CHAPTER XII_American renaissance; a review of domestic architecture

CONCLUSION

The eye of an artist differs structurally not at all from the eyes of

other people. His constant having to do with lines, values and all that,

gives him an enviable facility in delineation, the same facility that

training would impart in any other vocation; but it is the man--the

artist temperament that exists behind the ocular sense that denominates

the artist, a matter of pure luck, however, or of birth, which amounts

to the same thing.

When nature issues his temperament to a man, she stamps on the back of

it the words “not transferable” rubricated. By no effort of his own can

he bestow his temperament upon anybody else nor materially alter it

within himself. He looks upon things always in a certain way--envious

folks call it a squint--never may he see them in any other. He struggles

with a personal bias so strong, that, in nine cases out of ten, he had

much rather die than have to live his life contrary to the cherished

autonomy imposed by temperament.

The artist contends with a temperament unusually exacting and, at times,

very inconvenient. I remember having to ride my bicycle twelve miles one

afternoon some years ago, to a bakery in another town from where I

lived, to gratify a whim of temperament, I suppose, for some

particularly delicious tea rolls that were manufactured there. I felt I

could not possibly get along with the plain bread and butter I knew we

had for supper. I purchased the rolls, and was tying the precious

bundles to the handle-bars of my wheel when a carriage drove up in front

of the bakery. It contained two rather unprepossessing women who were

evidently acquainted with the baker’s wife, judging from the familiar

way they called to her from the curb. The baker’s wife came out upon the

doorstep, and inquired what kind of bread she should bring them. It was

then, without an idea of causing the slightest shock to the

sensibilities of the man they saw, with a bicycle, they replied with

picturesque indifference--“Oh, any kind, just so long as it is bread to

fill-up on!” Overhearing this I could not help making the necessary

mental memoranda what unpromising subjects for art influences were the

temperaments of these women--how little education could really do for

them! how utterly impossible it would be for them to change their

temperaments, and how, in all probability, they had much rather be dead

than to be continually harrassed by the fastidious obligations of art!

But the case I have chosen is, perhaps, extreme. There is a pleasure for

most temperaments in art--a certain happiness that it contributes in a

mild way. The average temperament experiences through art a sensation

akin to that produced by music, and like music to the average

temperament, art is by no means a necessity. It is merely the graceful

accomplishment to be cultivated after the serious business of life is

off the stage for the day, and we turn to playthings; whereas in the

case of the artist, it is his whole existence. My mother ridiculed me

about episodes like that of the rolls, but always commended my talent

for drawing. Although I tried to explain, she refused to believe that my

talent for drawing was only one result of the

PLATE LXXXIX.

[Illustration: MISS SIMPLICITY--HER HOUSE.]

[Illustration: DETAIL--PRINCESSGATE.]

temperament which sent me for the rolls. For does it nor naturally

follow that if any old bread will do to live on, why, any old house will

do to live in, and I should have had no interest for anything better,

certainly no incentive to the laborious grind of the drawingboard?

Still, in no instance, I believe, is art or charity--for they are one

and the same--wholly absent, if sometimes obscure, in the temperaments

of civilized people. Without the artistic sense, charity is the uncut

diamond, it yet accomplishes its own mission; while again, the gentle

passion reveals itself in singular guises, we recognize it with a little

patience. Unique among which guises let me cite the astute financier’s

well-known love of flowers,--and here let me tell you something besides!

It may be a strange observation, but the love of one’s fellow beings,

and an inordinate love of flowers, in a man, rarely go together.

Robespierre, at the fête to the Supreme Being, walked ahead of his

colleagues, laden down with flowers, and away back in the morning of

time the avocation of Cain was the cultivation of flowers. So, whenever

you see a man passionately fond of flowers (professional florists

excepted) you may know that every atom of charity which, normally,

should be distributed throughout his whole nature, has been focussed at

this one point; and it behooves you to mind the painted notice to small

craft you have seen suspended from the guardrail of an awe-inspiring

ocean liner in port, namely--

.........................................

. .

