar 
 elements in styles of the past. For example, 
 the modern Teuton development in architecture 
 is, perhaps, the best known of the modern 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 293 
 
 styles, with a splendid list of works to its credit ; 
 fine stores, and houses, noble town halls, and 
 great monuments ; all apparently designed in an 
 absolutely new and original way. When one ex- 
 amines them in detail, however, it is astounding 
 how exactly similar they are in many ways to 
 certain buildings of the German Baroque ; simi- 
 lar in a love for long, vertical lines, similar in 
 the use of roof surfaces, similar in the general 
 feeling for relief. The Plate opposite page 294 
 shows a little hunting lodge which is exactly 
 analogous to a great deal of the work of the 
 modern German Secession — in reality it was 
 built early in the Eighteenth Century by a 
 famous Baroque architect, Johann Conrad 
 Schlaun. 
 
 Similarly, the majority of the modern archi- 
 tecture of France is an eclectic style that 
 combines elements of almost all the French 
 "styles" from Francis I to Louis XVI and the 
 Empire. France is fortunate in having the 
 great tradition of the Ecole des Beaux Arts to 
 keep always alive in the student the ideals of 
 the architecture of its great past; and Art 
 Nouveau had but a short existence as a con- 
 trolling factor in French architecture. In a 
 
294 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTUKE 
 
 similar manner, the best modern English archi- 
 tecture is in a style which combines elements 
 from all the English styles, and especially from 
 Tudor work, and the earlier English Renais- 
 sance. 
 
 America, to-day, is too young to have any 
 national styles of her own to draw on, save only 
 the Colonial — a modified form of the later Eng- 
 lish classic, and to a less extent the Spanish 
 Renaissance. Our architects deserve a great 
 deal of credit for the way in which they are 
 making an ever-wider use of these two styles. 
 Examples of good modern buildings in an adap- 
 tation of the Colonial styles are so common 
 throughout the East that specific illustration 
 seems almost futile. There is something about 
 the style that makes it peculiarly well adapted 
 to the great elms and wide streets that are the 
 pride of the smaller eastern towns and cities, 
 particularly when it is used in a town where 
 there are many old houses and churches, and 
 a wealth of local tradition. Less known, but 
 even more interesting, are the increasingly 
 numerous buildings in California and the 
 Southwest in which an attempt has been 
 made to adapt the decorative motives of the 
 Spanish Renaissance, as it was built in Amer- 
 
MERCHANTS NATIONAL BANK, GRINNELL, IOWA 
 
 A building which is the result of one man's temperament, undisciplined by 
 tradition. Such a building almost always appears somewhat "outlandish." 
 
 HUNTING LODGE, CLEMENSWERTH, GERMANY 
 
 This lodge, built in the eighteenth century, shows that modern German 
 "Secession" architects are merely maintaining traditions of long standing. See 
 page 293. 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 295 
 
 ica — the " Mission' ' style — to modern uses. 
 There are a number of beautiful houses in Cali- 
 fornia which are entirely successful in this 
 adaptation of a beautiful style which has been 
 so travestied and caricatured by cheap build- 
 ers in the Middle West and East as to have 
 fallen into considerable disfavour. That the 
 style may be used successfully for large public 
 buildings, too, is proved by the the railroad sta- 
 tion at San Diego. At their best, however, these 
 styles are not sufficiently wide in their possibil- 
 ities to fill all our physical and aesthetic needs 
 and there are great portions of the country 
 where climatic or historical factors make both 
 seem out of place. 
 
 There is but one other possible source of 
 purely American inspiration. Some of the In- 
 dian tribes far in the southwest, in Mexico and 
 Central America, had developed long ago build- 
 ing forms of some beauty and magnificence. 
 This grotesque art, however, born of priest- 
 ruled, barbaric peoples, who worshipped ter- 
 rible gods with human sacrifices, is far too alien 
 to our taste ever to appear beautiful, and any 
 attempt to adapt it to our use is manifestly 
 absurd. 
 
 But in general, the architect should forget 
 
296 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 " style" altogether. The architect who seeks a 
 new and original American " style" is as much 
 at fault as he who sticks to Roman or Gothic at 
 all costs; his work may be interesting, it may 
 be significant, but often it is less in touch with 
 peoples' needs, less truly beautiful, than saner 
 and less imaginative work.* Whatever our 
 attitude on the style question may be, whether 
 it be conservatism, like that of Christopher 
 Wren, who wrote over two hundred years 
 ago, "It is necessary for the architect in a con- 
 spicuous work to preserve his undertaking from 
 general censure, and so for him to accommo- 
 date his designs to the Geist of the age he lives 
 in, though it appear to him less rational"; or 
 whether it be, on the other hand, the radicalism 
 of the critic who wishes that every architectural 
 book and photograph in the country might be 
 destroyed so that we might start anew — what- 
 ever our attitude may be, we think altogether 
 too much about ■ ' style. ' ' 
 
 For one may rest assured that style is but a 
 means, and that beauty is the end in quest. Let 
 our architects, then, and our laymen, too, stop 
 all their futile arguments about style, about 
 Art Nouveau or Seccessionism, or the good 
 
 * See the Plate opposite page 294. 
 
THE MEANING OF STYLE 297 
 
 old traditions, or the Roman or the Gothic; 
 for the truest way to a national style is through 
 a sincere attempt to gain beauty in a simple 
 way, and the architect who designs carefully 
 and thoughtfully, taking care to fulfill every 
 smallest demand which his problem makes, and 
 decorates the result in the most beautiful way 
 at his command, whether the decorative motives 
 he uses are created by him or adapted from the 
 past, is doing more to make American archi- 
 tecture a glorious expression of national life 
 than generations of theorizing critics. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 One of the most important movements in the 
 entire field of modern thought has been the 
 "socialization of consciousness''; that is, a 
 gradual widening in the scope of popular 
 thought, which has been reflected in every kind 
 of human endeavour. The individual is grow- 
 ing less and less satisfied with the consideration 
 merely of the things that concern him alone, 
 more and more he is coming to feel himself con- 
 sciously a part of the fascinating and complex 
 tissue of life ; he is beginning to appreciate that 
 his life is so closely bound up with the lives 
 of his fellows, and their lives knit by such a 
 multiplicity of ties to his, that he must settle all 
 really important questions not by their effect on 
 himself alone, but by their effect on the total 
 life of the community. The Mediaeval or Ren- 
 aissance moralist began with the individual soul, 
 and worked from that to the ideal community; 
 the modernist, on the other hand, starts with 
 
 298 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 299 
 
 the ideal community and works back to the in- 
 dividual soul. 
 
 This new attitude has furnished the world 
 with an entirely new set of criteria by which 
 to judge not only personal conduct, but also the 
 religion and the arts of the present day, and 
 this judgment is going on continuously and with 
 a ruthless earnestness. Architecture must 
 stand or fall in popular estimation according 
 to the manner in which it undergoes this judg- 
 ment, and by some it is condemned, for in villa 
 or great church, in library or city house, some 
 critics see only the working of the traditional 
 and outgrown individualism, and in the archi- 
 tect they see nothing but a panderer to the 
 false culture of a pleasure-loving plutocracy. 
 The critics who condemn our architecture in 
 this way are judging the whole art by a few in- 
 dividual architects. It is true that there are 
 certain architects who may be so judged and 
 so condemned ; but the art itself is greater than 
 any of those who practise it, and the great ma- 
 jority of American architects are more truly 
 alive to the social bearing of their profession, 
 and its unique social value, than are most of 
 their critics. 
 
300 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Architecture is, in fact, the greatest and most 
 real of all the arts, precisely because it has this 
 unique social message, this tremendous social 
 value. And this is necessarily so, because of 
 the very nature of the art itself ; because of its 
 dual nature, its double basis on practical needs 
 and aesthetic ideals. Every real change in pop- 
 ular sentiment will inevitably react on both 
 these factors, and through them on architecture, 
 for every real change in popular sentiment, 
 when once it permeates the core of community 
 life, must produce changes in the daily needs 
 of the people, just as surely as it must modify 
 to some extent the popular concept of beauty. 
 
 This is particularly true when the change is 
 one so deep in its penetration into the very 
 heart of life, and so wide in its scope, as the 
 present change, which must affect everything 
 one does or thinks; a change which has pro- 
 duced socialism and settlement houses, model 
 suburbs and public playgrounds. The social- 
 ized conscience, for instance, has produced new 
 ideals of housing, of sanitation, of factory ar- 
 rangement, of city planning, and all of these 
 have a direct bearing upon the art of architec- 
 ture, because they present new problems in the 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 301 
 
 buildings which the architect is called upon to 
 design. 
 
