architect to work in if the tons of tarry acids and soot from their
domestic chimneys—the chief offenders—went down the sewers, as such
refuse should as long as it remains refuse, instead of falling on our
heads and our buildings, is difficult to imagine. They would, one may be
sure, be towns of peculiar beauty, a beauty, too, very different to that
of the sunny towns of the Mediterranean. Instead of the bright colours
belonging to a lower latitude we should have the far more beautiful
half-tones and pearly greys belonging to our northern climate. Our
buildings to correspond would have to be more delicately modelled, with
less strongly marked shadows. Deep porticoes would rarely be used save
to mark points of special importance. The architect, instead of being a
man accustomed to think in black lines, would become sensitive, not only
to every shade of colour, but to every modulation of surface and
texture. No longer could we tolerate the hard, bright, cheery reds of
our machine-made pressed bricks. The black joints, too, in which we set
our brickwork, grinding cinders into our mortar where the south uses
sand, would seem to be what they are, so many dirty lines drawn across
the fair faces of our buildings, and thereby adding most unnecessarily
to the gloom. A vulgar moulding too, an over-emphasized piece of
ornament, would become so conspicuous in proper daylight, when all the
surroundings would be clean, that the author of it would begin to be cut
by his fellow-architects, and even his lay friends as a man of bad and
flamboyant taste. For it must be remembered we have already reached the
stage where a sin against taste, when realised, is far worse than one
against morals. Indeed, the reactions of clean air and the beautifully
tempered sunlight which really belongs to Lancashire would be infinite.
With the coating of soot removed from our lungs as well as the black
from our buildings we should probably all talk with the sprightliness of
the Athenians of old. An architectural public opinion would be one of
the first things to form, and woe betide the architect and client who
spoilt with his coarse work our modern Athens. An effect which old
Athens lacked we could have in abundance. The foliage of beautiful
feathery yet rounded trees suited to a town, which grow in our climate
but not in hers, might make the foil to the buildings of our main
streets which the London plane trees do to the painted buildings of the
London squares. Our parks, too, would become clean. They might then
cease to be the dreary recreation grounds, with asphalt paths and a
weedy sprinkling of grass, we now assume, unrightly I think, to be all
that is possible in the heart of a city.
All this I realise may be thought fanciful, though it is fancy based on
fact. Here, then, are solid facts no one can dispute. Sir Frank Baines,
chief architect to the Office of Works, than whom no one has more
experience of the upkeep of buildings, stated in his evidence before the
Committee on Smoke Abatement that the cost of the upkeep of a building
would be reduced by at least half if a smoke-free atmosphere obtained.
The material damage to Manchester by its own smoke has been calculated
at £1,000,000 a year. But more important even than these figures is the
disrepute and disregard into which its soot has brought such towns.
There is the story, probably apocryphal and certainly unwarranted,
though useful enough in pointing a moral, of the Cabinet Minister who
had a speaking engagement, and not feeling very well went to see a
leading consultant, and asked whether he was fit to keep his engagement,
which happened to be in Manchester. “Manchester?” said the consultant,
“certainly not. Nobody is well enough to go to Manchester.”
Owing to their smoke and dirt, no one now lives in our northern
manufacturing towns who can afford to live outside them. They have
become mere workshops, and, with the Englishman’s disregard for the
surroundings in which he works, they are yearly losing what little
amenities are left. When the eighteenth-century merchant lived in his
square dignified Georgian mansion, with its touch of Dutch brightness
and cleanliness, and walked to his equally dignified counting-house, the
appearance of the city he walked through was a thing of some
consideration to him. Now, when he motors into it for a few hours in the
middle of the week and is landed at his office door with hardly time to
see the buildings he passes, having his attention directed chiefly to
the traffic and the policemen, not only his interest in his town but his
knowledge of it is infinitely less. The place he makes money in is not
worthy of his thoughts except for that purpose. With the more
influential classes feeling like this, it is no wonder that the others
feel even less interest and responsibility as they hurry away in their
tram-cars to their distant suburbs. So the rot, started by the smoke,
spreads until the town becomes the black, formless, slightly smelling
abomination we begin to believe it must be. Yet all the time there are
Paris, Vienna, New York, Düsseldorf, and Cologne, indeed almost any town
but one of our own, to show that in reality the town is and may be
something very different—the highest and finest expression of communal
life, the place where service and work and the consequent enjoyment of
them can alone be carried to the highest pitch.
