diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/64629-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/64629-0.txt | 4673 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 4673 deletions
diff --git a/old/64629-0.txt b/old/64629-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 3ac0ac9..0000000 --- a/old/64629-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4673 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sticks and Stones, by Lewis Mumford - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Sticks and Stones - A Study of American Architecture and Civilization - -Author: Lewis Mumford - -Release Date: February 25, 2021 [eBook #64629] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The Internet - Archive/American Libraries.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STICKS AND STONES *** - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). - -Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end. - - * * * * * - -STICKS AND STONES - - * * * * * - - - - -STICKS AND STONES - - - A STUDY OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE - AND CIVILIZATION - - LEWIS MUMFORD - - [Illustration] - - BONI AND LIVERIGHT - PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK - - * * * * * - -Copyright, 1924, by Boni and Liveright, Inc. - -[Illustration] - -PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - * * * * * - - _Architecture, properly understood, is - civilization itself._ - --W. R. LETHABY - - _What is civilization? It is the humanization - of man in society._ - --MATTHEW ARNOLD. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I. THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION 13 - - II. THE HERITAGE OF THE RENAISSANCE 35 - - III. THE CLASSICAL MYTH 53 - - IV. THE DIASPORA OF THE PIONEER 75 - - V. THE DEFEAT OF ROMANTICISM 99 - - VI. THE IMPERIAL FAÇADE 123 - - VII. THE AGE OF THE MACHINE 155 - - VIII. ARCHITECTURE AND CIVILIZATION 193 - - ENVOI 237 - - NOTES ON BOOKS 241 - - - - -ACKNOWLEDGMENTS - - -This is an attempt to evaluate architecture in America in terms of our -civilization. I have not sought to criticize particular buildings or -tendencies: I have tried, rather, by approaching our modern problems -from their historic side, to criticize the forces that from one age -to another have conditioned our architecture, and altered its forms. -Lest my purpose be misunderstood, I have left out illustrations; for -a building is not merely a sight; it is an experience: and one who -knows architecture only by photographs does not know it at all. If the -omission of pictures lead the reader occasionally to break away from -the orbit of his daily walks, and examine our development in cities and -buildings for himself, it will be sufficiently justified. - -This book would not have been put together but for the persistent -encouragement and kindly interest of Mr. Albert Jay Nock: and it was -in The Freeman that the first five chapters, in somewhat briefer form, -appeared. My hearty thanks are likewise due to Mr. Charles Harris -Whitaker, whose private help and whose admirable public work as editor -of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects have both laid -me under a heavy obligation. My intellectual debt to Messrs. Victor -Branford and Patrick Geddes will be apparent to those who have followed -their work. In the concluding chapters I have been stimulated and -guided in many places by unpublished reports and memoranda written -by Mr. Clarence Stein, Mr. Benton Mackaye, and Mr. Henry Wright. -My friendly thanks are also due to Mr. James Henderson, Mr. Geroid -Tanquary Robinson, and Miss Sophia Wittenberg. - -Besides the essays in The Freeman, some of the material in Sticks -and Stones has appeared in the Journal of the American Institute of -Architects (Chapter Six), in The New Republic, and in The American -Mercury. I thank the editors for their permission to draw on these -articles. - -LEWIS MUMFORD. - - - - -CHAPTER ONE THE MEDIEVAL TRADITION - - -I - -For a hundred years or so after its settlement, there lived and -flourished in America a type of community which was rapidly -disappearing in Europe. This community was embodied in villages and -towns whose mummified remains even today have a rooted dignity that the -most gigantic metropolises do not often possess. If we would understand -the architecture of America in a period when good building was almost -universal, we must understand something of the kind of life that this -community fostered. - -The capital example of the medieval tradition lies in the New England -village. - -There are two or three things that stand in the way of our seeing -the life of a New England village; and one of them is the myth of -the pioneer, the conception of the first settlers as a free band of -“Americans” throwing off the bedraggled garments of Europe and starting -life afresh in the wilderness. So far from giving birth to a new life, -the settlement of the northern American seaboard prolonged for a -little while the social habits and economic institutions which were -fast crumbling away in Europe, particularly in England. In the villages -of the New World there flickered up the last dying embers of the -medieval order. - -Whereas in England the common lands were being confiscated for the -benefit of an aristocracy, and the arable turned into sheep-runs for -the profit of the great proprietors, in New England the common lands -were re-established with the founding of a new settlement. In England -the depauperate peasants and yeomen were driven into the large towns -to become the casual workers, menials, and soldiers; in New England, -on the other hand, it was at first only with threats of punishment and -conscription that the town workers were kept from going out into the -countryside to seek a more independent living from the soil. Just as -the archaic speech of the Elizabethans has lingered in the Kentucky -Mountains, so the Middle Ages at their best lingered along the coast -of Appalachia; and in the organization of our New England villages one -sees a greater resemblance to the medieval Utopia of Sir Thomas More -than to the classic republic in the style of Montesquieu, which was -actually founded in the eighteenth century. - -The colonists who sought to establish permanent communities--as -distinct from those who erected only trading posts--were not a -little like those whom the cities of Greece used to plant about the -Mediterranean and the Black Sea littoral. Like the founders of the -“Ancient City,” the Puritans first concerned themselves to erect an -altar, or rather, to lay the foundations for an edifice which denied -the religious value of altars. In the crudest of “smoaky wigwams,” an -early observer notes, the Puritans remember to “sing psalms, pray, and -praise their God”; and although we of today may regard their religion -as harsh and nay-saying, we cannot forget that it was a central point -of their existence and not an afterthought piled as it were on material -prosperity for the sake of a good appearance. Material goods formed the -basis, but not the end, of their life. - -The meeting-house determined the character and limits of the community. -As Weeden says in his excellent Economic and Social History of New -England, the settlers “laid out the village in the best order to attain -two objects: first, the tillage and culture of the soil; second, -the maintenance of a ‘civil and religious society.’” Around the -meeting-house the rest of the community crystallized in a definite -pattern, tight and homogeneous. - -The early provincial village bears another resemblance to the early -Greek city: it does not continue to grow at such a pace that it either -becomes overcrowded within or spills beyond its limits into dejected -suburbs; still less does it seek what we ironically call greatness by -increasing the number of its inhabitants. When the corporation has a -sufficient number of members, that is to say, when the land is fairly -occupied, and when the addition of more land would unduly increase the -hardship of working it from the town, or would spread out the farmers, -and make it difficult for them to attend to their religious and civil -duties, the original settlement throws out a new shoot. So Charlestown -threw off Woburn; so Dedham colonized Medfield; so Lynn founded Nahant. - -The Puritans knew and applied a principle that Plato had long ago -pointed out in The Republic, namely, that an intelligent and socialized -community will continue to grow only as long as it can remain a unit -and keep up its common institutions. Beyond that point growth must -cease, or the community will disintegrate and cease to be an organic -thing. Economically, this method of community-development kept land -values at a properly low level, and prevented the engrossing of land -for the sake of a speculative rise. The advantage of the Puritan method -of settlement comes out plainly when one contrasts it with the trader’s -paradise of Manhattan; for by the middle of the seventeenth century all -the land on Manhattan Island was privately owned, although only a small -part of it was cultivated, and so eagerly had the teeth of monopoly -bitten into this fine morsel that there was already a housing-shortage. - -One more point of resemblance: all the inhabitants of an early New -England village were co-partners in a corporation; they admitted -into the community only as many members as they could assimilate. -This co-partnership was based upon a common sense as to the purpose -of the community, and upon a roughly equal division of the land into -individual plots taken in freehold, and a share of the common fields, -of which there might be half a dozen or more. - -There are various local differences in the apportionment of the land. -In many cases, the minister and deacons have a larger share than the -rest of the community; but in Charlestown, for example, the poorest -had six or seven acres of meadow and twenty-five or thereabouts of -upland; and this would hold pretty well throughout the settlements. Not -merely is membership in the community guarded: the right of occupying -and transferring the land is also restricted, and again and again, in -the face of the General Assembly, the little villages make provisions -to keep the land from changing hands without the consent of the -corporation; “it being our real intent,” as the burghers of Watertown -put it, to “sitt down there close togither.” - -These regulations have a positive side as well; for in some cases the -towns helped the poorer members of the corporation to build houses, -and as a new member was voted into the community, lots were assigned -immediately, without further ado. A friend of mine has called this -system “Yankee communism,” and I cheerfully bring the institution -to the attention of those who do not realize upon what subversive -principles Americanism, historically, rests. - -What is true of the seventeenth century in New England holds good for -the eighteenth century in the Moravian settlements of Pennsylvania; -and it is doubtless true for many another obscure colony; for the same -spirit lingered, with a parallel result in architecture and industry, -in the utopian communities of the nineteenth century. It is pretty -plain that this type of pioneering, this definite search for the good -life, was conducted on an altogether different level from the ruthless -exploitation of the individual muckers and scavengers who hit the trail -west of the Alleghanies. Such renewals of the earlier European culture -as the Bach Festival at Bethlehem give us a notion of the cultural -values which the medieval community carried over from the Old World to -the New. There is some of this spirit left even in the architecture of -the Shaker community at Mount Lebanon, New York, which was built as -late as the nineteenth century. - -In contrast to the New England village-community was the trading post. -Of this nature were the little towns in the New Netherlands which were -planted there by the Dutch West India Company: the settlers were for -the most part either harassed individuals who were lured to the New -World by the prospects of a good living, or people of established rank -who were tempted to leave the walks of commerce for the dignities and -affluences that were attached to the feudal tenure of the large estates -that lined the Hudson. - -The germs of town life came over with these people, and sheer necessity -turned part of their energies to agriculture, but they did not develop -the close village-community we find in New England; and though New -Amsterdam was a replica of the Old World port, with its gabled brick -houses, and its well-banked canals and fine gardens, it left no decided -pattern on the American scene. It is only the country architecture -of the Dutch which survives as either a relic or a memory. These -trading posts like Manhattan and Fort Orange were, as Messrs. Petersen -and Edwards have shown in their study of New York as an Eighteenth -Century Municipality, medieval in their economy: numerous guild and -civic regulations which provided for honest weight and measure and -workmanship continued in force within the town. In their external -dealings, on the other hand, the practice of the traders was sharp, -and every man was for himself. Beginning its life by bargaining in -necessities, the trading post ends by making a necessity of bargaining; -and it was the impetus from its original commercial habits which -determined the characteristics of the abortive city plan that was laid -down for Manhattan Island in 1811. Rich as the Dutch precedent is in -individual farmhouses, it brings us no pattern, such as we find in New -England, for the community as a whole. - - -II - -Since we are accustomed to look upon the village as a quaint primitive -relic of a bygone age, we do not readily see that its form was dictated -by social and economic conditions. Where the village had to defend -itself against Indians, it was necessary to lay it out completely, -so that it might be surrounded by a stockade, and so that the -meeting-house might be such a rallying center as the bell-tower or the -castle was in Europe, or as the high temple site was in classic times. -But in the eighteenth century the Indian figured less in the scheme of -colonial life, and along the seacoast and river--as at Wells Beach in -Maine or Litchfield in Connecticut--the village became a long strip -upon a highroad, and the arable land stretched in narrow plots from the -house to the water, so that the farmer might better protect his crops -and his livestock from the fox, the wolf, the woodchuck, the hawk, the -skunk, and the deer. - -I emphasize these points of structure because of the silly notion -superficial observers sometimes carry away from the villages of -Europe or New England; namely, that their irregularity is altogether -capricious and uneconomical, associated only with the vagaries of the -straying cow. It would be more correct to say that the precise reverse -was true. The inequality in size and shape of plots shows always that -attention was paid to the function the land was to perform, rather -than to the mere possession of property. Thus, there was a difference -in size between home lots, which were always seated in the village, -and purely agricultural tracts of land, which were usually on the -outskirts; and in Dedham, for example, married men had home lots of -twelve acres, while bachelors received only eight. Another reason -for the compactness of the village was a decree of the General Court -in Massachusetts, in 1635, that no dwelling should be placed more -than half a mile from the meeting-house in any new plantation. Even -irregularities in the layout and placement of houses, which cannot -be referred to such obvious points as these, very often derive from -an attempt to break the path of the wind, to get a good exposure in -summer, or to profit by a view. - -All this was genuine community planning. It did not go by this name, -perhaps, but it achieved the result. - - -III - -We have learned in recent years to appreciate the felicities of -eighteenth-century colonial architecture, and even the earlier -seventeenth-century style is now coming into its own, in the sense that -it is being imitated by architects who have an eye for picturesque -effects; but we lose our perspective altogether if we think that the -charm of an old New England house can be recaptured by designing -overhanging second stories or panelled interiors. The just design, -the careful execution, the fine style that brings all the houses -into harmony no matter how diverse the purposes they served--for the -farmhouse shares its characteristics with the mill, and the mill with -the meeting-house--was the outcome of a common spirit, nourished by -men who had divided the land fairly and who shared adversity and good -fortune together. When the frame of the house is to be raised, a man’s -neighbors will lend him a hand; if the harvest is in danger, every man -goes out into the fields, even if his own crop is not at stake; if a -whale founders on the beach, even the smallest boy bears a hand, and -gets a share of the reward. All these practices were not without their -subtle effect upon craftsmanship. - -Schooled in the traditions of his guild, the medieval carpenter pours -his all into the work. Since sale does not enter into the bargain, it -is both to his patron’s advantage to give him the best materials, and -to his own advantage to make the most of them. If at first, in the -haste of settlement, the colonists are content with makeshifts, they -are nevertheless done in the traditional fashion--not the log cabins -of later days, but, more probably, wattle and daub huts like those -of the charcoal burners in the English forests. In some points, the -prevailing English tradition does not fit the raw climate of the north, -and presently the half-timbered houses of some of the earlier settlers -would be covered by clapboards for greater warmth, as in the eighteenth -century their interiors were lined with panelled pine or oak, instead -of the rough plaster. No matter what the material or mode, the -carpenter works not simply for hire, but for dear life’s sake, and as -a baker’s dozen numbers thirteen, so a piece of handicraft contains not -merely the workmanship itself, but a bit of the worker’s soul, for good -measure. The new invention of the gambrel roof, which gave additional -room to the second story without raising the roof-tree, is a product of -this system; and the variation in its length and pitch in New England, -New Jersey, and New York is a witness to the freedom of design that -prevailed throughout the work. - -These seventeenth-century houses, built at first with one or two -rooms, and then as luxury increased and family needs multiplied with -as many as four, would doubtless seem unspeakably crude and mean to -the resident of Floral Heights; indeed, if our present requirements -for housing were so simple it would not be quite so difficult to meet -our perpetual shortage. As a matter of fact, however, these early -provincial houses were well up to the standards for a similar homestead -in England; and in some ways were a distinct advance. Just as all the -separate courses on a restaurant menu were a few hundred years ago -cooked in the same pot, so the different subdivisions of the modern -house were originally combined into a single room, which was not -merely kitchen, workroom, and living quarters, but which also, at least -in winter, served as a stable for the more delicate members of the -barnyard. By the time America was settled the division into rooms had -just commenced among the better sort of farmer: the barn had split off -from the rest of the house, and the bedchamber was becoming a separate -apartment. As the seventeenth century lengthened, this division of -functions became more familiar in the provincial house. - -Let us take a brief look at one of these seventeenth-century buildings; -let us say, the John Ward house in Salem which still survives as a -relic. As one approaches the village on some November day, when the -leaves are no longer on the trees to obscure the vista, one feels -the dynamic quality of medieval architecture--a quality altogether -different from the prudent regularities of the later Georgian mode. -It is not merely a matter of painted gables, leaded, diamond-paned -windows, overhanging second stories, much as these would perhaps remind -us of a medieval European town. What would attract one is the feeling, -not of formal abstract design, but of growth: the house has developed -as the family within it has prospered, and brought forth children; as -sons and daughters have married, as children have become more numerous, -there have been additions: by a lean-to at one end the kitchen has -achieved a separate existence, for instance; and these unpainted, -weathered oaken masses pile up with a cumulative richness of effect. - -Every step that brings one nearer to the house alters the relation of -the planes formed by the gable ends; and so one must have got the same -effect in these old village streets as one gets today when one skirts -around, let us say, Notre Dame in Paris, now overwhelmed by the towers -at the front, and now seeing them reduced to nothing by the tall spire -in the rear. So the building seems in motion, as well as the spectator; -and this quality delights the eye quite as much as formal decoration, -which the architecture of the seventeenth century in America almost -completely lacked. - -The Puritan had his failings; and this lack of decoration was perhaps -the most important one in architecture. In his devotion to books and -in his love for music, even psalm-music, the Puritan was not immune to -art; but he was suspicious of the image, and one is tempted to read -into his idol-breaking a positive visual defect, akin to the Daltonism -or color blindness of the Quakers. Whereas medieval architecture -had cherished the sculptor and the painter, even in the commonest -vernacular work, the Puritans looked upon every diversion of the eye -as a diversion from the Lord, and, by forbidding a respectable union -between the artist and the useful arts, they finally turned the artist -out on the streets, to pander to the first fine gentleman who would -give him a kind word or a coin. Whereas Puritan buildings in the -seventeenth century were straightforward and honestly bent to fulfill -their functions, the Puritan did not see that ornament itself may be -functional, too, when it expresses some positive gesture of the spirit. -The bareness of the seventeenth century paved the way for the finicking -graces of the eighteenth. - - -IV - -In essentials, however, both the life and the architecture of the first -provincial period are sound. While agriculture is the mainstay of -life, and the medieval tradition flourishes, the New England village -reaches a pretty fair pitch of worldly perfection; and beneath all the -superficial changes that affected it in the next century and a half, -its sturdy framework held together remarkably well. - -Consider the village itself. In the center is a common, a little -to one side will be the meeting-house, perhaps a square barnlike -structure, with a hipped roof and a cupola, like that at Hingham; and -adjacent or across the way will be the grammar school. Along the roads -where the houses are set at regular intervals is a great columnar -arcade of elm trees. All these elements are essential to our early -provincial architecture, and without them it would be a little bare and -forbidding. The trees, above all, are an important part of New England -architecture: in summer they absorb the moisture and cool the air, -besides giving shade; in the winter their huge boles serve as a partial -windbrake; even the humus from their leaves keeps the soil of the lawns -in better order. The apple trees that cling to the warmer side of -the house are not less essential. Would it be an exaggeration to say -that there has never been a more complete and intelligent partnership -between the earth and man than existed, for a little while, in the -old New England village? In what other part of the world has such a -harmonious balance between the natural and the social environment been -preserved? - -Nowadays we have begun to talk about garden cities, and we realize that -the essential elements in a garden-city are the common holding of land -by the community, and the coöperative ownership and direction of the -community itself. We refer to all these things as if they represented a -distinct achievement of modern thought; but the fact of the matter is -that the New England village up to the middle of the eighteenth century -was a garden-city in every sense that we now apply to that term, and -happily its gardens and its harmonious framework have frequently -lingered on, even though the economic foundations have long been -overthrown. - -This is a medieval tradition in American architecture which should -be of some use to our architects and city planners; for it is a much -more substantial matter than the building of perpendicular churches or -Tudor country-houses in painfully archæological adaptations. If we wish -to tie up with our colonial tradition we must recover more than the -architectural forms: we must recover the interests, the standards, the -institutions that gave to the villages and buildings of early times -their appropriate shapes. To do much less than this is merely to bring -back a fad which might as well be Egyptian as “colonial” for all the -sincerity that it exhibits. - - - - -CHAPTER TWO THE HERITAGE OF THE RENAISSANCE - - -I - -The forces that undermined the medieval civilization of Europe sapped -the vitality from the little centers it had deposited in America. -What happened in the course of three or four centuries in Europe took -scarcely a hundred years on this side of the Atlantic. - -Economically and culturally, the village community had been pretty well -self-contained; it scraped along on its immediate resources, and if it -could not purchase for itself the “best of everything” it at least made -the most of what it had. In every detail of house construction, from -the setting of fireplaces to the slope of the roof, there were local -peculiarities which distinguished not merely the Dutch settlements -from the English, but which even characterized several settlements in -Rhode Island that were scarcely a day’s tramp apart. The limitation of -materials, and the carpenter’s profound ignorance of “style” made for -freedom and diversity. It remained for the eighteenth century to erect -a single canon of taste. - -With the end of the seventeenth century the economic basis of -provincial life shifted from the farm to the sea. This change had the -same effect upon New England, where the village-community proper alone -had flourished, that fur-trading had had upon New York: it broke up -the internal unity of the village by giving separate individuals the -opportunity by what was literally a “lucky haul,” to achieve a position -of financial superiority. Fishermen are the miners of the water. -Instead of the long, watchful care that the farmer must exercise from -planting time to harvest, fishing demands a sharp eye and a quick, hard -stroke of work; and since what the Germans call _Sitzfleisch_ is not -one of the primary qualities of a free lad, it is no wonder that the -sea weaned the young folks of New England away from the drudgeries of -its boulder-strewn farms. With fishing, trading, and building wooden -vessels for sale in foreign ports, riches poured into maritime New -England; and what followed scarcely needs an explanation. - -These villages ceased to be communities of farmers, working the land -and standing squarely on their own soil: they became commercial towns -which, instead of trading for a living, simply lived for trade. With -this change, castes arose; first, the division between the poor and the -rich, and then between craftsmen and merchants, between the independent -workers and the menials. The common concerns of all the townsfolk -took second rank: the privileges of the great landlords and merchants -warped the development of the community. Boston, by the middle of -the eighteenth century, was rich in public buildings, including four -schoolhouses, seventeen churches, a Town House, a Province House, -and Faneuil Hall--a pretty large collection for a town whose twenty -thousand inhabitants would scarcely fill a single block of tenements -in the Bronx. But by this time a thousand inhabitants were set down as -poor, and an almshouse and a workhouse had been provided for them. - -With the rise of the merchant class, the industrial guild began to -weaken, as it had weakened in Europe during the Renaissance. For about -a hundred years the carpenter-builder continued to remain on the scene, -and work in his forthright and painstaking and honest manner; but in -the middle of the eighteenth century he was joined, for the first -time, by the professional architect, the first one being probably -Peter Harrison, who designed the Redwood Library, which still stands -in Newport. Under competition with architects and amateurs of taste, -the carpenter-builder lost his position as an independent craftsman, -building intelligently for his equals: he was forced to meet the swift, -corrosive influences brought in from foreign lands by men who had -visited the ports of the world; and he must set his sails in order to -catch the new winds of fashion. - -What were these winds, and what effect did they have upon the -architecture of the time? - -Most of the influences that came by way of trade affected only the -accent of architecture; the language remained a homely vernacular. In -the middle of the eighteenth century China sent over wallpaper; and in -the Metropolitan Museum there is an American lacquered cabinet dated -as early as 1700, decorated with obscure little Chinese figures in -gilded gesso. “China” itself came in to take the place of pewter and -earthenware in the finer houses; while in the gardens of the great -manors, pavilions and pagodas, done more or less in the Chinese manner, -were fashionable. Even Thomas Jefferson, with his impeccably classical -taste, designed such a pavilion for Monticello before the Revolution. - -This specific Chinese influence was part of that large, eclectic -Oriental influence of the eighteenth century. The cultural spirit that -produced Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes also led to the translation of -the Chinese and Persian and Sanskrit classics, and by a more direct -route brought home Turkish dressing-gowns, turbans, and slippers to -Boston merchants. In Copley’s painting of Nicholas Boylston, in 1767, -these Turkish ornaments rise comically against the suggestion of a -Corinthian pillar in the background; and this pillar recalls to us the -principal influence of the time--that of classic civilization. This -influence entered America first as a motif in decoration, and passed -out only after it had become a dominating motive in life. - - -II - -The Renaissance was an orientation of the European mind towards the -forms of Roman and Greek civilization, and towards the meaning of -classical culture. On the latter side its impulse was plainly a -liberating one: it delivered the human soul from a cell of torments -in which there were no modulating interests or activities between the -base satisfactions of the temporal life and the beatitudes of heaven. -With the Renaissance the god-beast became, once again, a man. Moreover, -just when the Catholic culture of Christendom was breaking down under -the influence of heresy and skepticism, the