 In the main, modern architects appreciate and 
 welcome these new problems. It is not upon 
 them that the blame must be laid for the slow 
 realization of the social ideal in modern build- 
 ings. They are ever alert to the changing needs 
 of the public; housing competitions and the 
 like are frequent, and architectural thought is 
 eagerly assailing these new problems, and 
 eagerly creating new ideals to realize. But, 
 unlike painter or sculptor or writer, the archi- 
 tect needs more than his own thought and his 
 own skill to create works of art. The architect's 
 mission is not fulfilled by dreams or great 
 schemes, it is only fulfilled by actual buildings, 
 constructed and in use. And to embody the 
 ideas which he has developed requires often a 
 large amount of money. It requires people to 
 build, people who are ready to appreciate the 
 merits of new schemes and to pay for them. As 
 long as speculative builders and real estate op- 
 erators are content to build cheap and ill-de- 
 signed buildings because there is great profit 
 in this evil trade, just so long, no matter how 
 hard the architect thinks about new ideals, and 
 
302 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 no matter how perfect are the solutions his 
 brain devises for the new problems, will the 
 social ideal be thwarted in architecture, and our 
 cities remain chaotic, unbeautiful, depress- 
 ing monuments of an inexcusable avarice. Good 
 design costs ; high ideals must be paid for ; and 
 until people are educated beyond the wild and 
 thoughtless rush for abnormal dividends at any- 
 cost of beauty and health, it is discouragingly 
 futile to hope for great improvements. If our 
 architecture is to be blamed for not realizing 
 the immense importance of socialized effort at 
 the present day, the blame must rest not upon 
 the architect, but upon that small minority who 
 are determined to build as cheaply and as 
 thoughtlessly as the law allows, because there 
 is easy wealth for them in the process. 
 
 It is significant in this matter that one of the 
 first to realize in an agony of spirit the terrible 
 injustice and ruthless cruelty of the new in- 
 dividualistic industrialism was also one of the 
 best known of architectural critics, John Kuskin. 
 In a lecture before the Koyal Institute of Brit- 
 ish Architects, after an interesting discussion of 
 architectural education, occurs this passage: 
 "Pardon me that I speak despondingly. For 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 303 
 
 my part, I feel the force of mechanism and the 
 fury of avaricious commerce to be at present 
 so irresistible that I have seceded from the 
 study not only of architecture, but nearly of all 
 art ; and have given myself as I would in a be- 
 sieged city, to seek the best modes of getting 
 bread and water for the multitudes, there re- 
 maining no question, it seems to me, of other 
 than such grave business for the time." 
 
 Euskin saw architecture one-sidedly; to his 
 acute insight and powerful ethical sense, there 
 was, therefore, little place in life for the archi- 
 tect ; poverty and misery were calling too poig- 
 nantly for relief on all sides. But to Euskin 
 architecture meant decoration and ornament, 
 and the architect was primarily a decorator, 
 and it is this misconception which gives such a 
 sad and discouraged tone to this passage. To 
 the modern architect, who realizes that decora- 
 tion is but one of several sides of his great art, 
 the call of poverty and misery is only an in- 
 spiration to a more careful exercise of his skill, 
 and a more absolute devotion to his profes- 
 sion. 
 
 v^ The first great value which the art of 
 architecture has for the commonwealth lies in 
 
304 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the fact that true architecture is entirely de- 
 voted to the sincere attempt to solve in the best 
 practical way possible all the various problems 
 set before it by every building which it is to 
 design. The implications of this are extremely 
 far reaching. Not only does the individual 
 architect, by the careful design of each build- 
 ing, thus improve the conditions under which 
 the users of the building live, or work, as the 
 case may be, but in addition, the gradually 
 growing number of such carefully designed 
 buildings raises the entire standard of taste in 
 the nation, slowly, it is true, but irresistibly. 
 
 The modern school house is a concrete ex- 
 ample of how architecture supplies the practical 
 necessities engendered by the new social con- 
 science, and at the same time raises the stand- 
 ard of public taste. The ordinary city school 
 house of thirty years ago was, as a general rule, 
 an unbeautiful, unhealthy affair, with close, un- 
 ventilated rooms, dark corridors, and danger- 
 ous wooden stairs ; a gloomy place of brick out- 
 side and coarse wooden trim in, where the chil- 
 dren were herded together in a most unhealthy 
 and uninspiring way. Since that time awaken- 
 ing social consciousness allows no more such 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 305 
 
 blots on our streets; public opinion will no 
 longer stand school houses which are not light 
 and well ventilated and safe. The modern 
 school house is airy and conveniently arranged, 
 and often the most carefully thought out build- 
 ing in the community. For this state of things 
 the architect is directly responsible. Even be- 
 fore public opinion had awakened to the horrors 
 of dirty and dangerous schools, the architect 
 had devoted a great deal of thought to the prob- 
 lem, as many of the older schools, when de- 
 signed by good architects, testify. The true 
 architect is never content with following the 
 minimum requirements of the law, as the mere 
 builder is too often content. The true architect 
 is always puzzling over his problems, and ap- 
 plying all his expert knowledge and skill to pro- 
 ducing buildings that shall not only satisfy pub- 
 lic taste, but, as nearly as possible, shall em- 
 body the high ideal of the building that exists in 
 his own mind. If his building does not far sur- 
 pass the minimum requirements of the law and 
 of popular opinion, in convenience, in efficiency, 
 in sanitation, in beauty, and in safety, the archi- 
 tect feels that he has failed. The mental result 
 is the raising of the taste of the community to 
 
306 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 a new level; for good things which the public 
 has once enjoyed, it is very loathe to part with. 
 The material result, also, is immeasurable. New 
 York City's newer schools are a wonderful civic 
 possession, and so are the schools in a thousand 
 different towns and cities, all because in them 
 architects have striven to do their work sin- 
 cerely and well. Particularly in California has 
 the school architecture risen to a high level of 
 public service, because there the community 
 conscience seems to have been developed to an 
 unusual degree, and bcause economic conditions 
 and the moderate climate have given the archi- 
 tect a greater freedom to build according to his 
 ideals. If education is the great hope of pro- 
 gressive democracy, surely in building the 
 many- windowed and efficient schools of New 
 Y'ork or St. Louis, or the invitingly delightful, 
 wide-spreading, one-storied schools of Califor- 
 nia, American architects have performed a con- 
 spicuous public service, and architecture has 
 been truly the expression of the awakening so- 
 cial conscience of the nation. 
 
 During the last twenty years there has been 
 an even greater improvement in housing con- 
 ditions, for which the architect is responsible. 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OP ARCHITECTURE 307 
 
 We are in the habit of thinking of our city slums 
 as rather terrible places even now; but if we 
 could picture them as they were thirty years 
 ago, we should realize what progress has been 
 made in bettering the living conditions of the 
 poor. It is true that architects are not respon- 
 sible for all the improvements, but it is equally 
 true that architecture has not lagged behind. 
 And for very many improvements architecture 
 is directly responsible. The * ' open-stair ' ' tene- 
 ment, one of the greatest steps forward in tene- 
 ment design, in which all interior public 
 corridors are abandoned; the careful arrange- 
 ment of tenement units so as to give well-venti- 
 lated light courts that are real courts, airy and 
 capacious and pleasant, and the gradual recla- 
 mation of the waste roofs ; all these are changes 
 which architects have initiated. These are real 
 reforms, and it is only the tremendous increase 
 in population among the least educated people 
 which makes it possible still to fill the terrible 
 old "dumb-bell" flats, with their dark and 
 dreary rooms, their six-story air shafts, two or 
 three feet wide, and their indecent and dirty 
 sanitary arrangements. Before these, again, 
 were the utterly terrible holes in which the poor 
 
308 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of the early Nineteenth Century had to live; 
 holes the like of which one may conceive from 
 the labyrinthine alleys of parts of Liverpool or 
 Naples or eastern London, vast areas of un- 
 planned hovels and unkempt courts, black, fear- 
 fully unhealthy, without adequate water, with- 
 out any attempt at sanitation, reeking hotbeds 
 of disease and vice and despair, into which were 
 crowded all the unfortunate castaways of com- 
 mercial individualism. 
 
