THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD AND THE CLASSIC REVIVAL
After the close of the Revolutionary War came a period of comparatively
rapid evolution in architecture. This phase of post-Colonial evolution
reached its culminating point in the signal successes and almost
ludicrous failures of the Greek or Classic Revival, successes and
failures that occurred simultaneously, strange as it may seem, though
caused by the same influences, and are still to be seen in the older
cities of our land, oftentimes standing in close proximity.
Historically considered, this process of swift evolution is attributable
to several causes of which the chief were the rapidly increasing
affluence and prosperity of the new republic and the general approval
with which French influences and fashions were regarded. In the era of
vigorous mercantile and industrial reaction after the stress and strain
of a long and exhausting war, it was but natural that not only
merchants, manufacturers and other men of substance, but also whole
communities as well, should seek to express in structures domestic and
public the proper pride and confidence of their new-found political
importance and freedom. New social and civic demands were to be met and
architecture was quick to reflect the spirit of growth and progress. In
a measure, too, there were the ravages of shot, shell and fire and the
decay incident to a long financial depression to be repaired. With an
access of material prosperity came also an access of economic elegancies
and men of means and position demanded that their domestic surroundings
should measure up to new standards of luxury. When they found themselves
in circumstances to build anew, as they not infrequently did, their
houses, while usually following much the old arrangement of plan and
number of rooms, displayed new influences of ornamental detail and the
alteration or addition of features in conformity to the new mode.
Furthermore--and this was by no means the least factor affecting the new
conditions--in the general social overturn, wrought by the event of war,
the Loyalists, who represented a large portion of the wealth and
refinement of the Colonial period, had been ruined, dispossessed of
their estates, driven from the country or had withdrawn to England or
some of the other Colonies and their places had oftentimes been taken
by persons who had hitherto held a humbler state of life. These men of
new wealth and standing, who owed their advancement to their warm
espousal of the American cause, built themselves houses to accord with
their recently acquired rank and sought by the fineness of their
dwellings, as is the wont of _parvenus_, to make up for lack of birth
and breeding. It was but natural, too, in all these cases just
mentioned, that popular taste should incline toward an architectural
vogue that was French in its immediate inspiration rather than toward
any style whose precedents were to be found in the Mother Country whose
recent political domination was still held in bitter remembrance.
Architecturally considered, this evolution that culminated in the full
fruition of the Classic Revival shows three influences that are to be
reckoned in any attempt at its analysis. In the first place, there was
the Adam phase of the Georgian mode which had begun to find pronounced
expression in the American Colonies from about 1770 onward. The greater
refinements of this type, as analysed in preceding chapters, were
strongly in evidence up to 1800 or shortly afterward and their Adam
provenance was clearly distinguishable. In the second place, there were
the carpenter-designed and built houses of plainly defined Georgian
ancestry. During the eighteenth century, the public mind had become so
thoroughly imbued with the Georgian spirit of architectural classicism,
tempered and modified, to be sure, by conveyance through a British
medium, but classicism all the same, that even the most unpretentious
little houses gave evidence of the prevailing influence in one form or
another. It might be a house door with pilasters and pediment or it
might be a mantel. The pilasters flanking the doorway might have lost
all traces of near kinship to any of the classic orders, so far as their
details were concerned, and so might the pediment also, but the mere
fact that they were there showed plainly the source whence they were
derived. These carpenter-designed-and-built houses of the end of the
eighteenth century may be regarded as a residuum of the architectural
spirit of the epoch. Last of all, there was the pure classic influence,
the circumstances of whose transplanting to America we shall examine in
detail.
Both the architecture of the Georgian period and the architecture of the
Classic Revival were essentially classic in spirit but there was a vast
difference between their several manifestations of classicality and it
is most important that we should grasp that fundamental difference. The
classicism of Georgian architecture was free in its spirit and
interpretation and was elastic in its adaptability to the requirements
of domestic or public edifices. The architects who applied it were
blessed with common sense and while they incorporated a distinct element
of formal order in their work, they were not trammelled by so narrow a
conventionalism that they feared to make such adaptations as their own
original genius prompted, provided they were consistent with the source
of general inspiration. In other words, the classicism of Georgian
architecture was classicism humanised and rationalised by transmission
through the channels of the Renaissance or the labours of such
discriminating students of antiquity as the Brothers Adam. It was
elastic and suited alike to public edifices and abodes of both high and
low degree. It was also direct and simple and had the dignity and
vitality that art unaffected and ingenuous always shows. For this very
reason it was so convincing and so long retained its hold upon popular
taste.
