the tower of the Auditorium by the powerful open colonnade and the
strong machicolated cornice in which it culminates. Waiving, as the
designers have been compelled to do, the main purpose of the structure,
and considering it as a commercial building, the Auditorium does not
leave very much to be desired. The basement, especially, which consists
of three stories of granite darker than the limestone of the
superstructure, and appropriately rough-faced, is a vigorous and
dignified performance, in which the expression of rugged strength is
enhanced by the small and deep openings, and in which the necessarily
large openings of the ground-floor are prevented from enfeebling the
design by the massiveness of the lintels and flat arches that enclose
them, and of the piers and pillars by which these are supported. The
superstructure is scarcely worthy of this basement. The triple vertical
division of the wall is effectively proportioned, but a much stronger
demarcation is needed between the second and third members than is
furnished by the discontinuous sill-course of the eighth story, while a
greater projection, a greater depth, and a more vigorous modelling of
the main cornice, and an enrichment of the attic beneath, would go far
to relieve the baldness and monotony that are the defects of the design,
and that are scarcely to be condoned because there are architectural
faults much worse and much more frequent, which the designers have
avoided. It is only, as has been said, in the entrances that they have
been permitted to exhibit the object of the building. Really, it is only
in the entrance on the Lake front, for the triplet of stilted arches at
the base of the tower is not a very felicitous or a very congruous
feature. The three low arches of the Lake front are of a Roman
largeness--true vomitoria--and their effectiveness is increased by the
simplicity of their treatment, by the ample lateral abutment provided
for them, and by the long and shallow balcony that overhangs them. With
the arches themselves this makes a very impressive feature, albeit the
balcony is a very questionable feature. Even to the layman there must be
a latent contradiction in the intercalation of the pillar to relieve the
bearing of a lintel, when the pillar is referred to an unsupported
shelf, obviously lighter and weaker than the lintel itself. This
contradiction is not explained away by the vigor and massiveness of the
shallow corbels that really account for the alternate columns, and it
suggests that the construction so exhibited is not the true
construction at all, and leaves this latter to be inferred without any
help from the architecture. Even if one waives his objection to
architectural forms that do not agree with the structural facts, it is
surely not pedantic to require that the construction asserted by the
forms shall be plausible to the extent of agreeing with itself. It is a
pity that there should be such a drawback from a feature so effective;
but the drawback does not prevent the feature from being effective, nor
do the shortcomings we have been considering in the design of the
Auditorium, nor even the much more serious obstacle that was inherent in
the problem and imposed upon the architects, prevent it from being a
very impressive structure, and justifying the pride with which it is
regarded by all patriotic Chicagoans.
But, as has been intimated, it is not in monumental edifices that the
characteristic building of Chicago is to be looked for. The “business
block,” entirely utilitarian in purpose, and monumental only in
magnitude and in solidity of construction, is the true and typical
embodiment in building of the Chicago idea. This might be said, of
course, of any American city. Undoubtedly the most remarkable
achievements of our architects and the most creditable have been in
commercial architecture. But in this respect Chicago is more American
than any of the Eastern cities, where there are signs, even in the
commercial quarters, of division of interest and infirmity of purpose.
In none of them does the building bespeak such a singleness of devotion,
or indicate that life means so exclusively a living. Even the exceptions
prove the rule by such tokens as the modest dimensions of the Art
Institute and the concealment of the Auditorium in the heart of a
business block. It does not by any means follow that the business
blocks are uninteresting. There are singularly few exceptions to the
rule of dismalness in the buildings that were hurriedly run up after the
fire. One of these exceptions, the American Express Company, has an
extrinsic interest as being the work of Mr. Richardson, and as being, so
far as it need be classified, an example of Victorian Gothic, although
its openings are all lintelled, instead of the Provençal Romanesque to
which its author afterwards addicted himself with such success. So
successful an example is it that an eminent but possibly bilious English
architect, who visited Chicago at an early stage of the rebuilding,
declared it to be the only thing in the town worth looking at--a
judgment that does not seem so harsh to the tourist of to-day who
compares it with its thus disesteemed contemporaries. It is a sober and
straightforward performance in a safe monochrome of olive sandstone, and
it thus lacks the note of that variety of Victorian Gothic that Mr.
Ruskin’s eloquence stimulated untrained American designers to produce,
in which the restlessness of unstudied forms is still further tormented
by the spotty application of color. From this variety of Victorian
Gothic Chicago is happily free. A gabled building in brick and sandstone
opposite the Palmer House is almost a unique, and not at all an
unfavorable, example. The business streets that are now merely dismal
would have been much more aggressively painful if the incapable
architects who built them had deviated from the comparative safety of
their cast-iron Renaissance into a style that put them upon their
individual want of resources. Moreover, throughout the commercial
quarter any attempt at a structural use of color is sure shortly to be
frustrated by coal-smoke. Upon the whole, it is a matter for
congratulation that the earlier rebuilders of
[Illustration: THE FIELD BUILDING.
