ADAPTATION
A representative architect in New York city has declared impressively,
“We are no longer architects, but adapters!” To him, looking upon his
own achievement and that of his contemporaries as well as the general
tendency of the times in which we live, it seemed, indeed, he
had framed an unimpeachable aphorism. It is a funny thing about
architecture:--nearly as it concerns our every day needs, much as it is
criticised about our ears, our knowledge of it, nevertheless, continues
to be absurdly inexact and experimental. I am speaking now of
architecture as a fine art, not as the science of an engineer. One has
only to read the reviews to note how little the authors themselves know
to tell us, how they go ’round and ’round the animal, with more or less
entanglement, as we have read of picadors doing in a bull fight. And
when they have finished can we call
PLATE LXVII.
[Illustration: “It seemed they were coming to--to a river--a sombre,
swift-flowing river, and a huge gray building resting upon arches
spanned its width. Ascending a little elevation in the road, further up,
the vision becomes clearer and fascinating to the dreaming horseman. It
is the Château of Chenonceau.”--MISS. POLLY FAIRFAX.]
to mind a single statement wherein they have committed themselves to
anything definite? The whole proposition architectonic is to the average
reviewer an egregious bugbear before which he is anything but sure of
himself.
He hints at the mysteries of design, half advocating, half condemning,
the two salient American traits--namely, originality and enterprise; for
he readily sees that if he commends those traits unequivocally, he must
acknowledge the architects of our Reign of Terror to have been the
greatest of all American architects whose work has passed into history,
as they were assuredly the most original and enfranchised. And this, of
course, would never do for the Della Cruscan critic of America.
Upon the other hand, he is expected, by a species of professional
jealousy which is somehow perennial, to cavil at that kind of
architecture called at the present time “adaptation.” From which
fault-finding the reader gathers that adaptation is but a polite synonym
for cribbing and thieving from the masterpieces of antiquity. Then,
while preparing his argument, numerous contradictory things suggest
themselves to the reviewer that are exceedingly difficult of
assimilation. If he be fair, sincere with himself, while caviling at
adaptation, how can he make use of such a class of architecture as we
have exemplified in every-day acquaintances like Trinity Church by
Upjohn and Grace Church by Renwick, two intensely American designs, yet
gauged by the standard of modern criticism, out and out adaptations of
mediæval Gothic! Again, it will not do for him to endeavor to extricate
himself with credit by declaring that adaptation belongs by right only
to ecclesiastic edifices, for there, before one in a moment, stands the
Capitol at Washington sharply cutting a piece out of the blue sky on the
horizon of Maryland, the pride of every American citizen, acknowledged
to be the most successful specimen of American Renaissance of its class
(legislative buildings), yet the most loyal to its Italian antecedents,
making the newer State capitols with domes look tawdry in consequence,
proportionately as they are less Italian and significant historically.
So that altogether the case appears to be one hopelessly involved and
complicated.
PLATE LXVIII.
[Illustration: KINGDOR, SUMMIT, N. J.]
[Illustration: CANTERBURY KEYS, WYOMING, N. J.]
PLATE LXIX.
[Illustration: THE LOUVRE.]
To cry out against adaptation is nothing new, peculiar to our day. It
was ever thus from history’s early hour. Popular criticism in France
during the seventeenth century was against the Louvre, Fontainebleau and
Versailles as being Italian palaces without significance in France, save
that of national vacuity in the creative faculty. Saint-Simon, in his
memoirs of the epoch, makes out Louis XIV. and his principal architect,
Hardouin-Mansart, to have been unskilful bunglers. But to us, the
splendid monuments are French Renaissance without dissent, thoroughly
French and historically correct because they coincide with the
legitimate, historic development of that nation’s art. They have become
part of the French landscape, Italian no longer, just as the now
familiar town house of W. K. Vanderbilt, at Fifth Avenue and
Fifty-second Street, which in 1883 (see Plate LXX) was so intensely
French as to seem entirely out of its element in New York, has gradually
grown to look to us what it really always was, i. e., good American
Renaissance adapted from the Valois propaganda of architectural
composition. In the more recent day of Ruskin it was the fashion to
belittle the work of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren as work of no
inspiration; and I have no doubt there were architects, once upon a
time, envious of the talents of Michelangelo, who did not hesitate to
say the great Italian simply copied.
