home, or with the conditions of a modern town-house, is shown, if it
needed any showing, by a dwelling that adjoins the first of the
Richardson houses, and that nobody who is familiar with Mr. W. K.
Vanderbilt’s house or with the Marquand houses in New York would need to
be told was the work of Mr. Hunt. It recalls particularly the Vanderbilt
house, being in the same monochrome of light gray, and repeating, though
with a wide variation, some of the same features, especially the
corbelled tourelle. This is here placed to much better advantage at a
salient instead of a re-entrant angle; it is more happily proportioned;
the corbelling, not continuous, but broken by the wall of the angle, is
very cleverly managed, and the whole feature is as picturesque and
spirited as it is unmistakably domestic in expression. The house does
not exhibit the same profusion of sculptural ornament as the earlier
work it recalls, nor is there so much of strictly architectural detail.
By this comparison, indeed, one would be inclined to call this treatment
severe; but it is prodigality itself in comparison with its neighbor.
This latter comparison is especially instructive because in the block,
as a matter of mere mass and outline, Mr. Richardson’s composition,
considerably simpler, is also pretty distinctly more forcible than that
of Mr. Hunt, by reason of its central and dominating feature, and
especially by reason of the completeness with which it is united by the
simple and unbroken roof; whereas the criticism already passed upon the
Vanderbilt house, that it grows weak above the cornice line, is
applicable, though in a less degree, to its author’s later work. The
various roofs required by the substructure, and carried to the same
height, have been imperfectly brought into subjection, and their
grouping does not make a single or a total impression. Taking the fronts
by themselves, considering them with reference to the distribution of
voids and solids, we must omit the minor front of Mr. Richardson’s work
as scarcely showing any composition; but the principal front is much
more striking and memorable, doubtless, than either elevation of Mr.
Hunt’s design, carefully and successfully as both of them have been
studied. Yet there is no question at all that the latter is by far the
more admirable and effective example of domestic architecture, because
the possibilities of expression that inhere in the masses are in the one
case brought out, and left latent in the other.
Of course, Mr. Hunt’s work is no more characteristically Chicagoan than
Mr. Richardson’s, and, of course, the dwellings we have been considering
are too large and costly to be fairly representative of the domestic
architecture of any city. The rule, to which there are as few exceptions
in Chicago as elsewhere, is that architecture is regarded as a
superfluity that only the rich can afford; whereas a genuine and general
interest in it would require the man who was able to own a house at all
to insist upon what the tailors call a “custom-made” dwelling, and would
lead him equally to reject a ready-made residence and a misfit. In that
case we should see in single houses of moderate size and moderate cost
the same evidence of affectionate study as in houses of greater
pretensions, even though the design might be evinced only in the careful
and thoughtful proportioning
[Illustration: FRONT IN DEARBORN AVENUE.
John Addison, Architect.]
and adjustment of the parts. This is still a sight as rare as it is
welcome in any American city, though it is less rare in cities of the
second and third class than in cities of the first. Chicago has its
share, but no more than its share, of instances in which the single
street front of a modest dwelling has been thought worthy of all the
pains that could be given to it. Of one such instance in Chicago an
illustration is given, and it is somewhat saddening to one who would
like to find in it an evidence of intelligent lay interest in
architecture to be informed that it is the residence of its architect.
Upon the whole, the domestic architecture of the town has few local
characteristics, besides those already mentioned, which are due to local
conditions rather than to local preferences. The range of building
material is wide, and includes a red sandstone from Lake Superior that
has not yet made its way into the Eastern cities, of a more positive
tint than any in general use there. On the other hand, the whole
continent has been laid under tribute for Chicago. The green “Chester
serpentine” which one encounters so often in Philadelphia--and generally
with regret, though in combination it may become very attractive--quite
unknown in New York as it is, is not uncommon in the residential
quarters of Chicago. Another material much commoner here than elsewhere
is the unhewn bowlder that Mr. Richardson employed in the fantastic
lodge at North Easton, which was one of his happiest performances. In a
long and low structure like that the defects of the material are much
less manifest than when it is attempted to employ it in a design of
several stories. One of the most interesting of these attempts is
illustrated herewith. The architect has wisely simplified his design to
the utmost to conform to the intractability of his material, and with
equal wisdom has marked with strong belts the division of his stories.
But in spite of its ruggedness the wall looks weak, since it is plain
that there is no bonding, and that it is not properly a piece of
masonry, but a layer of highly magnified concrete, which owes its
stability only to the cohesion of the cement, and to give the assurance
of being a trustworthy wall needs to be framed in a conspicuous quoining
of unquestionable masonry.
One other trait is common enough among such of the dwellings of Chicago
as have architectural pretensions to
[Illustration: A HOUSE OF BOWLDERS.