classics brought to the -educated men of Europe a common theme which saved them from complete -intellectual vagrancy. The effect of classical civilization, on the -other hand, was not an unmixed good: for it served all too quickly -to stereotype in old forms a spirit which had been freshly reborn, -and it set up a servile principle in the arts which has in part been -responsible for the wreck of both taste and craftsmanship. - -The first builders of the Renaissance, in Italy, were not primarily -architects; they were rather supreme artists in the minor crafts; and -their chief failing was, perhaps, that they wished to stamp with their -personal imprint all the thousand details of sculpture, painting, -and carving which had hitherto been left to the humble craftsman. -Presently, the technical knowledge of the outward treatment of a -building became a touchstone to success; and a literal understanding -of the products of antiquity took the place in lesser men of personal -inspiration. The result was that architecture became more and more -a thing of paper designs and exact archæological measurements; the -workman was condemned to carry out in a faithful, slavish way the -details which the architect himself had acquired in similar fashion. -So the architect ceased to be a master-builder working among comrades -of wide experience and travel: he became a Renaissance gentleman who -merely gave orders to his servants. - -Victor Hugo said in Notre Dame that the printing-press destroyed -architecture, which had hitherto been the stone record of mankind. The -real misdemeanor of the printing-press, however, was not that it took -literary values away from architecture, but that it caused architecture -to derive its value from literature. With the Renaissance the great -modern distinction between the literate and the illiterate extends -even to building; the master mason who knew his stone and his workmen -and his tools and the tradition of his art gave way to the architect -who knew his Palladio and his Vignola and his Vitruvius. Architecture, -instead of striving to leave the imprint of a happy spirit on the -superficies of a building, became a mere matter of grammatical -accuracy and pronunciation; and the seventeenth-century architects who -revolted from this regime and created the baroque were at home only in -the pleasure gardens and theaters of princes. For the common run of -architects, particularly in the northern countries, the Five Orders -became as unchallengeable as the eighty-one rules of Latin syntax. To -build with a pointed arch was barbarous, to build with disregard for -formal symmetry was barbarous, to permit the common workman to carry -out his individual taste in carving was to risk vulgarity and pander to -an obsolete sense of democracy. The classics had, it is true, united -Europe anew in a catholic culture; but alas! it was only the leisured -upper classes who could fully take possession of the new kingdom of -the mind. The Five Orders remained firmly entrenched on one side, the -“lower orders” on the other. - -Hereafter, architecture lives by the book. First it is Palladio and -Vignola; then it is Burlington and Chambers; then, after the middle -of the eighteenth century, the brothers Adam and Stuart’s Antiquities -of Athens. Simpler works with detailed prescriptions for building in -the fashionable mode made their way in the late seventeenth century -among the smaller fry of carpenters and builders; and they were widely -used in America, as a guide to taste and technique, right down to the -middle of the nineteenth century. It was by means of the book that -the architecture of the eighteenth century from St. Petersburg to -Philadelphia seemed cast by a single mind. We call the mode Georgian -because vast quantities of such building was done in England, as a -result of the general commercial prosperity of that country; but it -was common wherever European civilization had any fresh architectural -effort to make, and if we call this style “colonial” in America it is -not to mark any particular lapse or lack of distinction. - -The Renaissance in architecture had reached England at about the time -of the Great Fire (1666), fully two generations after the Italian -influence had made its way into English literature; and it came to -America, as one might guess, about a generation later. It was left -for Alexander Pope, who himself was a dutiful Augustan, to sum up the -situation with classic precision to Lord Burlington, who had published -Palladio’s Antiquities of Rome: - - “You show us Rome was glorious, not profuse, - And pompous buildings once were things of use. - Yet shall, my lord, your just and noble rules - Fill half the land with imitation fools; - Who random drawings from your sheets shall take - And of one beauty many blunders make.” - -These lines were a warning and a prophecy. The warning was timely; -and the prophecy came true, except in those districts in which the -carpenter continued to ply his craft without the overlordship of the -architect. - - -III - -The first effect of the Renaissance forms in America was not to -destroy the vernacular but to perfect it; for it provided the -carpenter-builder, whose distance from Europe kept him from profiting -by the spirited work of his forbears, with a series of ornamental -motifs. New England, under the influence of an idol-breaking -Puritanism, had been singularly poor in decoration, as I have already -observed: its modest architectural effects relied solely on mass, -color, and a nice disposition of parts. In its decorative aspects -medievalism had left but a trace in America: the carved grotesque -heads on the face of the Van Cortlandt Mansion in New York, and the -painted decorations in some of the older houses and barns among the -Pennsylvania Dutch pretty well complete the tally. - -Classical motifs served to fill the blank in provincial architecture. -As long as the carpenter worked by himself, the classic influence -was confined to little details like the fanlights, the moldings, the -pillars of the portico, and so on. In the rural districts of New -England, from Maine to Connecticut, and in certain parts of New York -and New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the carpenter keeps on building in his -solid, traditional manner down to the time that the jig-saw overwhelms -a mechanically hypnotized age; and even through the jig-saw period -in the older regions, the proportions and the plan remained close to -tradition. The classical did not in fact supplant the vernacular until -the last vestiges of the guild and the village-community had passed -away, and the economic conditions appropriate to the Renaissance -culture had made their appearance. - -The dwelling house slowly became more habitable during this period: -the skill in shipbuilding which every sheltered inlet gave evidence of -was carried back into the home, and in the paneling of the walls and -the general tidiness and compactness of the apartments, a shipshape -order comes more and more to prevail. The plastered ceiling makes its -appearance, and the papered wall; above all, white paint is introduced -on the inside and outside of the house. - -Besides giving more light, this innovation surely indicates that -chimney flues had become more satisfactory. Paint was no doubt -introduced to keep the torrid summer sun from charring the exposed -clapboards; and white paint was used, despite the expense of white -lead, for the reason that it accorded with the chaste effect which was -inseparable in the eighteenth-century mind from classic precedent. - -Indeed, the whiteness of our colonial architecture is an essential -characteristic; it dazzled Dickens on his first visit to America, and -made him think that all the houses had been built only yesterday. The -esthetic reason for delighting in these white colonial farmhouses is -simple: white and white alone fully reflects the surrounding lights; -white and white alone gives a pure blue or lavender shadow against -the sunlight. At dawn, a white house is pale pink and turquoise; at -high noon it is clear yellow and lavender-blue; in a ripe sunset it -is orange and purple; in short, except on a gray day it is anything -but white. These old white houses, if they seem a little sudden and -sharp in the landscape, are at least part of the sky: one finds them -stretched on a slight rise above the highroad like a seagull with -poised wings, or a cloud above the treetops. Were anything needed to -make visible the deterioration of American life which the nineteenth -century brought with it, the habit of painting both wood and brick gray -should perhaps be sufficient. - - -IV - -If the architecture of the early eighteenth century in America is -a little prim and angular, if it never rises far above a sturdy -provincialism, it is not without its own kind of interest; and Faneuil -Hall, for example, is not the worst of Boston’s buildings, though it -is overshadowed by the great utilitarian hulks that line the streets -about it. By studying the classical forms at one remove, the builders -of the eighteenth century in America had the same kind of advantage -that Wren had in England. Wren’s “Renaissance” churches, with their -box-like naves and their series of superimposed orders for steeples, -had no parallel, so far as I am aware, in Italy, and certainly had -no likeness to anything that had been built in classic times: they -were the products of a playful and original fancy, like the mermaid. -Mere knowledge, mere imitation, would never have achieved Renaissance -architecture; it was the very imperfection of the knowledge and -discipleship that made it the appropriate shell of its age. Coming -to America in handbooks and prints, chastely rendered, the models of -antiquity were, down to the Revolution, followed just so far as they -conveniently served. Instead of curbing invention, they gave it a more -definite problem to work upon. - -It was a happy accident that made the carpenter-builders and cabinet -makers of America see their China, their Paris, their Rome through a -distance, dimly. What those who admire the eighteenth century style -do not, perhaps, see is that an accident cannot be recovered. However -painstakingly we may cut the waistcoat, the stock, the knee-breeches -of an eighteenth-century costume, it is now only a fancy dress: its -“moment” in history is over. The same principle holds true for Georgian -or colonial architecture, even more than it does for that of the -seventeenth century; for one might, indeed, conceive of a breakdown -in the transportation system or the credit system which would force -a builder to rely for a while upon the products of his own region; -whereas, while our civilization remains intact there are a hundred -handbooks, measured drawings, and photographs which make a naïve -recovery of antiquity impossible. - -Once we have genuinely appreciated the influence that created early -colonial architecture, we see that it is irrecoverable: what we call -a revival is really a second burial. All the king’s horses and all -the king’s men have been hauling and tugging vigorously during the -last fifty years to bring back the simple beauties and graces of the -colonial dwelling, and the collectors’ hunt for the products of the -Salem, Newburyport and Philadelphia cabinetmakers is a long and merry -one; but the only beneficent effect of this movement has been the -preservation of a handful of antiquities, which would otherwise have -been impiously torn down. What we have built in the colonial mode is -all very well in its way: unfortunately, it bears the same relation to -the work of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that -the Woolworth Building bears to the cathedrals of the Middle Age, or -the patriotism of the National Security League to the principles of -Franklin and Jefferson. Photographic accuracy, neatly touched up--this -is its capital virtue, and plainly, it has precious little to do with a -living architecture. Like the ruined chapel in The Pirates of Penzance, -our modern colonial houses are often attached to ancestral estates that -were established--a year ago; and if their occupants are “descendants -by purchase,” what shall we say of their architects? - - - - -CHAPTER THREE THE CLASSICAL MYTH - - -I - -The transformation of European society and its material shell that took -place during the period we call the Renaissance is associated with -the break-up of the town economy and its replacement by a mercantile -economy devoted to the advantage of the State. Along with this goes -the destruction of the village community, and the predominance -in social affairs of a landholding oligarchy who have thrown off -feudal responsibilities while they have retained most of the feudal -privileges, and a merchant class, buttressed by riches derived from -war, piracy, and sharp trade. - -America reproduced in miniature the changes that were taking place in -Europe. Because of its isolation and the absence of an established -social order, it showed these changes without the blur and confusion -that attended them abroad. - -It is sometimes a little difficult to tell whether the classical modes -of building were a result of these changes in society or, among other -things, an incentive to them; whether the classical frame fitted the -needs of the time, or whether men’s activities expanded to occupy the -idolum that had seized their imagination. At any rate, the notion that -the classical taste in architecture developed mainly through technical -interests in design will not hold; for the severely classical shell -arose only in regions where the social conditions had laid a foundation -for the classical myth. - -The first development of the grand style in the American renaissance -was in the manors of Virginia and Maryland. It came originally through -an imitation of the country houses of England, and then, after the -Revolutionary War, it led to a direct adaptation of the Roman villa -and the Greek temple. One does not have to go very deep to fetch -up the obvious parallel between the land-monopoly and slavery that -prevailed in the American manors and the conditions that permitted the -Roman villa itself to assume its stately proportions; nor need one -dwell too long upon the natural subordination, in this regime, of the -carpenter-builder to the gentleman-architect. “In the town palaces -and churches,” as Mr. Fiske Kimball justly says, “there was a strong -contradiction between modern conditions and ancient forms, so that it -was only in the country that Palladio’s ideas of domestic architecture -could come to a clear and successful expression. These monuments, since -so much neglected, served in Palladio’s book expressly to represent the -‘Antients’ designs of country-houses....’” - -At his death, Robert Carter, who had been Rector of the College, -Speaker of the Burgesses, President of the Council, Acting Governor of -Virginia, and Proprietor of the Northern Neck, was described in the -Gentleman’s Magazine of 1732 as the possessor of an estate of 300,000 -acres of land, about 1,000 slaves, and ten thousand pounds. Pliny the -Younger might well have been proud of such an estate. On a substantial -basis like this, a Palladian mansion was possible; and up and down the -land, wherever the means justified the end, Palladian mansions were -built. - -The really striking thing about the architecture of Manorial America -with its great dignity and its sometimes striking beauty of detail or -originality of design--as in the staircase at Berry Hill which creates -a flaring pattern like butterfly’s wings--the striking thing is the -fact that the work is not the product of a specialized education; it -is rather the outcome of a warm, loving, and above all intelligent -commerce with the past, in the days before Horseback Hall had become -as aimless and empty as Heartbreak House. Mr. Arthur T. Bolton, the -biographer of the brothers Adam, has exhibited letters from Robert -Adam’s patrons in England which mark their avid and precise interest -in classical forms; and without doubt a little digging would uncover -similar examples in America. - -These educated eighteenth-century gentlemen, these contemporaries of -“Junius” and Gibbon, who had read Horace and Livy and Plutarch, had one -foot in their own age, and the other in the grave of Rome. In America, -Thomas Jefferson exemplified this whole culture at its best and gave it -a definite stamp: he combined in almost equal degrees the statesman, -the student, and the artist. Not merely did Jefferson design his own -Monticello; he executed a number of other houses for the surrounding -gentry--Shadwell, Edgehill, Farrington--to say nothing of the Virginia -State Capitol and the church and university at Charlottesville. It -was Jefferson who in America first gave a strict interpretation to -classicism; for he had nothing but contempt for the free, Georgian -vernacular which was making its way among those who regarded the -classical past as little more than a useful embellishment. - -The contrast between the classical and the vernacular, between the -architecture of the plantation and the architecture of the village, -between the work of the craftsman, and the work of the gentleman -and the professional architect, became even more marked after the -Revolutionary War. As a result of that re-crystallization of American -society, the conditions of classical culture and classical civilization -were for a short time fused in the activities of the community, even -in the town. One may express the transformation in a crude way by -saying that the carpenter-builder had been content with a classical -finish; the architects of the early republic worked upon a classical -foundation. It was the Revolution itself, I believe, that turned the -classical taste into a myth which had the power to move men and mold -their actions. - -The merchant who has spent his hours in the counting house and on the -quay cannot with the most lofty effort convert himself into a classical -hero. It is different with men who have spent long nights and days -wrangling in the State House, men who have ridden on horseback through -a campaign, men who have plotted like Catiline and denounced like -Cicero, men whose daily actions are governed with the fine resolution -of a Roman general or dictator. Unconsciously, such men want a stage -to set off and magnify their actions. King Alfred can perhaps remain a -king, though he stays in a cottage and minds the cakes on the griddle; -but most of us need a little scenery and ritual to confirm these high -convictions. If the tailors had not produced the frock-coat, Daniel -Webster would have had to invent one. The merchant wants his little -comforts and conveniences; at most, he desires the architect to -make his gains conspicuous; but the hero who has drawn his sword or -addressed an assembly wants elbow room for gestures. His parlor must -be big enough for a public meeting, his dining room for a banquet. -So it follows that whereas under pre-Revolutionary conventions even -civic buildings like Independence Hall in Philadelphia are built on -a domestic scale, the early republican architecture is marked by the -practice of building its domestic dwellings on a public scale. The fine -houses of the early republic all have an official appearance; almost -any house might be the White House. - -Even when Dickens made his first visit to America, the classical -myth and the classical hero had not altogether disappeared: one has a -painful memory of the “mother of the modern Gracchi,” and one sees how -the republican hero had been vulgarized into a Jacksonian caricature -like General Cyrus Choke. For a whole generation the classical myth -held men in its thrall; the notion of returning to a pagan polity, -quaintly modified by deism, was a weapon of the radical forces in -both America and France. Jean Jacques himself preached the virtues of -Sparta and Rome in Le Contrat Social, as well as the state of nature -which he praised in Emile; and, in general, “radicalism” associated -itself with the worship of rule and reason, as opposed to the caprice, -the irrationality, the brute traditionalism of what the children of -that age then characterized as “Gothic superstition.” Almost within -his lifetime Washington became Divus Cæsar, and if a monument was not -built to him immediately, a city was named after him, as Alexandria had -been named after Alexander. Did not the very war-veterans become the -Society of the Cincinnati; did not the first pioneers on the westward -march sprinkle names like Utica and Ithaca and Syracuse over the Mohawk -trail; and did not a few ex-soldiers go back to their Tory neighbor’s -plow? As Rome and Greece embodied the political interests of the age, -so did classical architecture provide the appropriate shell. Even those -who were not vitally touched by the dominant interests of the period -were not immune to the fashion, once it had been set. - - -II - -In New England, not unnaturally, the influence of the merchant -prevailed in architecture for a longer time, perhaps, than it did -elsewhere. Samuel McIntire, a carver of figureheads for ships and -moldings for cabins, provided an interior setting in the fashion of -Robert Adam, which enabled the merchant of Salem to live like a lord -in Berkeley Square; and Bulfinch, a merchant’s son, began by repairing -his father’s house, went on a grand tour of Europe, and returned to a -lucrative practice which included the first monument on Bunker Hill, -and the first theater opened in Boston. Under McIntire’s assiduous and -scholarly hands, the low-lying traditional farmhouse was converted -into the bulky square house with its hipped roof, its classical -pilasters, its frequently ill-proportioned cupola, its “captain’s -walk,” or “widow’s walk.” The merchant with his eye for magnitude -lords it over the farmer with his homely interest in the wind and the -weather; and so McIntire, the last great figure in a dying line of -craftsmen-artists, is compelled to make up by wealth of ornament a -beauty which the earlier provincial houses had achieved by adaptation -to the site without, and to subtlety of proportion within. The standard -of conspicuous waste, as Mr. Thorstein Veblen would call it, spread -from the manor to the city mansion. - -Throughout the rest of the country, the pure classical myth created the -mold of American architecture, and buildings that were not informed by -this myth attempted some sort of mimicry, like the mansion Squire Jones -built for Marmaduke Temple in Cooper’s The Pioneers. There are churches -standing in New Jersey and New York, for example, built as late as -1850, which at a distance have the outlines and proportions of classic -buildings, either in the earlier style of Wren, or in the more severe -and stilted Greek manner favored by a later generation. It is only on -closer inspection that one discovers that the ornament has become an -illiterate reminiscence; that the windows are bare openings; that the -orders have lost their proportions, and that, unlike the wandering -mechanic, who “with a few soiled plates of English architecture” helped -Squire Jones, the builder could no longer pretend to talk learnedly “of -friezes, entablatures, and particularly of the composite order.” Alas -for a bookish architecture when the taste for reading disappears! - - -III - -The dominant designs of the early republican period proceeded directly -or indirectly from such books as Stuart’s Antiquities of Athens, and -from such well-known examples of temple architecture in southern -Europe as the Maison Carrée at Nîmes. In one sense, there was a -certain fitness in adapting the Greek methods of building to America. -Originally, the Greek temple had probably been a wooden building. Its -columns were trees, its cornices exposed beams; and the fact that in -America one could again build mightily in wood may have furnished an -extra incentive to the erection of these colossal buildings. The fact -that the Greek mode in America was well under way before the first -example of it had appeared in Edinburgh, London, or Paris, shows -perhaps that time and place both favored its introduction on this side -of the Atlantic: for the availability of certain materials often, no -doubt, directs the imagination to certain forms. - -On the whole, however, the Greek temple precedent was a bad one. For -one thing, since the Greek _cella_ had no source of light except the -doorway, it was necessary to introduce modifications in the elevation, -and to break up the interior; and it was only in the South that the -vast shadowed retreats formed by porches and second-story balconies -proved a happy adaptation to the climate. Again: Greek architecture -was an architecture of exteriors, designed for people who spent the -greater part of the year out of doors. With no temple ritual comparable -to the services of the church or cathedral, the Greeks lavished their -attention upon externals, and as a great admirer of the Greeks, Sir -Reginald Blomfield well says, “may have been more successful with the -outside of their buildings than with the inside.” To fail with the -interior in a northern climate is to fail with the essentials of a -habitation; and these vast rooms, for all their ornament, too often -remained bleak. - -Even on the esthetic side, the Greek style of building was not a -full-blown success. With all their strict arrangement of the classic -orders, with all their nice proportions, the muted white exteriors -resembled a genuine Greek temple in the way that a sepia photograph -would represent a sunrise--the warm tones, the colors, the dancing -procession of sculptures were absent; it was a thinned and watered -Greece that they called to mind. Indeed, the disciples of the Age of -Reason and white perukes would have been horrified, I have no doubt, -at the “barbarism” of the original Greek temples, as they would -doubtless also have been at the meanness of the dwellings in which -Pericles or Thucydides must have lived. Once the temple-house ceased -to be a stage upon which the myth of classicism could be enacted, it -ceased also to be a home. For who wishes to live in a temple? That is -a spiritual exercise we do not demand even of a priest. Small wonder -that the temple lingered longest in the South, where, down to the Civil -War, gangs of slaves supported the dignity of the masters and a large -household diminished the chilly sense of solitude. - -It was in public architecture that the early republic succeeded best, -and it was here that its influence lingered longest, for down to 1840 -well-designed buildings in the classic mode, like the Sub-Treasury -building in New York, were still put up. The work of McComb in New -York, Hoadley in Connecticut, Latrobe in Pennsylvania and Maryland, to -mention only a few of the leading architects, represents the high-water -mark of professional design in America; and the fact that in spite -of the many hands that worked upon it the Capitol at Washington is -still a fairly coherent structure is a witness to the strength of -their tradition. For all its minor felicities, however, we must not -make the mistake of the modern revivalists, like Mr. Fiske Kimball, -who urge the acceptance of the classic tradition in America as a -foundation for a general modern style. Form and function are too far -divorced in the classic mode to permit the growth of an architecture -which will proceed on all fours in houses and public buildings, and -factories and barns; moreover, there are too many new structures -in the modern world which the builders of Rome or the Renaissance -have not even dimly anticipated. In medieval building the town hall -is a different sort of building from the cathedral: using the same -elements, perhaps, it nevertheless contrives an altogether different -effect. In the architecture of the early republic, on the other hand, -the treasury building might be a church, and the church might be a -mansion, for any external differentiation one can observe--in fact, the -only ecclesiastical feeling that goes with the churches of the time -is a cold deism, or an equally cold Protestant faith which has lost -entirely the memories and associations of the intervening centuries. -This sort of architecture achieves order and dignity, not by composing -differences, but by canceling them. Its standards do not inhere in -the building, but are laid on outside of it. When the purpose of the -structure happens to conform to the style, the result may be admirable -in every way. When it does not happen to conform the result is tedious -and banal; and, to tell the truth, a great deal of the architecture of -the early republic is tedious and banal. - - -IV - -One further effect of the classic mode has still to be noted: the -introduction of formal city design, by the French engineer, Major -L’Enfant, in the laying out of Washington. Stirred by the memory of -the grand design of Paris under Louis XIV, with its radiating avenues -that cut through the city in the way that riding lanes cut through the -hunting forest, L’Enfant sought to superimpose a dignified pattern -upon the rectangular plan provided by the commissioners of Washington. -By putting the major public buildings in key positions, by providing -for a proper physical relation between the various departments of the -government, by planning spacious avenues of approach, culminating in -squares, triangles, and round-points, Major L’Enfant gave great dignity -to the new capital city, and even though in the years that followed his -plan was often ignored and overridden, it still maintained a monumental -framework for the administrative buildings of the American State. - -Unfortunately, if Washington has the coherence of a formal plan, it -also has its abstractness: contrived to set off and serve the buildings -of the government, it exercised no control over domestic building, over -business, over the manifold economic functions of the developing city. -The framework was excellent, if cities could live by government alone. -By laying too much stress on formal order, the exponents of classic -taste paved the way for the all too formal order of the gridiron plan, -and since the gridiron development was suited to hasty commercial -exploitation, while the mode of Washington was not, it was in this mold -that the architecture of the nineteenth century was cast. - -Within a short while after its introduction in New York in 1811 the -effects of the rectangular streets and rectangular lots became evident; -whereas the prints of New York before 1825 show a constant variety in -the elevation and layout of houses, those after this date resemble more -and more standardized boxes. Long monotonous streets that terminated -nowhere, filled by rows of monotonous houses--this was the net -contribution of the formal plan. Classical taste was not responsible -for these enormities--but on the whole it did nothing to check them, -and since the thrifty merchants of New York could not understand -L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, they seized upon that part of it which -was intelligible: its regularity, its appearance of order. - -With the new forces that were at work on the American scene, with -the disintegration of classical culture under the combined influence -of pioneer enterprise, mechanical invention, overseas commerce, -and the almost religious cult of utilitarianism, all this was -indeed inevitable. What happened to the proud, Roman-patterned -republic of 1789 is a matter of common knowledge. Benjamin Latrobe, -the British architect who contributed so much to the Capitol at -Washington--including a new order of corn stalks and tobacco -leaves--was a witness to the disintegration of the age and the -dissolution of its world of ideas; and there is a familiar ring to his -commentary upon it: - - “I remember [he says in his autobiography] the time when I was over - head and ears in love with Man in a State of Nature.... Social - Compacts were my hobbies; the American Revolution--I ask its pardon, - for it deserves better company--was a sort of dream of the Golden - Age; and the French Revolution was the Golden Age itself. I should - be ashamed to confess all this if I had not a thousand companions - in my kaleidoscopic amusement, and those generally men of ardent, - benevolent, and well-informed minds and excellent hearts. Alas! - experience has destroyed the illusion, the kaleidoscope is broken, - and all the tinsel of scenery that glittered so delightfully is - translated and turned to raggedness. A dozen years’ residence at the - Republican court of Washington had affected wonderfully the advance - of riper years.” - -Major L’Enfant’s plan for Washington was the last gasp, it seems to me, -of the classical order; Jefferson’s University of Virginia was perhaps -its most perfect consummation, for Jefferson had planned for the life -of the institution as well as for the shell which was to contain it. -Before the nineteenth century was long under way men’s minds ceased -to move freely within the classical idolum; and by 1860 the mood -was obliterated and a large part of the work had been submerged or -destroyed. The final ironic commentary upon the dignity and austerity -of the earlier temples is illustrated in a house in Kennebunkport, -Maine; for there the serene, pillared façade is broken up in the rear -by a later, and alas! a necessary addition: a two-story bow-window -projected far enough beyond the eaves to give a little light to the -occupants of the rooms! - -In sum, there was a pathetic incompatibility in this architecture -between need and achievement, between pretensions and matter-of-fact--a -rigid opposition to common sense that a vernacular, however playful, -would never countenance. These temples were built with the marmoreal -gesture of eternity; they satisfied the desire and fashion of the -moment; and today their ghosts parade before us, brave but incredible. - - - - -CHAPTER FOUR THE DIASPORA OF THE PIONEER - - -I - -From the standpoint of architecture, the early part of the nineteenth -century was a period of disintegration. The gap between sheer utility -and art, which the Renaissance had emphasized, was widened with the -coming of machinery. That part of architecture which was touched by -industrialism became crude beyond belief: the new mills and factories -were usually packing boxes, lacking in light and ventilation, and the -homes of the factory workers, when they were not the emptied houses -of merchants and tradesmen, made to serve a dozen families instead of -the original one, were little more than covered pens, as crowded as -a cattle market. At the same time that the old forms were undermined -by the new methods of mechanical production, a sentimental longing to -retain those forms, just because they were old, seized men’s minds; -and so industrialism and romanticism divided the field of architecture -between them. - -It was no accident that caused romanticism and industrialism to -appear at the same time. They were rather the two faces of the new -civilization, one looking towards the past, and the other towards -the future; one glorifying the new, the other clinging to the old; -industrialism intent on increasing the physical means of subsistence, -romanticism living in a sickly fashion on the hollow glamour of the -past. The age not merely presented these two aspects; it sought to -enjoy each of them. Where industrialism took root, the traditions -of architecture were disregarded; where romanticism flourished, on -the other hand, in the mansions, public buildings, and churches, -architecture became capricious and absurd, and it returned to a past -that had never existed. Against the gross callousness which a Bounderby -exhibited toward beauty and amenity, there was only the bland piety of -a Pecksniff. - -The dream that is dying and the dream that is coming to birth do not -stand in sequence, but mingle as do the images in a dissolving view; -and during the very years that the architecture of the Renaissance, -both in Europe and America, achieved new heights of formal design, the -first factories were being planted in Staffordshire and Yorkshire, -the Duke of Bridgewater built his famous canal, and Horace Walpole -designed his “Gothic” mansion on Strawberry Hill. The coincidence of -industrialism and romanticism is just as emphatic in America as in -England; and it is not without historic justice that the architect who -in 1807 designed the chapel of St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, after -the Gothic fashion, successfully introduced a steam pumping system in -Philadelphia’s waterworks. While the industrial buildings of the period -represented nothing but a lapse from the current vernacular, due to -haste and insufficient resources, romantic architecture was a positive -influence; and it will perhaps best serve our purpose to examine the -romantic heritage in its pristine form, rather than in the work of -disciples like Latrobe, whose American practice is dated about two -generations later. - -The author of The Castle of Otranto had a perverse and wayward -interest in the past; and the spirit he exhibited in both his novel -and his country home was typical of the romantic attitude everywhere. -What attracted Walpole to the Gothic style was little more than the -phosphorescence of decay: he summoned up the ghosts of the Middle -Ages but not the guilds; and instead of admiring the soundness of -medieval masonry, those who followed directly in his path were -affected rather by the spectacle of its dilapidation, so that the -production of authentic ruins became one of the chief efforts of the -eighteenth-century landscape gardener. - -It is not a great step from building a ruin to building a mansion that -is little better than a ruin. While Walpole defended Strawberry Hill -by saying he did not aim to make his house so Gothic as to exclude -convenience, it happened again and again that the picturesque was the -enemy of simple honesty and necessity; and just as Walpole himself -in his refectory used wall paper that imitated stucco, so did other -owners and builders use plaster and hangings and wall paper and carpet -to cover up defects of construction. Towers that no one ever climbed, -turrets that no one could enter, and battlements that no one rose to -defend, took the place of the classic orders. The drawbridge-and-moat -that embellished Mr. Wemmick’s villa in Great Expectations was not a -wild conceit of Dickens but a relic of Walpole and his successors. - -As a disguise for mean or thoughtless workmanship, the application of -antique “style” was the romantic contribution to architecture; and -it served very handily during the period of speculative building and -selling that accompanied the growth of the new industrial towns. Even -where style did not conceal commercial disingenuousness, it covered -up a poverty of imagination in handling the elements of a building. -Gothic touches about doors and the exterior of windows, and a heap -of bric-a-brac and curios on the inside, softened the gauntness and -bareness of this architecture, or rather, distracted attention from -them. Curiosity was the dominant mood of the time, acquisitiveness its -principal impulse, and comfort its end. Many good things doubtless came -out of this situation; but architecture was not one of them. - - -II - -Modern industrialism began to take root in America after the War of -Independence, and its effect was twofold: it started up new villages -which centered about the waterfall or the iron mine and had scarcely -any other concern than industry; at the same time, by cutting canals -which tapped the interior, it drew life away from the smaller -provincial ports and concentrated commerce and population in great -towns like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. In New England, as in -the English Cotswolds from Whitney to Chalford, the mechanical regime -was humanized by the presence of an older civilization, and the first -generation of factory hands were farmers’ lads and lasses who neither -lost nor endangered their independence; but where the factory depended -upon paupers or immigrants, as it did in the big towns and in some -of the unsettled parts of the country, the community relapsed into a -barbarism which affected the masters as well as the hands. There was -more than a difference in literary taste between the Corinths and -Bethels named by an earlier generation and the Mechanicsvilles that -followed them. - -The chief watchwords of the time were progress and expansion. The -first belonged to the pioneer in industry who opened up new areas for -mechanical invention and applied science; the second, to the land -pioneer; and between these two resourceful types the old ways, were -they good or bad, were scrapped, and the new ways, were they good or -bad, were adopted. Both land pioneering and industrial pioneering were -essentially subdivisions of one occupation, mining; and, following the -clue opened by Messrs. Geddes and Branford, one may say with Professor -Adshead that the nineteenth century witnessed “the great attack of the -miner on the peasant.” - -Mechanical industry owes its great development and progress to the work -of the woodman and the miner: the first type of worker takes the bent -sapling and develops the lathe or “bodger” which is still to be found -in the remote parts of the Chiltern Hills in England, while from the -mine itself not merely comes the steam engine, first used for pumping -out water, but likewise the railway. The perpetual débris amid which -the miner lives forms a capital contrast with the ordered culture, the -careful weeding and cutting, of field and orchard: almost any sort of -habitation is an advance upon the squalor of the pithead; and it is -not a mere chance that the era devoted to mining and all its accessory -manufactures was throughout the western world the dingiest and dirtiest -that has yet befouled the earth. Choked by his own débris, or stirred -by the exhaustion of minerals, the miner’s community runs down--and he -departs. - -The name pioneer has a romantic color; but in America the land pioneer -mined the forests and the soil, and the industry pioneer almost as -ruthlessly mined the human resources, and when the pay-dirt got sallow -and thin, they both moved on. Longfellow’s allusion to the “bivouac of -life” unconsciously points to the prevailing temper; for even those who -remained in the older American centers were affected by the pioneer’s -malaise and unsettlement; and they behaved as if at any moment they -might be called to the colors and sent westward. - -Beside the vivid promises of Mechanical Progress and Manifest Destiny -the realities of an ordered society thinned into a pale vapor. In many -little communities Mechanical Societies were formed for the propagation -of the utilitarian faith: industrialism with its ascetic ritual of -unsparing work, its practice of thrift, its renunciation of the arts, -gathered to itself the religious zeal of Protestantism. The erection -of factories, the digging of canals, the location of furnaces, the -building of roads, the devising of inventions, not merely exhausted a -great part of the available capital; even more, it occupied the energy -and imagination of the more vigorous spirits. Two generations before, -Thomas Jefferson could lay out and develop the estate of Monticello; -now, with many of Jefferson’s capacities, Poe could only dream about -the fantastic Domain of Arnheim. The society around Poe had no more -use for an architectural imagination than the Puritans had for -decorative images; the smoke of the factory-chimney was incense, the -scars on the landscape were as the lacerations of a saint, and the mere -multiplication of gaunt sheds and barracks was a sign of progress, and -therefore an earnest of perfection. - -Did ever so many elements of disintegration come together at one time -and place before? The absence of tradition and example raised enough -difficulties in Birmingham and Manchester and Lyons and Essen; but in -America it was accentuated by the restless march of those pioneers who, -in the words of a contemporary economist, “leave laws, education and -the arts, all the essential elements of civilization, behind them.” -What place could architecture fill in these squatter communities? It -could diminish the hardships of living; it could grease the channels of -gain; and it could demolish or “improve” so much of the old as it could -not understand, as Bulfinch’s Court House in Newburyport was improved, -and as many a fine city residence was swept away under the tide of -traffic. - -These were the days when the log cabin flourished; but it did not -remain long enough in place to become the well-wrought and decorative -piece of rustic architecture that the better sort of peasant hut, done -with the same materials, became in Russia. A genuine architectural -development might have led from a crude log cabin to a finished one, -from a bare cabin to an enriched and garnished one, and so, perhaps, -in the course of a century or so, to a fine country architecture and -a great native art of wood carving comparable to that of the Russian -sculptors today. In America, however, the pioneer jumped baldly from -log cabin to White House, or its genteel and scroll-sawed equivalent; -and the arts inherent in good building never had a chance to develop. -With the animus of the miner in back of everything the pioneer -attempted, the pioneer’s architecture was all false-work and scantling. - - -III - -The first contribution to the pioneer’s comfort was Franklin’s -ingenious stove (1745). After that came a number of material -appliances. Central heating gave the American house a Roman standard of -comfort, the astral-oil lamp captivated Edgar Poe; and cooking stoves, -gas-lighting, permanent bathtubs, and water-closets made their way -into the better sort of house in the Eastern cities before the middle -of the nineteenth century. In the development of the city itself, the -gridiron plan was added to the list of labor-saving devices. Although -the gridiron plan had the same relation to natural conditions and -fundamental social needs as a paper constitution has to the living -customs of a people, the simplicity of the gridiron plan won the heart -of the pioneer. Its rectangular blocks formed parcels of land which he -could sell by the front foot and gamble with as easily as if he were -playing cards, and deeds of transfer could be drawn up hastily with the -same formula for each plot; moreover, the least competent surveyor, -without thought or knowledge, could project the growth of New Eden’s -streets and avenues into an interminable future. In nineteenth-century -city planning the engineer was the willing servant of the land -monopolist; and he provided a frame for the architect--a frame in which -we still struggle today--where site-value counted for everything, and -sight-value was not even an afterthought. - -In street layout and land subdivision no attention was paid to the -final use to which the land would be put; but the most meticulous -efforts were made to safeguard its immediate use, namely, -land-speculation. In order to further this use hills were graded, -swamps and ponds filled, and streets laid out before these expenditures -could be borne by the people who, in the end, were to profit by -or suffer from them. It was no wonder that the newer towns like -Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago by the middle of the century had -forfeited to the gambler in real estate, to pay the cost of street -improvements, generous tracts of land which the original planners had -set aside as civic centers. Planned by men who still retained some of -the civic vision of the early republic, the commercial city speedily -drifted into the hands of people who had no more civic scruples than -the keeper of a lottery. - -The gridiron plan had one other defect which was accounted a virtue by -the pioneer, and still is shared by those who have not profited by the -intervening century’s experience. With its avenues that encompassed -swamps and wildernesses, with its future growth forecast for at least -a hundred years, the complete city plan captivated the imagination. -Scarcely any American town was so mean that it did not attempt to -grow faster than its neighbor, faster perhaps than New York. Only by -the accumulation of more and more people could its colossal city -plan and its inflated land values be realized. If the older cities of -the seaboard were limited in their attempts to become metropolises -by the fact that their downtown sections were originally laid out -for villages, the villages of the middle west labored under just -the opposite handicap; they had frequently acquired the framework -of a metropolis before they had passed out of the physical state of -a village. The gridiron plan was a sort of hand-me-down which the -juvenile city was supposed to grow into and fill. That a city had -any other purpose than to attract trade, to increase land values, -and to grow is something that, if it uneasily entered the mind of an -occasional Whitman, never exercised any hold upon the minds of the -majority of our countrymen. For them, the place where the great city -stands _is_ the place of stretched wharves, and markets, and ships -bringing goods from the ends of the earth; that, and nothing else. - - -IV - -With business booming and vanishing, with people coming and going, with -land continually changing hands, what encouragement was there for the -stable achievements of architecture? In vain does the architect antic -and grimace to conceal his despair; his business is to put on a front. -If he is not a Pecksniff at heart, he will at any rate have to serve -Mr. Veneering. A guide book of 1826 refers to a Masonic Hall “somewhat -in the Gothic style”; and we can characterize all the buildings of the -period by saying that they were “somewhat” like architecture--a little -more than scenery, a little less than solids. - -For a while it seemed as if the Gothic revival might give the -prevailing cast to nineteenth-century building; for if this mode was -adopted at first because it was picturesque and historic it was later -reënforced by the conviction that it was a natural and scientific mode -of construction, that it stood for growth and function, as against the -arbitrary character of the classic work. The symbols of the organic -world were rife in the thought of this period, for in the sphere of -thought biology was supplanting physics, and Gothic architecture was -supposed peculiarly to be in the line of growth, while that of the -Renaissance cut across and, heretically, denied the principle of -organic development. Unfortunately the process of disintegration -had gone so far that no one current of thought had the power to -dominate; and the Gothic style proved to be only the first of a number -of discordant influences, derived from industry, from history, from -archæology. - -Indeed, the chief sign that bears witness to the disintegration of -architecture during the formative days of the pioneer is eclecticism; -but there is still another--the attempt to justify the industrial -process by using solely the materials it had created in abundance. In -discussing the plans for the Smithsonian Institution, Robert Dale Owen -observed that “of late years a rival material, from the mine, seems -encroaching on these [stone, clay, wood] and the next generation may -see, arising on our continent, villages, or it may be cities, of iron.” - -What Owen’s generation actually did see, apart from sheet-iron façades -and zinc cornices, was the Crystal Palace, which was built in New -York in 1853 in imitation of London’s exhibition hall of 1850. Ruskin -described the original Crystal Palace, with sardonic justice, as a -magnified conservatory; and that is about all that can be said for -either building. As exercises in technique they doubtless taught -many lessons to the iron masters and engineers; but they had scarcely -anything to contribute to architecture. A later generation built the -train sheds for their smoky railways on this pattern; but the precedent -lingers today chiefly in subway kiosks and window-fronts, and even here -it has created no fresh forms for itself--unless the blank expanse of -a plate-glass window framed in metallic grilles can be called a fresh -form. - -The growth of eclecticism, on the other hand, had by the middle of the -century given the American city the aspect of a museum and the American -countryside a touch of the picture-book. Washington Irving’s Sunnyside -and the first Smithsonian building were in the predominant Gothic mode; -but Poe described the mansion of a not altogether imaginary Arnheim as -semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic; and the old Tombs prison in New York got -its name from the Egyptian character of its façade. Who can doubt that -the design for a _Byzantine_ cottage, shown in The American Cottage -Builder (1854), was somewhere carried out? - -Nettled by the criticism that America was not Europe, the pioneer -determined to bring Europe to his doors. Relatively few American -architects during the period, however, had been abroad, and still -fewer had been there to any purpose; even men of culture and -imagination like Hawthorne and Emerson were not at home in the physical -environment of Europe, however intimate they were with its mind. The -buildings that were erected under the inspiration of European tours -only accentuated the barbarism of the American scene and the poverty of -the architect’s imagination. - -A good part of our architecture today still exhibits the parvenu’s -uneasiness, and is by turns French, Italian, or more or less obsolete -English; but we do not, perhaps, realize with what a difference; -for photography and archæological research now make it possible to -produce buildings which have all the virtues of the original except -originality, whereas the earlier, illiterate development of foreign -examples, rehearsed in memory, resulted in a conglomerate form which -resembled nothing so much, perhaps, as P. T. Barnum’s mermaid. - -If the Crystal Palace represents the extreme of industrial art, Colonel -Colt’s Armsmear represents the opposite--untutored romanticism. -Armsmear was built near Hartford, between 1855 and 1862. A writer in -the Art Journal for 1876 calls this mansion a “characteristic type -of the unique.” It was a “long, grand, impressive, contradictory, -beautiful, strange thing.... An Italian villa in stone, massive, -noble, refined, yet not carrying out any decided principles of -architecture, it is like the mind of its originator, bold and unusual -in its combinations.... There is no doubt it is a little Turkish among -other things, on one side it has domes, pinnacles, and light, lavish -ornamentation, such as Oriental taste delights in.... Yet, although -the villa is Italian and cosmopolitan, the feeling is English. It is -an English home in its substantiality, its home-like and comfortable -aspects.” - -It is, alas! impossible to illustrate in these pages this remarkable -specimen of American architecture; but in a lecture on the Present -and Future Prospects of Chicago (1846), I have discovered its exact -literary equivalent, and it will sum up the crudity and cultural -wistfulness of the period perhaps better than any overt description: - - “I thank you [apologizes the lecturer] for the patience you have - manifested on this occasion, and promise never more to offend in like - manner, so long. I have now, as Cowper observes-- - - ‘Roved for fruit, - Roved far, and gathered much....’ - - “And can, I think with Scott, surely say that-- - - ‘To his promise just - Vich-Alpine has discharged his trust.’ - - “I propose now, gentlemen, to leave you at Carlangtoghford, - - ‘And thou must keep thee with thy sword.’ - - “Let me say to you on this occasion, as Campbell does on another: - - ‘Wave, Munich! all your banners wave! - And charge with all your chivalry.’ - - “And should you in the contest fall, remember with old Homer-- - - ‘Such honours Ilion to her hero paid, - And peaceful slept the mighty Hector’s shade.’ - - “Allow me now to close in one of Scott’s beautiful strains: - - ‘Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on! - Were the last words of Marmion.’” - -_That_ was American architecture between 1820 and the Civil War--a -collection of tags, thrown at random against a building. Architectural -forms were brought together by a mere juxtaposition of materials, -held in place by neither imagination nor logic. There are a number -of honorable exceptions to this rule, for architects like Renwick, -who designed St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Upjohn, who built Trinity -Church, had a more sincere understanding of the conventional task; and -by any standard of esthetic decency the old Gothic building of New -York University, on Washington Square, was a far finer structure than -the bulky office building that has taken its place. Nevertheless, this -saving remnant does not alter the character of the great mass of work, -any more than the occasionally excellent cast-iron balconies, brought -over from the London of the Regency, alter the depressing character -of the great mass of domestic building. In elevation and interior -treatment, these ante-bellum buildings were all what-nots. Souvenirs -of architecture, their forms dimly recall the monuments of the past -without in any sense taking their place. - -To tell the truth, a pall had fallen over the industrial city: -contemporary writers in the ’forties and ’fifties speak of the -filth and smoke, and without doubt the chocolate brownstone front -was introduced as a measure of protective coloration. In this dingy -environment, men turned to nature as a refuge against the soiled -and bedraggled works of man’s creation; and as the creeping factory -and railroad train removed Nature farther from their doors, the park -was introduced as a more convenient means of escape. The congested -capitals of Europe had already learnt this lesson; traveled Americans, -like William Cullen Bryant, brought it home; and Central Park, planned -in 1853, was the first of the great landscape parks to serve as a -people’s pleasance. Conceived in contrast to the deflowered landscape -and the muddled city, the park alone re-created the traditions of -civilization--of man naturalized, and therefore at home, of nature -humanized, and therefore enriched. And even today our parks are what -our cities should be, and are not. - -By 1860 the halcyon day of American civilization was over; the spirit -had lingered in letters and scholarship, in the work of Parkman and -Motley and Emerson and Melville and Thoreau, but the sun had already -sunk below the horizon, and what seemed a promise was in reality an -afterglow. By the time the Civil War came, architecture had recorded -faithfully the social transformation; it was sullen, grim, gauche, -unstable. While in almost every age architecture has an independent -value to the spirit, so that we can rejoice in Chartres or Winchester -even though we have abandoned the Roman faith, in the early industrial -period architecture is reduced to a symptom. Romanticism had not -restored the past, nor had industrialism made the future more welcome. -Architecture wandered between two worlds, “one dead, the other -powerless to be born.” - - - - -CHAPTER FIVE THE DEFEAT OF ROMANTICISM - - -I - -Between 1860 and 1890, some of the forces that were latent in -industrialism were realized in American architecture. Where the first -pioneers had fared timidly, hampered by insufficient resources, the -generation that had been stimulated by war industries and profiteering, -by the discovery of petroleum and natural gas, by the spanning of the -American continent and by cable communication with Europe, rioted over -its new-found wealth. - -“The Song of the Broad-Ax” still faintly lingered on the Pacific -slopes; but the land pioneer was rapidly giving way to the pioneer -in industry; and for perhaps the first time during the century, the -surplus of capital outran the immediate demand for new plant and -equipment. The Iron Age reached its peak of achievement in a series -of great bridges, beginning with the Eads Bridge at St. Louis; and -romanticism made a last stand. It will pay us, perhaps, to take one -last look at the romantic effort, in order to see how impossible and -hopeless was the task it set out to perform. - -In England, the romantic movement in architecture had made the return -to the Middle Ages a definite symbol of social reform: in Ruskin’s mind -it was associated with the restoration of a medieval type of polity, -something like a reformed manor, while with Morris it meant cutting -loose from the machine and returning to the meticulous handicraft of -the town-guilds. In America, the romantic movement lacked these social -and economic implications; and while it is not unfair to say that the -literary expression of English romanticism was on the whole much better -than the architecture, in the proportion that The Stones of Venice was -better than the Ashmolean Museum or the Albert Memorial, the reverse is -true on this side of the Atlantic. - -Inarticulate as H. H. Richardson, the chief exponent of American -romanticism, was, it seemed for a while as if he might breast the -tide of mechanical industry and create for a good part of the scene a -sense of stability and harmony which it had all too plainly lacked. In -relation to his age, however, Richardson was in the biological sense a -“sport”; surrounded by jerry-builders, who had degraded the craft of -building, and engineers who ignored it, he was perhaps the last of the -great medieval line of master-masons. - -Richardson began his career in America directly after the Civil War. -Almost the first of the new generation of Americans to be trained by -the Ecole des Beaux Arts, he brought back to America none of those -atrocious adaptations of the French Renaissance like the New York, -Philadelphia, and Boston Post Offices. On the contrary, he had come -under the influence of Viollet-le-Duc; and for about ten years he -struggled with incongruous forms and materials in the anomalous manner -known as Free Gothic. The end of this period of experiment came in -1872, when he received the commission for Trinity Church in Boston; and -although it was not until ten years later that he saw any Romanesque -buildings other than in photographs--for he had not traveled during -his student-years in Paris--it was in this sturdy mode that he cast -his best work. Richardson was not a decorator, but a builder: in going -back to Romanesque precedent, with its round arches and massive stone -members, he was following out a dictum of Viollet-le-Duc’s: “only -primitive sources supply the energy for a long career.” Turning away -from “applied Gothic,” Richardson started to build from the bottom -up. So far had the art of masonry disappeared that in Trinity Church -Richardson sometimes introduced struts and girders without any attempt -to assimilate them in the composition; but as far as any single man -could absorb and live with a vanished tradition, Richardson did. - -The proof of Richardson’s genius as a builder lies in the difference -between the accepted drawings for Trinity Church and the finished -building. His ideas altered with the progress of the work, and in -almost every case the building itself is a vast improvement over the -paper design. Moreover, in his capacity as master-mason, Richardson -trained an able corps of craftsmen; and so pervasive was his influence -that one still finds on houses Richardson never saw, the touches of -delicate, leafy stone-carving he had introduced. With carving and -sculpture, the other arts entered, and by his fine designs and exacting -standards of work, Richardson elevated the position of the minor -crafts, at the same time that he turned over unreservedly to men like -John La Farge and Augustus St. Gaudens the major elements of decoration. - -Probably most people who know Richardson’s name vaguely associate -him with ecclesiastical work; but Richardson’s brand of romanticism -was a genuine attempt to embrace the age, and in his long list of -public works there are but five churches. If the Pittsburgh Court -House and Trinity Church stand out as the hugest of his architectural -conceptions, it is the smaller buildings that test the skill and -imagination of the master, and the public libraries at North Easton, -Malden, and Quincy, Mass., and some of the little railway stations -in Massachusetts stand on an equally high level. Richardson pitted -his own single powers against the barbarism of the Gilded Age; but, -unlike his contemporaries in England, he did not turn his back upon -the excellences of industrialism. “The things I want most to design,” -he said to his biographer, “are a grain-elevator and the interior of a -great river-steamboat.” - -In short, Richardson sought to dominate his age. So nearly did he -succeed that in a symposium on the ten finest buildings in America, -conducted by an architectural journal in the ’eighties, Richardson -was given five. This was no easy victory, and, to tell the truth, -it was only a partial one. The case of the State Capitol at Albany, -which Richardson and Eidlitz took in hand in 1878, after five -million dollars had been squandered on it in the course of ten years’ -misconstruction, scarcely caricatures the conditions under which the -arts struggled to exist. Begun in the style of the Roman Renaissance, -the building under Richardson’s impetuous touch began to take on -Romanesque proportions, only to be legislated back into Renaissance by -the offended lawgivers! - -William Morris Hunt, then at the height of his powers, was commissioned -to paint two large mural compositions for the assembly chamber of -this blessed building. So much time had been spent in mismanaging the -structure that Hunt was given only two months to transfer his cartouche -to the panels; but he worked heroically, and, as one of his biographers -says, the work was a great triumph. Great, perhaps--but temporary! -“The building had fallen into the hands of a political ring, and the -poor construction was revealed in the leaking of the massive roof and -the settling of the whole structure. Before ten years had passed, -great portions of Hunt’s paintings flaked off, and what remained was -walled up behind the rebuilding necessary to avert utter ruin.” In a -period like this, Richardson’s comparative success takes on heroic -proportions. - - -II - -With the little eddies of eclecticism, with the rage for the Mansard -roof, or the introduction of German Gothic, and, a little later, the -taste for Queen Anne domesticity, there is scarcely any need to deal; -they represented only the dispersion of taste and the collapse of -judgment which marked the Gilded Age. - -Up to the time of the Chicago World’s Fair, Richardson had imitators, -and they were not always mean ones. L. H. Buffington, in Minneapolis, -had to his credit a number of buildings which would not, perhaps, -have dishonored the master himself; but, as so often happens, the -tags in Richardson’s work were easier to imitate than his spirit -and inventiveness; and the chief marks of the style he created are -the all-too-solid courses of rough stone, the round arch, the squat -columns, and the contrasts in color between the light granite and the -dark sandstone or serpentine. Mr. Montgomery Schuyler, an excellent -architectural critic, once said, not without reason, that Richardson’s -houses were not defensible except in a military sense; but one is -tempted to read into these ponderous forms partly the architect’s -unconscious desire to combat the infirmity and jerry-building of his -lower contemporaries, and partly his patron’s anxiety to have a seat of -refuge against the uneasy proletariat. A new feudalism was entrenching -itself behind the stockades of Homestead and the other steel-towns -of the Pittsburgh district. Here was a mode of building, solid, -formidable, at times almost brutal, that served the esthetic needs of -the barons of coal and steel almost as well as the classic met those -heroes who had survived the War of Independence. - -I have emphasized what was strong and fine in Richardson’s work in -order to show how free it was from the minor faults of romanticism; and -yet it reckoned without its host, and Richardson, alas! left scarcely -a trace upon the period that followed. Romanticism was welcomed when -it built churches; tolerated when it built libraries; petted when it -built fine houses; but it could not go much farther. Richardson was a -mason, and masonry was being driven out by steel; he was an original -artist, and original art was being thrust into the background by -connoisseurship and collection; he was a builder, and architecture -was committing itself more and more to the paper plan; he insisted -upon building foursquare, and building was doomed more and more to -_façaderie_. The very strength of Richardson’s buildings was a fatal -weakness in the growing centers of commerce and industry. It takes more -than a little audacity to tear down one of Richardson’s monuments, -and so, rather ironically, they have held their own against the -insurrections of traffic and realty speculation; but the difficulty of -getting rid of these Romanesque structures only increased the demand -for a more frail and facile method of construction. - -Romanticism met its great defeat in the office-building. By the use -of the passenger elevator, first designed for an exhibition-tower -adjacent to the Crystal Palace in 1853, it had become possible to raise -the height of buildings to seven stories: the desire for ground-rents -presently increased the height to ten. Beyond this, mere masonry could -not go without thickening the supporting piers to such an extent that -on a twenty-foot lot more than a quarter of the width would be lost -on the lower floors. Richardson’s Marshall Field Building in Chicago -was seven stories high; and that was about as far as solid stone or -brick could climb without becoming undignified and futile by its -bulk. The possibilities of masonry and the possibilities of commercial -gain through ground-rents were at loggerheads, and by 1888 masonry was -defeated. - -Richardson, fortunately, did not live to see the undermining of the -tradition he had founded and almost established. Within a decade of -his death, however, only the empty forms of architecture remained, for -the steel-cage of the engineer had become the new structural reality. -By 1890 the ground-landlord had discovered, in the language of the -pioneer’s favorite game, that “the roof’s the limit.” If that was so, -why limit the roof? With this canny perception the skyscraper sprang -into being. - -During this Gilded Age the standard of the best building had risen -almost as high as it had been in America in any earlier period; but -the mass of good building had relatively decreased; and the domestic -dwellings in both city and country lost those final touches of -craftsmanship that had lingered, here and there, up to the Civil War. -In the awkward country villas that began to fill the still-remote -suburbs of the larger cities, all sense of style and proportion were -lost: the plan was marked by meaningless irregularities; a dingy, -muddy color spread over the wooden façades. There exists a huge and -beautifully printed volume, of which, I believe, there are not more -than a hundred copies, on the villas of Newport in 1876: the compiler -thereof sought to satisfy the vanity of the original owners and the -curiosity of a later generation; yet mid all these examples of the -“novel” and the “unique,” there is not a single mansion that would -satisfy any conceivable line of descendants. - -If the level of architecture was low in the country, it touched the -bottom of the abyss in the city. As early as 1835 the multiple-family -tenement had been introduced in New York as a means of producing -congestion, raising the ground-rents, and satisfying in the worst -possible way the need of the new immigrants for housing. The conditions -of life in these tenements were infinitely lower than they had been -in the most primitive farmhouse of the colonial period; their lack of -light, lack of water, lack of sanitary facilities, and lack of privacy, -created an admirable milieu for the propagation of vice and disease, -and their existence in a period which was boasting loudly of the -advance of science and industrialism shows, to say the least, how the -myths which inspired the age stood between the eye and reality, and -obscured the actual state of the modern industrial community. - -To the disgrace of the architectural profession in America, the -worst features of tenement-house construction were standardized in -the so-called dumb-bell tenement which won the first prize in the -model tenement-house competition of 1879; and the tenements which -were designed after this pattern in the succeeding years combined a -maximum lack of privacy with a minimum of light and air. The gridiron -street-design, the narrow frontage, the deep lot, all conspired to make -good housing difficult in the larger cities: within this framework -good house-design, indeed, still is difficult. The dumb-bell tenement -of the Gilded Age, however, raised bad housing into an art; and the -acquisition of this art in its later developments is now one of the -stigmata of “progress” in a modern American city. I say this without -irony; the matter is too grave for jest. - -During these same ’seventies, the benefits of poor housing were -extended in New York to those with money enough to afford something -better: the Paris flat was introduced. The legitimate excuse for the -small apartment was the difficulty of obtaining household service, -and the futility of keeping up large houses for small families: this, -however, had nothing to do with the actual form that the apartment -took, for, apart from the desire for congestion-rents, it is as easy to -build apartments for two families as for twenty. The flat is a genuine -convenience for the well-to-do visitor to a city; it gives him the -atmosphere of a home without many of its major complications, and those -who got the taste for this life in Paris were not altogether absurd in -desiring to enjoy the same benefits in New York. Unfortunately, what -suits a visitor does not necessarily meet the demands of a permanent -resident: one may tolerate a blank wall for a week or a month without -being depressed, particularly since a good part of a visitor’s time -is spent outside his home; but to live year after year facing a blank -wall or an equally-frowning façade opposite is to be condemned to the -environment of a penitentiary. - -The result of building apartments in New York and elsewhere was not -cheaper rents for smaller quarters: it was smaller quarters without -the cheap rents. Those who wanted sunlight and a pleasant view paid a -premium for it; those who did not get either paid more than enough -for what they got. The result of building apartments which would -satisfy only a visitor was to make every family visitors: before the -acute housing shortage, yearly removals to new premises were the only -palliative that made their occupancy tolerable. The amount of wear and -tear and waste, the loss of energy and money and good spirits, produced -by the inability of the architect to design adequately under the -pecuniary standards of the Gilded Age was colossal. The urban nomad in -his own way was as great a spendthrift as the pioneer of the prairie. -Both of them had been unable to create a permanent civilization; and -both of them paid the price for it. - - -III - -During the first period of pioneering, mechanical improvements had -affected the milieu of architecture, but not architecture itself, if -one overlooks such ingenuities as the circular and octagon houses of -the eighteen-thirties. Slowly, the actual methods of construction -changed: the carpenter-builder, who had once performed every -operation, gave way to the joiner, whose work profited by putty and -paint, curtains and carpets--to the plasterer, who covered up the -raw imperfect frame--and to the plumber. Weird ornamental forms for -doors and window-architraves, for moldings and pendants, were supplied -to the builder by the catalogs of the planing and scroll-saw mills. -Invention produced novelties of contortion in wood, unique in ugliness -and imbecile in design. Like the zinc and iron statues that graced -the buildings of the Centennial Exposition, these devices record the -absorption of art in a vain technology. - -One need not dwell upon the results of all these miserable efforts, -conceived in haste and aborted for profit: the phenomenon was common -to industrial civilization at this period, and can be observed in -Battersea and Manchester as well as in New York and Pittsburgh. Mr. -Thomas Hardy, who was trained as an architect, wrote the esthetic -apology for industrialism; and in proclaiming the rightness of our -architectural deserts, one cannot help thinking that he transferred to -the Wessex countryside a little of the horrible depression he must have -acquired in London. - -“Gay prospects,” exclaimed Mr. Hardy, “wed happily with gay times; but, -alas! if the times be not gay! Men have more often suffered from the -mockery of a place too smiling than from the oppression of surroundings -oversadly tinged.... Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of -orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new vale in -Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may find themselves in -closer harmony with external things wearing a somberness distasteful -to our race when it was young. Shall we say that man has grown so -accustomed to his spiritual Bastille that he no longer looks forward -to, and even shrinks from, a casual emergence into unusual brightness?” - -Even the best work of the period is blighted with this sombreness: the -fact that so many of Richardson’s buildings have the heavy air of a -prison shows us that the Gilded Age was not, indeed, gay, and that a -spiritual Black Friday perpetually threatened the calendar of its days. - - -IV - -If the romantic movement in America proved that the architect could -capture only a small part of the field, and go no further than the -interests of privilege allowed, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge -showed how well industrialism could handle its problems when its -purposes were not limited by the necessity for sloppy workmanship -and quick turnover. The story of its building is a tribute to both -science and humanity. When John Roebling, the designer of the bridge, -died in the midst of his job, the business of construction was taken -up by his son, and by his devotion to his task in season and out of -season, Washington Roebling became an invalid. Confined to his house -on Columbia Heights, for ten years the younger Roebling watched the -work through a telescope, and directed it as a general would direct a -battle. So goes the legend: it runs rather higher than the tales of -mean prudence or mechanical skill which glorified Mr. Samuel Smiles’ -heroes. - -The bridge itself was a testimony to the swift progress of physical -science. The strong lines of the bridge, and the beautiful curve -described by its suspended cables, were derived from an elegant formula -in mathematical physics--the elastic curve. If the architectural -elements of the massive piers have perhaps too much the bare quality of -engineering, if the pointed arches meet esthetic betrayal in the flat -solidity of the cornices, if, in short, the masonry does not sing as -Richardson alone perhaps could have made it sing, the steel work itself -makes up for this, by the architectural beauty of its pattern; so that -beyond any other aspect of New York, I think, the Brooklyn Bridge -has been a source of joy and inspiration to the artist. In the later -bridges the spanning members are sturdier and the supporting piers and -cables are lighter and less essential; and they suffer esthetically by -the very ease of their triumph over the difficulties of engineering. - -All that the age had just cause for pride in--its advances in science, -its skill in handling iron, its personal heroism in the face of -dangerous industrial processes, its willingness to attempt the untried -and the impossible--came to a head in the Brooklyn Bridge. What was -grotesque and barbarous in industrialism was sloughed off in the -great bridges. These avenues of communication are, paradoxically, the -only enduring monuments that witness a period of uneasy industrial -transition; and to this day they communicate a feeling of dignity, -stability, and unwavering poise. - -The Brooklyn Bridge was opened in 1884; Richardson died, after -finishing the Pittsburgh Court House, in 1886. There was a short period -during which the echoes of Richardson’s style resounded in the work -of the Western architects; and then in New York two of Richardson’s -own pupils, Messrs. McKim and White, who had caught the spirit of the -period that was to follow the passing of the frontier, prepared an -appropriate mold for its activities. By far the finest things in the -late ’eighties are the shingled houses which Richardson and Stanford -White and a few others developed for seaboard estates: they recovered -the spirit of the early vernacular work, and continued the colonial -tradition without even faintly recalling colonial forms. This new note, -however, was scarcely sounded before it died out; and in the twenty -years that followed the conflict between industrialism and romanticism -was swallowed up and finally forgotten in the rise of a new mode. -Richardson had not died too soon. The quality of mind and culture which -shines through his work was opposed to nearly every manifestation of -the period that succeeded him. - -From this time on, romanticism retained a place for itself only by -forfeiting its claims to occupy the whole province of architecture. In -churches and college halls where the traditional tie with the Middle -Ages had never perhaps been completely broken, its triumphs have been -genuine; but although Mr. J. G. Rogers’ Harkness Memorial at Yale, -or Messrs. Goodhue and Cram’s St. Thomas’ Church, for example, leave -little to be desired in themselves, they have established no precedent -for the hundred other kinds of building which the modern community -requires; and it is not without significance that in his most recent -efforts Mr. Goodhue, for one, had abandoned the molds of romanticism. -Unlike Richardson, the surviving romanticists now demand a certain -insulation from the modern world; the more intelligent exponents of the -movement believe with Dr. Ralph Adams Cram that there is no hope for -its achievement throughout the community without a return to “Walled -Towns.” - -Such a retreat is the equivalent of surrender. To hold to Gothic -precedent in the hope of re-creating the medieval community is to -hope that an ancient bottle will turn potassium permanganate into -claret. The romanticists have never fully faced the social and economic -problems that attend their architectural solutions: the result is that -they have been dependent upon assistance from the very forces and -institutions which, fundamentally, they aim to combat. Isolated on -little islands, secure for the moment, romanticism must view the work -on the mainland with a gesture of irate despair; and the only future it -dares to face lies behind it! - - - - -CHAPTER SIX THE IMPERIAL FAÇADE - - -I - -The decade between 1890 and 1900 saw the rise of a new period in -American architecture. This period had, it is true, been dimly -foreshadowed by the grandiose L’Enfant, but if the superficial forms -resembled those of the early republic, and if the precedents of classic -architecture again became a guide, the dawning age was neither a -revival nor a continuation. - -In the meanwhile, fresh influences had entered. The generation of -students who had studied in the Ecole des Beaux Arts after the Civil -War was ready, at last, to follow the lone trail which Richard H. Hunt -had blazed. Richardson’s most intimate disciples reacted against the -stamp of his personality and sought a more neutral mode of expression, -consecrated by established canons of good taste. On top of this, the -introduction of steel-cage construction removed the necessity for solid -masonry, and placed a premium upon the mask. The stage was set for a -new act of the drama. - -All these influences shaped the style of our architecture when it -arose; but the condition that gave it a substantial base was the rise -of a new order in America’s economic life. Up to this time, the chief -industrial problem had been to improve the processes of mechanical -production and to stake out new areas for exploitation. One may compare -these economic advances to the separate sorties of an army operating on -a wide front: any lone adventurer might take his courage in his hands -and exploit an invention, or sink an oil well, if he could find it. -By 1890 the frontier had closed; the major resources of the country -were under the control of the monopolist; it became more important -to consolidate gains than freshly to achieve them. Separate lines of -railroads were welded into systems; separate steel plants and oil -plants were wrought into trusts; and where monopoly did not rest upon a -foundation of natural advantage, the “gentleman’s agreement” began its -service as a useful substitute. The popular movements which sought to -challenge the forces of this new regime--the labor movement, socialism, -populism--had neither analyzed the situation with sufficient care nor -attracted the adherence of the majority. The defeat of Henry George as -a local political candidate was symbolic: by 1888 a humane thinker -like Edward Bellamy had already accepted the defeat, had embraced the -idea of the trust, and had conceived a comprehensive utopia on the -basis of letting the process of monopoly go the limit, so that finally, -by a mere yank of the levers, the vast economic organizations of the -country would become the “property” of the people. - -The drift to the open lands came to a full pause. The land-empire had -been conquered, and its overlords were waxing in power and riches: the -name “millionaire” became the patent of America’s new nobility. With -the shift from industry to finance went a shift from the producing -towns to the spending towns: architecture came to dwell in the stock -exchanges, the banks, the shops, and the clubs of the metropolis; if it -sought the countryside at all, it established itself in the villas that -were newly laid out on hill and shore in the neighborhood of the great -cities. The keys to this period are opulence and magnitude: “money to -burn.” - -These years witnessed what the Roman historian, Ferrero, has called -a “_véritable recommencement d’histoire_.” In the new centers of -privilege there arose a scale of living and a mode of architecture -which, with all its attendant miseries, depletions, and exploitations, -recalled the Rome of the first and second centuries after Christ. It is -needless to say that vast acres of buildings, factories, shops, homes, -were erected which had no relation at all to the imperial regime; for -not everyone participated in either the benefits or the depressions -that attended the growth of monopoly; but the accent of this period, -the dominant note, was an imperial one. While the commonplace building -of the time cannot be ignored, it remains, so to say, out of the -picture. - - -II - -Hardly had the process of concentration and consolidation begun before -the proper form manifested itself. The occasion for its appearance -was the World’s Columbian Exposition, opened in 1893. In creating -this fair, the enterprise and capacity for organization which the -architects of Chicago had applied to the construction of the skyscraper -transformed the unkempt wilderness of Jackson Park into the Great -White City in the space of two short years. Here the architects of -the country, particularly of New York and Chicago, appeared for the -first time as a united profession, or, to speak more accurately, as -a college. Led by the New Yorkers, who had come more decisively under -European influence, they brought to this exposition the combination -of skill and taste in all the departments of the work that had, two -centuries earlier, created the magnificent formalities of Versailles. -There was unity of plan in the grouping of the main buildings about -the lagoon; there was unity of tone and color in the gleaming white -façades; there was unity of effect in the use of classic orders and -classic forms of decoration. Lacking any genuine unity of ideas and -purposes--for Root had initially conceived of a variegated oriental -setting--the architects of the exposition had achieved the effects of -unity by subordinating their work to an established precedent. They -chanted a Roman litany above the Babel of individual styles. It was a -capital triumph of the academic imagination. If these main buildings -were architecture, America had never seen so much of it at one time -before. Even that belated Greco-Puritan, Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, was -warm in praise. - -It would be foolish to quarrel with the style that was chosen for these -exposition buildings, or to deny its propriety. Messrs. McKim, White, -Hunt, and Burnham divined that they were fated to serve Renaissance -despots and emperors with more than Roman power, and unerringly they -chose the proper form for their activities. Whereas Rome had cast its -spell over the architects of the early Renaissance because they wished -once more to enter into its life, the life of its sages and poets and -artists, it attracted the architects of the White City because of its -external features--because of its stereotyped canons and rules--because -of the relatively small number of choices it offered for a lapse in -taste--because of its skill in conspicuous waste, and because of that -very noncommittal quality in its massive forms which permitted the -basilica to become a church, or the temple to become a modern bank. - -Of all the Renaissance architects, their impulses and interests were -nearest, perhaps, to Robert Adam, whose church at West Wycombe could -be turned into a ballroom by the simple act of removing the pews, and -permitting the gay walls and decorations to speak for themselves. -Behind the white staff façade of the World’s Fair buildings was -the steel and glass structure of the engineer: the building spoke -one language and the “architecture” another. If the coming of -the skyscraper had turned masonry into veneer, here was a mode of -architecture which was little but veneer. - -In their place, at the Fair, these classic buildings were all that -could be demanded: Mr. Geoffrey Scott’s defense of the Baroque, in -The Architecture of Humanism, applies particularly to its essential -manifestations in the Garden and the Theater--and why not in the Fair? -Form and function, ornament and design, have no inherent relation, -one with the other, when the mood of the architect is merely playful: -there is no use in discussing the anatomy of architecture when its -only aim is fancy dress. As a mask, as a caprice, the classic orders -are as justifiable as the icing on a birthday cake: they divert the -eye without damaging the structure that they conceal. Unfortunately, -the architecture of the Renaissance has a tendency to imitate the -haughty queen who advised the commons to eat cake. Logically, it -demands that a Wall Street clerk shall live like a Lombardy prince, -that a factory should be subordinated to esthetic contemplation; and -since these things are impossible, it permits “mere building” to -become illiterate and vulgar below the standards of the most debased -vernacular. Correct in proportion, elegant in detail, courteous in -relation to each other, the buildings of the World’s Fair were, -nevertheless, only the simulacra of a living architecture: they were -the concentrated expression of an age which sought to produce “values” -rather than goods. In comparison with this new style, the romanticism -of the Victorian Age, with its avid respect for the medieval building -traditions, was honesty and dignity itself. - -The Roman precedent, modified by the work of Louis XIV and Napoleon -III, by Le Nôtre and Haussmann, formed the basis not merely for the -World’s Fair, but for the host of city plans that were produced in the -two decades that followed. It seemed for a while as if the architect -might take the place of the engineer as city planner, and that the -mangled regularity of the engineer’s gridiron plan, laid down without -respect to topographic advantage or to use, might be definitely -supplanted in the remodeled central districts and in the new extensions -and suburbs of the American city. The evil of the World’s Fair triumph -was that it suggested to the civic enthusiast that every city might -become a fair: it introduced the notion of the City Beautiful as a -sort of municipal cosmetic, and reduced the work of the architect to -that of putting a pleasing front upon the scrappy building, upon the -monotonous streets and the mean houses, that characterized vast areas -in the newer and larger cities. - -If the engineer who had devoted himself to sewers and street-plans -alone had been superficial, the architectural city planner who centered -attention upon parkways alone, grand avenues alone, and squares like -the Place de l’Etoile alone, was equally superficial. The civic center -and the parkway represented the better and more constructive side -of this effort: in Cleveland, in Pittsburgh, in Springfield, Mass., -harmonious groups of white buildings raised their heads above the -tangle of commercial traffic, and in the restoration of L’Enfant’s -plan for Washington, the realities of the imperial regime at length -caught up with the dreamer born out of his due time. A good many of -these plans, however, were pathetically immature. One of the reports -for Manhattan, for example, devoted pages and pages to showing the -improvement that would follow the demolition of the wall around Central -Park--and the importance of clipped trees in the design of grand -avenues! - -Plainly, the architect did not face with sufficient realism the -colossal task with which he was confronted in the renovation of the -city. He accepted his improvements too much at the value placed upon -them by the leaders of Big Business--as a creator of land-values, as an -element in increasing the commercial attractiveness of the city. Did -not Mr. Daniel Burnham himself point to the improvements in Periclean -Athens, not as the embodiment of Athenian citizenship and religion at -its highest point, but as a measure for increasing the attractiveness -of the city to visitors from abroad? Cut off from his true function to -serve and