parallelepipeds with two external areas. The influence of the
American zoning law is visible in the upper part only. It
accounts for the stepping-back of the central block and the
octagonal tower that surmounts each corner. (Fraternity Clubs
Building, New York, by Murgatroyd and Ogden.)_
[Illustration]
A building erected under the zoning ordinance will, therefore, occupy
as much ground as its promoter is able to buy with borrowed money,
and will, wherever possible, spread itself over the entire area of a
city block, so that it is bounded by a street on all four sides. Its
outline will, in addition, present two striking characteristics. It
will rise on all sides in a succession of receding stages gathered
at the summit in a central tower-like mass which, provided its area
does not exceed a prescribed limit, may itself escape the restraining
influence and rise unhindered. And while at each corner the street wall
itself is brought to the full height permissible under the ordinance,
the central part of each façade will be recessed so as to form one or
several open courts or areas. At the moment of writing, London is about
to witness the completion of its first building designed along these
lines. Why the American zoning regulations should have been made to
govern the design of the new Devonshire House building in London is not
excessively clear, but this interesting piece of work does at any rate
provide a valuable illustration of the laws of growth to which American
architecture will in future be subject. For this reason it is by far
the most interesting and the most characteristically modern of our
large new buildings. There is just now a curious tendency to describe
as modern a small number of structures whose windows are treated in
accordance with a short-lived æsthetic fashion of thirty years ago.
Devonshire House furnishes proof that architecture is able to be more
modern than that, for here the new zoning ordinance is, for the first
time in London, shown actively at work.
_A zoned building, more recent than the last, showing
the American zoning law in full operation. The central
parallelepiped here runs across the two others, thus forming
six external areas separated by six buttress-like projections.
Each of these projections is stepped back in obedience to the
zoning law. (Bell Telephone Building, St. Louis, by Russell and
Crowell.)_
[Illustration]
We may now see why it was remarked that zoning had substituted a new
architectural impulse for the governing impulse of internal form to
which we owe the major masterpieces of architecture. A zoned building
can never be a masterpiece in the same sense as these. You cannot
compare a zoned building to Chartres Cathedral, any more than you can
compare a suit of clothes to a paper-weight. The form of the one is
dictated by something working from inside outwards, while the form of
the other is the result of an agency working upon the surface from
without. The paper-weight may be as beautiful in its way, but its
beauty does not arise, as the beauty of clothing arises, from its
power to invest the human form with an apt, expressive and dignified
integument. In the same manner the zoned building may be beautiful, but
not with the beauty of the greatest architecture, which consists in
the fashioning of a dwelling-place, human or divine, in such a manner
as to guard and delight those who enter into it. The zoned building
is, I repeat, like the University of Pittsburg, a matter of cubic feet
piled up around a private road. Any new formal impulse that may control
its growth resides in the street without; any new formal excellence it
may exhibit has for its origin the directing authority of this street.
But in spite of the inferior quality of its products, it is easy to
see that the zoning ordinance holds out a considerable promise to the
architecture of the future, supplying a fresh and vigorous motive in
the place of an older that is rapidly failing, and setting up the
authority of reason where caprice alone now rules.
Before we leave this subject, a word may perhaps be added concerning
the limitations of this method of control. It clearly cannot be applied
everywhere with equally pleasing results. A town or a district in which
the streets run at right angles to one another will show it at its
best, for there, and there only, will it be possible for the defining
lines to meet with any degree of regularity. London buildings, too,
have sometimes to conform to a stipulated angle, though for another
reason than those of New York. But the irregularity of our streets, and
the narrowness of most of our building frontages, have caused these
controlling angles to become a source of grotesque heterogeneity and
ugliness instead of allowing them to establish a new kind of order.
Nor should our town be one containing sites excessively large, or have
some of its streets so narrowly spaced as to produce sites that are
sensibly smaller than the average. The larger area will permit of too
great a building height, the smaller of too little, and it would appear
necessary that the “street block” should, in addition to a regular
outline, observe an approximate equality of size also. Founded upon
these two equalities, the zoning ordinances proceed to build up an
equality of height, of content, which in its turn begets yet another
that is the guarantee of their ultimate success. For nothing will
prosper in America that does not pay, and fortunately zoning has been
found to pay, and to pay very handsomely. The “realtors” of the big
American towns did not take long to discover that, while the building
of a skyscraper must enhance the value of the surrounding land, this
enhancement is considerably greater where the growth is controlled than
where it is left free to congest, and stifle, and darken, as in the
licence of nineteenth-century New York. To the neighbouring landowner
an unregulated skyscraper, if it pointed to a new opportunity, was
at the same time an evil and a discouragement, for, if all buildings
simultaneously went up to those same heights, would they not mutually
destroy one another? The zoning ordinance has thus become a part of
the republican policy of the United States, under which a competitive
society is made to bring forth numbers rather than eminence, and
watches over these its children with democratic solicitude.
