such of the victims of it as are artists who take serious views of their
art should ask themselves why they continue to work in a style which has
never produced a monument, and in which it is impossible to discern any
element of progress. In doing Queen Anne, have they done anything but
follow a fashion set, as fashions in millinery and tailoring are set, by
mere caprice? A professional journal has indeed declared that
“architecture is very much a matter of fashion,” and architects who take
this view of their calling will of course build in the fashion, as they
dress in the fashion, in spite of their own knowledge that the fashion
is absurd. But it is impossible to regard an architect who takes this
view as other than a tradesman, or to discuss his works except by
telling what are the latest modes, in the manner of the fashion
magazines. It seems impossible for architects who take this view of
their art to take their art seriously--anything like so seriously, for
example, as they take their incomes. But for architects who love their
art and believe in it, the point of “departure” is much less important
than the point of arrival, and by such architects the historical styles
of architecture will be rated according to the help they give in solving
the architectural problems of our time. We have seen that an architect
who starts from Renaissance architecture and an architect who starts
from Gothic architecture, if they faithfully scrutinize their
precedents, and faithfully discard such as are inapplicable, in arriving
at free architecture will arrive, so far as style is concerned, at much
the same result. If this process of analysis were to be carried on for a
generation, it would be as difficult, and as purely a matter of
speculative curiosity, to trace the sources of English and American
architecture as the sources of the composite and living English
language, which is adequate to every expression. We have been blaming
the architects for accepting the forms of past architecture without
analyzing them. But, indeed, if architects had been analysts, they would
generations ago have recognized in their work that we do live in times
unknown to the ancients, whether of Athens in the fifth century before
our era, or of Western Europe in the thirteenth century of our era; that
within the limits set by fact and reason there is ample room for the
exercise of all accomplished talents, and verge enough for the
expression of all sane temperaments, while without these limits nothing
can be done that will stand the test of fact and reason, which is the
test of time; that “effects” cannot precede causes, and that the rudest
art which is sincere is living and in the way to be refined, while the
most refined art that has lost its meaning can never be made alive. The
recognition of these things would have prevented a vagary like the
frivolities and affectations of the new departure from attaining any
vogue, but it would also have prevented the establishment of any
technical styles in modern building, and instead of reproducing
“examples” of one historical style and then of another, and then of a
mixture of two, architects would be producing and writers would be
discussing works of the great art of architecture.
[Illustration]_THE VANDERBILT HOUSES_
As an architectural work, the house of Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt is perhaps
the most noteworthy of the four large and costly mansions herewith
illustrated. In this a design intrinsically interesting has been carried
out with an amplitude of means of all kinds which yet nowhere
degenerates into profusion or mere ostentation. The dimensions are
generous for a town house, and they have been made the most of by a
breadth of treatment and an emphasis of structure, in the walls at
least, which enable the building to carry with grace a wealth of
ornament under which many buildings of equal size would disappear. The
material is a soft gray limestone, which leaves much to be desired in
color, though in texture it is equally adapted to the simple and massive
treatment of the walls and to the minute delicacy of the decoration,
both architectural and sculptural. It is very much to the credit of the
designer that in spite of a richness without many examples in our
domestic architecture, except in the other dwellings of this same
series, the first impression of his work, and the most abiding, is that
of power and massiveness. This is secured mainly by the unbroken breadth
of the flank of wall between the porch and the angle on the Fifth Avenue
front of the building--unbroken except by the simple and square-headed
openings with which it is pierced, and the crisp and emphatic though
[Illustration: HOUSE OF W. K. VANDERBILT.
R. M. Hunt, Architect.]
not excessive string courses which traverse it and mark the division of
the stories. It is questionable whether this massiveness is not carried
too far, but everybody will admit that an excessive weight of wall is a
“good fault” in the street architecture of New York, and that of the
two, a dwelling is more dignified which approaches the solidity proper
to a prison than one that emulates the precarious lightness proper to a
greenhouse. The depth of the porch and of the recessed balcony over it
in the central division of the avenue front assists this expression of
solidity, and helps the building to wear its burden of decoration
“lightly, like a flower.” The richness, as we have said, is almost
unexampled in New York. Of strictly architectural decoration--that is,
of members and details which are usually designed by the architect of a
building--there is a copiousness which is only saved by the means just
indicated from becoming an embarrassment of riches. All this work is
exquisite in execution. In design it is generally interesting and
scholarly, though there is common to all of it the defect of being too
small to be thoroughly well seen and thoroughly effective. The
uniformity of this defect of scale seems to prove that the architect
erred in estimating the effect of his design in the colorless material
employed. The decoration of the recess of the balcony, too, loses effect
by being entirely unrelated to the construction, and the stone trellis
with which the turret at the angle is overlaid is equally irrelevant to
the object to which it is applied. Architectural decoration ceases to be
such when it ceases to be a development of the structure; and these
exceptions, by their comparative ineffectiveness, confirm the wisdom of
the rule by which elsewhere throughout the building the ornament is used
to emphasize the structure, and thereby gains greatly in impressiveness
and in charm.