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XIX.
THE BUSH BUILDINGS OF NEW YORK AND LONDON.
NOTHING could illustrate better the versatility of the leading American
architects or the eclectic character of modern American architecture
than the Bush Buildings in New York and London. If we wanted to go
further we could illustrate this thesis from two other almost equally
important works by the same architects, Messrs. Hemle and Corbett. There
is their great and splendid Italian basilican church at Brooklyn and
their Washington Memorial Masonic Temple, a vast and powerful monumental
building in what we should call in England Neo-Grec architecture. These
four great structures, either of which is sufficiently striking and
competent in every implication of the word, to make the fame of an
ordinary English architect, are therefore at the four poles of
architectural expression, if we exclude modern attempts at futuristic
design. In the England of the end of last century we should have
explained this phenomenon easily enough, or at any rate the younger men
would, on the simple hypothesis of ghostly designers. But that will not
do in this case or in the similar cases of other American firms like
Messrs. York and Sawyer, or McKim, Mead and White, which show the same
universality in their work. In Mr. Corbett’s case, for his partnership
is frankly and openly that of a designer and a business man, from
experience of his office I happen to know that all this diverse yet
splendid achievement is the work of one man, Mr. Corbett himself. Yet
this does not measure his output of creative energy. Apart from his
lesser architectural work, like apartment houses and the four great
buildings mentioned, all erected or in the course of erection within the
span of a few years—for he is still a young man as measured by the heads
of the architectural profession in this country—Mr. Corbett finds time
to carry on the most successful design atelier in Columbia University.
Two nights a week he criticises the _projets_ of some 25-30 young
architects, making the constructive suggestions every teacher worth his
salt has to make. I met him late one night when he told me he had that
evening sketched fifteen different solutions to the same problem on as
many student drawing boards. How does this extreme competence, combined
with almost absolute freedom from a predilection for any particular form
of expression, arise? Obviously it is an intellectual phenomenon
divorced from faith in any particular tradition. The only answer I can
find to it, and I think it is a satisfactory answer, is that it lies in
a combination of the extremely logical Beaux Arts system of education
with the alertness of the quick-moving American mind, always open to
fresh ideas. Mr. Corbett was trained in Paris, and after that had the
usual period of assistantship in great offices like Mr. Cass Gilbert’s
and Messrs. McKim, Mead and White’s. In his own case he has never
believed in nor possessed a great office staff as measured by American
standards. He once told me that he felt fifteen draughtsmen were as many
as any man could feed with ideas. After that they began to feed you. It
seems a rational limit though one knows it is one often exceeded even in
England.
With these preliminary remarks let us consider his two great Bush
Buildings both designed to answer the same programme—a permanent
exhibition of travellers’ samples—and both converted or partially
converted to office purposes, as foreseen would be the case, while the
idea of such an exhibition gradually obtained acceptance. The programme
from the outset therefore obviously divides itself into two aspects,
that of providing large unencumbered exhibition floor space capable of
temporary sub-division into offices, and that of giving the total
building in each case the commanding appearance, which will make it a
prominent feature in a great city. We know how well Mr. Corbett, even in
the small section of his total scheme which has been built already, has
solved this two-sided problem in London. His New York building, perhaps,
is less well know. Let us therefore start with that.
