Seeing how Birmingham has grown and prospered, it is interesting to
consider what might have been the result if the town and its outskirts
had not been fairly pleasant for well-to-do people to reside in.
Fortunately, there is one extensive west-end suburb--Edgbaston--which
forms a suitable, healthy, and desirable residential locality for the
Birmingham upper classes. But for the existence of this well laid out--I
was going to say genteel, but Heaven forbid--neighbourhood, a very large
number of its wealthiest manufacturers and professional men would
doubtless now reside some distance from the city. An increasing number
of those who work in Birmingham now live--at least have their
houses--outside its limits, owing to facilities afforded by the
railways; but Edgbaston is still a rich, well-populated suburb within a
very easy distance of the centre of the city. Mr. Schnadhorst, when he
pulled political strings in Birmingham, regarded Edgbaston as a fine,
good piece of vantage ground from an electoral point of view, since it
kept so many rich residents within the pale of the town, and added so
much to its influential voting power.
Edgbaston is chiefly, I might almost say entirely, the property of the
Calthorpes, and the late Lord Calthorpe, also his predecessor, were wise
in their day and generation, and they had agents who were shrewd and
far-seeing. They saw the importance of reserving Edgbaston and laying it
out as an attractive, quiet suburb, and the late lord at least lived to
see it covered with leasehold residences, many of them--indeed a very
large number of them--of considerable value and importance. When these
leases expire, as some of them will now before many years are over, and
the noble ground landlord begins to draw in his net, what a big haul he
will make in the way of reversions of the properties that have been
built upon his land!
Some of these Edgbaston houses are not only large and commodious, but
are architecturally handsome and artistic. Birmingham has been fortunate
during the last thirty or forty years in having two or three local
architects who have not only possessed professional skill but also
taste. The old square, solid, "money box" houses, so much esteemed by
our fathers, are rarely erected now, but in their place residences of a
more attractive design and artistic type.
The Gothic revival has spread to domestic architecture, and the old,
dreadfully-symmetrical brick and stuccoed house, and the hybrid Italian
villa, make way for residential structures with gabled roofs, pointed
arch windows, red tiles instead of dull-coloured slates, and attractive
detail and ornamentation. In looking at such houses, one can hardly fail
to be struck by the difference that may be effected by using the
simplest materials--but using them with discrimination and taste. One
architect may plan a house which will be plain to ugliness, the bricks
laid in the most severe and commonplace fashion, and the outlines of the
design--if design it can be called--devoid of any grace or variety. No
projections to break up the dull flatness and give light and shade; no
attempt to relieve the unmitigated square, hut-like appearance of the
building. Another puts a pointed roof to his house, pierces it with
pretty windows that have form without diminishing the light. He runs
some courses of brick work round his building laid in diagonal or
otherwise diversified lines. He places a porch at the entrance which has
a touch of picturesqueness, and the result is a house that is pleasing
to look upon, has at all events a suggestion of form and appearance,
and all without any corresponding expense, because he has used his
material with skill and taste.
In Birmingham we have seen how much may be done in this direction in
various ways, especially in the matter of the Board Schools. When the
building of these schools was commenced the firm of Martin and
Chamberlain were selected as architects. They had to design
comparatively cheap buildings, for anything like extravagance in the way
of ornamentation would probably have provoked much hostility. Brick and
wood had to be the chief materials employed, but by using these with
device and taste good schools were produced from an art point of view,
and which, in their way, are a little education to those who attend
them.
Possibly there are still not a few among us who think that because there
is an element of design and attractiveness in the appearance of these
schools money has been needlessly expended. Such persons insist upon it
that only ugliness can be really economical, and that the simplest
ornamentation or beauty of form must mean superfluous cost. The number
of those who take this narrow view is happily limited, and is becoming
less owing to the improved and growing taste for art that has been
unmistakeably manifest of late years.
I have been led into this trifling digression by speaking of the houses
now built in that suburb of Birmingham inhabited by the wealthier
classes. These residents are, as I have said, better educated than their
fathers, and they have different notions as to how they should live and
what sort of houses they should live in. They are not merely people who
are beginning to prosper and have only just emerged from the chrysalis
state of modern civilization, but are citizens who have been prospering
for some time, or are the children of men who have been prosperous, and
they "live up" accordingly. They like their residences to be convenient
and comfortable inside; but they also feel a little pride if they look
attractive from without. Nor are tastefully-designed dwellings confined
to Edgbaston. The example of our "Birmingham Belgravia" has spread to
other suburbs, and if we go to Moseley, Handsworth, Harborne, and other
places in the vicinity of our city we find houses of a very much
improved pattern from an ornamental point of view compared with those of
a bygone generation. Edgbaston, however, set the example in the way of
Gothic house architecture, and the first specimen, I believe, was a
house in Carpenter Road, designed by the late Mr. J.H. Chamberlain, and
which was built for Mr. Eld, a partner in the firm of Eld and
Chamberlain, now Chamberlain, King, and Jones.
I remember that the erection of this Gothic house created quite a little
stir. To some eyes it was a very startling innovation. Pointed arch
windows for an ordinary dwelling house, who ever heard of such a thing?
What next? asked some square-toed, un-compromising, old-fashioned folks.
The idea was indeed so novel that it did not take people by storm, and
there was no immediate rush for Gothic houses. Gradually, however,
people began to like the style, or their architects told them they must
like it, and after some time residences of the new order began to be
seen in many directions.
There are now a number of large, costly, handsome Gothic houses in
Edgbaston, which will be, indeed, a goodly heritage for the ground
landlord when the present leases expire--a fact that often gives rise to
some serious thoughts and reflections. Many people feel very sore upon
this matter, and wax strong and vehement upon what is known as the
"unearned increment" question. I do not propose to lash this horse,
which is every now and then trotted out and properly thrashed by
reforming economists and others. "Unearned increment" is one of those
accidental incidents of life which can hardly be controlled or reckoned
with. Why should some men be sound and healthy and six feet high, and
others weak and feeble and only four feet ten? Most unequal and unjust!
If I have a field, and a town grows up to it of its own accord, and
somebody offers me four times as much as I gave for it, I hardly see why
I should be reckoned a thief and a robber if I pocket the proffered
cash. To take another illustration. I may have on my house-walls a
picture for which I gave twenty pounds. The artist has "gone up" since I
made my purchase, and I am now offered a hundred and twenty pounds for
my painting. "Unearned increment!"
But away with this question! I find I am getting the whip out, although
I promised not to thrash this wretched old economic hack. Only just one
little parting crack of the lash. Dealing with "unearned increment"
being an impracticability, perhaps it would be well for landlords who
benefit immensely by the accident of circumstances to recognise the fact
that they _do_ pocket a great "unearned increment," and be ungrudgingly
generous in return for benefits received. If this were done the names
of suburban landlords would not be received with such derision and
contempt as they are sometimes now, and "unearned increment" would
become all but an obsolete phrase.