Burnham & Root, Architects.]
be remarked, and that is the prevalence of Byzantine carving. This is
not really a Chicagoan characteristic. If it is especially noticeable
here, it is because Chicago is so new, and it is in the newer quarters
of older towns that it is to be seen. It is quite as general on the
“West side” of New York. Its prevalence is again in great part due to
the influence of Richardson, and one is inclined to welcome it as at
least tending to provide a common and understood way of working for
architectural carvers, and the badge of something like a common style
for buildings that have little else in common. The facility with which
its spiky leafage can be used for surface decoration tempts designers to
provide surfaces for its decoration, in such structural features as
capitals and corbels, at the cost of the modelling which is so much more
expressive and so much more troublesome, when a mere cushion will do
better as a basis for Byzantine ornament.
[Illustration: A BYZANTINE CORBEL.
Henry Ives Cobb, Architect.]
For the rest, the clever and ingenious features which one often comes
upon in the residential streets of Chicago, and the thoroughly studied
fronts that one comes upon so much more seldom, would excite neither
more nor less surprise if they were encountered in the streets of any
older American town. But from what has been said it will be seen that in
every department of building, except only the ecclesiastical, Chicago
has already examples to show that should be of great value to its future
growth in stimulating its architects to produce and in teaching its
public to appreciate.
[Illustration]_GLIMPSES OF WESTERN ARCHITECTURE_
II.--ST. PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS
It is just thirty years since Anthony Trollope ascended the Mississippi
to the head of navigation and the Falls of St. Anthony, and recorded his
impressions of the works of nature and of man along the shores of that
river. As might perhaps have been expected, he admired with enthusiasm
the works of nature, and as might certainly have been expected, he found
little to admire in the handiwork of man. “I protest that of all the
river scenery that I know, that of the upper Mississippi is by far the
finest and the most continued. One thinks, of course, of the Rhine; but,
according to my idea of beauty, the Rhine is nothing to the upper
Mississippi.... The idea constantly occurs that some point on every
hill-side would form the most charming site ever yet chosen for a noble
residence.” Thus Trollope of the upper Mississippi, and thus again of
the “twin cities” that are the subject of our present inquisition: “St.
Paul contains about 14,000 inhabitants, and, like all other American
towns, is spread over a surface of ground adapted to the accommodation
of a very extended population. As it is belted on one side by the river,
and on the other by the bluffs which accompany the course of the river,
the site is pretty, and almost romantic.” The other “twin” is so much
the later born that to few Minneapolitans does it ever occur that it had
even seen the light in 1861. “Going on from Minnehaha, we came to
Minneapolis, at which place there is a fine suspension-bridge across the
river, just above the Falls of St. Anthony, and leading to the town of
that name. Till I got there I could hardly believe that in these days
there should be a living village called Minneapolis by living men. I
presume I should describe it as a town, for it has a municipality and a
post-office, and of course a large hotel. The interest of the place,
however, is in the saw-mills.”
I do not mean to celebrate again the growth of St. Paul and Minneapolis
from these small beginnings, which is the marvel of even the marvellous
West. But for our immediate purpose it is necessary to bear in mind not
only the rapidity of the growth of the two cities, but the intensity of
the rivalry between them--a rivalry which the stranger hardly
comprehends, however much he may have heard of it, until he has seen the
workings of it on the spot. Indeed, it is scarcely accurate to describe
the genesis of Minneapolis, in particular, as a growth at all. St. Paul
has been developed from the frontier trading-post of the earlier days by
an evolution, the successive stages of which have left their several
records; but Minneapolis has risen like an exhalation, or, to adopt even
a mustier comparison, has sprung from the heads of its projectors
full-panoplied in brick and mortar. “The twin cities on either bank,”
remarks the historiographer of the Minneapolis Exposition of 1886, “amid
many ups and downs--the ups always predominating--pegged along steadily
towards greatness.” The phrase is rather picturesque than graphic, for
nothing could be less descriptive of the mode of locomotion of
Minneapolis than a steady pegging along. It has been an affair of leaps
and bounds. There are traces of the village that Trollope saw, and there
are the towering structures of a modern city, and there is nothing
between. In this electric air, where there is so little “precipitation”
in the atmosphere and so much in everything else; where “the flux of
mortal things” is not a generalization of the mind, but a palpable fact
of daily experience; where antiquity means the day before yesterday, and
posterity the day after to-morrow, the present is the most contemptible
of tenses, and men inevitably come to think and live and build in the
future-perfect. A ten-story building in a ten-acre lot requires
explanation, and this seems to be the explanation--this and the
adjacency of the hated rival. In St. Paul the elevator came as a needed
factor in commercial architecture, since the strip of shore to which the
town was confined in Trollope’s time still limits and cramps the
business-quarter, and leaves only the vertical dimension available for
expansion. Towering buildings are the normal outcome of such a
situation. Minneapolis, on the other hand, occupies a table-land above
the river, which at present is practically unlimited. Although, of
course, every growing or grown town must have a most frequented part--a
centre where land is costlier than elsewhere, and buildings rise
higher--the altitude of the newest and tallest structures of Minneapolis
could scarcely be explained without reference to the nearness of St.