. Keep clear of this ship’s propellers! .

. .

.........................................

In his conservatories, surrounded by brilliant flora from all over the

world, it is quite different; here you will find your astute financier

the most charming of hosts; but in your business deals with him, have a

care!

No true artist could be entirely happy to look at the world from the

financier’s standpoint. He may listen attentively to the cunning of

expediency fascinatingly unfolded, for his own good, for the good of his

family, and the assurance of the future, he may heartily wish to

exchange temperaments with that financier, temporarily, till he shall

have gained independence of the world commercial, in vain. The

unaccommodating

PLATE XC.

[Illustration: GREEN TREE INN--GERMANTOWN.]

temperament again will not let him. He is perfectly aware that there is

not half enough in the world to go round, and that he must divert the

earnings of other people somewhat into his own coffers if he is to be

entirely comfortable; but he had rather that circumstances divert these

earnings than his own cupidity. He hopes that God will, after a little,

see how hard He has made it for the people individually, and order a new

dispensation. It may be a forlorn hope, but it is none the less a hope

divinely implanted in every true artist and in every other charitable

nature. What else is it that applauds the dramatic note whenever and

wherever it is struck, even though it be the Laura Jean Libby kind from

the melodrama and the threadbare theme of the indigent heroine who

arraigns the conventional villain thus--

“I’d rather be the poor working-girl that I am than all your cruel gold

can make me!”

These are the sentiments which reflect those of every true artist. The

profession of architecture even more than that of the ministry should be

entered without hope of much financial gain. For the sake of goodness

don’t believe any such Munchhausen stuff about it as you, perhaps, read

in a popular magazine lately. The preacher’s service to God is direct,

something which He must take into consideration at least every Sunday;

while the service of the architect is indirect--so subtle indeed as to

create the natural fear in a student’s mind lest God forget about him

entirely, even to the barest livelihood. Professor Ware of the school of

architecture at Columbia College once told me that if he paused for one

moment to consider how very few of the new class of pupils which every

year assembled to be instructed could succeed by reason of the

inexorable laws of supply and demand alone, he could not teach them.

“But,” he added with a twinkle of satisfaction in his eye for having

placed his finger squarely on a grim but unerring philosophy--“I had

much rather starve to death in a profession that I loved than in a

business that I hated, since success in everything is achieved only by

the same meagre percentage.”

I am not forgetting that the profession of architecture is frequently

turned into a business enterprise, run

PLATE XCI.

[Illustration: PRINCESSGATE (MODERN) DEVELOPED FROM DUTCH AND ENGLISH

FARM-HOUSE MOTIVES.]

[Illustration: Try to Have the Rear of Your House as Attractive as the

Front.]

upon business principles, used merely as a means to an end, and that end

financial success--a state of things which has retarded the development

of American Renaissance more than any other one factor--but this leads

me back again to art and commercialism, to which I have already

consecrated a chapter of this review. Let us consider for the present

only the different kinds of architects we have in America, so

differently equipped as to cause positive amazement while cataloguing

them. What diversity of talent confronts us! talent, in some cases, one

would say, that scarcely concerned architecture. I can think of no other

profession which has quite so many branch specialists. Incredible as it

may seem, there are prominent and successful architects--trained

architects of ability--who are able to draw plans but who cannot draw

elevations, and others who can draw elevations but cannot plan. There

are architects who are skilful draughtsmen who cannot design, architects

who can design but cannot draw at all, architects who can only write

specifications and superintend--two very important branches of the

profession, however, that usually go together--while stranger still,

there are practising architects who can neither design nor draw nor

write specifications nor even superintend, but who possess a wonderful

business aptitude and personal magnetism by which they command clients

for their partners or draughtsmen who actually prepare the drawings and

the other instruments of service.

This class of architects is, by no means, confined to America or to the

epoch.[8] As long ago as the reign of Louis XIV in France, Jules

Hardouin Mansart was a shining example of the financier-architect. The

description of him given in Miss Wormeley’s admirable translation of the

memoirs of Saint-Simon[9] is so intensely interesting that I believe I

cannot do better than to quote the fragments which succeed:

PLATE XCII.