 Now that misery, at least, has gone, or is fast 
 passing. Many of the European cities have 
 made enormous strides in recent years in doing 
 away with the unspeakable conditions under 
 which their poor lived. In this fine work Ger- 
 many and England are in the lead, and city after 
 city has condemned wholesale great blocks of 
 unsanitary courts and alleys, and replaced them 
 with new and better houses. The statistics are 
 amazing. Between 1875 and 1908, for instance, 
 the city of London condemned and cleared one 
 hundred and four acres of fearful slums, Bir- 
 mingham ninety-three acres, Leeds seventy-five, 
 Glasgow eighty-eight, and so forth. Our cities 
 have much to learn from European cities in this 
 respect; in Europe civic consciousness is so 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 309 
 
 alive and civic pride so alert that improvements 
 are possible that stagger us. And these im- 
 provements are largely due to the architects. 
 It is architecture that must arrange for the 
 housing of all the people rendered homeless by 
 the condemnation of their hovels ; it is architec- 
 ture which must design new tenements which 
 shall not only satisfy but transcend the most 
 stringent requirements of the law. 
 
 If, as it appears, our people and our civic 
 governments here in America have been behind 
 the times and timid in their treatment of the 
 housing needs of our cities, our architects — and 
 by architects is meant not merely building de- 
 signers, but men who live up to the noble tradi- 
 tions and the high responsibilities of their art — 
 cannot be likewise blamed, for where they have 
 had opportunities to build tenements, they have 
 produced buildings which will bear comparison 
 with any in Europe in sanitation, in conven- 
 ience, in beauty, and in economy. Indeed, in 
 some ways they have set a standard that far 
 surpasses the European standard; as, for in- 
 stance, in the matter of bathrooms. New York 
 in 1904 had the terrible total of three hundred 
 and sixty-two thousand dark interior rooms; 
 
310 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 but New York now has probably a larger num- 
 ber of bathrooms than any other city in the 
 world, and bathrooms whose average conven- 
 ience and cleanliness are a wonder to foreign- 
 ers. A great deal of the progress which our 
 housing laws have made is attributable to ar- 
 chitecture, too. The public opinion of the ar- 
 chitectural profession is very powerful, and 
 organized as it is in architectural societies all 
 over the country, it has no little influence over 
 legislation. Every architectural society has 
 committees which devote a great deal of time 
 to legislative matters ; which examine every law 
 proposed that can have any bearing whatsoever 
 upon building ; which are always discussing san- 
 itation and fire prevention and building codes, 
 and by means of public agitation and education 
 striving always to raise building standards in 
 this country in every respect, both as regards 
 safety and beauty. 
 
 If architecture has been successful in better- 
 ing living conditions in modern cities, it has 
 been even more so in the suburbs. Here, again, 
 Germany and England have taken the lead, so 
 that the contrast between the carelessly planned 
 and poorly built suburbs of the first half 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 311 
 
 of the century and the model houses that have 
 been built during the last ten years is very strik- 
 ing. There is nothing much more depressing, 
 for instance, than the average English suburb 
 of fifty years ago, street after street exactly 
 alike, lined with ugly houses — ' ' semi-detached 
 villas" — each of dirty, blackened brick, without 
 distinction, utterly undesigned, and brooded 
 over always by tiers of great factory stacks, 
 gaunt and stark against a grey sky, stacks that 
 belch endlessly torrents of black smoke which 
 the wind smudges across the clouds. Such a 
 suburb is as dreary, as uninteresting, as cursed 
 with colourless anaemia, as the flat, stale life it 
 produces. It is dull with a cruel and despair- 
 ing hopelessness. Such suburbs one may see 
 still from the car windows as the train rushes 
 through the ragged skirts of southern London, 
 or through the busy black country of the Mid- 
 lands, or through certain towns in our own New 
 England or Pennsylvania. The new model su- 
 burbs of Germany and England are as famous 
 for their excellence as the old suburbs are noto- 
 rious for their squalor, and a visit to the Hamp- 
 stead Garden Suburb near London or to the 
 Krupp villages near Essen is a revelation to 
 
312 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 many an American. It is noteworthy that ar- 
 chitects have designed these new and beautiful 
 villages, and that it is to architecture that is 
 due to a large extent the improvement in subur- 
 ban housing. Lately, this country has begun to 
 awaken to the sordidness of our American sub- 
 urbs, and manufacturers have begun to build 
 on their own account new and pleasant villages 
 for their employees, realizing that in improved 
 living conditions lie advantages not only for 
 the employee, but for the employer as well. 
 
 There are a thousand symptoms that archi- 
 tects have not been blind to the opportunities 
 presented their art in this respect. The im- 
 proved housing now being built in Washington 
 as a memorial to the late Mrs. Wilson from de- 
 signs that were the product of a housing com- 
 petition is but one of many schemes which show 
 that architectural thought is at last bearing 
 fruit in executed work, and that there has been 
 a real beginning in making our cities and their 
 suburbs comfortable and safe and healthy, even 
 for the very poor — a beginning that is bound 
 to grow more and more quickly and bear ever 
 more fruit which shall be increasingly valuable 
 to the life of the commonwealth. 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 313 
 
 Nor are convenience and the filling of obvious 
 practical needs the only social services which 
 architecture performs. The dual idealism which 
 the architect should always possess, which 
 makes him alert to practical requirements, and 
 at the same time always avid of beauty, pre- 
 vents him from ever being satisfied with merely 
 crudely necessary results, however perfectly 
 convenient. The true architect, like every true 
 artist, sees life in a manner too broad and too 
 keen to allow that. He sees life as a matter of 
 ideals as well as of bread and butter ; he is al- 
 ways alert to the large place which beauty must 
 have in making any life rich and full. He real- 
 izes how a starved yearning for beauty is 
 twisted and perverted to find unhealthy expres- 
 sion in all sorts of vice and crime. He realizes 
 concretely that a passionate need for beauty is 
 innate in the very tissue of every life, and that 
 it is a real need, coextensive with the need for 
 health and life itself, and as definitely requiring 
 satisfaction to produce a sane and happy com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 The tragedy of the slum lies almost as much 
 in its ugliness as in its crowded and unhealthy 
 conditions. In fact, the two qualities are in- 
 
314 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 separably connected. The gaunt and terrible 
 ugliness of the typical American manufactur- 
 ing town sheds perpetually a subtle, baneful in- 
 fluence, all the more dangerous because so im- 
 palpable, upon the life of that town, adding 
 always to class hatreds, piling always inflam- 
 mable fuel on the hot fires of envy and greed 
 and rebellion ; an influence more potent than is 
 usually realized in arousing the angry heart of 
 strife, in turning boys to drink and drugs, in 
 speeding girls into the life where a flashy and 
 temporary luxury burns with a false beauty and 
 attractiveness for a brief span and dies into an 
 unutterably terrible tragedy of disease and dis- 
 illusion and death. Could we but substitute for 
 the raw wildness of a western mining town or 
 the slipshod squalor of the ordinary factory 
 centre in the East some semblance of order and 
 beauty, the results in an increased orderliness 
 and sanity of popular life would be amazing. 
 
 Experience has shown that this is no idle and 
 baseless assertion. It is the ever-increasing 
 movement in Germany to surround the employ- 
 ees of the great industrial firms with beauty 
 which is responsible in no small degree for the 
 industrial and national solidarity of the Ger- 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 315 
 
 man people so evident to-day. It is the fact 
 that the poor of the older continental cities of 
 Europe, however miserable, live in the midst of 
 a beauty which is the legacy of the architecture 
 of all the past, that has enabled them to live a 
 life in many ways richer, fuller and more spirit- 
 ual than the common life of their much more 
 prosperous American co-workers. The emo- 
 tional effect of beautiful buildings, however un- 
 consciously felt, is never lost, and a civic 
 consciousness truly alert must feel the need of 
 beauty as strongly as it is cognizant of the need 
 for health. 
 
 And if one beautiful building has an import- 
 ant effect upon those who see it, how much more 
 powerful is the effect of a city of beautiful 
 buildings ! The architectural perfection of Ath- 
 ens under Pericles was not only a symptom, it 
 was, as well, a cause of the well-ordered and 
 happy life of the Athenian commonwealth. So 
 the beauty and imposing grandeur of Home 
 under Trajan and Hadrian were not only a 
 symptom, but a cause of the gradual breakdown 
 of the Tory aristocracy of the Republic and the 
 early Empire, and the gradual acquisition by the 
 whole people — save the slaves — of civic rights 
 
316 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and an intellectual and artistic culture, as evi- 
 denced by the little town of Pompeii, for exam- 
 ple, a condition which alone made possible, after 
 centuries of racial struggle and political disin- 
 tegration, what culture there was during the 
 Dark Ages, and which laid a foundation that, 
 growing through the Middle Ages, carefully 
 nourished in the monasteries, blossomed with 
 such beauty in the Eenaissance, and produced 
 so infinitely much valuable to us in every side 
 of human activity. 
 