beautify the community, made an accessory of business itself, -like the merest salesman or advertising agent, it is no wonder that the -architect speedily lost his leadership; and that the initiative went -once again into the hands of the engineer. - -The main merit of all these efforts to perpetuate the World’s Fair is -that they sought to achieve some of the dignity and decisiveness of -the formal plan. Their weakness was that they neglected new elements, -like the billboard, the skysign, the subway, the tall building, -which undermined the effects of the plan even when it was achieved. -In their efforts to escape from the welter of misguided commercial -enterprise, the advocates of the city beautiful placed too great -reliance upon spots of outward order and decency; they took refuge in -the paper symmetry of axial avenues and round-points, as one finds -them in Haussmann’s Paris, and neglected the deeper and more genuine -beauties of, let us say, the High Street in Oxford or Chipping Camden, -or of many another European town that had achieved completion in its -essentials before the nineteenth century. - -In short, the advocates of the city beautiful sought a remedy on paper -which could be purchased only by a thorough reorganization of the -community’s life. If all this applies to the better side of the World’s -Fair, it touches even more emphatically the worse. - -The twenty years between 1890 and 1910 saw the complete rehabilitation -of the Roman mode, as the very cloak and costume of imperial -enterprise. The main effort of architecture was to give an effect of -dignity and permanence to the façades of the principal thoroughfares: -the public buildings must dominate the compositions, numerous -boulevards and avenues must concentrate the traffic at certain points -and guide the stranger to the markets and amusements: where possible, -as in the Chicago plan, by Messrs. Burnham and Bennett, avenues must be -cut through the gridiron pattern of blocks in order to achieve these -effects. If this imperial street system is somewhat arbitrary, and if -the necessary work of grading, filling, demolishing, and purchasing -existing property rights is extremely costly, the end, nevertheless, -justifies the means--the architecture impresses and awes a populace -that shares vicariously in it glories. Should the effect prove a little -too austere and formidable, the monuments will be offset with circuses -and hippodromes. - -In all this, the World’s Fair was a precise and classic example, for -it reproduced in miniature the imperial order. When the panic of 1893 -kept people away from the exhibitions of art, industry, and culture, -sideshows were promptly introduced by the astute organizers. Beyond -the serene classic façades, which recalled the elevation of a Marcus -Aurelius, sprawled the barkers, the freaks, and the tricksters, whose -gaudy booths might have reminded the spectator of the other side of the -imperial shield--the gaminism of Petronius Arbiter. The transformation -of these white façades into the Gay White Ways came during the next -decade; whilst the sideshows achieved a separate existence as “Coney -Island.” On top of this came the development of the mildly gladiatorial -spectacles of football and baseball: at first invented for playful -exercise, they became a standard means of exhibition by more or less -professional performers. The erection of numerous amphitheaters and -arenas, such as the Yale Bowl, the Harvard Stadium, the Lewisohn -Stadium, and their counterparts in the West, rounded out the imperial -spectacle. - -By a happy congruence of forces, the large-scale manufacture of -Portland cement, and the reintroduction of the Roman method of concrete -construction, came during the same period. Can anyone contemplate -this scene and still fancy that imperialism was nothing more than -a move for foreign markets and territories of exploitation? On the -contrary, it was a tendency that expressed itself in every department -of Western civilization, and if it appears most naked, perhaps, in -America, that is only because, as in the earlier periods, there was -so little here to stand in its way. Mr. Louis Sullivan might well -complain, in The Autobiography of an Idea, that imperialism stifled -the more creative modes of architecture which might have derived from -our fine achievements in science, from our tentative experiments in -democracy. It seems inevitable, however, that the dominant fact in our -civilization should stamp the most important monuments and buildings -with its image. In justice to the great professors of the classic -style, Messrs. McKim and Burnham and Carrere and Hastings, one must -admit that the age shaped them and chose them and used them for its -ends. Their mode of building was almost unescapably determined by the -milieu in which they worked. - -The change in the social scene which favored an imperial setting was -not without its effects upon the industries that supplied the materials -for architecture, and upon the processes of building itself. Financial -concentration in the stone quarries, for example, was abetted by the -creation of a national system of rail transportation, and partly, -perhaps, by the elaboration of the mechanical equipment for cutting -and trimming stone beyond a point where a small plant could work -economically. The result was that during this period numerous small -local quarries, which had been called into existence by Richardson’s -fine eye for color contrasts, were allowed to lapse. Vermont marble and -Indiana limestone served better the traditions that had been created in -the White City. - -The carrying of coals to Newcastle is always a pathetic practice; it -remained for the imperial age to make it a subject for boasting. Just -as many Connecticut towns whose nearby fields are full of excellent -granite boulders, boast a bank or a library of remote marble, so -New York City, which has a solid foundation of schist, gneiss, and -limestone, can point to only a handful of buildings, notably the -College of the City of New York and Mr. Goodhue’s Church of the -Intercession, in which these excellent local materials were used. The -curious result of being able by means of railway transportation to draw -upon the ends of the earth for materials has been, not variety, but -monotony. Under the imperial order the architect was forced to design -structures that were identical in style, treatment, and material, -though they were placed thousands of miles apart and differed in -every important function. This ignorance of regional resources is not -incompatible with grand effects, or even on occasion with decently good -architecture. But it does not profit by that fine adaptation to site, -that justness of proportion in the size of window and slope of roof, -which is an earnest of the architect’s mastery of the local situation. -Substitute Manila for the military colony of Timgad, or Los Angeles -for Alexandria, and it is plain that we have here another aspect of -Ferrero’s generalization. Even architects whose place of work was -nearer to the site of their buildings were, nevertheless, compelled to -copy the style of the more successful practitioners in New York and -Chicago. - -In government, in industry, in architecture, the imperial age was -one. The underlying policy of imperialism is to exploit the life -and resources of separate regions for the benefit of the holders -of privilege in the capital city. Under this rule, all roads lead -literally to Rome. While, as the German historian, W. H. Riehl, points -out, the provincial highroads served to bring the city out into the -countryside, the railroads served to bring the major cities together -and to drain the products of rural regions into the metropolis. It was -no accident that the great triumphs of American architecture during -the imperial period were the railroad stations; particularly the -Pennsylvania and the Grand Central in New York, and the Union Station -in Washington. Nor is it by mere chance that the Washington and the -Pennsylvania stations are the monuments to two architects, McKim and -Burnham, who worshiped most whole-heartedly at the imperial shrine. -With capital insight, these men established the American Academy at -Rome: they recognized their home. - -Esthetically considered, it is true, perhaps, that the finest element -in the Pennsylvania station is the train hall, where the architect has -dealt sincerely with his steel elements and has not permitted himself -to cast a fond, retrospective eye upon the Roman baths. When all -allowances are made, however, there remains less for criticism in the -railway stations and the stadiums--those genuinely Roman bequests--than -in any of the other imperial monuments. Indeed, so well does Roman -architecture lend itself to the railroad station that one of the prime -virtues of such a building, namely ease of circulation, was even -communicated to the New York Public Library, where it is nothing but a -nuisance, since it both increases the amount of noise and diminishes -the amount of space for reading rooms that are already overcrowded. - -Here, indeed, is the capital defect of an established and formalized -mode: it tends to make the architect think of a new problem in terms -of an old solution for a different problem. Mr. Charles McKim, for -example, indignantly withdrew from the competition over the New York -Public Library because the demands of the librarian for a convenient -and expeditious administration of his business interfered with the -full-blown conception which Mr. McKim had in mind. All this happened -after years of demonstration in the Boston Library of Messrs. McKim and -White’s failure to meet that problem squarely; and it apparently was -not affected by Mr. McKim’s experience with the great Columbia Library, -which has ample space for everything except books. In short, the -classic style served well enough only when the building to be erected -had some direct relation to the needs and interests of the Roman -world--the concourse of idlers in the baths or the tiers of spectators -in the circuses and hippodromes. When it came face to face with our -own day, it had but little to say, and it said that badly, as anyone -who will patiently examine the superimposed orders on the American -Telegraph Building in New York will discover for himself. - - -III - -With the transition from republican to imperial Rome, numerous -monuments were erected to the Divine Cæsar. Within a much shorter time -than marked the growth of the imperial tradition in America, a similar -edification of patriotic memories took place. - -In the restoration of the original plan of Washington, which began in -1901, the axis of the plan was so altered as to make it pass through -the Washington Monument; and at the same time the place of the Lincoln -Memorial, designed by the late Mr. Henry Bacon, a pupil of Mr. McKim’s, -was assigned. This was the first of a whole series of temples devoted -to the national deities. In the Lincoln Memorial, in the McKinley -Memorial at Niles, Ohio, in the Hall of Fame at New York University, -and in their prototype, Grant’s Tomb, one feels not the living beauty -of our American past, but the mortuary air of archæology. The America -that Lincoln was bred in, the homespun and humane and humorous America -that he wished to preserve, has nothing in common with the sedulously -classic monument that was erected to his memory. Who lives in that -shrine, I wonder--Lincoln, or the men who conceived it: the leader who -beheld the mournful victory of the Civil War, or the generation that -took pleasure in the mean triumph of the Spanish-American exploit, and -placed the imperial standard in the Philippines and the Caribbean? - -On the plane of private citizenship, a similar movement took place: -while before 1890 one can count the tombs in our cemeteries that boast -loudly of the owner’s earthly possessions and power, from that time -onward the miniature temple-mausoleum becomes more and more frequent. -In fact, an entire history of architecture could be deduced from our -cemeteries; all that has so far been described could be marked in the -progress from the simple slab, carved in almost Attic purity with a -weeping willow or a cubistic cherub, that characterized the eighteenth -century, to the bad lettering and the more awkward headstones of the -early nineteenth century; and from this to the introduction of polished -granite and iron ornament in the post-Civil War cemetery, down to the -mechanically perfect mausoleum, where the corpses are packed like -the occupants of a subway train, that some of our more effusively -progressive communities boast of today. As we live, so we die: no -wonder Shelley described Hell as a place much like London. - -The Roman development of New York, Chicago, Washington, and the -lesser metropolises, had an important effect upon the homes of the -people. Historically, the imperial monument and the slum-tenement go -hand in hand. The same process that creates an unearned increment -for the landlords who possess favored sites, contributes a generous -quota--which might be called the unearned excrement--of depression, -overcrowding, and bad living, in the dormitory districts of the city. -This had happened in imperial Rome; it had happened again in Paris -under Napoleon III, where Haussmann’s sweeping reconstructions created -new slums in the districts behind the grand avenues, quite as bad, -if far less obvious, as those that had been cleared away; and it -happened once again in our American cities. Whereas in Rome a certain -limit, however, was placed upon the expansion of the city because -of the low development of vehicular traffic, the rise of mechanical -transportation placed no bounds at all on the American city. If Rome -was forced to create huge engineering projects like aqueducts and -sewers in order to cleanse the inhabitants and remove the offal of -its congested districts, the American city followed the example of the -modern Romes like London and Paris by devising man-sewers, in which the -mass of plebeians could be daily drained back and forth between their -dormitories and their factories. - -So far from relieving congestion, these colossal pieces of engineering -only made more of it possible: by pouring more feeder lines into the -central district of New York, Boston, Chicago, or where you will, -rapid transit increased the housing congestion at one end and the -business-congestion at the other. As for the primary sewer system -devised for the imperial metropolis, it could scarcely even claim, with -rapid transit, that it was a valuable commercial investment. The water -outlets of New York are so thoroughly polluted that not merely have the -shad and the oyster beds vanished from the Hudson River, where both -once flourished, but it is a serious question whether the tides can -continue to transport their vast load of sewage without a preliminary -reduction of its content. Like the extension of the water conduits into -the Adirondacks, all these necessary little improvements add to the per -capita cost of living in an imperial metropolis, without providing a -single benefit that a smaller city with no need for such improvements -does not enjoy. In the matter of public parks, for example, the -Committee on Congestion in New York, in 1911, calculated that the park -space needed for the East Side alone, on the scale provided by the city -of Hartford, would be greater than the entire area of Manhattan Island. -In short, even for its bare utilitarian requirements, the mass-city, as -the Germans call it, costs more and gives less than communities which -have not had imperial greatness inflicted upon them. - -As to the more positive improvements under the imperial regime, history -leaves no doubt as to their dubious character, and current observation -only reinforces history’s lesson. In discussing the growth of the -tenement in Rome after the Great Fire, Friedlander says: - -“The motives for piling up storeys were as strong as ever: the site -for Cæsar’s Forum had cost over £875,000 compensation to tenants and -ground landlords. Rome had loftier houses than modern capital. A -disproportionately large part of the area available for building was -monopolized by the few, in consequence of the waste of space in the -plethoric architecture of the day, and a very considerable portion -was swallowed up by the public places, such as the imperial forums, -which took up six hectares, as well as by the traffic regulations and -extensions of the streets. The transformation and decoration of Rome -by the Cæsars enhanced the scarcity of housing, as did Napoleon III’s -improvements in Paris. A further adjutory cause of the increase in -the price of dwellings was the habit of speculation in house property -(which Crassus had practiced in great style) and the monopoly of the -proprietors, in consequence of which houses were let and sublet.” - -It would be tedious to draw out the parallel: given similar social -conditions in America we have not been able to escape the same social -results, even down to the fact that the palliatives of private -philanthropy flourish here again as they had not flourished anywhere on -the same scale since the Roman Empire. So much for imperial greatness. -When an architect like Mr. Edward Bennett can say, as he did in The -Significance of the Fine Arts: “House the people densely, if necessary, -but conserve great areas for recreation,” we need not be in doubt as to -who will profit by the density and who will profit, at the other end, -by the recreation. It is not merely that the park must be produced -to remedy the congestion: it is even more that the congestion must -be produced in order to provide for the park. To profit by both the -disease and the remedy is one of the master-strokes of imperialist -enterprise. Mr. Daniel Burnham said of the World’s Fair, according to -Mr. Bennett and Mr. Charles Moore, “that it is what the Romans would -have wished to create in permanent form.” One may say of our imperial -cities that they are what the Romans did create--but whether the form -will be permanent or not is a matter we may leave to the sardonic -attentions of history. - -For my own part, I think we have at last acquired a criterion which -will enable us to sum up the architecture of the imperial age, and -deal justly with these railroad stations and stadiums, these sewers -and circuses, these aqueducts and parkways and grand avenues. Our -imperial architecture is an architecture of compensation: it provides -grandiloquent stones for people who have been deprived of bread -and sunlight and all that keeps man from becoming vile. Behind the -monumental façades of our metropolises trudges a landless proletariat, -doomed to the servile routine of the factory system; and beyond the -great cities lies a countryside whose goods are drained away, whose -children are uprooted from the soil on the prospect of easy gain and -endless amusements, and whose remaining cultivators are steadily -drifting into the ranks of an abject tenantry. This is not a casual -observation: it is the translation of the last three census reports -into plain English. Can one take the pretensions of this architecture -seriously; can one worry about its esthetics or take full delight -in such finer forms as Mr. Pope’s Temple of the Scottish Rite in -Washington, or Mr. Bacon’s Lincoln Memorial? Yes, perhaps--if one -refuses to look beyond the mask. - -Even in some of its proudest buildings, the imperial show wears thin; -and one need not peer into the slums beyond in order to realize its -defects. The rear of the Metropolitan Museum or the Brooklyn Museum, -for example, might be the rear of a row of Bronx tenements or Long -Island City factories, so gaunt and barren and hideous is their -aspect. If the imperial age was foreshadowed in the World’s Fair, it -has received its apotheosis in the museum. In contrast to the local -museums one still finds occasionally in Europe, which are little more -than extensions of the local curio cabinet, the imperial museum is -essentially a loot-heap, a comprehensive repository for plunder. The -sage Viollet-le-Duc once patly said that he preferred to see his apples -hanging on a tree, rather than arranged in rows in the fruit shop: but -the animus of the museum is to value the plucked fruit more than the -tree that bore it. - -Into the museum come the disjecta membra of other lands, other -cultures, other civilizations. All that had once been a living faith -and practice is here reduced to a separate specimen, pattern, or form. -For the museum, the world of art has already been created: the future -is restricted to a duplication of the perfected past. This animus is -identic with that which made the Romans so skillful in copying Greek -statues and so dull in carving their own; a desirable habit of humility -were it not for the fact that the works of art in the past could not -have been created had our ancestors been so punctual in respect to -finished designs. The one thing the museum cannot attempt to do is to -supply a soil for living art: all that it can present is a pattern -for reproduction. To the extent that an insincere or imitative art is -better than no art at all, the Imperial Age marked an advance: to the -extent, however, that a living art is a fresh gesture of the spirit, -the museum confessed all too plainly that the age had no fresh gestures -to make; on that score, it was a failure, and the copying of period -furniture and the design of period architecture were the livid proofs -of that failure. - -The museum is a manifestation of our curiosity, our acquisitiveness, -our essentially predatory culture; and these qualities were copiously -exhibited in the architecture of imperialism. It would be foolish to -reproach the great run of architects for exploiting the characteristics -of their age; for even those who in belief and design have remained -outside the age--such resolute advocates of a medieval polity as Dr. -Ralph Adams Cram--have not been able to divert its currents. In so -far as we have learned to care more for empire than for a community -of freemen, living the good life, more for dominion over palm and -pine than for the humane discipline of ourselves, the architect has -but enshrined our desires. The opulence, the waste of resources -and energies, the perversion of human effort represented in this -architecture are but the outcome of our general scheme of working and -living. Architecture, like government, is about as good as a community -deserves. The shell that we create for ourselves marks our spiritual -development as plainly as that of a snail denotes its species. If -sometimes architecture becomes frozen music, we have ourselves to thank -when it is a pompous blare of meaningless sounds. - - - - -CHAPTER SEVEN THE AGE OF THE MACHINE - - -I - -Since 1910 the momentum of the Imperial Age seems to have slackened a -little: at any rate, in architecture it has lost much of the original -energy which had been given to it by the success of the Chicago -Exposition. It may be, as Henry Adams hinted, that the rate of change -in the modern world has altered, so that processes which required -centuries for their consummation before the coming of the dynamo have -been accelerated into decades. - -With events and buildings so close to us, it is almost impossible -to rate their relative importance; all that I can do in the present -chapter is to single out one or two of the more important threads -which, it seems to me, are bound to give the predominant color to the -fabric of our architecture. It is fairly easy to see, however, why the -imperial order has not stamped every aspect of our building: for one -thing, eclecticism has not merely persisted, but the new familiarity -that the American architect has gained with authentic European and -Asiatic work outside the province of the classic has increased the -range of eclecticism. So the baroque architecture of Spain, which -flourished so well in Mexico, and the ecclesiastical architecture of -Byzantium and Syria, have added a new charm to our motlied wardrobe: -from the first came new lessons in ornament and color, applied with -great success by Mr. Bertram Goodhue in the Panama-Pacific Exposition, -and now budding lustily in southern villas and gardens; and from -the second the architect is learning the importance of mass and -outline--the essentials in monolithic construction. - -Apart from this, however, the imperial regime has been stalled by its -own weight. The cost of cutting through new streets, widening grand -avenues, and in general putting on a monumental front has put the pure -architect at a disadvantage: there is the same disparity between his -plans and the actual aims of the commercial community as there is, -quite often, between the prospectus and the actual organization of an -industry. Within the precincts of the modern city, the engineer, whose -utilitarian eye has never blinked at the necessity for profitable -enterprise, and whose interest in human beings as loads, weights, -stresses, or units pays no attention to their qualitative demands as -human beings--within these precincts, I say, the engineer has recovered -his supremacy. - -Here, in fact, is the paradox of American architecture. In our suburban -houses we have frequently achieved the excellence of Forest Hills and -Bronxville; in our public buildings we tend more easily to approach the -strength and originality of Mr. Goodhue’s State Capitol for Nebraska; -in fact, never before have the individual achievements of American -architects been so rich, so varied, and so promising. In that part -of architecture which lies outside the purlieus of our commercial -system--I mean the prosperous country homes and college buildings and -churches and municipal institutions--a tradition of good building and -tactful design has been established. At this point, unfortunately, the -scope of the architect has become narrowed: the forces that create the -great majority of our buildings lie quite outside the cultivated field -in which he works. Through the mechanical reorganization of the entire -milieu, the place of architecture has become restricted; and even when -architecture takes root in some unnoticed crevice, it blooms only to be -cut down at the first “business opportunity.” - -The processes which are inimical to architecture are, perhaps, seen -at their worst in the business district of the metropolis; but more -and more they tend to spread throughout the rest of the community. Mr. -Charles McKim, for example, was enthusiastic over Mr. Burnham’s design -for the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago, and predicted that -it would long be a monument to his genius. “But unfortunately,” as Mr. -Burnham’s biographer says, “unfortunately for Mr. McKim’s reputation -as a prophet, he was unappreciative of the rapid growth of Chicago, -the consequent appreciation in the value of real estate in the Loop -district, and the expansive force of a great bank. This beautiful -building is doomed to be replaced by one which will tower into the -air to the permissible height of structures in the business section -of Chicago.” The alternative to this destruction is an even more -ignominious state of preservation; such a state as the Knickerbocker -Trust Company building achieved in New York, or the old Customs -House in Boston, both of which have been smothered under irrelevant -skyscrapers. Even where economic necessity plays no distinct part, -the forms of business take precedence over the forms of humanism--as -in the Shipping Board’s York Village, where as soon as the direction -of the community planner was removed a hideous and illiterate row of -shop-fronts was erected, instead of that provided by the architect, in -spite of the fact that the difference in cost was negligible. - -Unfortunately for architecture, every district of the modern city -tends to become a business district, in the sense that its development -takes place less in response to direct human needs than to the chances -and exigencies of sale. It is not merely business buildings that are -affected by the inherent instability of enterprises to which profit -and rent have become Ideal Ends: the same thing is happening to the -great mass of houses and apartments which are designed for sale. -Scarcely any element in our architecture and city planning is free -from the encroachment, direct or indirect, of business enterprise. -The old Boulevard in New York, for example, which was laid out by the -Tweed ring long before the land on either side was used for anything -but squatters’ farms, was almost totally disrupted by the building -of the first subways, and it has taken twenty years to effect even a -partial recovery. The widening of part of Park Avenue by slicing off -its central grass plot has just been accomplished, in order to relieve -traffic congestion; and it needs only a little time before underground -and overground traffic will cause the gradual reduction of our other -parkways--even those which now seem secure. - -The task of noting the manifold ways in which our economic system has -affected architecture would require an essay by itself: it will be more -pertinent here, perhaps, to pay attention to the processes through -which our economic system has worked; and in particular to gauge the -results of introducing mechanical methods of production, and mechanical -forms into provinces which were once wholly occupied by handicraft. -The chief influence in eliminating the architect from the great bulk -of our building is the machine itself: in blotting out the elements of -personality and individual choice it has blotted out the architect, -who inherited these qualities from the carpenter-builder. Mr. H. G. -Wells, in The New Macchiavelli, described Altiora and Oscar Bailey as -having the temperament that would cut down trees and put sanitary glass -lamp-shades in their stead; and this animus has gone pretty far in both -building and city planning, for the reason that lamp-shades may be -manufactured quickly for sale, and trees cannot. It is time, perhaps, -that we isolated the machine and examined its workings. What is the -basis of our machine-ritual, and what place has it in relation to the -good life? - - -II - -Before we discuss the influence of machinery upon building, let us -consider the building itself as an architectural whole. - -Up to the nineteenth century, a house might be a shelter and a work of -art. Once it was erected, it had few internal functions to perform: its -physiological system, if we may use a crude and inaccurate metaphor, -was of the lowest order. An open fire with a chimney, windows that -opened and closed--these were its most lively pretensions. Palladio, -in his little book on the Five Orders, actually has suggestions for -cooling the hot Italian villa by a system of flues conducted into an -underground chamber from which cold air would circulate; but this -ingenious scheme was on the plane of Leonardo’s flying machine--an -imaginative anticipation, I suppose, rather than a project. - -With the exception of Wren’s suggestions for ventilating the Houses of -Parliament, and Sir Humphrey Davy’s actual installation of apparatus -for this purpose, it was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth -century that engineers turned their minds to this problem, in America. -Yankee ingenuity had devised central heating before the Civil War, -and one of the first numbers of Harper’s Weekly contained an article -deploring the excessive warmth of American interiors; and at one time -or another during the century, universal running water, open plumbing, -gas, electric