We have examined with some care the evolution of wheeled traffic and
the changes its multiplication must inevitably bring about in the
appearance of our streets. Is not flying, it may be asked, always
described as the locomotion of the future, and is not the shape of
our buildings likely to reflect so important a development? The first
part of this question would take us beyond the scope of the present
essay, but the answer to the second part may perhaps form the subject
of a digressive paragraph. One might reasonably say that the design
of a building is likely to respond to the needs of aerial traffic in
three ways only, but not in any way that is likely to be of great
consequence. The first possibility is that a building may be required
providing means whereby aeroplanes are enabled to make a safe landing
on its roof. A flat roof of ample dimensions thus becomes necessary,
and yet we have seen that one of the effects of the zoning ordinance
is to break up the roof surface of a building into a series of narrow
ledges. A building upon the top of which it is desired to bring an
aeroplane to land will, therefore, in those places where zoning
prevails, need to be conspicuously low. Possibly a roof may here and
there be projected outward beyond the walls of a building, an expedient
whose drawbacks are such that it is unlikely to be often adopted. In
any case it will be necessary to provide an entrance to the building
from this roof, but there is nothing very new about that. The second
possibility is that the aeroplane may have to be lowered from the
roof of the building to the street level. The easiest way of making
this descent is (to quote from a newspaper advertisement of the great
Wanamaker exhibition to which I have referred) by “corkscrewing down
the exterior of the building.” One of the great mural cartoons included
(side by side with a Ford “family aeroplane”) in this exhibition shows
an enormous cylindrical tower, encircled by a descending spiral,
very much like a corkscrew in appearance. This tower is not, however,
an ordinary city building, but, reaching high above the concourse of
these, a special structure surmounted by a mooring mast for dirigibles.
Happily the building has yet to be designed that will, while giving
shelter, however unworthy, to human beings, wrap itself in a broad
fire-escape for the convenience of corkscrewing aeroplanes. And there
is, on the whole, no ground for supposing that our urban architecture
will at any time pay so exorbitant a regard to the advance of the
aeroplane as to transform itself in this manner.
But it will be remarked that aerial travel is bound to call into being
a number of buildings of a special kind, devoted to this one purpose
alone. May we expect such buildings to be as novel and as eminently
characteristic as the Wanamaker cartoon would appear to suggest? It
is difficult to believe that among them there will be anything more
unusual than the dirigible hangar, which is already a familiar sight,
and which, to do it justice, has a peculiar interest in that it is the
only modern building whose purpose contains an unanswerable argument
for a roof vaulted throughout its entire breadth. The hangar built at
Orly by the French engineer Freyssinet is perhaps the example best
known in this country; if it is not, it certainly deserves to be. But
though the rounded shape of a balloon clearly demands a vaulted roof,
there is no reason why such roofs should not be used elsewhere, as
they have in fact been used for many centuries; and in his Utrecht
Post Office the Dutch architect Crouwel has given us a building that,
stripped of its great clock and its counters and other furnishings,
might easily be mistaken by a wandering dirigible for its accustomed
lair. Striking though the appearance of the Orly hangar may be found,
it would scarcely be fair to attribute its success to the peculiar
function it so efficiently discharges. And if this is all that the
dirigible balloon is likely to do for architecture, what shall we
say of the aeroplane? It would appear that only when practising the
movement described by our American friends as “corkscrewing” will
the aeroplane need the help of the architectural innovator. Till
then we must remain content to see it inhabit a structure hardly
distinguishable from the coach-house of our forbears.