In New York Mr. Bush had chosen a site for his venture in 42nd Street, a
street which seems to me roughly to correspond to the Strand. That is to
say it is a street half way between the City and the West End, near to
the great commercial hotels, most of which are indeed in it. It is in a
growing neighbourhood too, into which important industrial concerns are
continually moving from the crowded down-town area. Hence under American
conditions the surrounding buildings are continually getting larger and
higher. The site Mr. Bush was able to buy was a very narrow one, some
fifty feet wide, in the centre of a city block. It would only get light,
therefore, back and front. Further any buildings rising above its
fellows must be prepared in such circumstances for the blank return
walls, which are one of the ugliest features of American building
conditions. If the site was a narrow restricted one it was however 200
feet deep, and compares therefore, in total area to about two-thirds of
that occupied by the central block of the London building. To develop
fully such a site it is obvious that only a portion of the building
could rise to any height, because only a portion of the total depth
could be lit from either end. Mr. Corbett chose to take up the front
portion using some 90 feet of depth for the purpose. We, in England,
with our duller climate, would consider 90 feet a great depth to be lit
from either end, or from a small enclave in one side, which might some
day be built up. To get his exhibition floor area then, and to give the
striking character his building demanded, this area of 90 by 50 feet was
made into a tower, and a very lofty one at that. It is 450 feet
high—higher, that is to say, than the cross on St. Paul’s. To build a
great tower on so narrow a base was in itself no small engineering
undertaking, especially as the large exhibition rooms on each floor made
cross bracing against wind pressure a difficulty. To make an oblong
tower with the two longer walls not only blank, but devoid of all
projections, however slight, for adjacent owners in America do not grant
accommodation of that kind, a beautiful and graceful object was an
architectural undertaking which it required no small ability to
accomplish. The choice of Gothic as the form of expression to be used
was probably dictated by the simple fact that Gothic lines would
emphasize the height of the tower—its main characteristic—and any other
style would diminish it. One can at any rate imagine the architect
trained in logical French methods arguing in that way. The difficulty of
the blank returns was overcome very ingeniously by imitation details of
long mullion-like lines in three coloured bricks, black ones being used
for the darkest shadows, which are made to correspond to the natural
average angle of the sun, while white bricks are used for the high
lights. The very thought of this would make Ruskin turn in his grave.
Yet the result is undeniably effective, and one cannot see how so good a
result on an absolutely plain face could be otherwise obtained. But the
tower, of course, does not really rely to any great extent on this
successful architectural camouflage. It relies on its undoubted grace,
which is largely due to the very beautiful double lantern or 8 or 9
stories which surmounts it. This lantern by being set in from the main
wall faces is freed from restrictions. The upper portion of it sets in
again and the architects have here their own office with all New York
from river to river and mountain range to mountain range at their feet.
At night the lantern top is illuminated by flood lighting, and floats
high in the sky, a golden casket of extraordinary and romantic beauty.
The building is Gothic throughout, with elaborate bank and club rooms on
the lower floors, but one must frankly admit that while it is far better
Gothic than that of the Woolworth Building, it is like the interior of
our own Houses of Parliament, Gothic without the touch of the Gothic
craftsman, and the variety and interest of Gothic designers. My own
feeling is that no human being can design Gothic detail on paper in the
quantity which these great buildings require and give it the real
interest and spontaneity of the old work. Sir Giles Scott has got nearer
it than anyone in his Liverpool Cathedral by departing very largely from
precedent. Mr. Corbett has departed from precedent too, but his thirty
odd floors, like the endless corridors of the House of Commons, call for
a greater output of ability in Gothic designing and craftsmanship than
the whole world possesses at the present time, and it must be remembered
as stated above, Mr. Corbett is his own designer.
