the West is not largely ecclesiastical, and the churches are for the
most part as near to traditional models as their designers have the
knowledge to bring them. In the Eastern States a great many interesting
essays have been made towards solving the modern problem of a church in
which the pulpit and not the altar is the central point of design, while
yet retaining an ecclesiastical expression. There is an edifice in St.
Paul called “the People’s Church,” in which the designer seems purposely
to have avoided an ecclesiastical expression, and to have undertaken to
typify in brick and stone the wild, free theology of the West. He has so
far succeeded that nobody could possibly take the result of his labors
for a church in the usual acceptation of the term, but this negative
attainment does not yet constitute a positive architectural success. It
may be that Western ideas in theology are thus far somewhat too sketchy
to form a basis for the establishment of an architectural type, since
mere negation is insusceptible of architectural expression. The People’s
Church does not lack, however, many of the qualities that should belong
to every building as a building, apart from its destination. In spite of
such unhappy freaks as that by which the stone basement merges into the
brick superstructure with no architectural mark of the transition, and
cuts the openings quite at random, or as that by which the brick wall,
for a considerable but indefinite extent, is quite promiscuously
aspersed with irregular bits of stone, it shows a considerable skill in
the placing and detailing of features, and the disposition of the
openings gives the principal front a grateful sense of stability and
repose. The ample entrances designate it as a place of popular assembly,
and possibly its religious purpose may be taken to be confessed, though
somewhat shamefacedly, in the wheel-window at the centre of one front,
and the tall traceried opening at the centre of the other, which are the
only relics of ecclesiastical architecture that are suffered to appear.
It is evident that it is a “People’s” something, and possibly this is as
near to a specification of its purpose as the neo-theologians have
attained. In this case, as it is notoriously difficult for a man to give
expression to an idea of which he is not possessed, the architectural
ambiguity is assuredly not to be imputed to the architect.
A Unitarian church in Minneapolis is also an unconventional specimen of
church architecture, though it could not be taken for anything but a
church, and it is undeniably a vigorous performance, consisting of
massive, well-divided, and “well-punched” walls in a monochrome of
dark-red sandstone. The novelty and the unconventionally, however, seem,
both in composition and in detail, to have been sought rather than
[Illustration: UNITARIAN CHURCH, MINNEAPOLIS.
L. S. Buffington, Architect.]
to have proceeded from the conditions of the problem, and the effect is
so far marred by the loss of the naturalness and straightforwardness
that justify a departure from convention. For example, even in a
galleried church the division into two stories can scarcely be
considered the primary fact of the building, though this division is the
primary fact of this design, and is emphasized by the torus that is the
most conspicuous moulding. Nevertheless, there is much felicity in the
general disposition and in the design of the features, especially in the
open fenestration of the transept gable, and its strong contrast with
the solider flanks of wall pierced only by the smaller openings that
indicate the gallery staircases, the slope of which is also expressed in
the masonry of the wall itself; and the low polygonal tower effectually
unites and dominates the two fronts. The innovation in the treatment of
detail, by which what is commonly the “wrought work” of a building in
facile sandstone is left rough-faced, is a caprice that seems also to
proceed from the pursuit of novelty, and that gains nothing in vigor for
what it loses in refinement. A rough-faced moulding seems to be a
contradiction in terms; yet here not only are the mouldings rough-faced,
but also the columns and colonnettes, and the corbelled pinnacles that
detach the tower and the gables, and it is only in the copings of these
that the asperities of the sandstone are mitigated. Slovenliness is not
vigor, and in the coarsening of this detail the designer, in spite of
having produced a vigorous and interesting work, exposes himself to the
critical amenity bestowed by Dryden upon Elkanah Settle, that “his style
is boisterous and rough-hewn.”