[Illustration: BILTMORE IN NORTH CAROLINA.

RICHARD MORRIS HUNT, Architect.]

PLATE XCIII.

[Illustration: HOUSE OF H. W. POOR, TUXEDO PARK, N. Y.

T. HENRY RANDALL, Architect.]

“He [Hardouin Mansart] was ignorant of his business. De Coste, his

brother-in-law, whom he made head architect, knew no more than he. They

got their plans, designs and ideas from a designer of building named

L’Assurance whom they kept, as much as they could, under lock and key.

Mansart’s cunning [his name was probably assumed for what we would call

in America an ‘ad.’] lay in coaxing the king by apparent trifles into

long and costly enterprises, and by showing him incomplete plans,

especially for the gardens, which instantly captured his mind, and

caused him to make suggestions: then Mansart would exclaim that he never

should have thought of what the king proposed, went into raptures,

declared he was a scholar compared to him, and so made the king tumble

whichever way he planned without suspecting it.”

* * * * *

“He made immense sums out of his works and his contracts, and all else

that concerned his buildings, of which he was absolute master, and with

such authority that not a workman, contractor or person about the

buildings would have dared speak or make the slightest fuss. As he had

no taste, or the king either, he never executed anything fine, nor even

convenient for the vast expenses he incurred.”

The episode about his bridge at Moulins that floated down the river to

Nantes is excruciatingly funny as told by Saint-Simon, but I must not

appropriate the space necessary for its relation.

I cannot think, however, that the damage of an occasional Hardouin

Mansart in France or a Mr. Pecksniff, I may say, in England, to the

architecture of either country has been anything like as great as that

done American Renaissance by their numerous colleagues upon this side of

the water. That our modern architecture is as good as it is, is no less

than remarkable, considering, too, how we are always trying to make it

pay financially. And when at last there comes a scintillating

opportunity where an architect is no longer obliged to turn out a

rent-trap, a manufacturing plant, or something else that will pay a

given percentage upon the investment, as happens in the case of a large

country house, the marks of our national trade are very apt to obtrude

themselves in a hundred amusing ways. The commercial habit cannot be

relinquished in a moment, and thus, unconsciously, we betray ourselves.

Of the modern country seats of America, I should select Biltmore (see

Plate XCII), in the North Carolina mountains--the masterpiece of Richard

Morris Hunt--as standing first and foremost at the time I write. It is

one of the very few examples of domestic architecture we have that can

be compared with the historic castles of England to which I have

referred and we are accustomed to seeing illustrated so beautifully in

_Country Life_. We call Biltmore French Renaissance now; it will be

American Renaissance later on. No other of Mr. Hunt’s designs can begin

to equal it. You may observe that Ochre Court at Newport has a fine

elevation to the sea. It is true. But the place is much marred by an

overgrown servants’ wing, while the notorious Marble-house appears to

have been created under pressure when the artist was overworked, for it

has neither his inspiration nor individuality, merely representing

several thousand cubic feet of classic architecture which would serve to

better advantage for a plate in a text-book. But at Biltmore, we have

an original design with the necessary attributes--attributes which I

need not take the trouble to enumerate again, having been so particular

about the reader’s making their acquaintance in the other chapters.

I remember I also mentioned the house of H. W. Poor, Esq., at Tuxedo

(see Plates XCIII and XCIV), as an example of modern work in America

that might withstand the odious ordeal of international comparison.

Really, it is a very simple thing, the Anglo-Saxon home idea; for the

life of me, I do not see why we have so little of it. The Jacobean

manor-house historically developed to date is an admirable medium of

expression, and in the illustration in Plate XCIV we may discover one

other example of good American Renaissance. If you think the Tuxedo

house looks too English to be called that, place it, it you please,

beside Blickling Hall in Norfolkshire, a genuine Jacobean prototype,

several fine illustrations of which will be found in the _Architectural

Record_ for October, 1901. Upon the long gallery of the latter, I think,

Mr. T. Henry Randall, the architect of Mr. Poor’s house, has improved.

