HUMBLE BEGINNINGS OF A NATIONAL SCHOOL
It is unfair to place these humble beginnings of American Renaissance
beside such highly developed architecture, for example, as English
“Country Life” exploits week after week, under its heading of “Country
Homes, Gardens, Old and New” as to make one believe that England must
have an unlimited store for the magazine to draw upon. And this is all
the more remarkable because one’s recollection of English landscape as
it reveals itself through windows of the railway carriages along the
main routes of travel--especially along the Great Eastern road from
London to Kings Lynn--distinguishes it little from that uninteresting
stretch of country which lies between Trenton and New Brunswick on the
Pennsylvania railroad. Evidently, all these magnificent halls were
erected long before the advent of railways, and are in no way
affiliated with the vulgar wake of commercialism. Accessibility, which
governs so largely in America, must be a matter of supreme indifference
to possessors of great estates in England, or, it seems to me, the
railway lines would meander in such a manner as closely to skirt the
confines of a magnificent demesne, occasionally. It is unfair to a
country whose visible architectural development is barely two centuries
old to bring it in contrast with one where no building is really ancient
without a history dating backward three or four hundred years, at least.
We, perhaps, fancy we have in America some modern country estates quite
worth while mentioning and which might easily withstand the odious
ordeal of comparison; but can the reader name one in the same category
with such a country seat as is illustrated in “Country Life” for July
12, 1902, described as “Osmaston Manor, Derbyshire” (Plate XXVI)?--and
this is a number of the periodical picked up without especial
selection--“Biltmore,” in the North Carolina mountains, possibly, with
the H. W. Poor house at Tuxedo, New Jersey, as an alternate choice, one
French
PLATE XX.
[Illustration: “Extremely humble, yet genteel.”
DOORWAY, PHILADELPHIA CLUB.
13th and Walnut Streets.]
Renaissance, the other Jacobean. But certainly, Newport, with its
miserable crowding and elbowing of American pretentiousness, much of the
pretentiousness belonging to the modern invention type of architecture,
offers no comparison at all. The Hunnewell gardens and some others we
have seen photographed and discussed of late look more like tree
nurseries than Renaissance gardens, while nearly all the modern American
show places illustrated from time to time in the different magazines
deal only with that primitive kind of splendor indigenous to provinces.
No, we may not compare American Renaissance after this manner. We are
entirely too young a nation for that kind of architecture which
presupposes a renowned antiquity which we lack. But what we may do
becomingly is to select the homely and humble cottages of Great Britain,
such cottages as the one we are shown where lived the poet Robert Burns,
for instance. Place those, if you please, beside the farmhouses of our
Colonial régime, and then you may be surprised to find we have something
to be proud of, even though it be the fashion to belittle these
essentially good antecedents by modern architectural scholars. I am
reminded herein of the story that is told of a noted professor of
music--Kullak, who, having discovered that the number on the programme
which the orchestra had rendered to the great delight of everyone, was a
Strauss waltz (it must have been one of the less known as “Autumn
Leaves,” it could not have been the hackneyed “Blue Danube,” which has
been so much overrated), turned to his pupils, ever loyal to their
master’s prejudices, beside him, and furtively whispered, “Well, don’t
say anything about it, boys; but it’s awfully nice!” The sentiment thus
expressed is the cultivated sentiment of the average architect toward
the early Renaissance of America. He appears to be constrained by some
artificial position--some pedantic make-believe that allows him to
acknowledge the merit of a Witch-Colonial exemplar (see Plate XXI), with
only the poorest kind of grace.
But I have already explained why the old stuff remaining in America is
so “awfully nice” as to charm all unprejudiced artists who have studied
our history, so that mystery about it, I trust, need be no
PLATE XXI.
[Illustration: DERBY-WARD HOUSE, SALEM, MASS. 17TH CENTURY.]
[Illustration: SOUVENIR OF ABIGAIL AND DELIVERANCE HOBBS (TWO ALLEGED
WITCHES), OF TOPSFIELD, MASS. 17TH CENTURY.]
longer. The paramount business in hand is to get rid of American
nonsense, to put it entirely out of the head, if possible, that nothing
may stand in the way of returning meekly and in a receptive spirit to
those ancient and honorable first principles of ours which were
unerring. This surgical-like operation accomplished, let us see what may
be done with the Derby-Ward house, erected A.D. 1680 in Salem (Plate
XXI), to make it habitable, convenient and desirable to-day.
At this stage of the art of house-building, upon which subject there has
been so much written and published, an architect would yet be considered
plumb crazy who had the temerity to submit such a picture to a
prospective client as the kind of house best suited to his needs. Yet,
why not? Has the reader no imagination? Can he not see how, given a
generous forecourt, with prim flower beds, a brick walk and box, this
frowning prototype of “Scarlet Letter” morals and punishment would take
on a very different aspect, its repelling severity mollified by a little
gracious environment? And we do not stop here, by any means. We make a
feature of the entrance, either by the aid of a true witch entry or a
bewitching hood shadowing a roughly-hewn platform resting upon a wide
step, say 16 inches, returned on two sides--the inviting kind. We repair
the cornice and embellish the overhang with moulded or turned drops at
effective intervals. We re-knit the rifts in the single chimney, making
a clustered stack of it above the roof. We flank the main edifice with a
becoming woodshed which deft handling will transform into a most
delightful loggia. And then we visit the nearby shop of an upholsterer.