The classicism of the Classic Revival, on the other hand, was
essentially and unalterably rigid in its adherence to the forms of
antiquity and the archæological manner of applying those forms. It was
not an adaptation, it was, in very truth, a _revival_ of the modes of
two thousand years ago, a gigantic exhibition of architectural
archæology. The strength of Georgian architecture lay in the freedom and
elasticity of its classicism and its ready flexibility to adaptation.
The weakness of the architecture of the Classic Revival was in its
rigidity and inflexible resistance to efforts to adapt it to varied
modern requirements. In the South, it is true, it showed a few traces of
freer interpretation, perhaps because in some cases the artisans were
incapable of rendering the accurate reproductions executed by better
skilled Northern mechanics but, even with this slight allowance, the
stamp of rigidity remained indelible.
Despite a degree of stiffness and pedantry, however, the architecture of
the Classic Revival, in its more felicitous manifestations, displayed
not a little real excellence, stateliness and grace. Many truly
important structures were built during the period of classic ascendancy
and to-day, after years of vicissitude in popular taste, their charm of
grace and quiet dignity is still fresh and enduring and constantly
reminds us of the courtliness of the generation that wisely planned and
achieved them. In its less regulated forms, on the contrary, probably
due to the ambitious contractor rather than to even an inferior
architect, the architecture of the Classic Revival was often unsuitable
in its application, uncomfortable and sometimes ridiculous. In the fore
part of the nineteenth century, classicism became an obsession among
builders whose sole aim seems to have been to transform each city in
the land into a second Athens or Rome. Everywhere could be seen
buildings that, if not planned on classic lines in their interior
divisions or their side elevations, were at least adorned with Greek and
Roman orders. This church or bank was embellished with a portico of
Corinthian columns, that one across the street had a corresponding
portico of severest Doric character while another, perhaps, around the
corner rejoiced in graceful Ionic pillars and, doubtless, just beyond
was a house whose owner took a proper pride in the impeccable purity of
his Tuscan piazza. Sometimes all the orders got inextricably jumbled
together on the same edifice and overrun with a veritable forest of
acanthus leaves and anthemia, and yet the effect was not wholly bad,
however much it might distress a purist, because the builders, in the
exuberance and freshness of their vigour, could not help producing some
vitality, although they were trying to be scrupulously accurate while
expressing themselves in a medium they did not fully understand. These
unseemly mix-ups of architectural botany or botanical architecture,
whichever one prefers to call it, were not of common occurrence it is
pleasant to record. They were the exception, and served to lend point to
the really excellent and creditable things that were achieved at a time
when a decorous formality went hand in hand with cultivated taste and
not a little vigour of thought.
The mutation of architectural style from the Georgian mode to that of
the Classic Revival was virtually synchronous and correspondent with the
sway of the Empire styles in furniture, the decorative arts and personal
attire. The Classic Revival style is altogether post-Colonial in date
and its exotic impetus and inspiration, derived from the France of the
First Napoleon and grafted upon a Georgian stock, cannot be regarded as
essentially a part of the logical process of architectural evolution
which had hitherto progressed by gradual and, for the most part, well
nigh imperceptible steps from one traditional form to another.
The vigorous classicism of the Georgian period, thanks to its filtration
through Renaissance channels, was elastic and appropriate in its
application. Even the elegancies and refinements of the Adam school of
Georgian expression, though drawn direct from the store of classic
antiquity, were judiciously adapted to current needs by masters of the
art of discrimination. But the type of classicism exemplified in the
Classic Revival was deliberately transplanted bodily and _de novo_ from
the ancient world by Napoleonic fiat, in like manner with the designs
for furniture and the patterns to dominate the products of the other
decorative arts. The transplanters sometimes showed a predilection for
heavy Roman forms rather than for the delicacy of Greek refinements, and
the transplanting was occasionally done in a clumsy way with little
apparent regard for fitness or the principles of sane adaptation. With
all the wealth of antiquity to draw from, it would have been strange
indeed if the fautors of revived classicism had not produced much that
was both exceedingly worthy and beautiful. As pointed out before,
whatever defect or weakness characterised the expression of the Classic
Revival style, viewed in the aggregate, is not to be attributed to the
forms employed but to the manner in which those forms were sometimes
misapplied and forced into uses or combinations to which they were ill
suited.