A more conventional and a quite unmistakable example of church building
is a Presbyterian church in St. Paul, which follows the established
ecclesiastical type, albeit with a recognition of the modern demand that
a church shall be a good place in which to preach and to be preached
to--a demand which here, as often elsewhere, is met by shortening the
arms of the cruciform plan until the church is virtually limited to the
crossing. It is no disparagement to the present design to say that in
its general composition it seems to have been suggested by--and at any
rate it suggests--an early and interesting work of Mr. Richardson’s, a
church in Springfield, Massachusetts, upon which it improves at some
points, notably in the emphatic exposition of the masonic structure. At
other points the variation is not so successful. The tower at
Springfield, with its attached turret, the entrance arch at its base,
and the broach spire with pinnacles detached over the squinches, is a
very vigorous piece of design. In the corresponding feature at St. Paul,
the relation between the two superposed open stages is not rhythmic or
felicitous, though each in itself is well modelled, and the transition
from the tower to the shingled spire, marked by shingled pinnacles
without a parapet, is distinctly unfortunate. For all that, the church
is a studied and scholarly performance.
[Illustration: PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ST. PAUL.
Gilbert & Taylor, Architects.]
In the material and materializing development of the West, it is not
surprising that the chief object of local pride should not be the local
church, but the local hotel. “Of course a large hotel” is now, as in
Trollope’s time,
[Illustration: WEST HOTEL, MINNEAPOLIS.
L. S. Buffington, Architect.]
a necessary ingredient of a local “boom.” In respect of architecture the
large hotel of Minneapolis has a decided advantage over the large hotel
of St. Paul. For the caravansary of the older town is an example of the
kind of secular Victorian Gothic that was stimulated by the erection of
Sir Gilbert Scott’s Midland Hotel in London, than which a less eligible
model could scarcely be put before an untrained designer, since there is
little in it to redeem an uneasy and uninteresting design except
carefully studied and carefully adjusted detail. This careful study and
adjustment being omitted, as they are in the Hotel Ryan, and a
multiplicity of features retained and still further confused by a
random introduction of color, the result is a bewildering and saltatory
edifice which has nothing of interest except the banded piers of the
basement. The West Hotel in Minneapolis is a much more considerable
structure. It has a general composition, both vertically and laterally,
consisting in the former case of three divisions, of which the central
is rather the most important, and in the latter of an emphasis of the
centre and the ends in each front and of a subordination of the
intervening wall. Here, also, there is a multiplicity of features, but
they are not so numerous or distributed so much at random as to prevent
us from seeing the countenance, for undeniably the building has a
physiognomy, and that is in itself an attainment. In artistic quality
the features are very various, and the one trait they seem to have in
common is a disregard for academic correctness or for purity of style.
This is conspicuous in the main entrance, which is perhaps the most
effective and successful of them, being a massive and powerful
porte-cochère, in which, however, an unmistakably Gothic dwarf column
adjoins a panelled pilaster, which as unmistakably owes its origin to
the Renaissance, and a like freedom of eclecticism may be observed
throughout the building. In its degree this freedom may be Western,
though a European architect would be apt to dismiss it indiscriminately
as American; whereas an American architect would be more apt to ask
himself, with respect to any particular manifestation of it, whether it
was really, and not only conventionally, a solecism. In this place the
conjunction does not strike one as incongruous, but there are other
features in which the incongruity is real, such as the repeated
projections of long and ugly corbels to support things that are pretty
evidently there mainly for the purpose of being supported. The
impregnable criticism of the Vicar of Wakefield, that the picture would
have been better if the artist had taken more pains, is especially
applicable to this edifice. It might have been both chastened and
clarified by severer study; but it is a compliment to it, as American
hotel architecture goes, to wish that it had been more carefully matured
by its designer before being irretrievably executed. The interior
presents several interesting points of design as well as of arrangement,
but perhaps it owes its chief attractiveness to the rich and quiet
decoration of those of its rooms that have been intrusted to Mr.
Bradstreet, who for many years has been acting as an evangelist of good
taste to the two cities, and who for at least the earlier of those years
must have felt that he was an evangelist _in partibus_. The interior
design and decoration of the opera-house at Minneapolis is a yet more
important illustration of his skill; but interiors are beyond our
present scope.