lighting, drinking fountains, and high speed electric -elevators made their way into the design of modern buildings. In Europe -these changes came reluctantly, because of the existence of vast -numbers of houses that had been built without a mechanical equipment; -so that many a student at the Beaux Arts returned from an attic in the -Latin quarter where water was carried in pails up to the seventh story, -to design houses in which the labor-saving devices became an essential -element in the plan. It is only now, however, during the last two -decades, that the full effect of these innovations has been felt. - -The economic outcome of all these changes can be expressed -mathematically; and it is significant. According to an estimate by Mr. -Henry Wright in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, -the structure of the dwelling house represented over ninety per cent -of the cost in 1800. Throughout the century there was a slow, steady -increase in the amount necessary for site, fixtures, and appliances, -until, in 1900, the curve takes a sharp upward rise; with the result -that in 1920 the cost of site and mechanical equipment has risen -to almost one-half the total cost of the house. If these estimates -apply to the simple dwelling house, they apply, perhaps, with even -greater force to the tenement, the office building, the factory, and -the loft: here the cost of ventilation, of fireproof construction, -of fire-prevention and fire-escaping devices, makes the engineering -equipment bulk even more heavily. - -Whereas in the first stages of industrial development the factory -affected the environment of architecture, in its latest state -the factory has become the environment. A modern building is an -establishment devoted to the manufacture of light, the circulation -of air, the maintenance of a uniform temperature, and the vertical -transportation of its occupants. Judged by the standards of the -laboratory, the modern building is, alas! an imperfect machine: the -engineers of a certain public service corporation, for example, -have discovered that the habit of punching windows in the walls of -the building-machine is responsible for great leakages which make -difficult the heating and cooling of the plant; and they hold that the -maximum efficiency demands the elimination of windows, the provision of -“treated” air, and the lighting of the building throughout the day by -electricity. - -All this would perhaps seem a little fantastic, were it not for the -fact that we have step by step approached the reality. Except for our -old-fashioned prejudice in favor of windows, which holds over from a -time when one could see a green field or a passing neighbor by sitting -at one, the transformation favored by the engineers has already been -accomplished. Just because of the ease in installing fans, lights, -and radiators in a modern building, a good part of the interiors -of our skyscrapers are fed day and night with artificial light and -ventilation. The margin of misuse under this method of construction -is necessarily great; the province of design, limited. Instead of the -architect’s paying attention to exposure, natural circulation, and -direct daylight, and making a layout which will achieve these necessary -ends, he is forced to center his efforts on the maximum exploitation -of land. Where the natural factors are flouted or neglected, the -engineer is always ready to provide a mechanical substitute--“just as -good as the original” and much more expensive. - -By systematically neglecting the simplest elements of city planning, -we have provided a large and profitable field for all the palliative -devices of engineering: where we eliminate sunlight we introduce -electric light; where we congest business, we build skyscrapers; where -we overcrowd the thoroughfares with traffic we burrow subways; where -we permit the city to become congested with a population whose density -would not be tolerated in a well-designed community, we conduct water -hundreds of miles by aqueducts to bathe them and slake their thirst; -where we rob them of the faintest trace of vegetation or fresh air, we -build metalled roads which will take a small portion of them, once a -week, out into the countryside. It is all a very profitable business -for the companies that supply light and rapid transit and motor -cars, and the rest of it; but the underlying population pays for its -improvements both ways--that is, it stands the gratuitous loss, and it -pays “through the nose” for the remedy. - -These mechanical improvements, these labyrinths of subways, these -audacious towers, these endless miles of asphalted streets, do not -represent a triumph of human effort: they stand for its comprehensive -misapplication. Where an inventive age follows methods which have no -relation to an intelligent and humane existence, an imaginative one -would not be caught by the necessity. By turning our environment over -to the machine we have robbed the machine of the one promise it held -out--that of enabling us to humanize more thoroughly the details of our -existence. - - -III - -To return to architecture. A further effect of the machine process on -the internal economy of the modern building is that it lends itself to -rapid production and quick turnover. This has been very well put by Mr. -Bassett Jones, in an article in The American Architect, which is either -a hymn of praise to the machine, or a cool parade of its defects, -according to the position one may take. - -“As the building more and more takes on the character of the machine,” -says Mr. Jones, “so does its design, construction, and operation -become subject to the same rules that govern ... a locomotive. Our -grandfathers built for succeeding generations. The rate of development -was slow, and a building which would satisfy the demands made upon it -for a century would necessarily be of a substantial nature. But with -us in a single generation even the best we can do with all the data -and facilities at our command is out of date almost before it shows -signs of appreciable wear. So a building erected today is outclassed -tomorrow. The writer well remembers the late Douglas Robinson, when -outlining the location and property to be improved by the construction -of a building some twenty years ago, ending his directions with the -proviso that it must be ‘the cheapest thing that will hold together -for fifteen years’! When the amortization charges must be based on so -short a period as this, and with land taxes constantly increasing, -it becomes obvious that construction must be based upon a cubic foot -valuation that prohibits the use of any but the cheapest materials -and methods.... Even the cost of carrying the required capital -inactive during the period of production has its effect in speeding up -production to the point where every part of the building that, by any -ingenuity of man, can be machine-made must be so made.” - -Since the features that govern the construction of modern buildings are -conditioned by external canons of mechanism, purpose and adaptation -to need play a small part in the design, and the esthetic element -itself enters largely by accident. The plan of the modern building -is not fundamental to its treatment; it derives automatically from -the methods and materials employed. The skyscraper is inevitably a -honeycomb of cubes, draped with a fireproof material: as mechanically -conceived, it is readily convertible: the floors are of uniform height -and the windows of uniform spacing, and with no great difficulty -the hotel becomes an office building, the office building a loft; -and I confidently look forward to seeing the tower floors become -apartments--indeed this conversion has already taken place on a small -scale. Where the need of spanning a great space without using pillars -exists, as in a theater or an auditorium, structural steel has given -the architect great freedom; and in these departments he has learned -to use his material well; for here steel can do economically and -esthetically what masonry can do only at an unseemly cost, or not at -all. - -What is weak in some of our buildings, however, is not the employment -of certain materials, but the application of a single formula to every -problem. In the bare mechanical shell of the modern skyscraper there -is precious little place for architectural modulation and detail; the -development of the skyscraper has been towards the pure mechanical -form. Our first tall buildings were designed for the most part by -men who thought in terms of established architectural forms: Burnham -and Root’s Monadnock Building, in Chicago, which has exerted such a -powerful influence over the new school of German architects, was an -almost isolated exception; and, significantly enough, it did not employ -the steel skeleton! The academic architects compared the skyscraper -to a column, with a base, a shaft, and a capital; and they sought to -relieve its empty face with an elaborate modeling of surface, like -that of the old Flatiron Building. Then the skyscraper was treated as -a tower, and its vertical lines were accented by piers which simulated -the acrobatic leap of stone construction: the Woolworth Tower and -the Bush Tower were both designed in this fashion, and, in spite of -numerous defects in detail, they remain with the new Shelton Hotel in -New York among the most satisfactory examples of the skyscraper. - -Neither column nor buttress has anything to do with the internal -construction of the skyscraper; both forms are “false” or “applied.” -Under the veracious lead of the late Mr. Louis Sullivan, the buildings -of the machine period have accepted the logic of the draped cube, -and the only gestures of traditional architecture that remain are -the ornaments that cling to the very highest and the very lowest -stories. Those buildings which do not follow this logic for the most -part accentuate the clumsy unimaginativeness of the designer: the new -Standard Oil building in New York, with its vestigial orders, shows an -interesting profile across the harbor almost in spite of itself, but at -a closer range will not bear criticism. - -An ornamentalist, like Mr. Louis Sullivan, is perhaps at his best -against the simple planes of the modern building: but a different -order of imagination, an imagination like that of the Norman builders, -is powerless in the face of this problem--or it becomes brutal. If -modern building has become engineering, modern architecture retains a -precarious foothold as ornament, or to put it more frankly, as scene -painting. Indeed, what is the bare interior of a modern office or -apartment house but a stage, waiting for the scenery to be shifted, -and a new play to be put on. It is due to this similarity, I believe, -that modern interior decoration has so boldly accepted the standards -and effects of stage-design. A newspaper critic referred to Mr. -Norman-Bel Geddes as having lined the interior of the Century Theater -with a cathedral: well, in the same way, the interior of a modern -skyscraper is lined with a factory, an office, or a home. - -It is not for nothing that almost every detail of the mechanized -building follows a standard pattern and preserves a studious anonymity. -Except for the short run of the entrance, the original architect has no -part in its interior development. If the architect himself is largely -paralyzed by his problem, what shall we say of the artisans, and of the -surviving handicraft workers who still contribute their quota of effort -to the laying of bricks and stones, to the joining of pipes, to the -plastering of ceilings? Gone are most of their opportunities for the -exercise of skilled intelligence, to say nothing of art: they might as -well make paper-boxes or pans for all the personal stamp they can give -to their work. Bound to follow the architect’s design, as the printer -is supposed to follow the author’s words, it is no wonder that they -behave like the poor drudge in the Chicago Exposition who left bare -or half-ornamented the columns which the architect had not bothered -to duplicate in full in the haste of finishing his drawing. Is it any -wonder, too, that the last vestige of guild standards is gone: that the -politics of industry, the bargaining for better wages and fewer hours, -concerns them more than their control over their job and the honor and -veracity of their workmanship? What kind of work can a man put into -“the cheapest building that will last fifteen years”? - - -IV - -The chief justification for our achievements in mechanical architecture -has been brought forth by those who believe it has provided the -basis for a new style. Unfortunately, the enthusiasts who have put -the esthetic achievements of mechanical architecture in a niche by -themselves, and who have serenely disregarded all its lapses and -failures and inefficiencies, have centered their attention mainly upon -its weakest feature--the skyscraper. I cannot help thinking that they -have looked in the wrong place. The economic and social reasons for -regarding the skyscraper as undesirable have been briefly alluded to; -if they needed any further confirmation, a week’s experience of the -miseries of rapid transit would perhaps be sufficient. It remains to -point out that the esthetic reasons are just as sound. - -All the current praise of the skyscraper boils down to the fact that -the more recent buildings have ceased to be as bad as their prototypes. -Granted. The uneasy hemming and hawing of ornament, which once agitated -the whole façade, has now been reduced to a concentrated gesture; and -the zoning ordinances that have been established in many large American -cities have transformed the older, top-heavy building into a tower or -a pyramid. That this is something of an advance is beyond dispute; in -New York one need only compare the Fisk Tire Building with the United -States Tire Building, representing respectively the later and the -earlier work of the same architects, to see what a virtue can be made -of legal necessity. A great architecture, however, is something to be -seen and felt and lived in. By this criterion most of our pretentious -buildings are rather pathetic. - -When one approaches Manhattan Island, for instance, from the Staten -Island Ferry or the Brooklyn Bridge, the great towers on the tip of -the island sometimes look like the fairy stalagmites of an opened -grotto; and from an occasional vantage point on the twentieth floor of -an office building one may now and again recapture this impression. -But need I point out that one can count on one’s fingers the number -of buildings in New York or Chicago that one can approach from the -street in similar fashion? For the millions who fill the pavements and -shuttle back and forth in tubes, the skyscraper as a tall, cloudward -building does not exist. Its esthetic features are the entrance, the -elevator, and the window-pocked wall; and if there has been any unique -efflorescence of a fresh style at these points, I have been unable to -discover it. - -What our critics have learned to admire in our great buildings is their -photographs--and that is another story. In an article chiefly devoted -to praise of the skyscraper, in a number of The Arts, the majority of -the illustrations were taken from a point that the man in the street -never reaches. In short, it is an architecture, not for men, but for -angels and aviators! - -If buildings are to be experienced directly, and not through the -vicarious agency of the photograph, the skyscraper defeats its own -ends; for a city built so that tall buildings could be approached and -appreciated would have avenues ten times the width of the present ones; -and a city so generously planned would have no need for the sort of -building whose sole economic purpose is to make the most of monopoly -and congestion. In order to accommodate the office-dwellers in the -Chicago Loop, for example, if a minimum of twenty stories were the -restriction, the streets would have to be 241 feet wide, according to -a calculation of Mr. Raymond Unwin, in the Journal of the American -Institute of Architects. - -One need not dwell upon the way in which these obdurate, overwhelming -masses take away from the little people who walk in their shadows any -semblance of dignity as human beings; it is perhaps inevitable that one -of the greatest mechanical achievements in a thoroughly dehumanized -civilization should, no doubt unconsciously, achieve this wry purpose. -It is enough to point out that the virtues of the skyscraper are mainly -exercises in technique. They have precious little to do with the human -arts of seeing, feeling, and living, or with the noble architectural -end of making buildings which stimulate and enhance these arts. - -A building that one cannot readily see, a building that reduces -the passerby to a mere mote, whirled and buffeted by the winds of -traffic, a building that has no accommodating grace or perfection in -its interior furnishing, beyond its excellent lavatories--in what -sense is such a building a great work of architecture, or how can -the mere manner of its construction create a great style? One might -as well say, with Robert Dale Owen, that the brummagem gothic of the -Smithsonian Institution was a return to organic architecture. Consider -what painful efforts of interior decoration are necessary before the -skyscraper-apartment can recapture the faded perfume of the home. -Indeed, it takes no very discerning eye to see that in a short time -we shall be back again in interiors belonging to the period of the -ottoman and the whatnot, in order to restore a homely sense of comfort -and esthetic ease to the eviscerated structure of the modern fireproof -apartment. What chiefly distinguishes our modern American work in this -department from that of the disreputable ’eighties is that the earlier -architects were conscious of their emptiness, and attempted feverishly -to hide it: whereas our moderns do not regard emptiness as a serious -lapse, and are inclined to boast about it. - -There is a sense, of course, in which these modern colossi express our -civilization. It is a romantic notion, however, to believe that this -is an important or beautiful fact. Our slums express our civilization, -too, and our rubbish heaps tell sermons that our stones conceal. The -only expression that really matters in architecture is that which -contributes in a direct and positive way to the good life: that is -why there is so much beauty to the square foot in an old New England -village, and so little, beyond mere picturesqueness, in the modern -metropolis. A building stands or falls, even as a pure work of art, by -its just relation to the city around it. Without a sense of scale--and -the skyscraper has destroyed our sense of scale--the effect of any -single building is nullified. - - -V - -The provinces in which mechanical architecture has been genuinely -successful are those in which there have been no conventional -precedents, and in which the structure has achieved a sense of -absolute form by following sympathetically the limitations of -material and function. Just as the bridge summed up what was best in -early industrialism, so the modern subway station, the modern lunch -room, the modern factory, and its educational counterpart, the modern -school, have often been cast in molds which would make them conspicuous -esthetic achievements. In the Aristotelian sense, every purpose -contains an inherent form; and it is only natural that a factory or -lunchroom or grain elevator, intelligently conceived, should become a -structure quite different in every aspect from the precedents that are -upheld in the schools. - -It would be a piece of brash esthetic bigotry to deny the esthetic -values that derive from machinery: the clean surfaces, the hard lines, -the calibrated perfection that the machine has made possible carry -with them a beauty quite different from that of handicraft--but often -it is a beauty. Our new sensitiveness to the forms of useful objects -and purely utilitarian structures is an excellent sign; and it is not -surprising that this sensitiveness has arisen first among artists. -Many of our power-plants are majestic; many of our modern factories -are clean and lithe and smart, designed with unerring logic and -skill. Put alongside buildings in which the architect has glorified -his own idiosyncrasy or pandered to the ritual of conspicuous waste, -our industrial plants at least have honesty and sincerity and an -inner harmony of form and function. There is nothing peculiar to -machine-technology in these virtues, however, for the modern factory -shares them with the old New England mill, the modern grain elevator -with the Pennsylvania barn, the steamship with the clipper, and the -airplane hangar with the castle. - -The error with regard to these new forms of building is the attempt -to universalize the mere process or form, instead of attempting to -universalize the scientific spirit in which they have been conceived. -The design for a dwelling-house which ignores everything but the -physical necessities of the occupants is the product of a limited -conception of science which stops short at physics and mechanics, and -neglects biology, psychology, and sociology. If it was bad esthetics -to design steel frames decorated with iron cornucopias and flowers, -it is equally bad esthetics to design homes as if babies were hatched -from incubators, and as if wheels, rather than love and hunger, made -the world go round. During the first movement of industrialism it was -the pathetic fallacy that crippled and warped the new achievements of -technology; today we are beset by the plutonic fallacy, which turns all -living things it touches into metal. - -In strict justice to our better sort of mechanical architecture, I -must point out that the error of the mechanolators is precisely the -opposite error to that of the academies. The weakness of conventional -architecture in the schools of the nineteenth century was the fact -that it applied only to a limited province: we knew what an orthodox -palace or post office would be like, and we had even seen their guilty -simulacra in tenement-houses and shopfronts; but no one had ever dared -to imagine what a Beaux Arts factory would be like; and such approaches -to it as the pottery works in Lambeth only made the possibility more -dubious. The weakness of our conventional styles of architecture was -that they stopped short at a province called building--which meant the -province where the ordinary rules of esthetic decency and politeness -were completely abandoned, for lack of a precedent. - -The modernist is correct in saying that the mass of building ought -to speak the same language; it is well for him to attempt to follow -Mr. Louis Sullivan, in his search for a “rule so broad as to admit -of no exceptions.” Where the modernist becomes confused, however, is -in regarding the _dictionary_ of modern forms, whose crude elements -are exhibited in our factories and skyscrapers and grain elevators, -as in any sense equivalent for their creative expression. So far our -mechanical architecture is a sort of structural Esperanto: it has a -vocabulary without a literature, and when it steps beyond the elements -of its grammar it can only translate badly into its own tongue the -noble poems and epics that the Romans and Greeks and medieval builders -left behind them. - -The leaders of modernism do not, indeed, make the mistake that some of -their admirers have made: Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright’s pleasure pavilions -and hotels do not resemble either factories or garages or grain -elevators: they represent the same tendencies, perhaps, but they do so -with respect to an entirely different set of human purposes. In one -important characteristic, Mr. Wright’s style has turned its back upon -the whole world of engineering: whereas the steel cage lends itself to -the vertical skyscraper, Mr. Wright’s designs are the very products -of the prairie, in their low-lying, horizontal lines, in their flat -roofs, while at the same time they defy the neutral gray or black or -red of the engineering structure by their colors and ornament. - -In sum, the best modern work does not merely respect the machine: -it respects the people who use it. It is the lesser artists and -architects who, unable to control and mold the products of the machine, -have glorified it in its nakedness, much as the producer of musical -comedies, in a similar mood of helpless adulation, has “glorified” the -American girl--as if either the machine or the girl needed it. - -It has been a genuine misfortune in America that, as Mr. Sullivan -bitterly pointed out in The Autobiography of an Idea, the growth of -imperialism burked the development of a consonant modern style. In -Europe, particularly in Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands, the best -American work has been appreciated and followed up, and as so often -happens, exaggerated; so that the esthetic appreciation of the machine -has been carried across the Atlantic and back again, very much in the -way that Emerson’s individualism was transformed by Nietzsche and -became the mystic doctrine of the Superman. Some of the results of this -movement are interesting and valid: the work of the Dutch architects, -for example, in the garden suburbs around Amsterdam: but what pleases -one in these new compositions is not the mechanical rigor of form but -the playfulness of spirit--they are good architecture precisely because -they are something more than mere engineering. Except for a handful of -good precedents, our mechanical work in America does not express this -vitality. The machine has stamped us; and we have not reacted. - -Moreover, in the building of separate houses in the city and its -suburbs, where the demands of mechanical efficiency are not so drastic -as they are in the office building, the effect of the machine process -has been to narrow the scope of individual taste and personality. -The designer, whether he is the architect, the owner, or the working -contractor, works within a tradition whose bearing lies beyond him. -Outside this mechanical tradition we have had many examples of good -individual work, like the stone houses that have been erected around -Philadelphia, and the more or less native cement and adobe houses in -New Mexico and California: but the great mass of modern houses are no -longer framed for some definite site and some definite occupants: they -are manufactured for a blind market. The boards are cut to length in -the sawmill, the roofing is fabricated in a roofing plant, the window -frames are cut in standard sizes and put together in the framing -factory, the balustrade is done in a turning mill, the very internal -fittings like china closets and chests are made in a distant plant, -after one of a dozen patterns fixed and exemplified in the catalog. -The business of the building worker is reduced to a mere assemblage -of parts; and except for the more expensive grades of work, the -architect is all but eliminated. The charming designs that the European -modernists make testify to the strength of their long architectural -tradition even in the face of machinery; the truth is that they fit -our modern methods of house-production scarcely much better than the -thatched cottage of clay and wattle. The nemesis of mechanism is that -it inexorably eliminates the architect--even the architect who worships -its achievements! - -So much of the detail of a building is established by factory standards -and patterns that even the patron himself has precious little scope -for giving vent to his impulses in the design or execution of the -work; for every divergence from a standardized design represents an -additional expense. In fact, the only opportunity for expressing his -taste and personality is in choosing the mode in which the house is to -be built: he must find his requirements in Italy, Colonial America, -France, Tudor England, or Spain--woe to him if he wants to find them -in twentieth-century America! Thus the machine process has created a -standardized conception of style: of itself it can no more invent a new -style than a mummy can beget children. If one wishes a house of red -brick it will be Georgian or Colonial; that is to say, the trimming -will be white, the woodwork will have classic moldings, and the -electric-light fixtures will be pseudo-candlesticks in silvered metal. -If one builds a stucco house, one is doomed by similar mechanical -canons to rather heavy furniture in the early Renaissance forms, -properly duplicated by the furniture makers of Grand Rapids--and so on. -The notion of an American stucco house is so foreign to the conception -of the machine mode that only the very poor, and the very rich, can -afford it. Need I add that Colonial or Italian, when it falls from the -mouth of the “realtor” has nothing to do with authentic Colonial or -Italian work? - -Commercial concentration and the national market waste resources by -neglect, as in the case of the Appalachian forests they squandered -them by pillage. Standardized materials and patterns and plans and -elevations--here are the ingredients of the architecture of the machine -age: by escaping it we get our superficially vivacious suburbs; by -accepting it, those vast acres of nondescript monotony that, call -them West Philadelphia or Long Island City or what you will, are but -the anonymous districts of Coketown. The chief thing needful for the -full enjoyment of this architecture is a standardized people. Here our -various educational institutions, from the advertising columns of the -five-cent magazine to the higher centers of learning, from the movie to -the radio, have not perhaps altogether failed the architect. - -The manufactured house is set in the midst of a manufactured -environment. The quality of this environment calls for satire rather -than description; and yet a mere catalog of its details, such as Mr. -Sinclair Lewis gave in Babbitt, is almost satire in itself. In this -environment the home tends more and more to take last place: Mr. Henry -Wright has in fact humorously suggested that at the present increasing -ratio of site-costs--roads, sewers, and so forth--to house-costs, the -house itself will disappear in favor of the first item by 1970. The -prophetic symbol of this event is the tendency of the motor-car and -the temple-garage to take precedence over the house. Already these -incubi have begun to occupy the last remaining patch of space about the -suburban house, where up to a generation ago there was a bit of garden, -a swing for the children, a sandpile, and perhaps a few fruit trees. - -The end of a civilization that considers buildings as mere machines is -that it considers human beings as mere machine-tenders: it therefore -frustrates or diverts the more vital impulses which would lead to the -culture of the earth or the intelligent care of the young. Blindly -rebellious, men take revenge upon themselves for their own mistakes: -hence the modern mechanized house, with its luminous bathroom, its -elegant furnace, its dainty garbage-disposal system, has become -more and more a thing to get away from. The real excuse for the -omnipresent garage is that in a mechanized environment of subways and -house-machines some avenue of escape and compensation must be left -open. Distressing as a Sunday automobile ride may be on the crowded -highways that lead out of the great city, it is one degree better than -remaining in a neighborhood unsuited to permanent human habitation. So -intense is the demand for some saving grace, among all these frigid -commercial