Let us turn now to his London building. It is so well known and so much
has been written about it that it is not necessary to describe it in any
detail. One may notice, however, how the dual aspect of the problem has
here too been solved. The great doorway with its giant columns and
semi-dome facing down Kingsway, with the crowning tower above, emphasize
the semi-public character of the proposed commercial exhibition or
museum. The great mass of plain stone face showing everywhere in
cliff-like walls, among its complicated neighbours, all piers columns
and architectural trappings of every sort, marks the London Bush
building as being as distinctive a unit in London as is the graceful
tower piercing the sky in New York. If it ever fulfils its owners’
conception and becomes a great depository of current articles of
commerce, it will stand out to the world as such a depository. The man
in the street will easily recognise it as such. There is rightly more
than a touch of the warehouse character in it. The architect seems to
me, therefore, to have solved that side of the problem better even in
London than he has in New York. The New York building is a more obvious
advertisement. Its tower is simply a beckoning finger. No one would
expect a graceful Gothic tower to be a storehouse of samples. The other
half of the problem is equally well solved by the London building. The
great floors, admirably and evenly lit by the evenly spaced windows,
make excellent exhibition galleries. In the meantime they make almost
equally good office floors. The regular spacing of the windows, which
allows them to be smaller than is usual in London and thereby gives the
greater wall spaces we all desire, makes each floor readily divisible to
suit tenants. The practical conditions of the problem seem therefore to
have been solved as admirably as the more spiritual ones.
The measure of success which this central block only of the whole London
conception has achieved is extraordinary, when one remembers that a
great deal of it will not be seen when the two big wing blocks are
built, and was so designed. There is a baldness about the flanks as at
present exposed, which will be very suited to the two garden courts,
when they are completed, but which is not so happy now. The fact, too,
that the main central block is not axial with Kingsway will not then be
so apparent. It is not axial because its axis is a necessary compromise
between the centre of Kingsway and the centre of the curve on the Strand
front. This deflection of the axis of the central block was, in my
opinion, very much to be preferred to a break in the back of the block
itself—the only alternative.
The clean lean character of the exterior, relying for its final effect
on the mass of the building rather than on any excitement of detail,
appears to me to fit with our current post-war ideas in a way which is
little short of marvellous, when one remembers that the building was
designed before the war. One may ask what has the war got to do with
architectural styles? I think that the answer is that the war with its
consequent economies is enforcing a healthy movement, which had already
started, towards buildings, which answered their programmes more
directly and without unnecessary fallals. The Adelphi Hotel and the
Cunard Buildings at Liverpool, both pre-war, are early examples of the
same trend. The main impulse, however, came from America, where
commercial buildings had become so large that columnar orders could no
longer be fitted to them, while the windows had become so small in
comparison to the structures as to be mere texture to the wall surface.
Buildings like the Port of London Building are already _demodé_. They
mark the end of an era. The young men now coming from the Schools of
Architecture are coming forth with very different ideas. To them the
London Bush Building is a welcome advance in logical expression, which
they themselves hope to carry still further. Its discreet detail is
based indeed on tradition, but is no thoughtless copy of old dead
things. It combines reserve with boldness, logical character with great
taste and knowledge. No better background for large sculptured figures
standing clear could be imagined than the great rich semi-dome to
Kingsway. This portico marks the public entrance to the whole building
as appropriately as does the smaller one in the Strand the entrance to
the bank or insurance office to occupy the Strand portion of the ground
floor. Fitness in expression seems to me as much inherent in the detail
as in the general conception. It is because of this logical fitness and
efficiency throughout that the Bush Building holds out hope for the
future. It has not been born dead as are so large a proportion of our
modern town-structures. Viewed from this standpoint, it seems to me far
more alive and valuable than the corresponding New York tower. The
idealism and hopefulness, which all who have met him know to be so
leading and interesting a characteristic of Mr. Bush himself, has,
thanks to his architect, found expression in his London building. Here
is honesty, simplicity, faith in and hope for the future. It is no small
gift he and Mr. Corbett between them have made to London, especially at
the present time. May they soon complete it as planned!
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XX.
BATH OR BOURNEMOUTH?
BATH is our one architectural city. Sufficient of it, that is to say,
has been built on an harmonious plan and with harmonious architecture to
give it a unity no other town in Great Britain or Ireland possesses.
Dublin, before the recent fighting, was nearest to it in this respect.