For public works other than public buildings, the two cities are not as
yet very notable. The site of St. Paul makes a bridge across the river
at this point a very conspicuous object, and perhaps nowhere in the
world would a noble and monumental bridge be more effective. The
existing bridges, however, are works of the barest utility, apparently
designed by railroad engineers with no thought of anything beyond
efficiency and economy, and they are annoying interruptions to the
panorama unrolled to the spectator from the hill-side in the shining
reach of the great river. Minneapolis has been more fortunate in this
respect, although the river by no means plays so important a part in its
landscape. The suspension-bridge of Trollope’s time has, of course, long
since disappeared, having been replaced by another, built in 1876 from
the designs of Mr. Griffith, which was a highly picturesque object, and
was perhaps the most satisfactory solution yet attained, though by no
means a completely satisfactory solution, of the artistic problem
involved in the design of a suspension-bridge; a problem which to most
designers of such bridges does not appear to be involved in it at
all.[G] It is very unfortunate that although the Minneapolitans
appreciated this structure as one of their chief municipal ornaments,
they should, nevertheless, have sacrificed it quite ruthlessly to the
need of greater accommodation; whereas there could scarcely have been
any insuperable difficulty in moving the site of the new bridge that the
new exigencies demanded so that the old might be preserved. In another
respect, Minneapolis has derived a great advantage from the capacity and
the necessity of taking long views that are imposed upon her people by
the conditions of their lives. This is the reservation, at the
instigation of a few provident and public-spirited citizens, of the
three lakes that lie in the segment of a circle a few miles inland from
the existing city, and of the strip of land connecting them. Even now,
with little improvement beyond road-making, the circuit of the future
parks is a delightful drive; and when Minneapolis shall have expanded
until they constitute a bounding boulevard, the value of them as a
municipal possession will be quite incalculable.
The aspect of the commercial quarters of the two cities has more points
of difference than of resemblance. The differences proceed mainly from
the fact already noted, that the commercial quarter of St. Paul is
cramped as well as limited by the topography, and that it is all coming
to be occupied by a serried mass of lofty buildings, whereas the lofty
buildings of Minneapolis are still detached objects erected in
anticipation
[Illustration: LUMBER EXCHANGE, MINNEAPOLIS.
Long & Kees, Architects.]
of the pressure for room that has not yet begun to be felt. It is an odd
illustration of the local rivalry that although the cities are so near
together, the architects are confined to their respective fields, and it
is very unusual, if not unexampled, that an architect of either is
employed in the other. Such an employment would very likely be resented
as incivism. Eastern architects are admitted on occasion as out of the
competition, but in the main each city is built according to the plans
of the local designers. The individual characteristics of the busiest
and most successful architects are thus impressed upon the general
appearance of the town, and go to widen the difference due to
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BANK OF COMMERCE, MINNEAPOLIS.
Harry W. Jones, Architect.]
natural causes. The best examples of commercial architecture in
Minneapolis, such as the Bank of Commerce and the Lumber Exchange,
before its partial destruction by fire, have the same straightforward
and severely business-like character as the buildings designed by Mr.
Root in Chicago, and, indeed, they seem to owe not a little to
suggestions derived from him. The treatment of the Lumber Exchange, in
particular, indicates an admiring study of his work. Here the centre of
the front is signalized by projecting shallow oriels carried through the
five central stories of the building on each side of the ample opening
in each story directly over the entrance, and by flanking this central
bay in the upper division with narrow and solid turrets, corbelled and
pinnacled. The scheme is not so effectively wrought out as it deserves
to be, and as it might be. The central feature is not developed into
predominance, and the main divisions of the building are no more
emphasized in treatment than the divisions between the intermediate
stories. The observer may recur to the Vicar of Wakefield to express his
regret that the promise of so promising a scheme should not have been
fulfilled, although, in spite of its shortcomings, the result is a
respectable “business block.” These remarks apply to the original
building, and not to the building as it has since been reconstructed by
the addition of two stories which throw out the relations of its parts,
and make it difficult to decipher the original scheme. The Bank of
Commerce is as frankly utilitarian as the Lumber Exchange, the designer
having relaxed the restraint imposed upon him by the prosaic and
pedestrian character of his problem only in the design of the scholarly
and rather ornate entrances. For the rest, the architecture is but the
expression of the structure, which is expressed clearly and with vigor.