H. H. Richardson, Architect.]
Chicago, being what they were, should have been so ignorant or careless
of what was going on elsewhere, which, had they been aware of it, they
would have been quite certain to misapply. Not only did they thus escape
the frantic result that came of Victorian Gothic in untutored hands, but
they escaped the pettiness and puerility that resulted of “Queen Anne,”
even when it was done by designers who ought to have known better. These
pages contain a disparagement of that curious mode of building in a
paper written when it was dressed in its little brief authority and
playing its most fantastic tricks. Now it is so well recognized that
Queen Anne is dead, that it seems strange educated architects ever could
have fancied they detected the promise and potency of architectural
life in her cold remains. This most evanescent of fashions seems never
to have prevailed in Chicago at all.
One of the earliest of the more modern and characteristic of the
commercial structures of Chicago, the Field Building, is by Mr.
Richardson also, a huge warehouse covering a whole square, and seven
stories high. With such an opportunity, Mr. Richardson could be trusted
implicitly at least to make the most of his dimensions, and large as the
building is in fact, it looks interminably big. Its bigness is made
apparent by the simplicity of its treatment and the absence of any
lateral division whatever. Simplicity, indeed, could scarcely go
further. The vast expanses of the fronts are unrelieved by any ornament
except a leaf in the cornice, and a rudimentary capital in the piers and
mullions of the colonnaded attic. The effect of the mass is due wholly
to its magnitude, to the disposition of its openings, and to the
emphatic exhibition of the masonic structure. The openings, except in
the attic, and except for an ample pier reserved at each corner, are
equally spaced throughout. The vertical division is limited to a sharp
separation from the intermediate wall veil of the basement on one hand,
and of the attic on the other. It must be owned that there is even a
distinct infelicity in the arrangement of the five stories of this
intermediate wall, the two superposed arcades, the upper of which, by
reason of its multiplied supports, is the more solid of aspect, and
between which there is no harmonious relation, but contrariwise a
competition. Nevertheless, the main division is so clear, and the
handling throughout so vigorous, as to carry off even a more serious
defect. Nothing of its kind could be more impressive than the rugged
expanse of masonry, of which the bonding is expressed throughout, and
which in the granite basement becomes Cyclopean in scale, and in the
doorway especially Cyclopean in rude strength. The great pile is one of
the most interesting as it is one of the most individual examples of
American commercial building. In it the vulgarity of the “commercial
palace” is gratefully conspicuous by its absence, and it is as
monumental in its massiveness and durability as it is grimly utilitarian
in expression.
It is in this observance of the proprieties of commercial architecture,
and in this self-denying rejection of an ornateness improper to it, that
the best of the commercial architecture of Chicago is a welcome surprise
to the tourist from the East. When the rebuilding of the business
quarter of Boston was in progress, and while that city was for the most
part congratulating itself upon the display of the skill of its
architects for which the fire had opened a field, Mr. Richardson
observed to the author of these remarks that there was more character in
the plain and solid warehouses that had been destroyed than in the
florid edifices by which they had been replaced. The saying was just,
for the burned Boston was as unmistakably commercial as much of the
rebuilt Boston is irrelevantly palatial. In the warehouse just noticed,
Mr. Richardson himself resisted this besetting temptation of the
architect, and his work certainly loses nothing of the simplicity which,
with the uninstructed builders of old Boston, was in large part mere
ignorance and unskilfulness, but emphasizes it by the superior power of
distributing his masses that belonged to him as a trained and sensitive
designer; for the resources of an artist are required to give an
artistic and poignant expression even of rudeness. The rebuilt
commercial quarter of Boston is by no means an extreme example of
misplaced ornateness. Within the past three or four years Wall Street
has been converted from the hum-drum respectability of an old-fashioned
business thoroughfare to a street of commercial palaces, the aspect of
which must contain an element of grievousness to the judicious, who see
that the builders have lavished their repertory of ornament and variety
on buildings to which nobody resorts for pleasure, but everybody for
business alone, and that they have left themselves nothing further to do
in the way of enrichment when they come to do temples and palaces,
properly so called. Mr. Ruskin has fallen into deep, and largely into
deserved discredit as an architectural critic, by promulgating
rhapsodies as dogmas. His intellectual frivolity is even more evident
and irritating by reason of the moral earnestness that attends it,
recalling that perfervid pulpiteer of whom a like-minded eulogist
affirmed that “he wielded his prurient imagination like a battle-axe in
the service of the Lord of Hosts.” All the same, lovers of architecture
owe him gratitude for his eloquent inculcation of some of the truths
that he arrived at by feeling, however inconclusive is the reasoning by
which he endeavors to support them, and one of these is the text, so
much preached from in the “Seven Lamps,” that “where rest is forbidden,
so is ornament.” Wall Street and the business quarter of Boston, and
every commercial palace in every city, violate, in differing degrees,
this plain dictate of good sense and good taste, even in the very rare
instances in which the misplacement of the ornateness is the worst thing
that can be alleged against it. In the best of the commercial buildings
of Chicago there is nothing visible of the conflict of which we hear so
much from architects, mostly in the way of complaint, between the claims
of “art” and the claims of utility, nor any evidence of a desire to get
the better of a practical client by smuggling architecture upon him, and
deceiving him for his own good and the glory of his architect. It is a
very good lesson to see how the strictly architectural
[Illustration: ARCADE FROM THE STUDEBAKER BUILDING.