 The great age of Gothic architecture was 
 equally a symptom and equally a cause of the 
 religious sentiment of the Thirteenth Century; 
 more than that, the great cathedrals of France 
 became the rallying places of the people, and 
 thus helped the solidifying of popular sen- 
 timent against the feudal barons. In the 
 gradual growth of cities around these great 
 churches, cities nestling as close as possible to 
 their tall, grey, many-buttressed sides, can be 
 seen in some small measure the inspiration 
 which the people drew then, and still draw, from 
 the beautiful might of their great architecture. 
 
 It is more difficult to trace the effect of beauty 
 upon us moderns. Our lives are more complex, 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 317 
 
 our spirits less naive, more skeptical, less 
 ready to yield to the stimulus of beautiful art. 
 It is especially difficult to realize the social effect 
 of beauty here in America, for the puritanism 
 under the spell of whose austerity large por- 
 tions of this country were settled has left traces 
 of itself even now; traces in whose influences 
 are strangely commingled good and evil — sane 
 thought and unhealthy repression, a stern moral 
 sense and an unreasoning suspicion of all that 
 is beautiful. But it would be an utter falsehood 
 to deny the effect of beautiful surroundings on 
 our people. The study of psychology has estab- 
 lished the close connection between aesthetic 
 pleasure and certain signs of mental and moral 
 health. To cite a simple case, in the mere eye 
 rest and repose which a simple and beautiful 
 building furnishes, there is a distinct source of 
 true health and happiness, and a distinct in- 
 fluence towards the thinking of sane and beau- 
 tiful thoughts. 
 
 One may well rest assured, therefore, that 
 architecture is performing a noble public ser- 
 vice in creating beautiful buildings as well as in 
 making them well built and convenient. There 
 is too much evidence in the history of the past, 
 
318 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 in the life around us, in psychological inquiry, 
 for anyone to deny that, and it is a fact which 
 the greatest and most far-seeing people have 
 always appreciated and accepted. Beauty, then, 
 has a two-fold, beneficent effect, first physical, 
 then spiritual ; first as a means of sane pleasure 
 to the senses, second as an inspiration to higher 
 thinking and better living. Ruskin — moralist 
 that he was — saw the spiritual effect of beauty 
 as supreme ; we are, perhaps, given too much to 
 a consideration merely of its physical side. At 
 the conclusion of the lecture from which was 
 taken the quotation given on page 302, there oc- 
 curs this beautiful passage, which all of us 
 might do well to take to heart. "But there is, 
 at least, this ground for courage, if not for 
 hope. As the evil spirits of avarice and luxury 
 are directly contrary to art, so, also, art is di- 
 rectly contrary to them; and according to its 
 force, expulsive of them and medicinal against 
 them. : . . In the fulfillment of such function, 
 literally and practically, here among men, is the 
 only real use or pride of noble architecture, and 
 on its acceptance or surrender of that function 
 it depends whether, in future, the cities of Eng- 
 land melt into a ruin more confused and ghastly 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 319 
 
 than ever storm wasted or wolf inhabited, or 
 purge and exalt themselves into true habita- 
 tions of men, whose walls shall be Safety, and 
 whose gates shall be Praise." 
 
 There is a third great service which archi- 
 tecture performs for the commonwealth, the in- 
 estimable service of "town planning.' ' Archi- 
 tecture has never been satisfied with designing 
 single buildings. Wherever great cities have 
 grown, there the architect has striven not only 
 to fill them with beautiful buildings, but to ar- 
 range them in the best possible manner, and so, 
 little by little, to produce cities whose design 
 shall be the expression, not of chance, but of 
 art. Thus the imperial Csesars built in Rome 
 forum after forum, straightened roads, widened 
 and lengthened streets. Thus, centuries later, 
 Henry the Fourth built in Paris the Place 
 Royal, setting an example which many of his 
 successors followed in making breathing spaces 
 and spots of real beauty in the capital. After 
 the London fire in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren 
 prepared a great plan for the rearrangement of 
 the burned portion, with fine wide streets and 
 dignified spaces — a plan, unfortunately, never 
 followed. 
 
320 THE ENJOYMENT OP ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Slightly different was the example of Card- 
 inal Kichelieu, who, in the first half of the Sev- 
 enteenth Century, had his architect, Lemercier, 
 design an entire village for him, to be built in 
 connection with his chateau — a village which, 
 though never finished, exists as one of the 
 earliest examples of comprehensive town plan- 
 ning. His was an example too autocratic and 
 requiring too much of enormous wealth and 
 power to result in emulation, but it indicates the 
 tendency always present to progress from the 
 building and designing of single buildings to the 
 designing of entire groups. 
 
 Our own country has an early example of 
 town planning starting from a different point 
 of view, in Washington, which was first laid 
 out from the plans of Major L 'Enfant, an ac- 
 complished Frenchman. General Washington 
 was far-sighted enough to realize almost alone 
 at this early time the enormous benefit of hav- 
 ing the national capital carefully and thought- 
 fully planned, and he was fortunate enough to 
 have a Frenchman to develop the design, for 
 the French have always had a superlative skill 
 in the solution of such problems, in the plac- 
 ing of important buildings, and the values 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 321 
 
 of vistas and variety. It is this French 
 skill which has made Paris the most beau- 
 tiful of all capitals; each great monarch, and 
 each successive governmental regime, striving 
 through its architects to make successive im- 
 provements, laying out new streets, building 
 dignified Places, setting beautiful buildings 
 always in the most effective situations. The 
 new boulevards, the tremendous and exquisite 
 vistas, like that up from the Place de la Con- 
 corde to the Madeleine, or up the Champs 
 Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, the treat- 
 ment of the great Chambre des Deputes, or 
 the Trocadero, these elements of high and in- 
 spiring beauty can be the results of nothing save 
 dauntless architectural skill and superb archi- 
 tectural taste backed by great and sympathetic 
 power; and it is this French skill and taste 
 which has influenced the beautification of count- 
 less European cities, from Berlin to Bucharest. 
 City planning — that is, the mere fact of city 
 planning — is, therefore, no new thing ; but city 
 planning as a science, with all the implications 
 which it has to-day, is. The city beautifiers of 
 the Eenaissance, and later, even through the 
 first three-quarters of the Nineteenth Century, 
 
322 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 had in mind mainly beauty and dignity. There 
 was a great deal of personal pride, perhaps 
 even of personal vanity, in the improvements 
 made in capital cities by the sovereigns reign- 
 ing there. These improvements were more in- 
 dividual than civic movements, and, however 
 beautiful their results now, they were often at 
 the time indirect results of terrible cruelty and 
 oppression, and attended with all sorts of scan- 
 dal. The building of the Place de la Concorde, 
 for instance, was probably set down as but one 
 more of the extravagances of the Louis by the 
 Eevolutionists ; they thought more of the ter- 
 rible taxation that had made it possible than of 
 the blessing it is to the modern city. The city 
 planner of those days was seeking beauty at any 
 cost. 
 
 It is the fact that large numbers of Americans 
 confuse this early city planning with the ideals 
 of modern city planning which makes them so 
 sceptical of its benefits, and so suspicious of its 
 aims. To them city planning immediately sug- 
 gests visions of many-columned monumental 
 buildings placed on impossibly wide streets, a 
 vision with no very real appeal to them, and 
 one to be realized only at the cost of wholesale 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 323 
 
 condemnation and ruinous taxes. What is 
 needed to make the great mass of us enthusias- 
 tic, over city planning is merely a clearer notion 
 of what modern city planning aims to do. 
 
 The modern movement is one of the finest and 
 most promising results of the socialization of 
 consciousness. It is not a matter of fanciful 
 schemes with formal beauty as their end; it is 
 a matter which touches every side of human life 
 and endeavour, and is based on the sanest and 
 most practical) scientific principles we know. 
 The city planning of to-day is, like the best 
 modern architecture, merely an attempt to solve 
 all the practical structural problems which the 
 modern city offers, in the best and most beau- 
 tiful way. It has as its aim a healthy, efficient, 
 and beautiful city, to be gained by the gradual 
 elimination of as many of the mistakes of the 
 past as possible in cities already existing, and 
 the careful planning of future developments, 
 with an eye to means of communication, water 
 supply, drainage, suitability to the site, and 
 beauty. 
 