The longer front shows the odd notion of emphasizing the centre by
withdrawing it, a procedure apparently irrational, which has, however,
the compensation of giving value and detachment to the entrance at its
base. The problem was much more promising than that of the Lumber
Exchange, seeing that here, with an ample area, there are but six
stories against ten, and it is out of all comparison better solved. The
four central stories are grouped by piers continued through them and
connected by round arches above the fifth, while the first and sixth are
sharply separated
[Illustration: CORNER OF BANK OF COMMERCE, MINNEAPOLIS.]
in treatment, the former as an unmistakable basement, with a plain
segment-headed opening in each bay, and the latter as an unmistakable
attic, with a triplet of lintelled and shafted openings aligned over
each of the round arches. The fronts are, moreover, distinguished,
without in the least compromising the utilitarian purpose of the
structure, by the use of the architectural devices the lack of which one
deplores in the other building, insomuch that the difference between the
two is the difference between a building merely
[Illustration: THE “GLOBE” BUILDING, MINNEAPOLIS.
E. Townsend Mix, Architect.]
blocked out and a finished building, and suggests again that the Lumber
Exchange must have been designed under pressure. The building of the
“Globe” newspaper, in Minneapolis, is a vigorous composition in
Richardsonian Romanesque, excessively broken and diversified, doubtless,
for its extent, but with interesting pieces of detail, and with a
picturesque angle tower that comes in very happily from several points
of view of the business quarter. The emphatic framing of this tower
between two plain piers is a noteworthy point of design, and so is the
use of the device that emphasizes the angles throughout their whole
extent, while still keeping the vertical lines in subordination to the
horizontal.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO “PIONEER PRESS” BUILDING, ST. PAUL.
S. S. Beman, Architect.]
Among the business blocks of St. Paul, the building of the “Pioneer
Press” newspaper is eminent for the strictness with which the design
conforms itself to the utilitarian conditions of the structure, and the
impressiveness of the result attained, not in spite of those apparently
forbidding conditions, but by means of them. Here also Mr. Root’s
buildings, to which this praise belongs in so high a degree, have
evidently enough inculcated their lesson upon the designer of the
present structure. An uncompromising parallelopiped of brown brick rears
itself to the height of twelve stories, with no break at all in its
outline, and with no architecture that is not evolved directly from the
requirements of the building. One does not seem to be praising a man
very highly to praise him for talking prose when he has a prosaic
subject. A mere incompetency to poetry would apparently suffice to earn
this moderate eulogy. Yet, in fact, nothing is much rarer in our
architecture than the power to deny one’s self irrelevant beauties. The
“Pioneer Press” building is a basement of three stones, the first story
of
[Illustration: CORNER OF “PIONEER PRESS” BUILDING.]
the brick-work counting in with the two-story substructure of masonry,
carrying a superstructure of seven, crowned with an attic of two. This
latter feature proceeds, doubtless, from the special requirement of a
newspaper office superposed upon a business block, and it may be
inferred that to this requirement is due the greater enrichment of the
lower of the two attic stories, contrary to the usual arrangement, and
testifying the architect’s belief, mistaken or not, that the editorial
function is of more dignity and worthier of celebration than the
typographical. At any rate, the unusual disposition is architecturally
fortunate, since it provides, in the absolutely plain openings of what
is presumably the composing-room, a grateful interval between the
comparative richness of the arcades beneath and of the cornice above. In
the main front, the ample entrance at the centre supplies a visible
motive for the vertical as well as for the subordinate lateral division.