If the tiny panes of glass in the windows have become through age
iridescent, more delicate than that of Tiffany favrile manufacture, so
much the better for the figured dimity or the bobbinet we intend to hang
against them, perpendicularly, not looped, but simply hemmed, and with
deep valance. By this time the scheme will have easily dawned upon the
mind of the sceptical onlooker. No longer does he adjudge us entirely
crazy. Why, no; we commence to be artists now--indeed, magicians! He
quotes Kullak, involuntarily.
We have ordered a hot-water heater installed, likewise sanitary
plumbing, and a range, these being the
PLATE XXII.
[Illustration: THE PIRSSON COTTAGE, WYOMING, N. J. MODERN HOUSE WITH
GERMANTOWN HOOD.]
[Illustration: MODERN COTTAGE WITH A DUTCH HOOD.]
only contracts we have signed with modern invention. All the rest has
been of the most conservative architectonic development.
“But the plans! One has to live in the house after it is built, you
know. Can you make it liveable with only the one chimney, and that in
the very centre?” we are asked. I think we can. Let me submit one
solution of the problem, at any rate, and you are quite at liberty to
take it home and improve upon it as much as you please.
These Witch-houses are the pioneers of the procession. Nothing older
than they has been able to withstand the vicissitudes of our erratic
climate’s racket, though contemporary with them are the early houses of
Connecticut, which have been admirably described in a book by Norman M.
Isham, A.M., and Albert F. Brown. The Sumner house at Middletown,
illustrated herewith (Plate XXIV), exhibits a method of construction
which I believe is peculiar to the State of Connecticut alone. It
consists of a 3-inch offset at the second story, and continuing around
the four sides, the gables projecting 3 inches more. A great central
[Illustration: A MODERN DEVELOPMENT OF WITCH-HOUSE--PLAN]
PLATE XXIII.
[Illustration: GERMANTOWN MOTIVE APPLIED TO A MODERN COTTAGE.]
[Illustration: TYPE OF EARLY CONNECTICUT HOUSE, STRATFORD, CONN.]
PLATE XXIV.
[Illustration: TYPE OF EARLY CONNECTICUT HOUSE, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.]
chimney again dominates the plan, which, it is true, taxes modern
ingenuity to make a graceful feature of the interior. A relic of old
Stratford (Plate XXIII) supplies another interesting type for
reincarnation. It is more generous in the matter of chimneys, but has
less pitch to the roof. The photograph reveals a texture to the shingled
sides which we may hardly obtain in modern work, though at a small
additional cost, for the sake of art purely, we may use the wide-gauge
shingles, but must see that they line accurately, as they do on the old
house at Stratford. They are an unwarranted affectation, the ragged
butts generally used to obtain archaic atmosphere in the houses of our
time.
We shall see that in New York State and in New Jersey the Dutch
influences prevailed in the early architecture, and in Pennsylvania, the
German. It is all good architecture, however. The Dutch hoods are
habitually at the eaves, while the German hoods which separated the
first and second stories were often carried around the entire building,
as flounces upon a skirt (see Plates XXV and XC). The hoods are all
fascinating, thoroughly architectonic, yet how little have they been
studied and developed in modern design! The niceties of their
application and use are little understood by the average architect, who,
ordinarily, would think he was wasting his client’s money to exploit
anything of the kind. You see, he forgets that his client has spiritual
needs as well as physical ones. The gambrel roofs of the Dutch houses
have come to be commercial commodities and are continually resorted
to--no, are continually parodied, I mean to say--by modern builders who
cannot tell what this immutable art principle we are talking about may
be. They are simply magnificent, the roof lines of the old stone house
at Hackensack, N. J., shown in Plate XXV, yet they are not good enough
for the modern inventor, he must try some fancied improvement in the way
of a grotesque pitch, for which he racks his brain. Of these same
fancied improvements I could supply examples _ad infinitum_, but they
could only pain the reader, however great a favor I might be doing
American commercialism.
And now I must pause again for the present, because I am come to the
doorway of Wyck at Germantown (Plate XIX), and before it the
architectural critic
PLATE XXV.
[Illustration: JOHNSON HOUSE, GERMANTOWN, PA.]
[Illustration: HOUSE AT HACKENSACK, N. J. EARLY 18TH CENTURY.]
PLATE XXVI.
[Illustration: HOUSE AT BOGOTA, N. J. EARLY 18TH CENTURY.]
[Illustration: OSMASTON MANOR, DERBYSHIRE.
(From English “Country Life.”)]
prefers to linger in silent admiration--to told his arms as the musical
critics used to do when Patti was at the zenith of her powers, but while
thoroughly enjoying every fine artistic _nuance_ of the performance, a
disturbing premonition reminds him--warns him that if paid to criticise
and not to praise he will, in all probability, lose his employment. They
have no bit of architectural detail in England that the Germantown
doorway need be afraid of. Of course you will go into ecstasies over it;
I do. But you will experience difficulty in finding an architect capable
of grasping the idea sufficiently well for you to incorporate the charm
of it in the new house you are planning to build. The modern
dwelling-house is conceived so differently, plotted so differently, with
unsympathetic T squares and triangles, and is governed so strictly by
materials easily milled, and easily nailed in place by the carpenter, as
to put that element of graciousness which signifies so much to our lives
and happiness--that “charm not deducible by mathematics,” that makes us
think, and whereby we eventually become better men and women in the
world, absolutely beyond the pale of realization.