In lieu of further recurrence to all that has since transpired, and is
transpiring to-day with the same moral, I should say without
qualification that adaptation--let us call it so until we discover a
better term--is the soul of architecture, presupposing the highest kind
of talent, most extended education, and artistic susceptibility.
How would it fare with an author who coined words habitually in
preference to using those given in the dictionary, or who invented a
syntax of his own? But, of course, nobody in his right mind would do
this. The object of literature is simply to adapt the words and
sentences to express our thoughts original so far as we know. In
architecture we have the analogy. An architect is bound to adapt in
spite of himself; and conversely, the poorest adapters are the poorest
architects in whose hands the art of adaptation falls into
PLATE LXX.
[Illustration: VANDERBILT HOUSE, FIFTH AVENUE & 52d ST.]
manifest plagiarism--plagiarism mostly of these architects’ more
successful contemporaries in America. But the varying requirements of
individual cases compel even those architects to adapt or else invent to
meet contingencies where no precedent is available, so in practice it
has come to be that nobody copies anything exactly.
Certainly, nobody copies a building of an earlier epoch that is
susceptible of reincarnation to-day. I explained this point very
clearly, I imagined, in an article I wrote for the _House Beautiful_ in
May, 1901, entitled “How to Make a Successful House,” which magazine
holds the copyright thereof, so that I cannot use the particular
reference here I should like to use. The economy of the age would not
let an architect reproduce Lambton Castle, for instance (see Plate
LXXI), fascinating proposition though it be, and the architect wanted to
do so, and could afford the expense of making the necessary minute
examination, the necessary drawings and measurements, which I can assure
you would be a work onerous and tedious almost beyond endurance for the
impatient temperament of an American. Centuries have elapsed, and the
province of the architect now is to make the castle perform its whole
process of evolution noiselessly in his brain, and come down to date so
as to meet the problem of a twentieth century home without disturbing
the illusion of its history, a process entailing concerted tension of
heart and brain to which the conditions imposed by mere abstract
architectural design are puerile.
I have selected a Tudor castle because the field is practically
untouched in American Renaissance and modern architecture generally. If
there be fashion in adaptation, the fashion has been for Elizabethan and
Jacobean adaptations rather than Tudor; but the real reason why we have
no creditable offspring of that delightful old rambler--Haddon Hall (see
Plate LXXII), in America is to be found in the fact that no American
architect capable of exploiting the thing has thought about it or else
he has lacked the opportunity, more probably the latter. I have often
contemplated that ancient and wonderful staircase on the castle terrace
while thrilling romances architectural have filled my
PLATE LXXI.
[Illustration: LAMBTON CASTLE.]
PLATE LXXII.
[Illustration: HADDON HALL.]
PLATE LXXIII.
[Illustration: CHARLECOTE HALL.]
head, though no appreciative client materialized to employ me.
Charlecote Hall (Plate LXXIII) dwells in a unique borderland of the
Elizabethan style. What a gracious subject this beautiful edifice
supplies for adaptation to date. Any progressive American architect
should be able to do it--in fact, he should be expected to improve
somewhat upon the original with all the modern science there is at his
command. It is true that metal window frames and sashes are not
manufactured ordinarily in this country, but it is high time they were,
and their appearance in the catalogues of what they would call in
England our “ironmongers” cannot be delayed for long, if indications
count for anything.
The open-timbered work of Elizabethan houses in America has become very
common, and I do not know that I may add any observations of importance
concerning this treatment. In the _House Beautiful_ for March, 1901,
will be found an article upon the subject, mostly in reference, however,
to a cottage named “Canterbury Keys,” illustration of which herein
appears (Plate LXVIII). Open-timbered work is also common to France,
Holland and Germany, and, notwithstanding an occasional inimical critic
upon the way we construct it in America, is thoroughly good
architectural development, and will continue to live in the history of
the future because it has history of the past to tell--delicious
reminiscences of snug old Anglo-Saxon homes. Moreover, Elizabethan
architecture instances a scientific focus of the Gothic and Renaissance
spirits, habitually unfriendly, where under the hand of the master these
spirits are made to coalesce in love and tranquillity delightful to see.
