CONCERNING STYLE
The result of the best adaptation is the gradual formation of a national
style of architecture. The closest adaptation that has been exploited in
America both in recent and what we call our ancient work, compared with
its separable prototypes, who shall say is not unmistakably modern and
American? Style is never evolved by the empirical architecture of
irrepressible inventors. Invention belongs to science. Happily, in the
field of art, everything was planted, arranged and cultivated for us
ages ago, so that we have only to wander as children, in an enchanted
garden that our days are not half long enough to encompass. We observe,
but wait for the planchette to move--to guide.
Style in architecture and literature alike is something which shapes
itself unconsciously to the mind--something which will neither be
coerced nor cajoled, but obeyed. Style selects its craftsman rather than
craftsmen their style. Style is the master, and we are the students ever
observing, listening, trying to understand, waiting for our cue, and
finally speaking our lines according to the histrionic ability there is
in each of us, for style is eminently dramatic.
But the moment we set up for ourselves and say, “Go to, let us make a
style!” that moment we miss our usefulness in the economy of art.
I knew of a young student of literature who, convalescing from an attack
of grippe, was found by his physician one day, sitting upright in bed
surrounded by a lot of new-looking books. As the visitor failed to
conceal some surprise, the enthusiast hastened with an explanation for
which the reader is scarcely better prepared. “Doctor,” he said. “I am
reading Kipling for style!”
Now, no matter how encouraging to the physician was the patient’s
interest in the books, it was a most discouraging thing as a matter of
art. For you don’t want to read anybody to copy his style, much less a
PLATE LXXXII.
[Illustration: MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE.]
PLATE LXXXIII.
[Illustration: DETAIL--MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE,
JOY WHEELER DOW, Architect.]
contemporary of your own. And no architectural student should want to
imitate the style of his master or employer, for it is heresy. It is
mockery.
If you have not sense enough to listen to your own muse, to study the
history of art for yourself, to speak the language of architecture as
all your honored predecessors have spoken it, following religiously the
splendid historical chart that is ever at your service for reference
while leaving your style to take care of itself--I am sorry for you.
In my own very limited scope of usefulness, I am quite willing to
confess that I have never bothered about style, and do not consider that
I have any worth mentioning; although, I suppose, an occasional
architect is annoyed past endurance by somebody who comes with an
illustration of a particular piece of my work which has appeared in the
magazines, requesting that my style be copied. Of course, it is not my
style that is desired, but the expression of Anglo-Saxon home feeling as
opposed to whatever is advectitious--out of place there--however correct
academically, and according to the rules of harmony, good form or
anything else you choose to call it. All tendency in myself toward
mannerism, prejudice, partisanship and eclectic theory I have endeavored
to repress, for I found that good style needed no suggestions from me.
Good style means the historical note which measures the success of an
architectural design. It is the distinct theme we must be able to
recognize throughout, no matter how elaborate or original the
accompaniment. To exemplify which point I have selected the Searles
cottage, erected in 1889, at Block Island (see Plate LXXXVI), not
because it was erected without regard to expense or financial returns,
for there is much domestic architecture in America erected quite as
independently of either consideration which would ruin my argument were
I to use it; but because the Searles cottage is one of the most original
designs in American Renaissance, without in the least compromising good
style, that I know of in contemporary work. It is said to have been
designed by a decorator, but in that case merely adds another instance
of the truism that there are decorators who should be architects and
architects who should be decorators. The illustration shows the
PLATE LXXXIV.
[Illustration: PRINCESSGATE.]
[Illustration: PRINCESSGATE--REAR.
JOY WHEELER DOW, Architect.]
PLATE LXXXV.
[Illustration: EASTOVER--THE WEST FRONT.
JOY WHEELER DOW, Architect.]
PLATE LXXXVI.
[Illustration: SEARLES’ COTTAGE--EXEMPLIFYING ARCHITECTURAL STYLE.]
[Illustration: THE MODERN AMERICAN DWELLING--EXEMPLIFYING FASHION.]
building in process of construction, but let us place it beside the
illustration of a very recent example of modern house and see what
happens. I think thereby will be conveyed to the mind of the reader more
insight of the difference between style and fashion in architecture (see
Plate LXXXVI) than could be accomplished by writing in a week. At last
we see a house with a cupola where the cupola has a recognized mission,
and pleases rather than offends, as occurs also at Mount Vernon, in
Virginia (Plates XXVII and XXVIII), and where it crowns the roof of the
McPhædris house at Portsmouth (Plate XXXI). Here are instances where we
should miss the cupola as part, not so much of the design, perhaps, as
of the style, the historical atmosphere, were it absent. It would be the
incomplete sentence, in other words, where the original thought had not
been completely expressed.
I am aware that the Searles cottage is not one that, ordinarily, would
be called “pretty.” The cottage I designed for Mr. Mitchell, at East
Orange (see Plates LXXX, LXXXII, LXXXIII and XCI), I dare say answers
to that description better, as does also Princessgate, at Wyoming, N. J.
(see Plates XVIII, LXXXIV, LXXXIX and XCI), but I am speaking now of
style, the picturesque is something else again. I can fancy the beginner
in architecture leaning over his drawingboard and saying, “Well, that’s
the funniest Colonial house I ever saw!” But the first year of his
course will correct the slight astigmatism from which he suffers. For,
even should he fail to pursue the engaging study of style, style is so
insinuating, because of the immense significance it has behind it, that
very soon it will be speaking to him. And while the student feels it
only in that first intangible stage, unable to say to himself what it
is, even while people aver that the Searles cottage was entirely
misplaced on the treeless coast of a pelagic isle, while they tell him
that no use could be found for it except as a kind of casino, yet there
will begin to dawn upon him an uncontrollable appreciation, just as
began to dawn upon the aged auditor in the pit of the old-time playhouse
at Paris during the production of a masterpiece by Molière, till, toward
the end of the second act, no
PLATE LXXXVII.
[Illustration: STYLE AND THE PICTURE.
Watkinson House, Middletown, Ct.]
[Illustration: DETAIL--SOUTH EIGHTH STREET, PHILADELPHIA.]
PLATE LXXXVIII.
[Illustration: DETAIL--SILVERGATE.]
longer master of his enthusiasm, he cried out to the author on the
stage, “_Courage, Molière! Voilà la vraie comédie!_” And in good
architectural style do we not see a comedy indeed, faithfully enacted?
Yet, of the thousand and one things that have gone to make architectural
style all intimately connected with human events the influence of
individuals has counted least. One generation of builders has taken up
the work where its immediate predecessor stopped. Each generation
commits its blunders, while each adds the imperceptible trifles of such
intrinsic value, taken together, as to have produced style.
The fashions of architecture--they perish. Style endures.