This neo-classic inspiration of Napoleonic French contrivance found
favour in America, thanks to the strong Francophile sentiment prevailing
in the latter part of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the
nineteenth, which even dictated the colour and design of ladies’ gowns
and their method of coiffure. In the able hands of such men as Charles
Bulfinch, the neo-classic manifestation well merited all the popular
approval accorded it. It is scarcely fair, however, to put Bulfinch
forth, at least in his earlier period, as a typical exponent of Classic
Revival architecture. He was, it is true, imbued with the new
influences but he had too much creative instinct and too much sense of
fitness ever to descend to mere copying or wholesale borrowing. Besides,
he was, one might say, by date of birth and training, a product of the
Adam age and, by native bias, in full sympathy with its delicate and
refined methods of expression. Indeed, we may properly regard Bulfinch
as marking the transition from the Adam or last phase of Georgian
architecture to the modes of the Classic Revival for he combined in his
work many of the best features of both. He knew how and when to employ
Adam delicacy and refinement of detail or Adam exuberance of
embellishment without falling into a surfeit of finicky and saccharine
over-elaboration; he knew also when and where to use classic boldness
and vigour and even classic austerity without sinking from classic grace
into any of the heavy Roman forms of brutal vulgarity and military
bombast that sometimes marred the work of later exponents of Classic
Revival inspiration.
Bulfinch was possessed of consummate good taste, a fine sense of
proportion and a genius for judicious adaptation. He was educated while
the Adam influence was at its height, had broadened his field by
observation and foreign travel and began to practise just before the
first fresh impetus of direct classicism was launched. It was,
therefore, quite natural that, with his trained perception and happy
faculty of selection and combination, he should have picked out the best
in each school, and peculiarly appropriate that his work should
exemplify the transitional stage by which one was merged into the other
for, in the evolutionary process, already alluded to, the purest form of
neo-classic design found its analogue in the earlier Adam practice.
Along with Bulfinch, as a representative of the transition stage, must
be classed Samuel McIntire, of Salem, whose work both public and
domestic has always been justly esteemed. He, too, retained a large
share of Adam elegance and wealth of detail which he successfully
incorporated with motifs and methods of treatment inspired by the more
recent impetus of classicism. To McIntire’s influence may be attributed
much of the slender delicacy of proportion and the attenuation of
pillars and pilasters--this attenuation had a counterpart in some of the
contemporary New York Dutch design--so noticeable in a great deal of New
England architecture of this period. He eliminated all grossness and
pared down the dimensions of columns while he drew out their length to a
degree that had no precedent in ancient practice and would have shocked
the French purists under whose auspices the new movement
[Illustration: ANDREW SAFFORD PORCH, SALEM, MASS.
Transition to Classic Revival.]
[Illustration: INTERIOR DOORWAY, NICHOLS HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.]
[Illustration:
Photograph by C. V. Buck, from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON.
Classic Revival.]
[Illustration: GIRARD COLLEGE, PHILADELPHIA.
Classic Revival.]
had been inaugurated. Despite these departures from architectural and
archæological orthodoxy, however, McIntire’s work is replete with
exquisite charm and is justified by applying to it the touchstone of
good taste.
Latrobe, McComb, in his later work, L’Enfant, Hoban, Dr. Thornton,
Thomas Jefferson, Strickland and other noted architects of the last
years of the eighteenth century and the fore part of the nineteenth
followed classic precedent somewhat more closely in the practice of
their profession and may, therefore, be considered the most faithful and
typical exponents of Classic Revival principles. Much of their work is
noble in conception and peculiarly suited to the monumental character of
the buildings they designed.