Mr. Gotch in his “Early Renaissance of England” calls all three schools
of design--Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean--uniformly Renaissance
development because all were influenced by the architecture of Italy,
though the Tudor style, hardly perceptibly; but the real English
Renaissance, classified for the better understanding of the term,
belongs to the later development under the Georges. And it was to this
subdivision of the mighty subject that American Renaissance served its
apprenticeship, although the articles of indenture, I contend, were
legally canceled by the
PLATE LXXIV.
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--WOLSEY PALACE.]
PLATE LXXV.
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--SOUTH PALACE.]
responsibilities of the “Grand Epoch” (see Chapter V). If there ever
existed a condition of unproductive tutelage in America as is imputed by
envious critics, it was during the Transitional period. In the earlier
chapters of this review, I have defended American Renaissance against
all detracting imputations concerning its legitimacy, its honor and its
merit, and I do not think I wish to amend anything I have said.
In Plates LXXIV and LXXV I submit two remarkable views of Hampton Court,
one, the Wolsey palace in the earliest Renaissance, according to Gotch,
and the other the South palace (time of William and Mary) by Sir
Christopher Wren, in the latest. The latter façade has already served
for American adaptation, and in all probability will continue to do so,
being very easily adapted to American use. And if the feat be
historically accomplished the resulting composition becomes, _ipso
facto_, American Renaissance, not English, however exotic it may at
first appear, and although it be the custom to call such an
architectural development “pure adaptation.” But when we consider that
St. Peter’s cathedral at Rome was once an adaptation, the beautiful
library of San Marco by Sansovino, also an adaptation, the Louvre and
Fontainebleau, adaptations as well, I do not know that we need be
particularly scandalized, nor do I doubt for one moment that, if our
work be good, it will soon outlive an appellation of uncertain
reflection--a word, nevertheless, which every so often must play its
part in the history of art.
The school of design which has proved the greatest attraction to the
blossoming genius of America is, of course, French Renaissance,
preëminently at the time I write. To say that an architect is a Beaux
Arts man is equivalent to speaking of a certain much advertised brand of
whiskey, in that compliments are superfluous. You call him “a Beaux Arts
man,” and--“_that’s all_.”
No Brahmin of India has his faith more absolutely defined than has the
Beaux Arts man his. And he must progress, and ply his art as though he
were a bishop on the chess-board, always in a designated line, and
always with the same local color of the place of his matriculation
except, we shall say, when he is off
PLATE LXXVI.
[Illustration: CHAMBORD, “THE VALOIS SHOOTING-BOX.”]
PLATE LXXVII.
[Illustration: AZAY-LE-RIDEAU.--THE CELEBRATED COUP D’OEIL OF THE
CHATEAU.]
for a spree, which, to be sure, does him no credit, and he dabbles in
Colonial, Elizabethan and other diversions. But his art is French
Renaissance, not the graceful Renaissance of Pierre le Nepveu at
Chambord (see Plate LXXVI), nor the romantic Renaissance so insinuating
of Azay-le-Rideau (see Plate LXXVII), the designer of which no modern
ascription names, but the colder, impersonal, mathematical Renaissance
of the time of Viollet-le-Duc or the ultra, over-decorated Renaissance
of the last exposition, and the present generation of French architects.
The Ecole des Beaux Arts (Department of Architecture) is essentially a
school of material art to which there is no spiritual side. It is the
art which we measure by metres and centimetres, not an art we may
measure by psychical balances and our affections. And the personal side
of architecture--the side which ministers so largely to us when we come
to that complex embodiment of our joys and sorrows complete in the one
word “home”--well, sentiment has nothing to do with the case in the
estimation of the Beaux Arts man.
Of all the historic châteaux in France, Chenonceau (see Plate LXVII)
has received the most attention from American architects. Replicas of
its fascinating _tourelles_--some faithful, some deformed--greet one
very frequently in the modern residences of America. We have to
recognize the Chenonceau dormers, too, though they be dwarfed and
squatted according to the limited roof space at the disposal of the
American designer. Such tremendous roofs as were supported with ease by
the formidable walls of the old châteaux are prohibitory with us, that
is, if we cipher with American expediency and commercial economy. But
the right way to adapt a French cháteau is really to make believe
restore one, pretending for the nonce, that one is M. Pierre Lescot, M.