perfections, that handicraft is being patronized once more, -in a manner that would have astonished Ruskin, and the more audacious -sort of interior decorator is fast restoring the sentimentalities in -glass and wax flowers that marked the Victorian Age. This is a pretty -comment upon the grand achievements of modern industry and science; but -it is better, perhaps, that men should be foolish than that they should -be completely dehumanized. - -The architecture of other civilizations has sometimes been the brutal -emblem of the warrior, like that of the Assyrians: it has remained for -the architecture of our own day in America to be fixed and stereotyped -and blank, like the mind of a Robot. The age of the machine has -produced an architecture fit only for lathes and dynamos to dwell -in: incomplete and partial in our applications of science, we have -forgotten that there is a science of humanity, as well as a science -of material things. Buildings which do not answer to this general -description are either aristocratic relics of the age of handicraft, -enjoyed only by the rich, or they are fugitive attempts to imitate -cheaply the ways and gestures of handicraft. - -We have attempted to live off machinery, and the host has devoured us. -It is time that we ceased to play the parasite: time that we looked -about us, to see what means we have for once more becoming men. The -prospects of architecture are not divorced from the prospects of the -community. If man is created, as the legends say, in the image of -the gods, his buildings are done in the image of his own mind and -institutions. - - - - -CHAPTER EIGHT ARCHITECTURE AND CIVILIZATION - - -I - -In the course of this survey we have seen how architecture and -civilization develop hand in hand: the characteristic buildings of -each period are the memorials to their dearest institutions. The -essential structure of the community--the home, meeting-place, the -work-place--remains; but the covering changes and passes, like the -civilization itself, when new materials, new methods of work, new ideas -and habits and ways of feeling, come into their own. - -If this interpretation of the rôle of architecture is just, there -is little use in discussing the needs and promises of architecture -without relating the shell itself to the informing changes that may -or may not take place in the life of the community itself. To fancy -that any widespread improvement of architecture lies principally with -the architects is an esthetic delusion: in a barren soil the most -fertile geniuses are cut off from their full growth. We have not -lacked architects of boldness and originality, from Latrobe to Louis -H. Sullivan: nor have we lacked men of great ability, from Thomas -Jefferson to Bertram Goodhue; nor yet have we lacked men who stood -outside the currents of their time and kept their own position, from -Richardson to Dr. Cram. With all these capacities at our disposal, -our finest efforts in building remain chaotic and undisciplined and -dispersed--the reflection of our accumulated civilization. - -Our architectural development is bound up with the course of our -civilization: this is a truism. To the extent that we permit our -institutions and organizations to function blindly, as our bed is -made, so must we lie on it; and while we may nevertheless produce -isolated buildings of great esthetic interest, like Messrs. Cram -and Goodhue’s additions to West Point, like The Shelton, like a -hundred country estates, the matrix of our physical community will -not be affected by the existence of separate jewels; and most of our -buildings will not merely be outside the province of the architectural -profession--they will be the product of minds untouched, for the most -part, by humane standards. Occasionally the accidental result will be -good, as has happened sometimes in our skyscrapers and factories and -grain elevators; but an architecture that must depend upon accidental -results is not exactly a triumph of the imagination, still less is it -a triumph of exact technology. - -Looking back upon the finished drama, it is convenient to regard our -community and our builders as creatures of their environment: once -their choices are made, they seem inevitable. On this account even the -pomp of the imperial architects can be justified, as the very voice -and gesture of the period they consummated. Looking forward, however, -this convenient fiction of inevitability is no longer serviceable: we -are in the realm of contingency and choice; and at any moment a new -factor may be introduced which will alter profoundly the economic and -social life of the community. The Great War in Europe, the revolution -in Russia, the spread of motor transportation in America, the idea of -non-coöperation in India--I select these at random as matters which -during the last generation have altered profoundly the unceasing “drift -of things.” - -The future of our civilization depends upon our ability to select and -control our heritage from the past, to alter our present attitudes -and habits, and to project fresh forms into which our energies may be -freely poured. On our ability to re-introduce old elements, as the -humanists of the late Middle Ages brought back the classic literature -and uncovered the Roman monuments, or to introduce new elements, as the -inventors and engineers of the last century brought in physical science -and the machine-tool technology, our position as creators depends. -During the last century our situation has changed from that of the -creators of machinery to that of creatures of the machine system; and -it is perhaps time that we contrived new elements which will alter once -more the profounder contours of our civilization. - -Unfortunately for our comfort and peace of mind, any real change in our -civilization depends upon much more complicated, and much more drastic -measures than the old-fashioned reformer, who sought to work a change -of heart or to alter the distribution of income, ever recognized; and -it will do little good to talk about a “coming renaissance” unless we -have a dim idea of the sort of creature that is to be born again. Our -difficulty, it seems to me, is due to the fact that the human sciences -have lagged behind the physical ones; and up to the present time our -good intentions have been frustrated for the lack of the necessary -instruments of analysis. It may be helpful and amusing, however, to -see what we can do in this department with the instruments that are -already at hand. - -In every community, as Frédéric Le Play first pointed out, there are -three elements: the place, the work, and the people; the sociologist’s -equivalent of environment, function, and organism. Out of the -interaction of the folk and their place, through the work, the simple -life of the community develops. At the same time, each of these -elements carries with it its specific spiritual heritage. The people -have their customs and manners and morals and laws; or as we might say -more briefly, their institutions; the work has its technology, its -craft-experience, from the simple lore of peasant and breeder to the -complicated formulæ of the modern chemists and metallurgists; while the -deeper perception of the “place,” through the analysis of the falling -stone, the rising sun, the running water, the decomposing vegetation, -and the living animal gives rise to the tradition of “learning” and -science. - -With this simple outline in mind, the process that created our present -mechanical civilization becomes a little more plain; and we can -appreciate, perhaps, the difficulties that stand in the way of any -swift and easy transformation. - -Thus our present order was due to a mingled change in every aspect of -the community: morally, it was protestantism; legally, the rise of -representative government; socially, the introduction of “democracy”; -in custom, the general breakdown of the family unit; industrially, it -meant the collapse of the guilds and the growth of the factory-system; -scientifically, the spread of physical science, and the increased -knowledge of the terrestrial globe--and so on. - -Each of these facets of the community’s life was the object of separate -attention and effort: but it was their totality which produced the -modern order. Where--among other reasons--the moral preparation for -mechanical civilization was incomplete, as in the Catholic countries, -the industrial revolution was also late and incomplete; where the -craft-tradition remained strong, as in the beech forests of the -Chilterns, the industrial change made fewer inroads into the habits of -the community, than, let us say, in Lancashire, where modern industry -was untempered and unchallenged. - -If the circumstances which hedge in our architecture are to be -transformed, it is not sufficient, with Mr. Louis Sullivan, to say -that we must accept and enthrone the virtues of democracy; still -less is there any meaning in the attempt of the Educational Committee -of the American Institute of Architects to educate public taste in -the arts. Nor is there any genuine esthetic salvation in the demand -of the modernists that we embrace in more whole-hearted fashion the -machine. Our architecture has been full of false starts and unfulfilled -promises, precisely because the ground has not been worked enough -beforehand to receive the new seeds. - -If we are to have a fine architecture, we must begin at the other end -from that where our sumptuously illustrated magazines on home-building -and architecture begin--not with the building itself, but with the -whole complex out of which architect, builder, and patron spring, -and into which the finished building, whether it be a cottage or -a skyscraper, is set. Once the conditions are ripe for a good -architecture, the plant will flower by itself: it did so in the Middle -Ages, as a hundred little towns and villages between Budapest and -Glastonbury still testify; it did so again within a limited area among -the swells of the Renaissance; and it is springing forth lustily today -in the garden cities of England, the Netherlands, and the Baltic -countries. The notion that our architecture will be improved by courses -of appreciation in our museums and colleges is, to put it quite mildly, -one of the decadent deceits of snobbery. It is only paper flowers that -grow in this fashion. - - -II - -In order to get our bearings, we shall pull apart, one by one, the -principal elements in our heritage of civilization in the United -States, and examine them separately. This is a dangerous convenience, -however, and I must emphasize that these strands are tightly -intertwined and bound up. It is only in thought that one can take -them apart. No one has ever encountered man, save on the earth; no -one has ever seen the earth, save through the eyes of a man. There -is no logical priority in place, work, and people. In discussing the -community one either deals with it as a whole, or one’s discussion is -incomplete and faulty. - - -III - -The capital sign of the early settlements beyond the seashore was -the clearing; and since the great majority of newcomers lived by -agriculture, the forest itself appeared merely as an obstacle to -be removed. The untouched woods of America were all too lush and -generous, and if an occasional Leatherstocking loved them, the new -settler saw only land to clear and wood to burn. In the New England -village, the tradition of culture was perhaps applied to the land -itself, and elsewhere there are occasional elements of good practice, -in the ordered neatness of boulder-fences. For the most part, however, -the deliberate obliteration of the natural landscape became a great -national sport, comparable to the extermination of bison which the -casual western traveler devoted himself to at a later date. - -The stripping of the Appalachian forest was the first step in our -campaign against nature. By 1860 the effect was already grave enough -to warn an acute observer, like George Perkins Marsh, of the danger to -our civilization, and to prompt him in Earth and Man, to remind his -countrymen that other civilizations about the Mediterranean and the -Adriatic had lost their top-soil and ruined their agriculture through -the wanton destruction of their forests. - -In the meanwhile, a new factor had entered. If before the nineteenth -century we cleared the forest to make way for the farm, with the -entrance of the industrial pioneer we began to clear the farm to parcel -out the city. We have called this process the settlement of America, -but the name is anomalous, for we formed the habit of using the land, -not as a home, a permanent seat of culture, but as a means to something -else--principally as a means to the temporary advantages of profitable -speculation and exploitation. - -James Mackay, a charitable Scotch observer in the middle of the -nineteenth century, explained our negligence of the earth by the fact -that we pinned our affections to institutions rather than places, and -cared not how the landscape was massacred as long as we lived under the -same flag and enjoyed the same forms of government. There is no doubt a -little truth in this observation; but it was not merely our attachment -to republican government that caused this behavior: it was even more, -perhaps, our disattachment from the affiliations of a settled life. The -pioneer, to put it vulgarly, was on the make and on the move; it did -not matter to him how he treated the land, since by the time he could -realize its deficiencies he had already escaped to a new virgin area. -“What had posterity done for him?” - -The pioneers who turned their backs on a civilized way of life in -order to extend the boundaries of civilization, left us with a heavy -burden--not merely blasted and disorderly landscapes, but the habit of -tolerating and producing blasted and disorderly landscapes. As Cobbett -pointed out in his attempt to account for the unkempt condition of the -American farm, the farmer in this country lacked the example of the -great landed estates, where the woods had become cultivated parks, and -the meadowland had become lawns. Without this cultivated example in the -country, it is no wonder that our cities have been littered, frayed at -the edges, ugly; no wonder that our pavements so quickly obliterate -trees and grass; no wonder that so many towns are little more than -gashes of metal and stone. - -Those who had been bred on the land brought into the city none of that -disciplined care which might have preserved some of its amenities. They -left the smoke of the clearings, which was a sign of rural “progress”; -they welcomed the smoke of the towns, and all that accompanied it. - -It is scarcely a paradox to say that the improvement of our cities -must proceed inwards from the countryside; for it is largely a matter -of reversing the process which converts the farm into incipient blocks -of real estate. Once we assimilate the notion that soil and site -have uses quite apart from sale, we shall not continue to barbarize -and waste them. Consider how the water’s edge of lower Manhattan was -developed without the slightest regard for its potential facilities for -recreation; how the Acropolis of Pittsburgh, the Hump, was permitted to -turn into a noisome slum; how the unique beauty of Casco Bay has been -partly secured only by Portland’s inferiority as a shipping center. -Indeed, all up and down the country one can pick up a thousand examples -of towns misplaced, of recreation areas becoming factory sites, of -industries located without intelligent reference to raw materials or -power or markets or the human beings who serve them, of agricultural -land being turned prematurely into suburban lots, and of small rural -communities which need the injection of new industries and enterprises, -languishing away whilst a metropolis not fifty miles away continues to -absorb more people, who daily pay a heavy premium for their congestion. - -I have already drawn attention to the waste of local materials in -connection with our manufacture of buildings, our concentration of -markets, and our standardization of styles. It is plain that our -architects would not have to worry so painfully about the latest -fashion-page of architectural tricks, if they had the opportunity to -work more consistently with the materials at hand, using brick where -clay was plentiful, stone where that was of good quality, and cement -where concrete adapted itself to local needs--as it does so well -near the seashore, and, for a different reason, in the south. Wood, -one of our most important materials for both exterior and interior, -has suffered by just the opposite of neglect: so completely have our -Appalachian forests been mined, and so expensive are the freight -charges for the long haul from the Pacific coast, that good housing -in the east depends to no little extent upon our ability to recover -continuous local supplies of timber throughout the Appalachian region. - -(It is characteristic of our mechanical and metropolitan civilization -that one of the great sources of timber waste is the metropolitan -newspaper: and one of the remoter blessings of a sounder regional -development is that it would, perhaps, remove the hourly itch for the -advertising sheet, and by the same token would provide large quantities -of wood for housing, without calling for the destruction of ten acres -of spruce for the Sunday edition alone! I give the reader the privilege -of tracing the pleasant ramifications of this notion.) - -To see the interdependence of city and country, to realize that the -growth and concentration of one is associated with the depletion and -impoverishment of the other, to appreciate that there is a just and -harmonious balance between the two--this capacity we have lacked. -Before we can build well on any scale we shall, it seems to me, have -to develop an art of regional planning, an art which will relate city -and countryside in a new pattern from that which was the blind creation -of the industrial and the territorial pioneer. Instead of regarding -the countryside as so much grist doomed to go eventually into the -metropolitan mill, we must plan to preserve and develop all our natural -resources to the limit. - -It goes without saying that any genuine attempt to provide for the -social and economic renewal of a region cannot be constrained to -preserve vested land-values and property rights and privileges; -indeed, if the land is to be fully loved and cared for again we must -recover it in something more than name only. The main objection to -keeping our natural resources in the hands of the community, namely, -that private capital is more zealous at exploitation, is precisely the -reason for urging the first course. Our land has suffered from zeal in -exploitation; and it would be much better, for example, that our water -power resources should remain temporarily undeveloped, than that they -should be incontinently used by private corporations to concentrate -population in the centers where a high tariff can be charged. The -number of things that are waiting to be done--the planting of town -forests, the communal restoration of river banks and beaches, the -transformation of bare roads into parkways--will of course differ in -each region and locality; and my aim here is only to point to a general -objective. - -The beginnings of genuine regional planning have already been made -in Ontario, Canada, where the social utilization of water-power has -directly benefited the rural communities, and given them an independent -lease on life. In the United States, Mr. Benton Mackaye has sketched -out a bold and fundamental plan for associating the development of a -spinal recreational trail with an electric power development for the -whole Appalachian region, along the ridgeway; both trail and power -being used as a basis for the re-afforestation and the re-peopling -of the whole upland area, with a corresponding decentralization -and depopulation of the overcrowded, spotty coastal region. Such a -scheme would call for a pretty thorough dislocation of metropolitan -values; and if it is slow in making headway, that is only because its -gradual institution would mean that a new epoch had begun in American -civilization. At the present time it is hard to discover how tangible -these new hopes and projects may be: it is significant, however, that -the Housing and Regional Planning Commission of the State of New York -was called into existence by the necessity for finding a way out of our -metropolitan tangle; and it is possible that a new orientation in power -and culture is at hand. - -In a loose, inconsecutive way, the objectives of regional planning -have been dealt with by the conservation movement during the last -century; and if the art itself has neither a corpus of experience -nor an established body of practitioners, this is only to say that -it has, as it were, broken through the surface in a number of places -and that it remains to be gathered up and intelligently used. When -regional planning starts its active career, it will concern itself to -provide a new framework for our communities which will redistribute -population and industry, and recultivate the environment--substituting -forestry for timber-mining, stable agriculture for soil-mining, and in -general the habit of dressing and keeping the earth for our traditional -American practice of stripping and deflowering it. Architecture begins -historically when the “Bauer” who plants becomes the “Bauer” who -builds; and if our architecture is to have a substantial foundation, it -is in a refreshened countryside that we will perhaps find it. - - -IV - -Let us now turn to industry. The medieval order was disrupted in -America before it could fully take root. As a result we have no -craft-tradition that is properly native, with the exception of the -shipbuilders and furniture-makers of New England, whose art has been on -the wane since the second quarter of the nineteenth century. We have -covered up this deficiency by importing from generation to generation -foreign workmen, principally Germans and Italians, in whose birthplaces -the art of using wood and stone has not been entirely lost; but we -are still far from having created an independent craft-tradition -of our own. If art is the fine efflorescence of a settled life, -invention is the necessity of the roving pioneer who every day faces -new difficulties and new hazards; and accordingly we have devoted our -energies to the machine, and to the products of the machine. All that -we cannot do in this medium we regard as “mere” art, and put it apart -from the direct aims and practices of everyday life. - -Our skill in working according to exact formulæ with machines and -instruments of precision is not to be belittled: socially directed it -would put an end to a hundred vapid drudgeries, and it would perhaps -give the pervasive finish of a style to structures whose parts are -now oddly at sixes and sevens. Unfortunately for us and for the -world in general the machine did not come simply as a technological -contribution: it appeared when the guild had broken down and when -the joint stock company had gotten its piratical start as a Company -of Gentleman-Adventurers. As a result, our mechanical age was given -an unsocial twist; and inventions which should have worked for the -welfare of the community were used for the financial aggrandizement -of investors and monopolizers. In architecture, all the skill of the -technologist and all the taste of the artist have become subservient -to the desire of the financier for a quick turnover of capital, and -the ground landlord for the maximum exploitation of the land. The -sole chances for good workmanship occur when, by a happy accident of -personality or situation, the patron asks of the architect and engineer -only the best that they can give. - -It is this side of exaggeration to say that today a building is one -kind of manufactured product on a counter of manufactured products; -but with a difference; for the internal processes of construction -are still, in spite of all our advances, handicrafts. An interesting -result, as Mr. F. L. Ackermann has pointed out, follows from this -fact: namely, that the pace of building tends to lag behind the pace -at which other goods are produced under the machine-system; and if -this is the case, the quantitative production of buildings is bound -to be too low, while their cost is bound, by the same process, to be -disproportionately high. - -The remedy seized by the engineer, as I have pointed out, is to -introduce the process of standardization and mechanization wherever -possible. This heightens the pace of building, and by and large it -quickens the rate of deterioration in the thing built: both processes -increase the turnover of buildings, and so tend to make the art of -building approach the rhythm established by our price-system for the -other mechanical arts; since, under the price-system, the manufacturer -must create a continued demand for his products or risk flooding the -market. The two ways of creating a demand are to widen the area of sale -or to increase the rate of consumption. Shoddy materials and shoddy -workmanship are the most obvious means of accomplishing the second end; -but fashion plays a serious part, and maladaptation to use, though less -frequently noted, cannot be ignored. - -All these little anomalies and inconveniences have come with -machinery, not of course because the machine is inherently wasteful -and fraudulent, but because our social order has not been adapted to -its use. Our gains have been canceled, for the reason that the vast -expansion of our productive powers has necessitated an equally vast -expansion in our consumptive processes. Hence in many departments of -building, the advantage of machinery has been almost nullified; and if -handicraft has been driven out, it is less because it is inefficient -than because the pace of production and consumption under handicraft is -so much retarded. - -When Ruskin began to agitate for the revival of handicraft it looked -as if our industrial system were bound to triumph everywhere, and as -if Ruskin’s protest were the last weak chirp of romanticism. At the -present time, however, the issue is not so simple as it seemed to the -builders of the Crystal Palace; nor are the choices so narrow. What -seemed a fugitive philosophy when applied to the machine by itself has -turned out to be a rigorous and intelligent criticism, when applied to -the machine-system. The use of the machine in provinces where it has -no essential concern, the network of relationships that have followed -the financial exploitation of machinery--these things have led to a -revolt, in which the engineers themselves have participated. It is not -machinery alone that causes standardization, we begin to see, but the -national market; it is not the machine that makes our cheaper houses -blank and anonymous, but the absence of any mediating relation between -the user and the designer--except through the personality of the -builder, who builds for sale. - -Apart from this, in certain industries like wood-turning and -furniture-making the introduction of the gasoline engine and the -electric motor has restored the center of gravity to the small factory, -set in the countryside, and to the individual craftsman or group, -working in the small shop. Professor Patrick Geddes has characterized -the transition from steam to electricity as one from the paleotechnic -to the neotechnic order; and intuitive technological geniuses, like -Mr. Henry Ford, have been quick to see the possibilities of little -factories set in the midst of the countryside. Mechanically speaking, -the electric motor has in certain industries and operations placed -the individual worker on a par with the multiple-machine factory, -even as motor transportation is reducing the advantages of the big -city over the small town or village. It is therefore not unreasonable -to look forward to a continuation of this development, which will -enable groups of building workers to serve their immediate region -quite as economically as would a multitude of national factories, -producing goods blindly for a blind national market. With direct sale -and service, from local sawmills and local furniture-making shops, -the older handicrafts themselves might reënter once more through the -back door--as indeed they have already begun to do in response to the -demands of the wealthy. - -I am not suggesting here that handicraft is likely to replace -machinery: what I am suggesting is the immediate and tangible -possibility that machinery itself may lend itself in its modern -forms to a more purposive system of production, like that fostered -by handicraft; and under this condition the antagonism and disparity -between the two forms of production need not be so great as they are at -present. In a little valley I happen to be acquainted with, there is -enough running water to supply five families with electric light from -a single power plant; unfortunately, five families cannot combine for -such a purpose in the state I am speaking of without a power-franchise; -and so the only source of electric light is a distant commercial -power plant using coal. Here is an obvious case where commercial -monopoly runs contrary to economy and where the benefits of modern -technology are forfeited in the working of our financial system. Once -we understand that modern industry does not necessarily bring with it -financial and physical concentration, the growth of smaller centers and -a more widespread distribution of the genuine benefits of technology -will, I think, take place. - -It is true that the movement of the last hundred years has been away -from handicraft; but a hundred years is a relatively short time, and -at least a part of the triumph of machinery has been due to our naïve -enjoyment of it as a plaything. There is a wide difference between -doing away with hand-labor, as in sawing wood or hoisting a weight, -and eliminating handicraft by using machine tools for operations which -can be subtly performed only by hand. The first practice is all to -the good: the second essentially misunderstands the significance of -handicraft and machinery, and I must dwell on this point for a moment, -since it is responsible for a good deal of shoddy thinking on the -future of art and architecture. - - -V - -On the human side, the prime distinction overlooked by the mechanists -is that machine work is principally toil: handicraft, on the other -hand, is a form of living. The operations of the mechanical arts are -inherently servile, because the worker is forced to keep the pace -set by the machine and to follow the pattern set by the designer, -someone other than himself; whereas the handicrafts are relatively -free, in that they allow a certain leeway to different types of work -and different ways of tackling a job. These distinctions are bound up -with a difference in the forms that are used; and it is through these -esthetic differences that we may, perhaps, best see how the personal -and mechanical may be apportioned in the architecture of the future. - -The key to handicraft esthetics, it seems to me, is a sort of vital -superfluity. The carpenter is not content with his planed surface; nor -is the mason satisfied with the smooth stone; nor does the painter -impartially cover the bare wall: no, each worker must elaborate the -bare utilitarian object until the capital becomes a writhing mass of -foliage, until the domed ceiling becomes the gate of heaven, until -each object gets the imprint of the fantasies that have ripened in the -worker’s head. The craftsman literally possesses his work, in the sense -that the Bible says a body is possessed by a familiar spirit. - -Occasionally, this elaboration passes the point at which it would -give the highest esthetic delight to the beholder; nevertheless, the -craftsman keeps pouring himself into his job: he must fill up every -blank space, and will not be denied, for carving wood or hacking stone, -when it is done with a free spirit, is a dignified and enjoyable way -of living. Those of us who have become acclimated to industrialism -sometimes find the effulgence and profusion of craftsmanship a little -bewildering: but if our enjoyment of the portals of a medieval -cathedral or the façade of an East Indian house is dulled by the myopic -intricacy of the pattern, our appreciation of the craftsman’s fun and -interest should be heightened. Granting that art is an end in itself, -is it not an end to the worker as well as the spectator? A great part -of craftsmanship needs no other justification than that it bears the -mark of a joyous spirit. - -When we compare an ideal product of handicraft, like a Florentine table -of the sixteenth century, with an ideal product of mechanical art--say -a modern bathroom--the contrasting virtues and defects become plain. -The conditions that make possible good machine-work are, first of all, -a complete calculation of consequences, embodied in a working drawing -or design: to deviate by a hair’s breadth from this calculation is to -risk failure. The qualities exemplified in good machine-work follow -naturally from the implements: they are precision, economy, finish, -geometric perfection. When the workman’s personality intervenes in the -process, it is carelessness. If he leave his imprint, it is a flaw. - -A good pattern in terms of the machine is one that fulfills the bare -essentials of an object: the chairishness of a chair, the washiness of -a basin, the enclosedness of a house, and any superfluity that may be -added by way of ornament is a miscarriage of the machine-process, for -by adding dull work to work that is already dull it defeats the end for -which machinery may legitimately exist in a humane society; namely, to -produce a necessary quantity of useful goods with a minimum of human -effort. - -Craftsmanship, to put the distinction roughly, emphasizes the worker’s -delight in production: anyone who proposed to reduce the amount of time -and effort spent by the carver in wood or stone would be in effect -attempting to shorten the worker’s life. Machine-work, on the other -hand, tends at its best to diminish the inescapable drudgeries of -production: any dodge or decoration that increases the time spent in -service to the machine adds to the physical burden of existence. One is -a sufficient end; the other is, legitimately, only a means to an end. - -Our modern communities are far from understanding this distinction. -Just as in art we multiply inadequate chromolithographs and starve -the modern artist, so in architecture a good part of machine-work is -devoted to the production of fake handicraft, like the molded stone -ornamentation used in huge Renaissance fireplaces, designed frequently -for small modern apartments that are superheated by steam. In turn, -the surviving worker who now practices handicraft has been debased -into a servile drudge, using his skill and love, like his predecessors -in Imperial Rome, to copy the original productions of other artists -and craftsmen. Between handicraft that is devoted to mechanical -reproduction and machinery that is set to reproduce endless simulacra -of handicraft, our esthetic opportunities in art and architecture are -muffed again and again. An occasional man of talent, like Mr. Samuel -Yellin, the iron-worker, will survive; but the great run of craftsmen -do not. - -Now, with due respect to the slickness and perfection of the best -machine-work, we enjoy it because of the use that it fulfills: it may -incidentally achieve significant form, but no one retains a pickle -bottle, beautifully shaped though Messrs. Heinz and Co.’s are, for this -reason: it was meant for pickles and it vanishes with the pickles. -This is not merely true of today: it is true of all ages: the common -utensils of life return to the dust, whereas those things that hold -the imprint of man’s imagination--the amphoræ of the Greek potters, -the fragile crane-necked bottles of the Persians, the seals of the -Egyptians--are preserved from the rubbish heap, no matter how frail -they may be or how small their intrinsic value. - -There is something in man that compels him to respect the human imprint -of art: he lives more nobly surrounded by his own reflections, as a -god might live. The very rage of iconoclasm which the Mohammedans and -Puritans and eighteenth-century liberals exhibited betrayed a deep -respect for the power of art; for we destroy the things that threaten -our existence. Art, in a certain sense, is the spiritual varnish -that we lay on material things, to insure their preservation: on its -lowest terms, beauty is justified because it has “survival value.” -The fact that houses which bear the living imprint of the mind are -irreplaceable is what prevents them from being quickly and callously -replaced. Wren’s churches are preserved beyond their period of -desuetude by Wren’s personality. This process is just the opposite to -that fostered by the machine-system, and it explains why, in the long -run, machine-work may be unsatisfactory and uneconomical--too quickly -degraded. - -Art, in fact, is one of the main ways in which we escape the vicious -circle of economic activity. According to the conventional economist, -our economic life has but three phases: production, distribution, -and consumption. We work to eat so that we may eat to work. This is -a fairly accurate portrait of life in an early industrial town; but -it does not apply to the economic processes of a civilized community. -Everywhere, even in regions of difficulty, something more comes out of -production than the current income and the current saving of capital: -sometimes it is leisure and play, sometimes it is religion, philosophy, -and science, and sometimes it is art. In the creation of any permanent -work of art the processes of dissipation and consumption are stayed: -hence the only civilized criterion of a community’s economic life -is not the amount of things produced, but the durability of things -created. A community with a low rate of production and a high standard -of creation will in the long run be physically richer than a modern -city in which the gains of industry are frittered away in evanescent, -uncreative expenditures. What matters is the ratio of production to -creation. - -Here lies the justification of the modern architect. Cut off though -he is from the actual processes of building, he nevertheless remains -the sole surviving craftsman who maintains the relation towards the -whole structure that the old handicraft workers used to enjoy in -connection with their particular job. The architect can still leave -his imprint, and even in the severely utilitarian factory he can take -the simple forms of the engineer and turn them into a superb structure -like Messrs. Helmle and Corbett’s Fletcher Building in New York. To -the extent that honest engineering is better than fake architecture, -genuine architecture is better than engineering: for it strikes the -same esthetic and humane chord that painting and sculpture appeal to -by themselves. The freedom to depart from arbitrary and mechanical -precedent, the freedom to project new forms which will more adequately -meet his problem are essential to the architect. Up to the present he -has been able, for the most part, to exercise this freedom only on -traditional buildings, like churches and libraries and auditoriums, -which are outside the reaches of the present commercial regime and have -therefore some prospect of durability. - -But before the whole mass of contemporary building will be ready to -receive the imprint of the architect, and before the handicrafts -re-enter the modern building to give the luster of permanence to its -decorations and fixtures, there will have to be a pretty thoroughgoing -reorientation in our economic life. Whilst buildings are erected to -increase site values, whilst houses are produced in block to be sold -to the first wretch who must put a roof over his family’s head, it is -useless to dwell upon the ministrations of art; and, unfortunately, too -much of our building today rests upon this basis and exhibits all the -infirmities of our present economic structure. - -From the aspect of our well-to-do suburbs and our newly-planned -industrial towns, from the beginnings of a sound functional -architecture in some of our schools and factories, it is easy to -see what the architecture of our various regions might be if it had -the opportunity to work itself out in a coherent pattern. For the -present, however, it is impossible to say with any certainty whether -our architects are doomed to be extruded by mechanism, or whether they -will have the opportunity to restore to our machine-system some of -the freedom of an earlier regime; and I have no desire to burden this -discussion with predictions and exhortations. But if the conclusions we -have reached are sound, it is only the second possibility that holds -out any promise to the good life. - - -VI - -So far we have considered the regional and industrial bearing of -architecture: it now remains to examine briefly its relation to the -community itself. - -In the building of our cities and villages the main _mores_ we have -carried over have been those of the pioneer. We have seen how the -animus of the pioneer, “mine and move,” is antagonistic to the settled -life out of which ordered industries and a great architecture grow. -We have seen also how this animus was deepened in the nineteenth -century by the extraordinary temptation to profit by the increase in -land-increments which followed the growth of population, the result -being, as Mr. Henry George saw when he came back to the cities of -the East from a part of California that was still in the throes of -settlement--progress _and_ poverty. - -Now, to increase the population of a town and to raise the nominal -values in ground rents is almost a moral imperative in our American -communities. That is why our zoning laws, which attempt to regulate the -use of land and provide against unfair competition in obtaining the -unearned increment, almost universally leave a loophole through which -the property owners, by mutual consent, may transform the character of -the neighborhood for more intensive uses and higher ground rents. All -our city planning, and more and more our architecture itself, is done -with reference to prospective changes in the value of real estate. It -is nothing to the real estate speculator that the growth of a city -destroys the very purpose for which it may legitimately exist, as the -growth of Atlantic City into a suburb of Broadway and Chestnut Street -ruined its charm as a seaside fishing village. Sufficient unto the day -is the evil he creates. - -Most of the important changes that must be effected in relation to -industry and the land cannot be accomplished without departing from -these dominant _mores_--from the customs and laws and uneasy standards -of ethics which we carry over from the days of our continental -conquest. The pioneer inheritance of the miner, coupled with the -imperial inheritance of the hunter-warrior, out for loot, lie at the -bottom of our present-day social structure; and it is useless to expect -any vital changes in the milieu of architecture until the miner and the -hunter are subordinated to relatively more civilized types, concerned -with the culture of life, rather than with its exploitation and -destruction. - -I am aware that the statement of the problem in these elementary terms -will seem a little crude and unfamiliar in America where, in the midst -of our buzzing urban environment, we lose sight of the underlying -primitive reality, or--which is worse--speak vaguely of the “cave-man” -unleashed in modern civilization. I do not deny that there are other -elements in our makeup and situation that play an important part; but -it is enough to bring forward here the notion that our concern with -physical utilities and with commercial values is something more than -an abstract defect in our philosophy. On the contrary, it seems to me -to inhere in the dominant occupations of the country, and it is less -to be overcome by moralizing and exhortation, than to be grown out of, -by taking pains to provide for the ascendancy and renewal of the more -humane occupations. - -Our communities have grown blindly, and, escaping the natural -limitations which curbed even the Roman engineers, have not been -controlled, on the other hand, by any normative ideal. One step in -the direction of departing from our pioneer customs and habits would -be to consider what the nature of a city is, and what functions it -performs. The dominant, abstract culture of the nineteenth century -was blithely unconcerned with these questions, but, as I have already -pointed out, the Puritans not merely recognized their importance, but -regulated the plan and layout of the city accordingly. The notion that -there is anything arbitrary in imposing a limitation upon the area and -population of a city is absurd: the limits have already been laid down -in the physical conditions of human nature, as Mr. Frederic Harrison -once wisely observed, in the fact that men do not walk comfortably -faster than three miles an hour, nor can they spend on the physical -exertion of locomotion and exercise more than a few hours in every -twenty-four. With respect to the needs of recreation, home-life, and -health, the growth of a city to the point where the outlying citizen -must travel two hours a day in the subway between his office and his -place of work is unintelligent and arbitrary. - -A city, properly speaking, does not exist by the accretion of houses, -but by the association of human beings. When the accretion of houses -reaches such a point of congestion or expansion that human association -becomes difficult, the place ceases to be a city. The institutions -that make up the city--schools, clubs, libraries, gymnasia, theaters, -churches, and so forth--can be traced in one form or another back -to the primitive community: they function on the basis of immediate -intercourse, and they can serve through their individual units only a -limited number of people. Should the population of a local community -be doubled, all its civic equipment must be doubled too; otherwise the -life that functions through these institutions and opportunities will -lapse and disappear. - -It is not my purpose to discuss in detail the various devices by which -our practice of endless growth and unlimited increment may be limited. -Once the necessary conversion in faith and morals has taken place, the -other things will come easily: for example, the social appropriation of -unearned land-increments, and the exercise of the town-planner’s art to -limit the tendency of a community to straggle beyond its boundaries. - -While a great many other ideas and measures are of prime importance for -the good life of the community, that which concerns its architectural -expression is the notion of the community as limited in numbers, and in -area; and as formed, not merely by the agglomeration of people, but by -their relation to definite social and economic institutions. To express -these relations clearly, to embody them in buildings and roads and -gardens in which each individual structure will be subordinated to the -whole--this is the end of community planning. - -With the coherence and stability indicated by this method of planning, -architectural effect would not lie in the virtuosity of the architect -or in the peculiar ornateness and originality of any particular -building: it would tend to be diffused, so that the humblest shop would -share in the triumph with the most conspicuous public building. There -are examples of this order of comprehensive architectural design in -hundreds of little villages and towns in pre-industrial Europe--to say -nothing of a good handful in pre-industrial America--and community -planning would make it once more our daily practice. That it can be -done again the examples of Letchworth and Welwyn in England, and -numerous smaller gardened cities created by municipal authorities -in England and other parts of Europe, bear evidence; and where the -precepts of Mr. Ebenezer Howard have been to any degree followed, -architecture has been quick to benefit. - -The difference between community planning and the ordinary method of -city-extension and suburb-building has been very well put in a recent -report to the American Institute of Architects, by the Committee on -Community Planning. “Community planning,” says the report, “does not -ask by what desperate means a city of 600,000 people can add another -400,000 during the next generation, nor how a city of seven millions -may enlarge its effective borders to include 29,000,000. It begins, -rather, at the other end, and it asks with Mr. Ebenezer Howard how -big must a city be to perform all of its social, educational, and -industrial functions. It attempts to establish minima and maxima -for different kinds of communities, depending upon their character -and function. If the established practices of industry, commerce, -and finance tend to produce monstrous agglomerations which do not -contribute to human welfare or happiness, community planning must -question these established practices, since the values they create -have nothing to do with the essential welfare of the community itself, -and since the condition thus created is inimical to the stable, -architectural development of the community.” - -The normative idea of the garden-city and the garden-village is -the corrective for the flatulent and inorganic conception of -city-development that we labor with, and under, today. So far from -being a strange importation from Europe, the garden-city is nothing -more or less than a sophisticated recovery of a form that we once -enjoyed on our Atlantic seaboard, and lost through our sudden and -almost uncontrollable access of natural resources and people. Here and -there an enterprising and somewhat benevolent industrial corporation -has attempted to carry out some of the principles of garden-city -development; and the United States Housing Corporation and the Shipping -Board had begun to build many admirable communities, when the war -brought this vast initiative to an end. These precedents are better -than nothing, it goes without saying, but there will have to be a -pretty thorough reorientation in our economic and social life before -the garden-city will be anything more than a slick phrase, without -content or power. - -Until our communities are ready to undertake the sort of community -planning that leads to garden-cities, it will be empty eloquence -to talk about the future of American architecture. Sheltered as an -enjoyment for the prosperous minority, or used as a skysign for the -advertisement of business, architecture will still await its full -opportunity for creative achievement. - -The signs of promise are plenty, and if I have dealt with the darker -side of the picture and have occasionally overemphasized the weaknesses -and defects of the American tradition, it is only because in our -present appreciation of what the American architect has already given -form to, we are likely to forget the small area these achievements -occupy. So far we have achieved patches of good building; more than -once we have achieved the _mot juste_, but we have not learnt the -more difficult art of consecutive discourse. With respect to the -architecture of the whole community, medieval Boston and medieval -New Amsterdam had more to boast than their magnificently endowed -successors. Just as Mr. Babbitt’s great ancestor, Scadder, transformed -a swamp into a thriving metropolis by the simple method of calling it -New Eden, so do we tend to lighten our burdens by calling them the -“blessings of progress”; but it does not avail. Our mechanical and -metropolitan civilization, with all its genuine advances, has let -certain essential human elements drop out of its scheme; and until we -recover these elements our civilization will be at loose ends, and our -architecture will unerringly express this situation. - -Home, meeting-place, and factory; polity, culture, and art have -still to be united and wrought together, and this task is one of the -fundamental tasks of our civilization. Once that union is effected, the -long breach between art and life, which began with the Renaissance, -will be brought to an end. The magnitude of our task might seem a -little disheartening, were it not for the fact that, “against or with -our will,” our civilization is perpetually being modified and altered. -If in less than a hundred years the feudal civilization of Japan could -adopt our modern mechanical gear, there is nothing to prevent our own -civilization from recovering once more its human base--nothing, that -is, except our own desires, aims, habits, and ends. This is an ironic -consolation, perhaps, but the remedy it offers is real. - - - - -_ENVOI_ - - -_The aristocracies of the world have never doubted the supremacy of the -home and garden and temple over all the baser mechanisms of existence, -and the folk-civilizations out of which aristocracies have so often -risen have never strayed far from these realities. In the Norse fables, -the dwarfs are regarded as queer monsters, because they are always -“busy people” who have no pride or joy except in the work they perform -and the mischief they cause._ - -_The great heresy of the modern world is that it ceased to worship the -Lords of Life, who made the rivers flow, caused the animals to mate, -and brought forth the yearly miracle of vegetation: it prostrated -itself, on the contrary, before the dwarfs, with their mechanical -ingenuity, and the giants, with their imbecile power. Today our lives -are perpetually menaced by these “busy people”; we are surrounded -by their machines, and for worship, we turn their prayer wheels of -red-tape._ - -_It will not always be so; that would be monstrous. Sooner or later -we will learn to pick our way out of the débris that the dwarfs, the -gnomes, and the giants have created; eventually, to use Henry Adams’ -figure, the sacred mother will supplant the dynamo. The prospects -for our architecture are bound up with a new orientation towards the -things that are symbolized in the home, the garden and the temple; for -architecture sums up the civilization it enshrines, and the mass of our -buildings can never be better or worse than the institutions that have -shaped them._ - - - - -NOTES ON BOOKS - - -I HISTORICAL BACKGROUND - -The best introductions to the historic setting of our architecture -and civilization are the local guide-books and histories. See, for -example, Stokes’s excellent and exhaustive Iconography of Manhattan, -and the Memorial History of Boston, edited by Justin Winsor. Both -are profusely illustrated. In the wave of civic enthusiasm that -swept over the country in the ’nineties, many local descriptions and -histories were written. For the most part, they are loose, rambling, -credulous, and devoid of sociological insight: but occasionally there -is a nugget in the matrix. Powell’s Historic Towns series covers broad -ground. As regional histories, Weeden’s Economic and Social History -of New England, and Mr. Samuel Eliot Morison’s Maritime History of -Massachusetts, stand in a class by themselves: in them we have the -beginnings of what W. H. Riehl called a “natural history” of the human -community. - - -II ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY - -Ever since colonial architecture was reappreciated after the Civil -War, a large amount of material has appeared on the early architecture -of the colonies. Before 1900 the greater part of this was uncritical. -Isham and Brown’s work on the early architecture of Connecticut and -Rhode Island made a new departure, which Messrs. Cousins and Riley’s -studies of the architecture of Salem and Philadelphia have carried on. -Mr. Fiske Kimball’s compendious study of the Domestic Architecture of -the Colonies and the Early Republic brings together a large amount of -authenticated data. Articles and illustrations dealing with particular -aspects of our pre-industrial architecture, or with particular -regions--like the Lebanon Valley in Pennsylvania--are scattered through -the architectural periodicals. Beyond the early republican period, -our architectural histories come to an end. Works like John Bullock’s -The American Cottage Builder, New York: 1854, occur in almost every -old library and are full of interesting data. To fill the gap in -later years we must have recourse to a comprehensive German treatise, -Das Amerikanische Haus, by F. R. Vogel, Berlin: 1910. This may be -supplemented by Homes in City and Country, by Russell Sturgis, J. W. -Root and others, New York: 1893. - - -III BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES - -Where formal description leaves off, the biographies of our principal -architects enter. The following books traverse in order the entire -period from the Revolution to the present generation. - -Samuel McIntire: His Life and Work. F. Cousins and P. M. Riley, Boston: -1916. - -The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch. Ellen Susan Bulfinch, New -York: 1896. - -The Journal of Latrobe. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, New York: 1905. - -Henry Hobson Richardson. Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, Boston: 1888. - -Charles Follen McKim. A. H. Granger, Boston: 1913. - -Daniel H. Burnham. Charles Moore, New York: 1921. - -The Autobiography of an Idea. Louis H. Sullivan, New York: 1924. - - -IV CONTEMPORARY WORK - -Portfolios of work by contemporary architects are so numerous that -to single out any would be invidious. The files of the Architectural -Record, the American Architect, House and Garden, and Arts and -Decorations--to mention only the more available periodicals--should be -consulted particularly for illustrations. - - -V ESTHETICS - -As an introduction to architecture in general the formal textbooks -are occasionally useful. Let me commend particularly, however, -Viollet-le-Duc’s The Habitations of Man in all Ages. The archæology -and ethnology of this work are, it goes without saying, outmoded: -but for all that it has a permanent interest, and it is high time -that someone took up Viollet-le-Duc’s theme and redeveloped it in -the light of contemporary research. While I am restoring a classic, -let me add another: Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ruskin -is disregarded nowadays, as he was in his own generation, by people -who have not yet caught up with him. His insight and unflinching -intelligence are both needed, however, and it is no longer necessary -to warn the student against his quirks and solecisms. Ruskin wrote -the apology for modernism in art when he said: “There would be hope -if we could change palsy for puerility,” and he anticipated modern -decoration when he said: “I believe the only manner of rich ornament -that is open to us is geometrical color mosaic, and that much might -result from strenuously taking up that mode of design.” For that -matter, Ruskin even predicted the architectural use of steel frames. -The Seven Lamps of Architecture closes on a prophetic word which means -far more to us today than to Ruskin’s contemporaries. “I could smile,” -he said, “when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach -of worldly science and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at -the beginning of new days. There is thunder on the horizon, as well -as dawn.” We who have seen the lightning strike may well reread these -words.... - -As for modern books on architecture and esthetics, let me recommend -a handful. Among them note W. R. Lethaby’s Form in Civilization. -In sharp contrast to Professor Lethaby is Geoffrey Scott’s The -Architecture of Humanism, Boston: 1914. I do not accept Mr. Scott’s -main position; but there is something to be said for it, and he says -it well. Both points of view are embraced in the distinction Mr. -Claude Bragdon makes between the Organic and the Arranged, in one of -Six Lectures on Architecture. From a limited field, Rhys Carpenter’s -Esthetic Basis of Greek Art reaches conclusions which illuminate -almost every province of esthetics. There is an able exposition of the -absolutist, mechanical point of view in Vers Une Architecture, by the -architect whose pen-name is “Le Corbusier-Saugnier.” In Speculations, -Mr. T. E. Hulme presents an interesting philosophic apology for -mechanism. - - -VI SOCIOLOGY - -For the civic and sociological background of this study, consult -Professor Patrick Geddes’s Cities in Evolution, London: 1915, likewise -his Principles of Sociology in Relation to Economics. The latter can -be obtained through Le Play House, 65 Belgrave Road, London, S. W. 1. -The chapter on Westminster, by Mr. Victor Branford, in Our Social -Inheritance, London: 1919, is a unique introduction to the direct study -of social institutions and their architectural forms. The other volumes -in The Making of the Future series, edited by Messrs. Geddes and -Branford, should also have an important place on the student’s shelf. - -Light on our more immediate problems will be found in the files of the -Journal of the American Institute of Architects. Note particularly Mr. -F. L. Ackermann’s article on Craftsmen--Machines--Speed--Credit, June, -1923, and Mr. Benton Mackaye’s article on the proposed Appalachian -Trail. See, also, the Power number of the Survey Graphic. The report -of the Committee on Community Planning of the American Institute of -Architects (1924) should be read in connection with the last chapter: -it treats in detail the difficulties that the architect confronts under -our present economic and social order. See, likewise, Mr. Ebenezer -Howard’s classic Garden Cities of Tomorrow. - -FINIS - - * * * * * - -Transcriber’s Notes: - -Punctuation has been made consistent. - -Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in -the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have -been corrected. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STICKS AND STONES *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for -copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very -easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation -of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project -Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may -do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected -by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark -license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country other than the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where - you are located before using this eBook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that: - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of -the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set -forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, -Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up -to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website -and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without -widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our website which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. |