The gallery of Blickling Hall has some

PLATE XCIV.

[Illustration: H. W. POOR HOUSE, TUXEDO, N. Y.

T. HENRY RANDALL, Architect.]

[Illustration: PHILLIPS HOUSE, LAWRENCE, L. I.

T. HENRY RANDALL, Architect.]

ugly features. In my opinion, this American architect understands the

adaptation of a Jacobean manor-house better than any other of his day.

It is style and historical development--not fashion--that produces the

architectural comedy--its story, its personality, its life. And now that

I am about to speak again of the most popular kind of houses of all in

America--Colonial houses, notwithstanding the very great number of them

erected during the last decade or two, I am yet almost in despair of

finding illustrations where the architectural comedy, its personality

and life are to be sufficiently discovered. Perhaps the firm of

architects who have been most noted as specialists in this line have

done nothing better than the house they designed in the eighties of the

last century for Mr. William Edgar, on Beach Street in Newport (see

Plate XCV). This design was always very much superior to that of the

Taylor house, of which I drew a sketch for Chapter IX; and as time goes

on the gap between them widens, while I do not see that the Edgar house

loses by contrast with a number of much more pretentious successors in

the same style of composition.

That there is so much room for general improvement in America is what I

have to offer in extenuation for the questionable sarcasms into which I

have sometimes fallen in these articles. Because of its salutary

influence, I have found sarcasm useful in scoring my points, preferring

it greatly to flattery, which D’Israeli used, he averred, for the same

purpose--he “found it useful”--adding, “and when it comes to royalty you

want to lay it on with a trowel.” I do not know that the simile holds

good as far as that, and I fear my sarcastic allusions have already

become fatiguing.

In glancing back over what I have written, I find yet another class of

architects and another theory of architecture to which no credit has

been given. I refer now to that class of architects who publish books of

readymade plans, and who advertise for clients in the periodicals, and

to their theory of architecture which does not allow that the artist

enters into the proposition. This is as I understand it, at least, from

one of their advertisements, which reads, “Plans made _not_ by an

_artist_, but by an _architect_.”

Bored nearly to death by having to listen to unwelcome

PLATE XCV.

[Illustration: GARDEN GATE AT WYOMING, N. J.]

[Illustration: WINDOW OF A DINING-ROOM.]

[Illustration: THE EDGAR HOUSE, NEWPORT.]

art discussion which to them does not seem either necessary or practical

in what they consider a purely utilitarian business for housing the

people, they have conceived a positive aversion to architecture as a

fine art. I do not know exactly what they mean by the affectation and

exaggeration they exploit if it is not intended to be artistic; but it

is quite possible they deprecate all that, themselves, as the necessary

amount of tawdriness the American people will have, feeling the while

unequal to educating such hopeless material. For it may be that I do

these wholesalers of printed plans a great injustice--it may be they

realize, as do other architects, only too keenly, that architecture is

the cubic measure of art, and requires an artist of the third power to

fuss with it successfully, in which case I fancy I recognize even

greater method in their madness.

THE END

INDEX

Alexandria, Va., 71, 72;

Fairfax house, 71;

Carlyle house, 71.

Alice in Wonderland, reference, 31.

Alison, Archibald, historian cited, 108.

American Notes, Dickens’ criticisms in, 89-91.

American Renaissance explained, 17-20;

its local color, 21-27;

sincerity of, 21-23;

various observations concerning, 21-27;

its derivation, 25-27;

outraged by modern Romanesque, 27-29;

Andrew Jackson’s influence upon, 41, 48-50;

early architects of, 42-44;

designing a farmhouse in, 46-48;

modern farmer’s knowledge of, 40, 49, 50;

not taught in schools, 35, 49, 50;

contrasted with architecture of England, 51-53, 77;

restoration of an old house, 55-57;

various motives, 57-60;

roofs, 60;

development under aristocracy, 62-78;

Washington connoisseur of, 73;

originality of, 76, 77;

in Annapolis, 62-64;

in Bristol, 81, 82;

in Salem, 82, 83;

in Middletown, Conn., 84, 85;

in Philadelphia, 85-88;

influence of Ruskin Gothic, 95-97;

influence of Civil War, 108-17;

of Centennial Exposition, 118-20, 125;

Colonial revival, 128-31;

adaptations, 132;

criticised by writers, 132-34;

apprenticeship of, 140-41;

injured by financiers, 131, 166;

traditions of, 40-42;

legislative buildings, 134.