Claude Perrault or M. Gabriel, and that the king or some grand seigneur
of the realm has commanded one’s services for the purpose. As in the
elevation of the house for Mrs. H. at Morristown (see Plate LXXVIII) I
made believe to myself that the mediæval _tour_ was genuine, already
there, but requiring immediate restoration. It was easy to set imaginary
masons to work pointing the machicolations and curtain. I made believe
that long disuse had
PLATE LXXVIII.
[Illustration: ELEVATION OF A COUNTRY HOUSE FOR MRS. H--AT
MORRISTOWN.]
vanquished the portcullis, leaving its yawning pockets to be disposed
of. Commercialism said “wall them up,” not I. It would be a pity to lose
a particle of the thirteenth century atmosphere that consents to linger.
So I decided upon a bold innovation as the privilege of adaptation. I
could anchor the chains for holding up the glass canopy over the
carriage entry, in those pockets that once housed the arms of the
portcullis; and thus, the spooky old _tour_ could be saved intact. The
main part of the American château is in this case supposedly modern,
developed from motives supplied by the minor châteaux of France--the
_manoirs_, the _fermes_, with a little American household planning
within, necessary for comfort.
But you have noticed that no American, however rich, has yet amassed
sufficient fortune to warrant an undertaking anything like an adaptation
of Chambord (see Plate LXXVI). A class of architecture in itself, the
Valois shooting-box is quite too tremendous in extent for any modern use
as a private domicile. The palace of Fontainebleau, also, would entail
most too much of a contract for even the president of a trust, and I
may add to these names, delightful to pronounce, the Louvre (see Plate
LXIX), which the people of Philadelphia alone had the hardihood to
caricature in a municipal building. Shades of François Mansart, what
crimes have we enacted in thy name! [My acknowledgments to Mme. Roland].
Perhaps the most inviting and as little explored field of architecture
suitable to domestic purposes in this country that I can think of to
suggest to our talent is the opportunity we have in the Swiss châlets of
the eighteenth century. There is a great variety of types from which to
choose--high-roofed châlets and low-roofed châlets, châlets of stucco
and châlets of wood. And there never was a sounder theory than that of
Switzerland concerning the construction of wooden edifices. I do not
except Norway, nor Sweden, nor Japan, for the ancient[7] châlets of
Switzerland are in academic Gothic, if you please, architecturally of a
high order which has withstood the vicissitudes of art and awaits the
homage of future generations. To American architects who still have
PLATE LXXIX.
[Illustration: KINGDOR. FRONT ELEVATION.]
[Illustration: DETAIL “KINGDOR”.]
more to do with wood than any other building material these châlets
should prove both instructive and useful. Mr. Jean Schopfer has
contributed, in the _Architectural Record_ (New York), two very
interesting papers about the eighteenth century châlets, and I will
devote what remains of my space in this chapter to an American châlet I
had some little difficulty in prevailing upon its owner to have, but
with which, now that it is finished, he has assured me he is perfectly
satisfied. (See Kingdor, Plates LXVIII., LXXIX.)
Cypress, which in this part of the country has come to be our main
reliance in the absence of good white pine, answers admirably for
American adaptations of these Colonial houses--let us call them--of
Switzerland. Most any size timbers may be specified without bankrupting
the client or inconveniencing the contractor, while some durable stain
will form an excellent ground for a venerable patina by infinitesimal
particles to attach itself. I confess my only disappointment in Kingdor
was that I was not permitted to carve the scriptural legends in archaic
missal text that should always adorn the long horizontal timbers of a
“truly” châlet. For in the most part of the adaptation it became my
privilege, much to my unspeakable delight, to say to the black beast
that besets the path of all architects--namely, the everlasting spirit
of commercialism--expressively what Beau Brummel tells the importunate
bailiffs in the play: “Oh, go and walk in Fleet Street!”
PLATE LXXX.
[Illustration: A COTTAGE AT EAST ORANGE, N. J.
JOY WHEELER DOW, Architect.]
PLATE LXXXI.
[Illustration: DOORWAY, BRISTOL, R. I.]