The sculptural decoration, in contradistinction to that strictly
architectural, equally abounds. By sculptural decoration is meant that
designed as well as executed by the sculptor, and in regard to which the
only care of the architect is to provide places for it, and so to frame
it that, if it does not help, it may not injure, the architecture to
which it is attached. It is not too much to say of this that it is much
the most important and interesting work in decorative sculpture which is
to be seen out-of-doors in New York. The most noteworthy piece of it,
perhaps, is the procession of cherubic musicians girdling the
frieze-like band of the corbel which carries the oriel of the southern
front.[D] The execution elsewhere, in the panels under and between the
windows, and in the pilasters of the bay, is equally good, but the
design is nowhere else so effective. One need not be a purist, indeed,
to find fault with the introduction of these pilasters at the angles of
the bay and on the curve of the oriel, which are so clearly not
structural members, actual or symbolic, and which are so clearly
introduced for the sake of the ornament they bear, although he may
condone the fault for the prettiness of the ornament generally in
design, and its unfailing care and delicacy of execution. The only
criticism possible, indeed, upon the execution of this work is, that it
is too exquisite, and reduces the texture of carved stone too nearly to
the more facile surface of moulded clay.
One’s admiration of Mr. Hunt’s spirited and scholarly design does not
indeed cease with the walls of the house; but it must be owned that it
undergoes some modification above the cornice. It cannot be said that
the sky-line is so effective as might have been expected from what is
beneath it. There is an undeniable piquancy about the statued gable
which terminates the roof of the principal mass, and the relation
between this roof and the steep hood of the turret is picturesque, taken
alone. Unfortunately, it cannot be taken alone, and the effect of the
whole series of roofs is not a harmonious grouping, but--there is no
other word for it--a “huddle.” It is in the roof, too, that the
shortcomings of the architect in the solution of what may be called his
academic problem are most apparent. The style of his work is the
transitional style of France, the modification of mediæval architecture
under the influence of the Italian Renaissance, until what was all
Gothic at the beginning of the transition had become all classic at its
close. This is, in fact, an attempt to summarize in one building the
history of a most active and fruitful century in the history of
architecture, which included the late Gothic of the fifteenth century
and the early Renaissance of the sixteenth, and spanned the distance
from the minute and complicated modelling of the Palais de Justice at
Rouen and the Hôtel Cluny at Paris, to the romantic classicism of the
great châteaux of the Loire. Certainly the attempt does not lack
boldness. Here we have in one building the superimposed bases and
interpenetrating mouldings of the latest French Gothic and the
fish-bladder tracery of the Renaissance, and in the dormers the stride
from the ogee canopies of Rouen to the prim pilasters and pediment of
Orleans. Mr. Hunt’s skill has not sufficed to introduce together these
features, the outcomes of different modes of thought as well as of
different systems of construction, without a visible incongruity; nor
are they in all cases successful, taken singly. The large and elaborate
dormer over the entrance, especially, instead of being a visible
reconciliation of the two styles, is a visible demonstration that they
cannot be reconciled. A complete construction of post and lintel, of
pilaster and entablature, is supplemented by another construction of
flying buttresses which are clearly superfluous and irrelevant, and
which, instead of resisting the thrust of an arch, have the appearance
of ineffectually “shoring up” a structure which, though complete, is
unstable.
One is inclined to ascribe the lack of unity and repose which the
disturbed sky-line of the building entails upon it, and which somewhat
impairs the dignity of an otherwise dignified and always animated
design, to the angle turret of which the architect was evidently
enamoured. We may share his liking for it, and admit it to be an
extremely pretty thing, without admitting that it belongs to this
building. The leading motive of the composition is evidently the
“pyramidization,” to borrow Mr. Thomas Hope’s uncouth word, of the whole
building towards the apex of the main mass at the angle, from the point
of view from which the illustration is taken. It is clearly to assist
and emphasize the ascent and convergence of all the lines of the
building to this apex, and to enhance the apparent dimensions, that this
mass is raised a story, and the extremities of the building allowed to
fall away, and it is in order to account for the emphasizing of this
mass by a separate roof that the somewhat awkward expedient has been
adopted of dropping the cornice on the street side below the eaves. New
York readers who are familiar with the aspect of the Dry Dock
Savings-Bank in the Bowery will know what is meant by this
“pyramidization,” and will remember how it is there attained. Now it
happens that it is precisely this intention which in the present
instance is obscured and partly defeated by the tormenting of the
sky-line, which in turn may be traced to the insistence of the architect
upon his extremely pretty but irrelevant
[Illustration: HOUSE OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
George B. Post, Architect.]
turret. It is a good lesson in architecture to find that the effect of a
whole may be so much impaired by one of the most successful of the
parts, and that even when “the thing” is really rich and rare, we may
still be unsatisfied how it “got there.” Happily neither this
shortcoming, nor shortcomings much graver, could prevent such a work as
this from being an ornament to the city, and an honorable monument to
its architect.