The influence of the Classic Revival was to be noted earliest in public
edifices such as the Boston State House on Beacon Hill, the New Theatre
or the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia or, most of all, in the
Capitol at Washington in the design, erection and restoration or
rebuilding of which so many of the most eminent architects of the day
had a share. There the classic orders were reproduced with faithful
accuracy in combinations that displayed their chaste beauty and noble
proportions in the most dignified and impressive manner. Capitals of
impeccable exactitude and fidelity to their prototypes, pediments and
entablatures of due proportion, triglyphs, mutules, modillion brackets,
acanthus leaves, egg and dart mouldings, dentils, anthemia and all the
other structural and ornamental features characteristic of either Greek
or Roman architecture became familiar objects to the public gaze and
exercised their subtle but powerful agency in the education of a
disciplined and elegant sense of architectural propriety.
The architecture of the Classic Revival was undoubtedly at its best in
public edifices or in large and imposing mansions which afforded
sufficient opportunity to display its ample characteristics. Such
structures, moreover, did not require any great stretch of ingenuity in
making adaptations. While columns might have to be lengthened out or
features foreign to classic conception added, the task of accommodation
rarely offered serious difficulties to be overcome. In the hands of such
men as Bulfinch or McIntire, at the outset, or of Latrobe, Hoban,
Strickland and their various able contemporaries, the Classic Revival
gave us many truly admirable structures instinct with dignity and grace.
In the hands of the too confident and insufficiently educated mechanic
who ventured to try his hand at designing, it was a very different thing
indeed and its remaining examples of this inferior type can scarcely be
viewed with pleasure.
If one may trace an analogy between the Adam mode and the best
manifestations of the Classic Revival with its stately structures full
of breadth, dignity and repose, so may one also trace with ease an
analogy between the carpenter-designed-and-built houses of the end of
the Georgian period and much of the insignificant domestic work of the
Classic Revival. In other words, the elegant Adam creations bore
virtually the same relation to the contemporary carpenter-designed
houses as did the larger and serenely chaste compositions of the Classic
Revival to the small and inexpensive attempts on the part of ambitious
builders to apply the same style to little, cramped structures for which
it was manifestly unfit. There was this difference, however. The
carpenter-architects of the end of the Georgian period were far superior
in discrimination and taste to their successors, who tried to make up
for their lack of knowledge by ill-judged essays that succeeded only in
being ridiculous. Their tiny, temple-fronted houses were not domestic
and were as unreal and architecturally unsatisfying as stage settings
viewed from the rear. They were bombastic and pompous--one feels almost
like saying “pompious”--and displayed no real merit or refinement to
back up their preposterous pretensions to a dignity and state not at all
in keeping with their true purpose. The so-called “carpenters’ classic”
mode, which was really a chastened and restrained form of the debased
Classic Revival style, was infinitely preferable because it was simple
and did not pretend to be something it was not.
Among the thoroughly striking and important buildings erected in this
era that ought to be mentioned, besides those already referred to, are
the Sub-Treasury in New York, Girard College in Philadelphia, the
Philadelphia Custom House, and the Cathedral in Baltimore. These are
typical buildings and, for that reason, worthy of being kept in mind,
but the list of creditable examples might be added to almost
indefinitely.
As a direct result of the Classic Revival influence there was a certain
amount of modest and agreeable adaptation which created a pleasant
domestic episode in the annals of American architecture. Examples of
this modified classic school are unpretentious and, for the reason that
they mark no ambitious flights, commendable in their own field. For want
of a better name we have been accustomed to call this architectural
species “Carpenters’ Classic.” Whatever its shortcomings--and not much
can be expected of it for it makes no pretence--it was infinitely better
than much that followed it.
In contemplating the story of the Classic Revival one can find much to
be thankful for.
[Illustration: WINDOW DETAIL, HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Classic Revival.]
[Illustration: DOOR DETAIL, HOUSE IN PHILADELPHIA.
Classic Revival.]
[Illustration: STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA, SOUTH FRONT. 1733.]
[Illustration: HALLWAY, STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA.]
Let its failures be what they may, it was in large measure due to the
work done during the period of its ascendancy that we owe a certain
tradition and precedent in public work that has wrought for good and is
still working in our own day.