Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from Microsoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/enjoymentofarchiOOhamlrich THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE I »•• pj O -2 & w at W H .THE ENJOYMENT OF ARCHITECTURE BY TALBOT FAULKNER HAMLIN ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1916 H2 ••• • 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 - bfl W c >>— • 3* is o> a. a 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. W u a Q 'g 1 1 z s i-i ci PC « 3 E 8 * nh a) Pi O U 2 fc 2 ft . S o 'Sicfi 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. C o w i 9 £ S2 7. o a a. 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. >< < * ■- c w u V o H > g A u | o < 3 < p- u 4) X. i •< i C* - i > X e. 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 ^ 3 SB Pd « H en g 2 H c/) H 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 HSkW i$m> PQ W cti g § .2 & 9 <: £ w o H 'C 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 *z 3 < 0" H oc .£ (/) W «J U 8 S5 .5 w 3 •u o c J rt E 4> > ~- PC j Oj Cn 3 « "^ 41 Q H ad < 0) «i J3 S ■^cc u o a pa Sii H 55 of -u >< SI o a 3 «g H cj « 2 =3 > 13 4) 04 *o^ O d O fa o_ 3 cS - J C < >J s ^C O o>" S M 4) > 55 c§ -< boo u tCv^ c c 5 b E? 5* •a-^ £> 5^ ft-c •5 8 S* THE CRITICISM OF ORNAMENT 195 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. |V o < 8 a "5 3 -fa Z g « a > ~ <: or 6" Is go. S <° •§(8 (/l CO c > o ° £E ■s-g 0)