Perhaps it is because Mr. Post, the architect of the house of Mr.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, has not attempted so much as Mr. Hunt that his
work may be called at once more successful and less interesting. In
color it has more and in design less of variety. For the monotony of
gray wall and black roof it substitutes red brick, with wrought work of
the same gray limestone employed in the house we have been talking of,
and with a red slated roof broken by great stone dormers. It is much
more simple and compact in composition than the other, for the main
house is a parallelogram brought together under one great four-hipped
roof, and the wing is here a very subordinate appendage. It is thus much
simpler, much more within the conventional decorum of a town mansion in
its scheme, while it is equally far from having the appearance of having
been designed by contract, and is studied with equal thoroughness,
although with a very different motive. In the matter of color, it is
undeniable that the brick-work has in places a patchy look by reason of
the comparatively small quantities in which it is used, the whole front
on the avenue being virtually of highly wrought stone, and it seems
clear that the building would have gained if the brick had been omitted
altogether from this front. On the street front the mode of treatment
adopted might very possibly have made the building dull and monotonous
if it had been built in monochrome, as assuredly the addition of a
strong contrast of color would have made the more varied design of the
other painfully restless. In style the two buildings offer a curious
resemblance and a curious contrast. This also is a French château, but a
French château of the period after the transition, when all detail had
been thoroughly classicized, and only a romantic wilfulness and freedom
of composition recalled the architecture of the Middle Ages. Here are
the shell frieze of Blois and the fish-bladder tracery of Orleans,
without the Gothic detail which in the French Renaissance is so often
found side by side with them. The carving here, equally well executed
for its purpose, does not appeal so much to admiration for its
execution, for the reason that it is all strictly architectural, and not
directly imitative. In design it is for its purpose equally well
studied; in scale, indeed, is much better studied, so that the detail,
which is often lost in the ineffectual minuteness of the carving in the
former case, here takes its place with emphasis. Perhaps in some
instances it takes its place with too much emphasis, as in the modelling
of the arches of the first floor; while, on the other hand, there is a
clear lack of vigor in the brackets which carry the balcony of the third
story, and in the treatment of the spiral shaft upon which rests the
corbelled turret at the outer angle. But these defects of design seem to
be quite deliberate, and it seems, upon the whole, that the building
looks as the architect intended it to look, in a more accurate sense
than can be said of its competitor. The leading motive of composition in
that was the “pyramidization” at the angle. The leading motive of this
may be assigned to the development of the floor lines. The perpendicular
lines are entirely subordinated
[Illustration]
to these--so far subordinated, indeed, that the axial lines of the
openings in the lower stories are disregarded in the upper--and the
horizontal lines are wrought by modelling and decoration into emphatic
belts, graduated in richness from the simple basement course to the very
rich and elaborate cornice. We may say here, too, that our admiration
grows fainter above this line; for the exaggerated dormers, excessive as
dormers and inadequate as gables, are the least successful features of
the building, while in their decoration, alone in the building,
constructive propriety is abandoned. But the great and simple roof
certainly prevents the building from straggling, as its neighbor tends
to do, while the angle turrets at its base not only relieve its outline
of monotonous heaviness, but are clever expedients for stopping the
lines of its angles. Upon the whole, one may say of Mr. Post’s design
that it is a thoroughly workmanlike piece of work, and may even find
less fault with it than with the more ambitious work of Mr. Hunt;
though, indeed, he may ascribe this to his belief that there is less in
it to talk about or to think about.