Amplification, modern, houses injured by, 75.

Annapolis, Md., 62-65, 68, 70, 82.

Anne Arundel Town, 62.

Applied ornament, 120, 131.

Architectural Record, articles in, mentioned, 62, 147.

Architectural Review, articles in, mentioned, 80, 102, 104.

Architecture, ignorance concerning, as a fine art, 132-33, 171;

adaptation, soul of, 136; contrasted

with literature, 76, 136;

plagiarism in, 137, 151;

Jacobin, 41, 111-15, 117;

Elizabethan, 138-40;

Tudor, 96, 140;

Queen Anne, 125-28;

Jacobean, 25, 41, 138, 140, 168;

Romanesque, 28;

Gothic, 95-97, 146;

French Renaissance, 123-24, 135, 142-44;

eclectic style a fallacy, 20;

not taught in schools, 35, 49, 50;

newly invented, 30-33, 114;

American extravaganza, 46;

atmosphere necessary to, 116;

modern Colonial, 128-30;

cubic measure of art, 171.

Architects, different kinds of, 163-65;

publishers of plans, 170-71.

Arnold-Shippen house, Fairmount Park, 69.

Art and charity, 38, 39.

Art and commercialism contrasted, 37-39.

Artist temperament, 156-61.

Astor Library, mentioned, 105, 107.

Astor, John Jacob, 105, 106.

Atmosphere necessary to architecture, 116.

Azay-le-Rideau, château of, 143.

Back-buildings of Philadelphia, 86-88.

Bancroft, George, his history of United States cited, 77.

Bates & Guild Co., publications by, 63.

Beaconsfield, Earl of, mentioned, 123;

his use of flattery, 170.

Bell, Frederick A., buys the Danforth place at Madison, N. J., 122.

Bellwood, Madison, N. J., 121-23.

Belmont houses, New York City, 37.

Bennett house, New Bedford, Mass., 102, 104.

Bennett, James Gordon, his account of an assembly ball cited, 92.

Berkshires, modern architecture in, 35, 36.

Beau Brummel, quoted, 148.

Blickling Hall, 168.

Biltmore, North Carolina, 52, 167.

Bond Street, N. Y. City, No. 23, 99-101.

Boston, Mass., Scarcity of Colonial houses in, 68.

Bramante, architect, 45, 122.

Brandon, Va., mentioned, 63.

Brice-Jennings house, Annapolis, mentioned, 63.

Bristol, R. I., 68, 80-82;

Capt. Churchill house (house with the eagles), 81;

doorways, 82;

De Wolf-Colt house, 80, 81;

De Wolf-Middleton house, 81, 82;

Norris house, 81.

Brown, Albert F., book on early Connecticut houses, 57.

Browning the poet mentioned, 95, 98.

Burns, Robert, cottage of, 53.

Canterbury Keys, Wyoming, N. J., 139.

Capitol at Washington, 71, 134.

Carlyle house at Alexandria, Va., 71;

adaptation of, 71.

Carlyle, Thomas, cited, 108.

Carrère and Hastings, extension designed by, 122.

Centennial Exposition, its influence, 118, 120, 125.

Charity, its relation to architecture, 38, 39;

anatomy of, 107.

Charlecote Hall, 139.

Chambord, château of, 143;

mentioned, 145.

Charm not deducible by mathematics, 61.

Chase house, Annapolis, mentioned, 63.

Chenonceau, château of, 143-144.

Chew house, Germantown, 69.

Chopin, étude by, cited, 67;

quoted, 106.