 In those bustling, booming days when Ameri- 
 can industrialism and commerce were growing 
 with mushroom rapidity, and cities were spring- 
 
324 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ing up all over the country, little thought was 
 given to their planning. The city fathers merely 
 laid out a criss-cross of streets, all at right 
 angles to each other; the real-estate promoters 
 got hold of as much as they could, and specula- 
 tion and chaos were the inevitable results. 
 Buildings went up here and there, with no cor- 
 relation, and each landowner built exactly what 
 he pleased, wherever he pleased. Fads and 
 fashions boomed now one portion of the town, 
 now another ; residential areas became business 
 areas ; business areas faded and died away into 
 emptiness ; factories were built in places where 
 they spoiled promising residential developments. 
 Cut-throat speculation and competition followed 
 no ideal, recognized no checks. The resultant 
 chaotic inefficiency of such a city is amazing, 
 and it is a characteristic all too universal in 
 this country. Under any such anarchy real es- 
 tate becomes a questionable investment, for 
 real estate values soar and die unaccountably. 
 The scattering of business and manufacturing 
 makes a great deal of trucking necessary that 
 might easily have been avoided. It necessitates 
 an endless loss of time and money in the ordi- 
 nary run of the day's work. 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 325 
 
 Furthermore, when once business and resi- 
 dential areas have become somewhat settled, 
 the American policy of allowing anyone to do 
 what he wants with his property enables owners 
 to build the great many-floored skyscrapers of 
 our cities, buildings which are often unsound 
 economically, for so few of them earn an income 
 large enough to justify their cost, and which 
 often add immeasurably to the congestion of the 
 streets whose light and air they obstruct, and 
 to the fearful crowding of all means of commun- 
 ication. 
 
 Little by little order is beginning to grow out 
 of this chaos of our American cities. Many of 
 them have permanent town-planning boards, 
 which are continually looking for places where 
 changes are necessary, taking traffic censuses 
 to find out by actual count where street conges- 
 tion occurs, and trying to find means of remedy ; 
 pressing all sorts of housing and building re- 
 forms ; plotting new transit facilities so as best 
 to serve the whole city, and planning new devel- 
 opments with an eye to the future. They are 
 considering always the acquisition of new park 
 spaces, and planning park systems in such a 
 way that every portion of the city may have its. 
 
326 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 share of greenness and open sky ; they are striv- 
 ing to meet the insistent demands of hordes of 
 children for ever more numerous playgrounds. 
 Moreover, the city planners have a keen eye to 
 the connection of the city with the outside world. 
 They note the position of its railroads or its 
 main highways, and try to arrange for manufac- 
 turing districts and wholesale markets in con- 
 nection with terminal schemes. If the city is 
 on the ocean, or a navigable river or lake, they 
 attempt to develop its port facilities in the most 
 efficient possible way, coupling them up with 
 railroad or warehouse or market, and, at the 
 same time, arranging some means by which the 
 population of the city may enjoy the peace and 
 quietness and cool breezes which large bodies of 
 water always produce. In a word, modern city 
 planning is concerned with every single fea- 
 ture of city life, housing, water supply, food 
 supply, drainage, railroads, port facilities, 
 amusements, recreation, means of transit, 
 streets, parks, and so on; so that there is not 
 one of us but derives benefit from the city plan- 
 ner's work. 
 
 But because architecture can never forget 
 that it is an art, city planning can never lose 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 327 
 
 sight of aesthetic values, and every question is 
 considered from a double viewpoint. The good 
 city planner forgets neither his sewers nor his 
 views and vistas, and he designs his parks as 
 well as his docks, for only by the combining 
 of the useful and the beautiful can the ideal 
 city arise. 
 
 For the ideal city has begun to arise, out of 
 the grimness of our thoughtless ill-designed 
 past, like a phoenix. The work is going on 
 quietly, and still slowly, for it is hampered by 
 the jealous individualism of our conservative 
 democracy, which -can see in movements for the 
 common weal only attacks on its liberty. Never- 
 theless, it has made great strides which have 
 proved its success. A drive around the park 
 system of Chicago is a revelation; the busy, 
 happy playgrounds, the great parks, the 
 miles of parkway thrill even the coolest ob- 
 server. So the gradual changes in Boston, 
 the development of the Fenway, of the Charles 
 Eiver basin, of the Metropolitan parks outside 
 the city, of the increasing use of the great water- 
 front, are but symptoms of a movement which 
 is destined ultimately to permeate the whole 
 land. Cincinnati, Detroit, Minneapolis, Madi- 
 
328 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 son — they are all beginning to appreciate the 
 virtues of a planned city, and are striving in 
 some measure to realize the true ideals of what 
 a city might be. 
 
 And it is right that our American cities 
 should do this, ever with more increasing speed, 
 and in more increasing numbers. The founders 
 of some of our older cities had a wisdom that 
 we are beginning to appreciate only now; for 
 in their city plans they strove to embody all 
 they knew of what a city needed. Penn's orig- 
 inal plan for Philadelphia, for instance, called 
 for one parked square to every five! or six 
 blocks. Hq realized the value of open spaces 
 and green in cities, and it is a tragedy hard to 
 understand that his plan and his ideal were so 
 soon forgotten. It is equally strange and 
 equally unfortunate that Major L'Enf ant's 
 plan for Washington, with its radial streets and 
 its squares and circles, exerted so little influence 
 on the design of later streets, for the dreary 
 monotony of miles on miles of checker-boarded 
 streets, those running in one way all numbered, 
 all the others lettered, is extremely fatiguing; 
 it produces a city without variety or opportuni- 
 ties of true self-expression. Better by far 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 329 
 
 the cow paths of Boston than the gridiron of 
 Lincoln or Omaha ! 
 
 The American cities have still far to go be- 
 fore the ideal is realized, bnt we may well be 
 glad that a beginning has been made. There 
 are three chief objections which obstruct its 
 realization. One is the innate conservatism of 
 a powerful portion of the population, the second 
 is the refusal of the people to accept the prin- 
 ciple of "excess condemnation,' ' and the third 
 is the lamentable inefficiency of many of our city 
 administrations. The first objection is gradu- 
 ally disintegrating under the effects of educa- 
 tion ; the second is still powerful. By the prin- 
 ciple of excess condemnation, a city which de- 
 sires to make any improvement may condemn 
 not only the land actually required by the im- 
 provement, but an additional strip all around, 
 which it may either sell, or lease, or develop in 
 some other way when the improvement has been 
 made. That is, it permits the city to help to 
 finance any improvements by the actual profits 
 which the improvement produces, and at the 
 same time it gives the city a certain amount of 
 jurisdiction over the character and artistic style 
 of buildings to be built adjoining it. This power 
 
330 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 at once enables a city to do infinitely more than 
 our American cities are at the present capable 
 of doing; and it is the secret behind the great 
 achievements of European city planning com- 
 pared with our own. The wonder is not that we 
 are behind Europe in city building and city 
 planning, the wonder is, that without this great 
 financial and aesthetic aid our cities have ac- 
 complished as much as they have. 
 
 There is still one minor feature of city plan- 
 ning to be considered briefly, a feature with re- 
 gard to which many of our architects may be 
 found wanting. That is the matter of the har- 
 mony of city architecture. Each architect is 
 tempted to design a city building purely with 
 regard to itself, to his tastes, and to his client's 
 needs. The result is the hodge podge of our 
 American city streets, with their jagged sky 
 lines and their warring details. In some ways 
 this condition is the inevitable result of the un- 
 certain condition of affairs in our cities, for no 
 man will spend money and time and sacrifice 
 personal whims to make his buildings harmon- 
 ize with the buildings on either side, only to 
 have his neighbours' buildings torn down and 
 replaced by others utterly different. Under a 
 
NEW OFFICE BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 An all too rare example of a building designed with regard to its neighbours. 
 In style it recalls the house at the left; by its use of restful plain surfaces it serves 
 as a transition to the church at the right. 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 331 
 
 saner system which guaranteed some prospect 
 of permanent character to a specific locality, by 
 limiting building heights, or by specifying the 
 type of building to be built, we might see more 
 regard paid to architectural harmony between 
 neighbouring buildings. The quiet Georgian 
 houses in parts of west central London, with 
 their dignified pilastered fronts facing on quiet 
 squares, are delightfully restful in effect; so 
 are places in our own country, like Forest Hills 
 Gardens on Long Island, or some of the newer 
 suburbs of Baltimore or Philadelphia, just be- 
 cause in them there has been a definite and suc- 
 cessful attempt to obtain an architectural har- 
 mony, a harmony possible only because in every 
 one of these cases some measure of permanence 
 for the building was guaranteed. 
 