Paul, and the intensity of the local pride born of that nearness. If the
physical necessities of the case prescribed ten-story buildings in St.
Paul, the moral necessity of not being outdone would prescribe
twelve-story buildings for Minneapolis. In point of fact, it is to a
Minneapolitan architect that we owe the first project of an office
building which bears the same relation to the ordinary elevator building
of our cities that this bears to the five or six story edifice that the
topographical and commercial conditions would indicate as suited to the
actual needs of Minneapolis. The project remains on paper, though it is
some years since it startled the architects of the country, and an
interesting project it is in an architectural sense; but it is none the
less representative of the local genius than if it had been executed.
Evidently there could be no better places than the twin cities to study
the development of Western architecture, or rather to ascertain whether
there is any such thing. There seems to be among the Western lay
populations a faith that there is, which is none the less firm for being
a trifle vague, and this faith is shared by some of the practitioners of
architecture in the West. In the inscrutable workings of our official
architecture, one of these gentlemen came to be appointed a few years
ago the supervising architect of the Treasury. It is a measure of the
extent and intelligence of the national interest in the art that this
functionary, with little more than the official status of a clerk, and
with no guarantee that he has any professional status whatever, has
little less than the ædiliary powers of an Augustus. To have found a
city of brick and to have left a city of marble is a boast that more
than one supervising architect could have paraphrased in declaring that
he found the government architecture Renaissance and he left it Gothic,
or that he found it Gothic and he left it nondescript, while each
successive incumbent could have declared that he found it and left it
without architectural traditions and without architectural restraints.
The ambition of the architect immediately in question was not sectarian
so much as sectional. To him it seemed that a bureau had too many
traditions which to other students seemed to have none at all. Not
personally addicted to swearing to the words of any master, he
considered that the influence of authority in his office was much too
strong. He was himself from the remote West, and in an interview
setting forth his hopes and purposes, shortly after he came into the
office from which he was shortly to go out, he explained that “Eastern”
conventionalities had had altogether too much sway in the previous
conduct of the office, and that he meant to embody “Western ideas” in
the public buildings. In the brief interval before his retirement he
designed many monuments from which one should be able to derive some
notion of Western architectural ideas, and one of these is the
government building in Minneapolis. This edifice is mainly remarkable
for the multitude of ill-assorted and unadjusted features which it
exhibits, especially for the “grand choice” of pediments which its
fronts present--pediments triangular and curved, pediments closed and
broken--and for the variety and multiplicity of the cupolas and lanterns
and crestings by which the sky-line is animated into violent agitation.
The features themselves cannot be “Western,” since they are by no means
novel, the most recent of them dating back to Sir Christopher Wren, and
it must be the combination or the remarkable profusion of “things” that
constitutes the novelty and the Westernness which it was the mission of
the author to introduce into our public architecture. Unfortunately
there is nothing that can fairly be called combination, for the
composition is but an agglomeration, “a fortuitous concourse of atoms.”
We have all seen in the Eastern cities too many buildings of which
crudity and recklessness were the characteristics, and which were
unstudied accumulations of familiar forms, to assume that crudity and
recklessness in architecture are especially “Western ideas.” If they be
so, then assuredly “Western” is an opprobrious epithet, not lightly and
unadvisedly to be applied to any structure.
There is perhaps no other building in either city equally costly and
conspicuous which merits it in the same degree with the government
building at Minneapolis, at least in an architectural sense. An
enterprising owner in the same city has procured the materials for a new
building by permitting each contributor to inscribe his contribution
with the name of the material furnished by him, and a statement of its
good qualities, and these incised advertisements undoubtedly give a
local color to the structure; but this Westernness is scarcely
architectural. The City Hall and Court-house in St. Paul is a large and
conspicuous building, the more conspicuous for being isolated in the
midst of an open square; and it is unfortunate in design, or the absence
of it, the arrangement of its voids and solids being quite unstudied and
casual, and the aggregation quite failing to constitute a whole. There
are by no means so many features in it as in the government building at
Minneapolis, nor are they classic; but the architect has introduced more
“things” than he was able to handle, and they are equally irrelevant to
the pile and to each other, especially the tower that was intended to be
the culminating feature of the composition, but which fails to fulfil
its purpose from any point of view, crowning as it does a recessed angle
of the front. This also is a congeries of unrelated and unadjusted
parts, and, in the light of the illustrations of his meaning furnished
by our official spokesman, this also may be admitted to be
characteristically W----n. The same admission may reluctantly be made
concerning the Chamber of Commerce in St. Paul, which consists
architecturally of two very busy and bustling fronts, compiled of
“features” that do not make up a physiognomy, and which stand upon a
massive sash frame of plate-glass. As a matter of fact, these things
have their counterparts in the East, only there they are not referred to
the geography, but to the illiteracy or insensibility of the designer,
and this classification seems simpler, and, upon the whole, more
satisfactory.