It is developed through the three stories of the basement, and it is
recognised in a prolongation upward of its flanking piers through the
central division--which is completed by round arches, the spandrels of
which are decorated--and through the attic, so as to effect a triple
division for the front. The unostentatious devices are highly effective
by which the monotony that would result from an identical treatment of
the seven central stories is relieved, while the impression made by the
magnitude of such a mass is retained. The terminal piers are left
entirely unbroken throughout all their extent, except for a continuous
string course above the eighth story, which might better have been
omitted, since it cuts the intermediate piers very awkwardly, and
detracts from the value of the heavier string course only one story
higher that has an evident reason of being, as the springing course of
the arcade; while the intermediate piers are crossed by string courses
above the fifth and the ninth stories, so as to give to the central and
dominant feature of the main composition a triple division of its own
into a beginning, a middle, and an end.
The building is very successful, and the more successful because the
designer has shirked nothing and blinked nothing, but out of this
nettle, commercial demands, has plucked this flower, commercial
architecture. The same praise of an entire relevancy to its purpose
belongs to the Bank of Minnesota, a well-proportioned and well-divided
piece of masonry, in spite of more effort at variety in outline, and of
somewhat more of fantasy in detail. The former is manifested in the
treatment of the roof, in which the gables of the upper story are
relieved against a low mansard; and the latter in the design of these
gables and of the rich and effective entrance. The problem, as one of
composition, is very much simplified here, since the building is but of
six stories, and the dilemma of monotony or miscellany, which so awfully
confronts the designers of ten and twelve story buildings, does not
present itself. The two lower stories, though quite differently
detailed, are here grouped into an architectural basement, the grouping
being emphasized in the main front by the extension of the entrance
through both. The superstructure is of three stories, quite identical
and very plain in treatment, and above is the lighter and more open
fenestration of the gabled attic.
[Illustration: BANK OF MINNESOTA, ST. PAUL.
Wilcox & Johnson, Architects.]
Of far more extent and pretension than this, being
[Illustration: TOP OF NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE BUILDING, ST. PAUL.
Babb, Cook, & Willard, Architects.]
indeed perhaps the costliest and most “important” of all the business
block of St. Paul, is the building of the New York Life Insurance
Company. In saying that the total impression of this edifice is one of
picturesque quaintness, one seems to deny its typicalness, if not its
appropriateness, as a housing and an expression of the local genius, for
assuredly there is nothing quaint about the Western business man or his
procedures during business hours, however quaint and even picturesque
one may find him when relaxing into anecdote in his hours of ease. The
building owes its quaintness in great part to the division of its
superstructure into two unequal masses flanking a narrow court, at the
base of which is the main entrance. The general arrangement is not
uncommon in the business blocks of New York. The unequal division into
masses, of which one is just twice as wide as the other, looks
capricious in the present detached condition of the building; though
when another lofty building abuts upon it, the inequality will be seen
to be a sensible precaution to secure the effective lighting of the
narrower mass, the light for the wider being secured by a street upon
one side as well as by the court upon the other. Even so, this will not
be so intuitively beheld as the fact of the inequality itself, and as
the differences of treatment to which it gives rise and by which it is
emphasized; for the quaintness resulting from the asymmetry is so far
from being ungrateful to the designer that he has seized upon it with
avidity, and developed it by all the means in his power. Quaintness is
the word that everybody uses spontaneously to express the character of
the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance, and the treatment of these unequal
gables is obviously derived from Flemish examples. The origin of their
crow steps and ailerons is unmistakable, and the treatment of the
grouped and somewhat huddled openings, and their wreathed pediments and
bull’s-eyes, richly and heavily framed in terra-cotta, is equally
characteristic, to the point of being baroque. This character is quite
evidently meant, and the picturesqueness that results from it is
undeniable, and gives the building its prevailing expression; howbeit it
is confined to the gables, the treatment of the substructure being as
“architecturesque” as that of the superstructure is picturesque. A
simple and massive basement of two stories in masonry carries the five
stones of brick-work heavily quoined in stone that constitute the body
of the building, and this is itself subdivided by slight but sufficient
differences, the lower story being altogether of masonry, and the upper
arcaded. An intermediate story, emphatically marked off above and below,
separates this body from the two-story roof, the gables of which we have
been considering. The main entrance, which gives
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE BUILDING, ST. PAUL.]