When the fighting is really finished and rebuilding starts in earnest,
it will probably fall a little further behind, for to-day there is
nowhere any canon of taste sufficiently strong to force any sort of
uniformity on new buildings. That is where we differ most strongly from
the 18th century. Bath was not built by one architect, though one was
responsible for most of the lay-out as must always be the case where
there is any plan at all. The actual buildings of Bath were built by a
group of architects no more closely connected, except in general ideas
and taste, than are modern architects. Yet how different the result!
Think of Bath with its stately procession of noble streets, squares,
circuses, crescents and other architectural forms and the modern town
which most nearly answers to the same requirements—Bournemouth. The
contrast could not be greater and in itself is a good measure of the
difference in ideals which separates the builders of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries from those of the latter half of the
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. In the place of a dignified
neighbourliness and sense of solidarity which led folk to live in
terraces of houses, which externally did not differ from one another, we
have, as exhibited in Bournemouth, or in any other modern recreational
town for the matter of that, the evidence of a desire to live as far
removed as possible from one’s neighbours in a house which differs in
shape as much as possible from theirs. In Bath in the eighteenth century
one did not show one’s superiority by any outward display. The greatest
in the land were ready to live cheek by jowl with the least famous. A
circus or crescent might house for the time being, at any rate, great
ministers of state, dignitaries of the Church, members of the
aristocracy and retired tradesmen in houses whose exteriors were
identical. We often pride ourselves a little superficially on the
superior democratic tendencies of the age in which we live, yet if
architecture is used as a test we see at once how much more really
democratic a city layed out on the lines of Bath is to one on the lines,
or rather one like Bournemouth, for the latter has no lines at all in an
architectural sense. I do not want to say that the garden city idea of
which Bournemouth is an early, if unconscious example, has not beauties
of its own. I only desire to point out what a very different ideal of
beauty the two towns and the two centuries they stand for exhibit.
Another difference, which is really involved and implied in the two
different conceptions of what a town for rest and recuperation should
be, is to be noted in the way each town approaches the country. The
modern town has always its indefinite region surrounding it, which is
neither town nor country, but an ugly and generally an untidy
overlapping of each. The whole of a town of the type of Bournemouth is
suburban. That is involved in its idea, but there are parts of it on its
outskirts where its suburban qualities lapse into meanness. In
eighteenth century Bath there was nothing of the sort. The town and
country did not mix and consequently neither spoilt the other. There was
perfect town and perfect country co-existing side by side. The proof of
this is still to be seen to-day in Great Pulternay Street,—the most
dignified and perfect town street I know. As you walk down it you feel
that you are, at any rate for the time being, a citizen of no mean city.
Its urban flavour is of the most refined and exquisite kind. It has its
proper climax in Sydney House, and there are no loose ends to distract
the view in any direction. It might be a street in Paris, but devoid of
Parisian noise and push and with statelier architecture. Yet a hundred
yards to the right, through New Sydney Place, you have to-day open
fields and completely unspoilt country. On the opposite side is the
modern suburb of Bathwick, and you can note the difference. When
Pulternay Street was built, however, it ran straight out into the open
country, and its four-storied town houses must have backed on to the
fields. Portland Place and the Bloomsbury Squares must have been very
much the same when they were first laid out. The creeping of the modern
town by means of inferior houses growing up higgledy-piggledy or in long
dull streets leading nowhere, with all the squalor and discomfort to
everyone such a condition implies, is, I am afraid, a modern conception,
or rather the absence of any conception at all. When in the eighteenth
century, owing to its sudden rise in fashion, Bath burst its medieval
walls, as did so many English towns, it did it deliberately according to
an architectural plan. The result was, instead of the area of muddle
through which one drives as quickly as possible in approaching a modern
town, no muddle at all, but fine trees and stately country adjacent to
fine houses and stately streets, each enhancing the other. Let us
consider a little more closely this method of town building and town
planning as exemplified in Bath.