S. S. Beman, Architect.]
sucess of the commercial buildings is apt to be directly in
proportion to the renunciation by the designers of conventional
“architecturesqueness,” and to their loyal acceptance at all points of
the utilitarian conditions under which they are working.
The Studebaker Building is one of the show buildings of Chicago, but it
cannot be said to deserve this particular praise in so high a degree as
several less celebrated structures. It partakes--shall we say?--too much
of the palatial character of Devonshire Street and Wall Street to be
fairly representative of the severity of commercial architecture in
Chicago. It is very advantageously placed, fronting the Lake Park, and
it is in several respects not unworthy of its situation. The arrangement
of the first five stories is striking, and the arcade that embraces the
three upper of these is a striking and well-studied feature, with detail
very good in itself and very well adjusted in place and in scale. It is
the profusion of this detail and the lavish introduction of carved
marble and of polished granite shafts that first impress every beholder
with its palatial rather than commercial character, but this character
is not less given to the front, or to that part of it which has
character, by the very general composition that makes the front so
striking. An arcade superposed upon two colonnades, which are together
of less than its own height, can scarcely fail of impressiveness; but
here it loses some of its impressiveness in losing all its significance
by reason of its subdivision into three equal stories, none of them
differing in purpose from any other or from the colonnade below, and the
larger grouping that simulates a lofty hall above two minor stories is
thus seen to be merely capricious. Of course pretty much the same
criticism may be passed upon most American works of commercial
architecture, and upon the best not less than upon the worst, but that
it cannot be passed upon the best commercial buildings of Chicago is
their peculiar praise. Moreover, the Studebaker building has some marked
defects peculiar to its design. The flanking piers of the building, in
spite of the effort made to increase their apparent massiveness by a
solid treatment of the terminal arches at the base, are painfully thin
and inadequate, and their tenuity is emphasized by the modelling into
nook shafts of their inner angles in the second story. These are serious
blemishes upon the design of the first five stories, and these stories
exhaust the architectural interest of the building. There is something
even ludicrous in the sudden and complete collapse of the architecture
above the large arcade, as if the ideas of the designer had all at once
given out, or rather as if an untrained builder had been called upon to
add three stories to the unfinished work of a scholarly architect. In
truth, this superstructure does not show a single felicity either of
disposition or detail, but is wholly mean and commonplace. It suffices
to vulgarize the building below it, and it is itself quite superfluously
vulgarized by the unmeaning and irrelevant conical roofs with which the
sky-line is tormented. If the substructure be amenable to the criticism
that it is not commercial architecture, the superstructure is amenable
to the more radical criticism that it is not architecture at all.
The Owings Building is another conspicuous commercial structure that
invites the same criticism of not being strictly commercial, but in a
very different way. There is here no prodigality of ornament, and no
irrelevant preciousness of material. A superstructure of grayish brick
surmounts a basement of gray-stone, and the only decoration is reserved
for the main entrance, which it is appropriate to signalize and render
conspicuous
[Illustration: THE OWINGS BUILDING.
Cobb & Frost, Architects.]
even in works of the barest utility. This is attained here by the lofty
gable, crocketed and covered with carving, that rises above the plain
archway which forms the entrance itself. The lintelled openings of the
basement elsewhere are of a Puritanical severity, and so are the arched
openings of the brick superstructure. Neither is there the least attempt
to suggest the thing that is not in the interior arrangement by way of
giving variety and interest to the exterior. In the treatment of the
wall space, the only one of the “unnecessary features,” in which Mr.