The prospect opened to us by aerial locomotion is limited, for
no matter how high our winged vehicles may one moment soar, they
cannot approach the earth without losing much of their glamour and
strangeness. Let us turn instead to the far more considerable factor
which came before us at the beginning of this essay. The emancipation
of modern woman was there glanced at in only one of the three aspects
of which the two others have still to be regarded. We saw how, as a
consumer of wealth, she has been instrumental in withdrawing the art of
building from the light of its central inspiration, and depriving it of
the most highly treasured of its resources. As a producer of wealth,
her influence has perhaps been less momentous, but it is by no means
to be disregarded, for the modern dwelling-house exhibits the fruits
of it in almost every detail of planning and equipment. So profound
are the changes it has suffered that a medium-sized house, built, say,
three generations ago, and left in its original state, presents almost
insuperable difficulties to the housewife of to-day. Its cavernous
succession of kitchens and larders, its monumental boiling ranges, its
numberless stairs and endless dim passages, all of these things must
fall into desuetude, unless a regiment of muscular girls and women is
enlisted to maintain order among them. We all know how in the leisurely
age of our great-grandmothers a house was much more loosely, more
vaguely planned, with nothing resembling the meticulous precision that
is brought to bear upon it to-day. It was not necessary in those days
to measure the distance the housewife had to walk in order to put the
dinner on the table, for the walk was one which she was never called
upon to take. There was no need to place a roomy and well-ventilated
linen-cupboard close to the principal bedrooms, for the bedroom linen
might be kept anywhere and fetched from anywhere without inflicting
appreciable hardship upon the housewife. But wide though the gulf may
be that divides the modern house from that of the early nineteenth
century, the novelty of the former would not be nearly so apparent
were it not for the much broader gulf by which it is divided from
that of a generation later. During the second half of the century the
romantic revival was scattering over the country a number of houses
whose unpracticalness was so gigantic that they could only strike
the beholder completely dumb. The labyrinth at Knossos being at that
time still undiscovered, these structures are generally presumed to
derive from the cathedrals and dungeons of the Middle Ages. It is by
comparison with these preposterous inventions that the post-war house
stands out in a yet more appealing and more individual light. Instead
of losing purpose and definition, like the typical city building, it
has gained vastly in both these qualities, and it has gained because,
from being the scene of the housewife’s activities, it has become her
instrument and ally, and sometimes (it must be admitted) her accomplice
even.
The next step, indeed, has already been taken. It is possible even now
to watch the modern residence gradually assuming the properties of a
machine. At the beginning of the last century nine-tenths of the cost
of a house went into the structure, while the remaining tenth paid for
its fixtures and equipment. Nowadays we spend almost as much on drains
and plumbing, on baths and closets, on bedroom lavatory basins supplied
with hot water, on central heating, electric light, telephones and
suchlike, as we spend on the building of the house. So remarkable has
been this development that an American writer has prophesied a period
when houses will be given away free with the plumbing. It is doubtful
whether such munificence will ever become a commercial possibility, but
the prophecy contains more than a modicum of truth. We may reasonably
expect to see all but the most indispensable furniture done away
with in the small house of to-morrow, while its walls, ceilings, and
doors will assume a blankness and roundedness that has hitherto been
thought needful only in the operating chambers of our hospitals. In
order still to reduce the housewife’s labours, the apartments will
be brought together in those vast blocks that are meeting with such
strenuous opposition from private householders in the United States,
an opposition to which the zoning authorities have almost invariably
given every support. What is the reason for this opposition? It is
that a new apartment house will (in the words of a recent American
Court pronouncement) “increase the fire hazard” of the district upon
which it intrudes, and will be “creative of noises from autos, taxis,
milk wagons, drays, etc., in a locality where peace and quiet now
prevail; it will obstruct light and air, and sooner or later it will
bring with it the immoralities which always attend the building of
such structures.” The list of its potential misdeeds goes on, but I
have quoted at sufficient length to show what are the conditions to be
expected when the house is supplanted by large, noisy, and efficient
machines, which none but the richest and the poorest may altogether
elude.
Is it inevitable that they will be so supplanted? The displacement
is steadily going on, and the scope and rapidity of the process must
depend upon the eagerness with which modern woman sets herself to pluck
the fruits of liberty that are now so compliantly brought within her
reach. It should be borne in mind, however, that the mechanization
of the house is inspired by a purpose diametrically opposite to that
entertained by the pioneers of modern methods in industry. The triumph
of the powerloom over the handloom was conditioned by its ability to
produce so many more yards of material than the handloom could be made
to yield. But while the machine was introduced into the industrial
world in order to multiply the products of labour, the object of the
modern house is to diminish the necessity for labour. By exchanging the
handloom for the powerloom the weaver could, while still taking the
same amount of trouble, produce a greater result, but when the modern
housewife moves into a labour-saving flat her object is by taking
considerably less trouble to produce the same result as before. How
and where she spends the hours of leisure thus acquired is a question
which does not bear upon our present argument, except in so far as this
leisure has enabled her to raise the drapery store to the exalted
place it occupies to-day, and by this means to divert the trend of
modern architecture in the direction which we have just been following.