 This harmony is too beautiful and valuable 
 an ideal to be entirely abandoned, however, 
 under any condition. The Plate opposite page 
 330 is an illustration of a remarkably successful 
 attempt to obtain harmony in New York City, 
 to mediate between the exuberant Francis the 
 First style of the house on the left, and the 
 strong Gothic of the church on the right. The 
 designer of these two office buildings might well 
 
332 THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 have given up the task, but he persevered and 
 produced a finished product, not only beautiful 
 in itself, but in harmony with the divergent 
 buildings on either side. It is an experiment 
 whose success justifies more imitation than it 
 has received, and we owe a great deal of credit 
 to both owner and architect for realizing the 
 true responsibilities of city building in a way 
 that is all to uncommon. Their archtitecture 
 reveals that they, at least, have attained in some 
 measure a civic consciousness. 
 
 Architecture, then, has been true to life, for 
 architecture has reflected the socialization of 
 consciousness, which is such an outstanding 
 fact of these days. And not only has architec- 
 ture reflected this movement, but it has been 
 of unique service to it in three different ways. 
 Architecture has been able to fill the practical 
 needs of the people ; architecture has been able 
 to give us ideals of better and finer cities than 
 any we know ; architecture has been the creator 
 of an infinite amount of concrete and palpable 
 beauty to enrich the popular life. Engineering 
 can build us factories of a kind, and schools and 
 churches of a kind ; sanitary science can keep us 
 in bodily health; painting and sculpture ancl 
 
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF ARCHITECTURE 333 
 
 music can give us the poignant delight of 
 beauty; but it is the art of architecture alone 
 which takes the engineering and the sanitation, 
 and all the rich beauty of the past, and is able 
 to synthesize them into noble buildings and 
 noble cities which are alike mechanically effi- 
 cient, and spiritually inspirations for all time. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 You will recall that it has been stated sev- 
 eral times that architecture was an emo- 
 tional art. It is always necessary to keep this 
 in mind, for since architecture excites princi- 
 pally the more formless and vaguer emotions, 
 there is a strong temptation to forget the emo- 
 tional appeal altogether, and to regard it as 
 something purely intellectual. Any such atti- 
 tude^ to be avoided, as it will lead to an appre- 
 ciation of architecture at best one-sided, and 
 true appreciation is never that. A true appre- 
 ciation of architecture can only come to one who 
 studies it with an eager sympathy, and with all 
 sides of his nature alert and receptive. He must 
 blind himself neither to the intellectual nor the 
 emotional aspect of the art : he should consider 
 structure, planning, and abstract beauty, but at 
 the same time he should preserve an attitude 
 
 335 
 
336 EPILOGUE 
 
 keenly alive to the emotional message which the 
 art may bring. The value of such an attitude is 
 more than personal, for it will react inevitably 
 upon the standard of popular taste, and thus 
 eventually upon the art of architecture itself; 
 and the greater the number of persons who 
 adopt such a thoughtful, sensitive attitude, the 
 sooner the day will come when architecture 
 shall regain the throne due to what Eeginald 
 Blomfield so aptly terms the "Mistress Art." 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 This is not intended as a comprehensive bibliography 
 of the subject of architecture as a whole, or any of 
 the branches of architecture. It is merely intended 
 as a list of those books which will be most generally 
 helpful to one who desires to enter upon a further 
 study of this fascinating art. More complete bibliog- 
 raphies will be found in many of the works listed 
 below. 
 
 GENERAL 
 
 Blomfield, R. A. — The Mistress Art. London, Edward Ar- 
 nold, 1908. 
 
 Gaudet, J. — Elements et Theorie de V Architecture. Paris, 
 Librarie de la Construction Moderne, 1902. 
 
 (This is the most complete and encyclopaedic book on 
 the entire subject of architecture; it is somewhat techni- 
 cal, but is copiously illustrated.) 
 
 Handbuch der Architektur. — Stuttgart and Darmstadt, Ar- 
 nold Bergstrasser and J. P. Diehl, 1883-1907. 
 
 Longfellow, W. P. P. — The Column and the Arch. New 
 York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1899. 
 
 Robinson, J. B. Architectural Composition. New York, D. 
 Van Nostrand & Co., 1907. 
 
 Ruskin, J. — Lectures on Architecture, Seven Lamps of Archi- 
 tecture, Stones of Venice. All of these have been re- 
 printed frequently. 
 
 Sturgis, R.— The Appreciation of Architecture. New York, 
 The Baker and Taylor Co., 1903. 
 
 Van Pelt, J .—Essentials of Composition as Applied to Art. 
 New York, The Macmillan Co., 1902. 
 
 Viollet le duc, E. E.— Discourses on Architecture. Trans- 
 lated by Henry Van Brunt. Boston, James R. Osgood & 
 Co., 1875. 
 
 337 
 
338 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Wallis, F. E. — How to Know Architecture. New York and 
 London, Harper and Brothers, 1910. 
 
 HISTORIES 
 
 Fergusson, J. — A History of Architecture in All Countries. 
 (Edited by R. P. Spiers.) London, John Murray, 1893. 
 
 Fletcher, B. and B. F.— A History of Architecture on the 
 Comparative Method. London, B. T. Bats ford, 1905. 
 
 Hamlin, A. D. F. — History of Architecture (Revised Edition). 
 New York and London, Longmans & Co., 1915. 
 
 Simpson, F. M. — A History of Architectural Development. 
 London and New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1911. 
 
 Slatham. — A Short Critical History of Architecture. Lon- 
 don, B. T. Batsford, 1913. 
 
 Sturgis, R.— History of Architecture (Continued by A. L. 
 Frothingham). New York, The Baker & Taylor Co., 
 1916. European Architecture. New York, The Macmil- 
 lan Co., 1896. 
 
 BOOKS DEALING WITH SPECIAL PERIODS. 
 
 One will note a paucity of works on modern archi- 
 tecture. For information with regard to modern buildings, 
 the files of the architectural periodicals are the best and 
 almost the only source. 
 
 Adams, H. — Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Boston and 
 New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913. 
 
 This is a most readable and enlightening work on the 
 mediaeval spirit. 
 Anderson, W. J. — The Architecture of the Renaissance in 
 
 Italy. London, B. T. Batsford, 1909. 
 Anderson, W. J. and Spiers, R. P. — The Architecture of 
 
 Greece and Rome. London, B. T. Batsford, 1903. 
 Belcher, J., and Macartney, M. E. — Later Renaissance Ar- 
 chitecture in England. London, B. T. Batsford, 1903. 
 Blomfield, R. A. — A History of Renaissance Architecture in 
 
 England, 1500-1800. London, George Bell & Sons, 1897. 
 Bond, F. — English Cathedrals Illustrated. London, G. Newnes, 
 1900. Gothic Architecture in England. London, B. T. 
 Batsford, 1905. An Introduction to English Church Ar- 
 chitecture. London, H. Milford, 1913. 
 Chandler, J. E.—The Colonial Architecture of Maryland, 
 Pennsylvania and Virginia. Boston, Bates, Kimball and 
 Guild, 1892. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 
 
 Eberlein, H. D. — The Architecture of Colonial America. Bos- 
 ton, Little, Brown & Co., 1915. 
 
 Hamlin, A. D. F. — History of Ornament ; Ancient and Medie- 
 val. New York, The Century Co., 1916. 
 
 Holme, O. — Old English Mansions. (Special Spring Number 
 of the International Studio, 1915.) London, The Inter- 
 national Studio, 1915. 
 
 In addition to this number, the International Studio has 
 published several other special numbers dealing with vari- 
 ous phases of English domestic architecture. All of these, 
 which are obtainable at any good library, are of great 
 value. 
 
 Jackson, T. G. — Byzantine and Romanesque Architecture. 
 Cambridge University Press, 1913. Gothic Architecture. 
 The same publisher, 1916. 
 
 Lanciani, R. A. — Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Dis- 
 coveries. Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co., 1889. The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome. 
 The same publisher, 1906. New Tales of Old Rome. The 
 same publisher, 1901. Pagan and Christian Rome. The 
 same publisher, 1893. Ruins and Excavations of Ancient 
 Rome. The same publisher, 1897. 
 
 Longfellow, W. P. P. and Frothingham, A. L. — Cyclopaedia 
 of Architecture in Italy, Greece and the Levant. New 
 York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1895. 
 
 Marquand, A. — Greek Architecture. New York, The Mac- 
 millan Co., 1909. 
 
 Mau, A. (translated by Kelcey). — Pompeii. New York, The 
 Macmillan Co., 1902. 
 
 Moore, C. H. — Development and Character of Gothic Archi- 
 tecture. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1890. 
 
 Nash, J. — The Mansions of England in the Olden Time. 
 (Special Winter Number of the International Studio, 
 1905-6.) London, The International Studio, 1906. 
 