Between either of these and the brown-stone houses which have been built
for Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, after the designs of Messrs. Herter, the
decorators, a wide architectural gulf is fixed. We found a leading
motive in each of the others; but what leading motive, or, indeed, what
subordinate motive, of an architectural kind, can be found here? There
is indeed no development of lines or of masses, and no organized
relation of parts is aimed at. The openings are not grouped or spaced so
as to tell the story of the interior, nor so as to bear any reference to
each other, nor are the structural features which every building must
possess brought out by modelling; nor is the ornament applied to
accentuate the structural features, nor is it designed with reference
either to its place or to its function as ornament. The fluted pilasters
of the second story seem to be meant, indeed, to re-enforce the angles
of the projecting portions of the wall. But this intention is abandoned
in the first and in the third stories, in which a belt of carved foliage
is run to the angles of the wall, without reference to the lines of the
pilasters. This foliage is in workmanship as careful as possible--as
careful, indeed, as the carving in either of the architectural works
which we have been discussing. Yet its perfection gives no pleasure to
the spectator, for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with the
building in the walls of which it is cut. Much of the detail is
carefully designed, but the absence of a general design makes it
ineffective. Except for the refinement of some of this detail, the
building would be as vacant of architectural interest as any work of our
architectural period of darkness. The Stewart mansion does not interest
students of architecture; but the Stewart mansion itself exhibits a
nearer approach than these houses to an architectural design, and
certainly a coherent design with coarse detail is less depressing, even
if it be more irritating, than an entire absence of architectural
meaning, with here and there a pretty architectural phrase which in some
other context may have meant something. These houses have another
misfortune in their very lugubrious color. A vivid piece of painted
decoration in the recessed balcony of the nearer is a grateful oasis in
the gloomy waste of rubbed sandstone, and some relief to its monotony is
also afforded by the gilded railings of the windows at each side of this
balcony. But it is to be hoped that courage may be found to let loose a
discreet decorator with unlimited goldleaf upon the whole sad fronts. A
mode of decoration which has been found so effective in the fogs of
London might profitably be employed to animate façades which are in no
danger of becoming too joyous. It would not be fair to leave these
architectural failures, which are in so unpleasant contrast to the
encouraging architectural success achieved in the other Vanderbilt
houses, without noting one excellent piece of design in the railings
which surround them, in which an original, characteristic, and
successful treatment of metal has been attained, and which, as works of
art, are really of more value than the houses they protect.
[Illustration: POST AND RAILING, W. H. VANDERBILT’S HOUSE.]
[Illustration]_THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE AS A MONUMENT_
The total length of the bridge is 5989 feet, of which the central span
between the towers is 1595 feet 6 inches, the “land spans” from the
towers to the anchorages each 930 feet, the approach on the New York
side 1562 feet 6 inches, and on the steeper Brooklyn side 971 feet.
These dimensions do not make this the longest bridge in the world. But
when it was built there was no single span which approached the central
span over the East River; and though it has since been exceeded by two
spans of the Forth Bridge, in Scotland (1710 feet each, sustained by
cantilevers), it remains by far the largest example of a chain-bridge.
It is half as long again as Roebling’s Cincinnati Bridge (1057 feet
between towers), and nearly twice as long as the same engineer’s Niagara
Bridge (821 feet). The span of the ill-fated bridge over the Ohio at
Wheeling, which was built in 1848, and blown down in 1854, was 1010
feet. Noteworthy suspension-bridges in Europe are Telford’s, over the
Menai Straits (589 feet), finished in 1825; Chaley’s bridge, at Fribourg
(870 feet), finished in 1834; and Tierney Clark’s bridge over the Danube
at Pesth (670 feet), finished in 1849. The longest spans bridged
otherwise than by a roadway hung from cables are the central spans of
Stephenson’s Britannia (box girder) Bridge (459 feet), of Eads’s St.
Louis Bridge, of steel arches (520 feet), and of the beautiful
Washington Bridge, of steel
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE FROM THE BROOKLYN SIDE.]
arches, at New York (510 feet). The largest span of an arch of masonry
known to have been built in a bridge (251 feet) was in that built in the
fourteenth century, and destroyed by Carmagnola in the fifteenth, which
crossed the Adda at Trezzo. The largest now standing (220 feet) is an
American work, the arch designed and built by General Meigs to carry the
Washington Aqueduct over Cabin John Creek. The second is that of the
Grosvenor Bridge at Chester (200 feet), and the third the central arch
of London Bridge (152 feet).
The Brooklyn Bridge is thus one of the mechanical wonders of the world,
one of the greatest and most characteristic of the monuments of the
nineteenth century. Its towers, at least, bid fair to outlast every
structure of which they command a view. Everybody recalls Macaulay’s
prophecy of the time “when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the
midst of a vast solitude, take his stand upon a broken arch of London
Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.” But when our New-Zealander
takes his stand above the saddles that are now ridden by the cables of
the bridge, to look over the site of a forsaken city, there will be no
ruins of churches--at least, of churches now in being--for him to sketch
or see. The web of woven steel that now hangs between the stark masses
of the towers may have disappeared, its slender filaments rusted into
nothingness under the slow corrosion of the centuries. Its builders and
the generation for which they wrought may have been as long forgotten as
are now the builders of the Pyramids, whereof the traveller, “as he
paceth amazedly those deserts,” asks the Historic Muse “who builded
them; and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not.” It is
not unimaginable that our future archæologist, looking from one of these
towers upon the solitude of a mastless river and a dispeopled land, may
have no other means of reconstructing our civilization than that which
is furnished him by the tower on which he stands. What will his judgment
of us be?