Minneapolis has a compensation for its newness in the fact that when its
public buildings came to be projected, the fashion of such edifices as
these had passed away. If the work of Mr. Richardson has been much
misunderstood, as I tried to point out in speaking of the domestic
architecture of Chicago, if its accidents have been mistaken by admiring
disciples for its essence, even if its essential and admirable qualities
do not always suffice to make it available as a model, it is necessary
only to consider such buildings as have just been mentioned to perceive
how beneficial, upon the whole, his influence has been, for it has at
least sufficed to make such buildings impossible--impossible, at least,
to be done by architects who have any pretensions to be “in the
movement”--and it is hard to conceive that they can be succeeded by
anything so bad. The City Hall of Minneapolis, for instance, was
projected but a few years later than its government building, but in the
interval Richardson’s influence had been at work. That influence is
betrayed both in the accepted design now in course of execution and in
the other competitive designs, and it has resulted in a specific
resemblance to the public building at Pittsburgh, which its author
professed his hope to make “a dignified pile of rocks.” The variations
which the authors of the Minneapolis City Hall have introduced in the
scheme they have reproduced in its general massing, and in its most
conspicuous features are not all improvements. By the introduction of
grouped openings into its solid shaft the tower of Pittsburgh is shorn
of much of its power; nor can the substitution be commended in its upper
stage of a modification of the motive employed by Richardson in
Trinity, Boston, and derived by him from Salamanca, for the simpler
treatment used in the prototype of this building as the culminating
feature of a stark and lofty tower. The far greater elaboration of the
corner pavilions of the principal fronts, also, though in part justified
by the greater tractability of the material here employed, tends rather
to confusion than to enrichment. On the other hand, the more subdued
treatment of the curtain wall between the tower and the pavilions gives
greater value and detachment to both, and is thus an advance upon the
prototype; and the central gable of the subordinate front is distinctly
more successful than the corresponding feature of Pittsburgh, the
archway, withdrawn between two protecting towers, of which the
suggestion comes from mediæval military architecture. Observe, however,
that the derivation of the general scheme of the building and of its
chief features from an earlier work is by no means an impeachment of the
architect’s originality, provided the precedent he chooses be really
applicable to his problem, and provided he analyze it instead of
reproducing it without analysis. In what else does progress consist than
in availing one’s self of the labor of one’s predecessors? If the
Grecian builders had felt the pressure of the modern demand for novelty,
and had endeavored to comply with it by making dispositions radically
new, instead of refining upon the details of an accepted type, or if the
mediæval builders had done the same thing, it is manifest that the
typical temple or the typical cathedral would never have come to be
built, that we should have had no Parthenon and no Cologne. The
requirements of the Minneapolis building, a court-house and town-hall,
are nearly enough alike to those of the county building at Pittsburgh to
make it credible that the general scheme of the earlier work may, by
force of merit, have imposed itself upon the architect of the later.
The general difference of treatment is the greater richness and
elaboration of the newer structure, and this is a legitimate consequence
of the substitution of freestone for granite; while the differences of
detail and the introduction at Minneapolis of features that have no
counterpart at Pittsburgh suffice to vindicate the designer from the
reproach of having followed his model thoughtlessly or with servility.
So far as can be judged from the drawings, the municipal building of
Minneapolis, when it comes to be finished, will be a monument of which
the Minneapolitans will have a right to be proud, for better reasons
than mere magnitude and costliness.
[Illustration: PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS.
Long & Kees, Architects.]
Another work, this time completely executed, by the designers of the
City Hall, the Public Library of Minneapolis, betrays also the influence
of Richardson. The motive of the principal front, an arcade bounded by
round towers and surmounted by a story of blank wall, was pretty
evidently suggested by his unexecuted
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO PUBLIC LIBRARY, MINNEAPOLIS.]
design for a similar building at Buffalo. The precedent here is perhaps
not so directly in point, seeing that the effectiveness of an arcade
increases with its length, and in a much greater ratio, and that the
arcade here is not only much shorter than in the projected building, but
is still further shortened to the eye by being heightened and carried
through two stories. The towers, too, would have been more effective had
it been practicable to give greater solidity to their lower stages.
Nevertheless, the building is distinctly successful, and its most
successful feature, the gabled centre that includes the entrance, is
one which illustrates the inventiveness of the designers, as well as
their power of judicious selection and modification.
[Illustration: THE PEOPLE’S CHURCH, ST. PAUL.
J. W. Stevens, Architect.]