It is, then, largely by virtue of her new position as a producer that
the woman of to-day has become able to exercise such a signal influence
in her quality of consumer of wealth. But from both these points of
view we may perceive her acting immediately upon the main architectural
current, while, if we consider her from the conjugal point of view, her
influence will show itself only in the flow of the tributary stream
which is conveniently described as decoration. It is a regrettable
fact that the decorative arts in England had, until they suddenly came
within this influence, shown not the smallest sign of vitality since
Soane and Nash translated the Attic enthusiasm of Shelley, Landor and
Winckelmann into stone and stucco. Learned though he may have been,
there can be no doubt that John Soane was as genuinely moved by the
masterpieces of Greek decoration as Shelley by the large and authentic
voices of Plato and Æschylus. The modern decorator, however, who
ransacks the storehouse of history from Robert Adam to the caves of
prehistoric man, is never animated by better instincts than those
of the merchant adventurer, and often enough by worse. Of a creative
impulse he is completely innocent. And what are we to say of the
teaching of Ruskin, who followed upon the heels of these great men,
except that it was calculated to impart a knowledge not so much of
decoration as of botany, while its temper was wholly inimical to such
pleasure as might yet be taken here and there in decorative skill?
Stifled by the tedious pullulation of Ruskin’s “natural forms,” this
pleasure appears to be awakening once more, and it is to modern woman
that we must look for the cause of this awakening.
A convenient way of picturing the change of outlook that has led to
this revival is to compare two familiar works of nineteenth-century
fiction separated by a generation or two. Gautier’s _Mademoiselle de
Maupin_ contains long passages redolent of that nature-worship which
made Wordsworth a best-seller and which inspired our Ruskin to discard
the principles of decorative design in favour of those derived from
the study of plant growth. Innumerable landscapes are presented to us
in this book, many of them bathed in moonlight of the most impeccable
romantic quality. Country mansions, pleasure-pavilions, creeper-clad
cottages, all these are concealed beneath a dense mass of verdure,
their existence briefly hinted at, while the sinuous paths by which
they may be approached are made the subject of the closest description,
together with the trees, shrubs, creepers, herbs and mosses which
form their setting. Such power of attention as remains in the reader
is skilfully directed upon the subject of feminine apparel, to the
treatment of which the author brings a sympathy and animation almost
equal to those with which he approaches the vegetable kingdom. But the
apartments through which his characters move, the walls and furniture
against which their forms, so exquisitely clad, stand disclosed to the
reader, receive as little thought as the exterior of the buildings,
so that it is impossible for us to say what they are like. As soon as
the men and women cross the threshold of a house, an impenetrable mist
descends upon their surroundings. Alas, there was no one to take any
interest in even the most delightful of the houses or rooms, and we are
left to reconstruct them for ourselves, aided only by our knowledge of
a few authentic remains.
In Zola’s Nana we have a complete antithesis to this fatigue, this
chlorosis of the decorative faculty. The adornment of her immediate
setting has with this famous character become a consuming passion. Her
intuitive artistic knowledge, her manifold inventiveness, never cease
to astonish the architects and decorators who work at her bidding. Nor,
in her brief but triumphant career through the world of vice, does she
once tire of devising fresh schemes of decoration, schemes which Zola
himself appears to regard with an enthusiasm approaching that of his
heroine. As she pauses at last on the brink of financial ruin, this
passion for decoration flares up with an almost hysterical intensity.
It is then that she dreams of “un prodige, un éblouissement ... un lit
comme il n’en existait pas, un trône, un autel ... en or et en argent
repoussés, pareil à un grand bijou.” To the end her preoccupation
maintains its firm hold upon her, for through it alone it was that she
could gain her mysterious ascendancy over the minds and the senses of
men. “Jamais elle n’avait senti si profondément la force de son sexe,”
remarks Zola as he shows her to us happily contemplating the scenes of
prodigious elegance that she had established around her. Such is the
change of attitude which nineteenth-century society must somehow have
witnessed before it could be so brilliantly recorded in writing. It is
a similar change that has infused new life into modern decoration.
The question may present itself whether to connect this movement
with Zola’s unfortunate heroine is not to detract from its merit or
importance. That must remain entirely a matter for individual judgment.
I will here but remark that, in borrowing their light from the
constellation of unhappy spirits in which Nana shone so vividly, the
decorative arts are only imitating the example set throughout Europe
and America by the art of feminine dress, and that whatever is said
of one of these arts applies to the other also. But this superficial
resemblance is not the only thing that unites decoration with dress,
for the modern movement in decoration cannot be better described than
as an enlargement of the old and more immediate business of personal
adornment. Both currents spring from a common source, and if the
younger of them will always remain in some respects apart from its
sartorial companion, grown with the centuries into a venerable historic
stream, we yet have reason to be thankful that the arid waste of
decoration is being watered again, however fitfully.