Coles house, Farmington, Conn., 23.

Colonial houses in Switzerland, 147.

Colonial houses, modern, 154;

scarcity of good ones, 169;

ultra-fashionable, 130.

Colonial revival, 128-30.

Colonnade, N. Y. City, 104-6.

Congress at Berlin, reference, 123.

Connecticut, early houses in, 57, 59.

Country house for Mrs. H. at Morristown, 144.

Country Life, the English periodical, 51;

illustration from, 52.

Cupolas (see chapter Reign of Terror, 108) correctly placed, 153.

Curious analogy between art and nature, 89.

Cypress as a building material, 147.

Delafield house on Long Island, 72-73.

Dickens, Charles, his criticisms, 89-91;

quoted, 108.

Don Juan, quotations from, 49, 78.

Du Barry, Madam, mentioned, 79.

Durham, Conn., Miles Merwin house, 46-48.

Dutch influences in New York and New Jersey, 59.

D’Israeli, his use of flattery, 170.

Early Renaissance of England, book by Gotch, 140.

Eastlake School of Design, 119-20.

Eclectic style, its fallacy in architecture, 20.

Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, 121, 142;

graduates of, 143.

Efflorescence of commercialism, 85.

Elmington, Gloucester Co., Va., 73.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, mentioned, 95.

English Renaissance under the Georges, 124, 140;

a vast treasure house, 77;

various other allusions, 22-27, 51-53, 61, 77, 96, 138-41, 168.

Fanciful houses (see Reign of Terror), 108.

Farmhouse, modern, 49, 50.

Farmington, Conn., Coles house, 23.

Field of art an enchanted garden, 149.

Financier architects, 164.

Financiers, their love of flowers, 160;

their influence upon American Renaissance, 131.

Flat-iron Building, N. Y. City, 37.

Florence, Italy, mentioned, 28.

Fontainebleau, Château of, 135, 142, 145.

Ford Mansion, Morristown, N. J., 75.

Fouquet, minister of Louis XIV, mentioned, 44.

Fourth Street, N. Y. City, doorway, 99.

French Renaissance, 123-24, 135, 142-44.

French Revolution cited, 79, 108.

Gabriel, architect, mentioned, 144.

George, Henry, cited, 109.

Germantown, Pa., 70;

Colonial houses in, 69, 70;

Morris house, 69;

Wyck, 60, 61, 69;

Stenton-in-the-fields, 69;

Wister house, 69.

Gerry, Mrs., engages Mr. Hunt to be her architect, 124.

Girondists and mountain, cited, 113.

Gloucester Co., Va., 73, 74.

Gotch’s Early Renaissance in England, 140.

Gothic architecture, in wood, 24;

recommended by Ruskin, 95-97.

Grace Church, N. Y. City, 134;

rectory, 96-97.

H. Mrs., her house at Morristown, N. J., 144.

Haddon Hall, 138.

Hackensack, N. J., old house in, 60.

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 105.

Hampton Court, Wolsey palace, 141;

South palace, 141.

Hancock house, Boston, mentioned, 68.

Hartford, Conn., mentioned, 83.

Harwood house, Annapolis, mentioned, 63.

Hawthorne, Nat’l, reference, 83.

Historical succession in architecture, 116.

Hone, Philip, diary of, 91-94.

Hoods, Dutch, 59, 60;

Germantown, 59, 60.

House Beautiful, articles in, cited, 80, 82, 137, 139.

House with the eagles, Bristol, R. I., 81.

How to make a successful house, reference, 137.

Hunnewell Gardens, cited, 53.

Hunt, Richard M., architect, 120-24.

Invented architecture, 30-33, 114-16.

Irving, Washington, 105-7;

Life and Letters, mentioned, 107.

Isham, Norman M., book on early Connecticut houses, 57.

Italian villas, cited, 110-11.

Italian palaces, 135.

Jackson, Andrew, 41, 48, 50.

Jacobean architecture, adaptation, 168;

Renaissance, reference, 25, 41.

Jacobin, architecture, 41;