 Perrot, G. and Chipiez, C. — Histoire de I'art dans Vantiquite. 
 Paris, Hachette et Cie., 1882-1914. 
 
 Polley, G. H. — The Architecture, Interiors and Furniture of 
 the American Colonies During the Eighteenth Century. 
 Boston, G. H. Polley & Co., 1914. 
 Porter, A. K. — Medieval Architecture. New York, The Baker 
 and Taylor Co., 1909. 
 
 (This book contains an exhaustive bibliography cover- 
 
340 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 ing the entire ground of Romanesque and Gothic archi- 
 tecture.) 
 
 Prentice, A. N. — Renaissance Architecture and Ornament in 
 Spain. London, B. T. Bats ford, 1893. 
 
 Saladin, H. — Manuel d'Art Musulman. Vol. I, Architecture. 
 (Vol. II, Les arts practiques et industricls, by G. Migeon.) 
 
 Scott, G. — The Architecture of Humanism. 
 
 Stuart, J. and Revett, N. — The Antiquities of Athens. Lon- 
 don, J. Taylor, J. Haberkorn, and others, 1762-1816. 
 
 Viollet-le-duc, E. E. — Dictionnaire Raisonne de V Architec- 
 ture Francaise. Paris, V. Morel et Cie, 1876. 
 
 (Despite its name, this is one of the most interesting 
 architectural books ever published. Its myriad illustra- 
 tions are a veritable mine of information and delight.) 
 
 Ward, W. H. — French Renaissance Architecture, 1495-1830. 
 London, B. T. Batsford, 1915. 
 
Index 
 
 A. 
 
 Agra, Taj Mahal at 89 
 
 Albany, Cathedral 118 
 
 State Education Building at 199, 203 
 
 Amiens, Cathedral 8, 48, 56, 62 
 
 Cathedral (plan, illustration) 248 
 
 Arc de Triomphe, Paris 321 
 
 Architecture, 
 
 Appeal of 3ff 
 
 Decorative Materials of I37ff 
 
 Effect on Life. 3i5ff 
 
 Laws of Form in 2off 
 
 Materials of 73ft 
 
 Social Value of 298ff 
 
 Architrave 95 
 
 Aristotle 31 
 
 Athens, 
 
 Monument of Lysikrates 25 
 
 Parthenon 8, 42, 173 
 
 Theseum 42 
 
 Axis 228ff 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon, Francis 103 
 
 Balance 4iff 
 
 Baltimore, Suburbs of 331 
 
 Beauty, Social Effect of 3i5ff 
 
 Birmingham 308 
 
 Blois, Chateau (cornice, illustration) 159 
 
 Boston 329 
 
 Park Development 327 
 
 Public Library 22, 66, 69, 132, 151, 243 
 
 Brooklyn Bridge 21 
 
 Brunelleschi '/ jgo 
 
 Bureau of Printing and Engraving, Washington, D. C.....42 
 
 Burghley House j, IG7 
 
 341 
 
342 INDEX 
 
 G 
 
 Cambridge, England, King's College Chapel in 101, 131 
 
 Cambridge, Mass., Craigie House in 46 
 
 Cantoria, from the Cathedral, Florence 193 
 
 Capitals, 
 
 Early Cypriote Ionic Capital (illustration) 275 
 
 French Gothic Capitals (illustration) 179 
 
 from Southwell Minster (illustration) 177 
 
 Capitol, Washington, D. C 8, 32, 35, 46, 59, 67, 70, 89, 286 
 
 Missouri State, Jefferson City, Mo. (plan, illustration) .236 
 
 of Virginia, Richmond, Va 286 
 
 Carcassonne, Cathedral of St. Nazaire 101 
 
 (illustration) 100 
 
 Ceilings 117ft 
 
 Centre of Interest (Climax) 66ff 
 
 Chambre des Deputes, Paris 321 
 
 Champs filysees, Paris 321 
 
 Charles VIII 279 
 
 Charlottesville, University of Virginia 286 
 
 Chartres, Cathedral 48, 50 
 
 Chenonceaux, Chateau 87 
 
 Chicago, 111., Park System of 327 
 
 Chimneys . . . .^ iosff 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio 327 
 
 City Planning 3i9ff 
 
 Climax (Center of Interest) 66ff 
 
 Coleridge, S. T. (quoted) 89 
 
 Cologne, Cathedral 45 
 
 Columbia University, New York City 87 
 
 Library 22, 89 
 
 Colosseum, Rome 21, 56, 199, 202 
 
 Complexity (Variety) 37 
 
 Constantinople 97 
 
 Santa (Hagia) Sophia 89, 114, 127, 176 
 
 Cornice i56ff 
 
 Classic (illustration) 147 
 
 of Wing of Francis I at Blois (illustration) 159 
 
 D. 
 
 Decorative Use of Structural Members I98ff 
 
 Detroit, Mich 327 
 
 Dome 87ff, I25ff 
 
 (illustration) 130 
 
 Doors 9iff 
 
 Spanish 97, 212 
 
 Ducal Palace, Venice 116 
 
 Duncan House, Newport, R. 1 166 
 
INDEX 343 
 
 £cole des Beaux Arts 293 
 
 Eddy, Mary Baker G., Memorial 169 
 
 Egypt, Mouldings used in 144 
 
 Decoration in 1/0 
 
 Ely, Cathedral 150 
 
 Erectheum, Athens 150 
 
 Essen, Krupp Villages near 311 
 
 Ethical Culture Meeting House, New York City 80 
 
 Excess Condemnation 329 
 
 Expositions, San Diego 9& 
 
 San Francisco 23 
 
 F. 
 
 Fiesole, Mino da 180 
 
 Floors 1 i6ff 
 
 Florence, Cantoria from Cathedral at 193 
 
 Palazzo Davanzati 120 
 
 Pazzi Chapel 180 
 
 Riccardi Palace 157 
 
 San Miniato 118 
 
 Forest Hills Gardens, L. 1 331 
 
 Form, Laws of 29ft" 
 
 Francis 1 279, 280, 281, 282, 293 
 
 Wing of, at Blois (illustration) 159 
 
 G. 
 
 Gambrel Roofs (illustration) 84 
 
 Glasgow 308 
 
 Gothic Ribbed Vault (illustration) 129 
 
 Grand Central Station, New York City 214 
 
 Greek Style, Development of 272$ 
 
 H. 
 
 Hampstead Garden Suburb 311 
 
 Hampton Court Palace (near London) 77, 118 
 
 Harmony, Law of 63ff 
 
 Harvard House, Stratford on Avon (illustration) 102 
 
 Henry IV 281, 319 
 
 Hipped Roofs (illustration) 86 
 
 Housing Conditions 3o6ff 
 
 Improvements in 308 
 
 I. 
 
 Ionic Cypriote Capital (illustration) 275 
 
344 INDEX 
 
 J. 
 
 Jefferson City, Mo., State Capitol Plan 236 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas 286, 288 
 
 Jones, Inigo 285 
 
 K. 
 
 Karnak, Temples at 21 
 
 Temple gateway at (illustration) 145 
 
 Kennebunk, Maine— Old House at (illustrated) 84 
 
 King's College Chapel, Cambridge 101, 131 
 
 Krupp Villages (near Essen) 311 
 
 Leeds 308 
 
 Lcmercier 320 
 
 L'Enfant, Major 286, 320, 328 
 
 Les Invalides, Paris 127 
 
 Lincoln, Cathedral 130, 150 
 
 Lincoln, Neb 329 
 
 Lion Gate, Mycenae 92 
 
 London 36, 308 
 
 Georgian Houses in 331 
 
 Hampton Court Palace 77, 118 
 
 Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey 131 
 
 National Gallery 35> 48, 88 
 
 St. Paul's Cathedral 89, 127, 132, 198 
 
 Westminster Abbey 21 
 
 Westminster Hall 1 18 
 
 Lord and Taylor, Store, New York City 104 
 
 Library, Boston 22, 66, 69, 132, 151, 243 
 
 New York City L 123 
 
 Louis XI 281 
 
 Louis XII 279 
 
 Louis XVI 293 
 
 Louvre, Paris 46, 70, 199, 203, 204 
 
 M. 
 
 Madeleine, Paris 321 
 
 Madison, Wis 327 
 
 Manhattan Island (silhouette of) . 12, 15 
 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City 46 
 
 Metropolitan Tower, New York City 91 
 
 Michelangelo 180 
 
 Minneapolis, Minn 327 
 
 Art Museum 46 
 
 Missouri. State Capitol (plan, illustration) 236 
 
INDEX 345 
 
 Monticello, Va 47 
 
 Monument of Lysikrates, Athens 25 
 
 Mosques, Doors of 97 
 
 Mouldings 141& 
 
 Illustration 143 
 
 Decorated 152 
 
 Decorated (illustration) 153 
 
 Mycenae, Lion Gate at 92 
 
 N. 
 