Ruskin declares architecture to consist, is the corniced frieze above
the fourth story of the superstructure, with its suggested support of
tall and slim pilasters; and this is quite justifiable as giving the
building a triple division, and distinguishing the main wall from the
gable. For this purpose, however, obviously enough, the dividing feature
should be placed between the two parts it is meant to differentiate; and
in the present instance this line is two stories higher than the point
actually selected, and is now marked only by a light string course. If
the emphatic horizontal belt had been raised these two stories, the
division it creates would not only have corresponded to the organic
division of the building, but another requisite of architectural
composition would have been fulfilled, inasmuch as one of the three
members would visibly have predominated over the others; whereas now the
three are too nearly equal. It is quite true that the prolongation of
the pilasters through two more stories would have made them spindle
quite intolerably, but in any case they are rather superfluous and
impertinent, and it would have decorated the fronts to omit them. The
accentuation of vertical lines by extraneous features is not precisely
what is needed in a twelve-story building of these dimensions. In these
points, however, there is no departure from the spirit of commercial
architecture. That occurs here, not in detail, but in the general scheme
that gives the building its picturesqueness of outline. The corbelled
turret at the angle makes more eligible the rooms its openings light,
but the steep gabled roofs which this turret unites and dominates
plainly enough fail to utilize to the utmost the spaces they enclose,
and so far violate the conditions of commercial architecture. It seems
ungracious to find fault with them on that account, they are so
successfully studied in mass and in detail, and the group they make with
the turret is so spirited and effective; but nevertheless they evidently
do not belong to an office building, and, to borrow the expression of a
Federal judge upon a famous occasion, their very picturesqueness is
aliunde.
We have been speaking, of course, of the better commercial edifices, and
it is by no means to be inferred that Chicago does not contain “elevator
buildings” as disunited and absurd and restless as those of any other
[Illustration: CORNER OF INSURANCE EXCHANGE.
Burnham & Root, Architects.]
American town. About these select few, also, there is nothing especially
characteristic. They might be in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia,
for any local color that they exhibit. It is otherwise with the
commercial buildings designed by Messrs. Burnham & Root. With the
striking exception of Mr. Richardson’s Field Building, the names of
these designers connote what there is of characteristically Chicagoan in
the architecture of the business streets, so that, after all, the
individuality is not local, but personal. The untimely and deplorable
death of John Wellborn Root makes it proper to say that the
individuality was mainly his. It consists largely in a clearer
perception than one finds elsewhere of the limitations and conditions of
commercial architecture, or in a more austere and self-denying acting
upon that perception. This is the quality that such towering structures
as the Insurance Exchange, the Phœnix Building, and “The Rookery” have
in common, and that clearly distinguishes them from the mass of
commercial palaces in Chicago or elsewhere. There is no sacrifice to
picturesqueness of the utilitarian purpose in their general form, as in
the composition of the Owings Building, and no denial of it in detail,
as in the irrelevant arcade of the Studebaker Building. Their flat roofs
are not tormented into protuberances in order to animate their
sky-lines, and those of them that are built around an interior court are
frankly hypæthral. Nor is there in any of them any incongruous
preciousness of material. They are of brick, brown or red, upon stone
basements, and the ornament is such, and only such, as is needed to
express and to emphasize the structural divisions and dispositions.
These are negative merits, it is true, but as our commercial
architecture goes, they are not less meritorious on that account, and
one is inclined to wish that the architects of all the commercial
palaces might attend to the preachments upon the fitness of things that
these edifices deliver, for they have very positive merits also. They
are all architectural compositions, and not mere walls promiscuously
pierced with openings, or, what is much commoner, mere ranges of
openings scantily framed in strips of wall. They are sharply and
unmistakably divided into the parts that every building needs to be a
work of architecture, the members that mark the division are carefully
and successfully adjusted with reference to their place and their scale,
and the treatment of the different parts is so varied as to avoid both
monotony and miscellany. The angle piers, upon the visible sufficiency
of which the effectiveness, especially of a lofty building, so largely
depends, never fail in this sufficiency, and the superior solidity that
the basement of any building needs as a building, when it cannot be
attained in fact by reason of commercial exigencies, is suggested in a
more rugged and more massive treatment not less than in the employment
of a visibly stronger material. These dispositions are aided by the
devices at the command of the architect. The angle piers are weighted to
the eye by the solid corbelled pinnacles at the top, as in the Insurance
Exchange and the Rookery, or stiffened by a slight withdrawal that gives
an additional vertical line on each side of the arris, as in the Phœnix,
while the same purpose is partly subserved in the Rookery by the
projection from the angle of the tall metallic lantern standards that
repeat and enforce this line. The lateral division of the principal
fronts is similar in all three structures. A narrow central compartment
is distinguished in treatment, by an actual projection or by the
thickening of the pier, from the longer wings, while the coincidence of
this central division with the
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE PHŒNIX BUILDING.
Burnham & Root, Architects.]