 National Gallery, London 35, 48, 88 
 
 New Haven, Conn., House in (illustration) 232 
 
 Yale University Dining Hall 118 
 
 Newport, R. I., Duncan House in 166 
 
 Newton Hall, near Cambridge, England (illustration) 86 
 
 New York, silhouette of 12, 15 
 
 Brooklyn Bridge 21 
 
 Columbia University 87 
 
 Columbia University Library 22, 89 
 
 Ethical Culture Meeting House 80 
 
 Grand Central Station 214 
 
 Lord and Taylor Store 104 
 
 Metropolitan Museum of Art 46 
 
 Metropolitan Tower 91 
 
 Pennsylvania Station (interior of) 25, 119 
 
 Post Office 42, 43, 47, 67, 70, 203 
 
 Public Library 123 
 
 Saint Patrick's Cathedral 45, 47 
 
 Saint Paul's Church 35 
 
 Trinity Church 287 
 
 Union Theological Seminary Chapel 118 
 
 New York, State Education Building (Albany) 199, 203 
 
 Notre Dame, Cathedral of, Paris 24, 45, 77, 101, 163, 217 
 
 O. 
 
 Omaha 329 
 
 Opera, Paris 242 
 
 Ornament I37ff 
 
 Amount of 207ff 
 
 Kind of 2i2ff 
 
 Non-representational i4off 
 
 Placing of 2096? 
 
 Representational i66ff 
 
 Size of 2i3ff 
 
 Suitability to Material i87ff 
 
346 INDEX 
 
 Suitability to Medium 190ft 
 
 Suitability to Purpose of Building 191 ff 
 
 Terra Cotta 195** 
 
 Palladio 287 
 
 Palazzo Davanzati, Florence 120 
 
 Vendramini, Venice 42, 47 
 
 Pantheon, Paris 127 
 
 Pantheon, Rome 94> 126, 127 
 
 Paris, 
 
 Arc de Triomphe 321 
 
 Chambre des Deputes 321 
 
 Champs £lysees 321 
 
 £cole des Beaux Art 293 
 
 Les Invalides 127 
 
 Louvre 46, 70, 199, 203, 204 
 
 Madeleine 321 
 
 Notre Dame, Cathedral of 24, 45, 77, 101, 163, 217 
 
 Opera 242 
 
 Pantheon 127 
 
 Place de la Concorde 321, 322 
 
 Sorbonne 88 
 
 Saint Eustache 65 
 
 Trocadero 321 
 
 Parthenon, Athens 8, 42, 173 
 
 Pater, Walter (quoted, School of Giorgione) 18 
 
 Pazzi Chapel, Florence 180 
 
 Pendentive (illustration) 130 
 
 Penn, Sir W 328 
 
 Pennsylvania Station, New York City 25, 119 
 
 Philadelphia 69, 328 
 
 Centennial Exposition, 1876 288 
 
 Suburbs of 331 
 
 Piers 133ft 
 
 Place de la Concorde, Paris 321, 322 
 
 Planning 22off 
 
 Amiens Cathedral (illustration) 248 
 
 City 319ft 
 
 House in New Haven (illustration) 232 
 
 Missouri State Capitol (illustration) 236 
 
 Steel, Effect of 2456* 
 
 Washington, D. C, Plan of Major L'Enfant 328 
 
 Portsmouth, N. H 69 
 
 Warner House 85 
 
 Post Office, New York City 42, 43, 47, 67, 70, 203 
 
INDEX 347 
 
 Proportion 6iff 
 
 Public Library, 
 
 Boston 22, 66, 69, 132, 151, 243 
 
 New York City 123 
 
 Rheims, Cathedral 21 
 
 Rhythm 55^ 
 
 Riccardi Palace, Florence 157 
 
 Richelieu, Cardinal 320 
 
 Village of 320 
 
 Richmond, Virginia, Old Capitol at 286 
 
 Robbia, Andrea della 197 
 
 Luca della 193, 197 
 
 Rome, Colosseum 21, 56, 199, 202 
 
 Pantheon 94, 126, 127 
 
 Santa Maria della Pace 134, 135 
 
 St. Peter's. 24, 25, 68, 89, 127, 132, 200, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218 
 
 Tabularium 199 
 
 Villa Madama 132 
 
 Roofs 8iff r 
 
 Gambrel (illustration) 84 -/ 
 
 Hipped (illustration) 86 
 
 Rouen, Cathedral 50 
 
 Ruskin, John 138, 167, 220 
 
 (quoted) 302, 303, 3*8 
 
 Saint Eustache, Paris 65 
 
 Saint Mark's, Venice 24 
 
 Saint Nazaire, Carcassonne 101 
 
 (illustration) IOO 
 
 Saint Patrick's, New York City 45, 47 
 
 Saint Paul's, London 89, 127, 132, 198 
 
 Saint Paul's, New York 35 
 
 Saint Peter's, Rome 
 
 24, 25, 68, 89, 127, 132, 200, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218 
 
 Salem, Mass 69 
 
 San Diego Exposition 98 
 
 Railroad Station 295 
 
 San Francisco Exposition 23 
 
 San Miniato, Florence 118 
 
 Santa Maria dei Miracoli, Venice 114 
 
 Santa Maria della Pace, Rome 134, 135 
 
 Santa (Hagia) Sophia, Constantinople 89, 114, 127, 176 
 
 Schlaun, Johann Conrad 293 
 
348 INDEX 
 
 Settignano, Desiderio da 180 
 
 Shirley, Virginia 47 
 
 Sorbonne, Paris 88 
 
 Southwell, Minster (Capitals, illustration) 177 
 
 Springfield, Mass., Court House '. 235 
 
 Steel, Effect of, on Planning 245ft", 270 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis 58 
 
 Stonehenge 37 
 
 Stratford on Avon, Harvard House (illustration) 102 
 
 Style, 
 
 Development of, American 284ft" 
 
 Development of, French Renaissance 279ft 
 
 Development of, Greek 272ft 
 
 Development of, Roman 277ft 
 
 Effect of Steel on 270 
 
 Meaning of 2636? 
 
 Suburbs 3ioff 
 
 of Baltimore 331 
 
 Hampstead Garden 311 
 
 Model 311 
 
 of Philadelphia 331 
 
 Symonds, J. A. (quoted) 57 
 
 T. 
 
 Tabularium, Rome 199 
 
 Taj Mahal, Agra 89 
 
 Temple of Theseus (Theseum), Athens 42 
 
 Thebes, Temples at 21 
 
 Terra Cotta 195^ 
 
 Tracery 101 
 
 Trinity Church, New York City 287 
 
 Trocadero, Paris 321 
 
 U. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary Chapel, New York City 118 
 
 Unity 3iff 
 
 V. 
 
 Value, Social, of Architecture 298ft" 
 
 Variety (Complexity) 37# 
 
 Vaults 123ft 
 
 Gothic Ribbed (illustration) 129 
 
 of King's College Chapel, Cambridge 131 
 
 Vendramini Palace, Venice 42, 47, 61, 200 
 
INDEX 349 
 
 Venice, Saint Mark's 24 
 
 Santa Maria dei Miracoli 114 
 
 Vendramini Palace 42, 47, 61, 200 
 
 Villa Madama, Rome . 132 
 
 Virginia, Old State Capitol, Richmond 286 
 
 University of, Charlottesville 286 
 
 W. 
 
 Walls 75ff 
 
 Interior Treatment of 1 13ft 
 
 Warner House, Portsmouth, N. H 85 
 
 Washington, D. C, Bureau of Printing and Engraving 42 
 
 Capitol 8, 32, 35, 46, 59, 67, 70, 89, 286 
 
 Housing in 312 
 
 Major L'Enfant's Plan of 286, 320, 328 
 
 White House 59 
 
 Washington, George 286, 320, 328 
 
 Westminster Abbey 21 
 
 Hall 1 18 
 
 Henry VII Chapel 131 
 
 White House, Washington, D. C 59 
 
 Windows o8ff 
 
 Wood Panelling 114, 115 
 
 Wool worth Building, New York City 91 
 
 Wren, Sir Christopher 285, 319 
 
 (quoted) 296 
 
 Yale University, Dining Hall, New Haven, Conn 118 
 
 York, Minster 101 
 
\ 
 
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