clear atmosphere to show it to advantage, it is the classic; and a
Greek or Roman temple in the atmosphere of fog, rain, and snow, of
Edinboro, London, Munich, or even Paris, does not produce at all the
same impression as if it were under the blue skies of Italy, Sicily, or
Greece; however, the frequent employment of classical _motifs_ since
the beginning of the century has contributed, to a degree unprecedented
in modern times, towards placing Paris in the very foremost rank among
the capitals of the world in the dignity and impressiveness of its
public buildings.
[Illustration: ARC DE L’ÉTOILE, PARIS.]
The encouragement given to architecture in France by Napoleon I. was
revived by Napoleon III. The remodeling of the streets, avenues, and
boulevards of Paris, under the direction of Baron Hausmann, while it
swept away many landmarks of mediæval Paris, contributed wonderfully
to its stately elegance as well as to its hygiene; the work begun
upon the Louvre was completed from designs by Visconti & Lefuel, and
much entirely new work erected. There was a group of men, some of
whom brought about the Neo-Grec movement, whose work was especially
interesting, and although not extensively copied, yet exerted a marked
influence for many years afterwards. These men were Labrouste, who
designed the Library of Ste. Geneviève, about 1830; Duc, who remodeled
the Palais de Justice; Duban, who built the library for the School of
Fine Arts, about 1845; Viollet le Duc, who restored the Château de
Pierrefonds, and wrote treatises and dictionaries upon architecture,
furniture, etc., and was instrumental in the organization of the
Society for the Preservation of Historical Monuments.
Still later than these works are Vaudremer’s Neo-Grec Church of St.
Pierre de Montrouge, built in 1860, and Abadie’s Byzantine Church of
the Sacred Heart, still unfinished; Baltard’s Church of St. Augustin,
of brick and cast-iron, and Central Market, of cast-iron and glass;
Garnier’s Opera House, Hitorff’s Northern Railway Station; the
Trocadéro, built for the Exposition of 1878; the Machinery Hall and
Eiffel Tower, for that of 1889; together with a host of other public
buildings, not only in Paris, but in other portions of France, many of
which have served as examples to the student of architecture in other
lands.
In this connection we should not forget the debt we owe to the French
nation. During the reign of Louis XIV. the School of Fine Arts was
founded in Paris, where free instruction in painting, sculpture, and
architecture is still given to all who pass satisfactorily the entrance
examinations; and in this school many of our successful architects
have received gratuitous instruction from some of the distinguished
men above mentioned. In the Department of Architecture the chief
characteristics are the thorough and systematic study of the plan, and
the adaptation of building materials to the conditions of the design.
Other European cities besides Paris have profited by the general
prosperity of the century. St. Petersburg produces the effect of a city
of palaces, the many residences of grand dukes and nobles, the number
of public institutions, the riding schools,—much used on account
of the severity of the climate,—and even the barracks, in spite of
the free use of stucco, each contributing to a certain impression of
stateliness; the palace of the Archduke Michael, built by an Italian,
Rossi, in 1820, is perhaps the most refined and dignified. Muscovite
architecture is most conspicuous in the elaborate and bulbous domes,
curious not only in form, but in color, of the churches of St.
Petersburg, of Moscow and Warsaw.
King Louis of Bavaria, having lived in Rome when Crown Prince,
cultivated so great a fondness for the architecture of Greece and
Italy, that when he came to the throne he commissioned his architects
to design for his capital city of Munich the Walhalla, Ruhmeshalle,
Glyptothek, and Pinakothek, after classical models.
In Dresden, the most interesting buildings designed upon Greek or
Italian traditions are the theatre and the picture gallery, by Semper,
who will long be ranked as the foremost German architect of his day.
In Berlin there is a theatre,—unique of its kind, with stage in the
centre, and an auditorium for winter use at one end and one for summer
at the other,—designed by Titz; at Carlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Strasburg
there are theatres and schools in the same style. The present Emperor
has added many schools throughout the empire, but they are of late
German Renaissance.
The public buildings of Germany and Belgium show few designs of
interest in recent years; the Parliament House at Berlin, by Wallot,
and the Palais de Justice at Brussels, by Polaert, being colossal in
mass and clumsy in detail. Many of the private houses designed in the
Italian Renaissance were very elegant and attractive, but within the
past decade there has been a woeful deterioration in the character of
both surface and line—the grotesque replacing the graceful.
[Illustration: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, KENSINGTON, LONDON.]
The villages built for their employees by Krupp, the gun manufacturer,
and Stumm, the maker of steel, are notable instances of the application
of private capital to the improvement of the domestic conditions of
the laboring class.
In Austria, Vienna has developed wonderfully since the days of Maria
Theresa. The classic Parliament House by Hansen, in 1843, is one of
the most delightful of its kind to be found anywhere; Schmitt’s Gothic
town-hall is interesting, but cannot be said to be so successful in
design; the Votive Church by Ferstel, in 1856 (also Gothic), the
Opera House by Siccardsburg and Van der Nüll, with the City Theatre,
an elaborate Renaissance structure, by Semper and Hasmauer, are all
worthy of note. The University with the two Museum buildings, facing
each other upon a small park, and other public buildings and residences
along the Ring Strasse, are extremely satisfactory, in spite of the
fact that stucco has been so extensively employed.
Only a few years ago the municipality of Buda-Pesth offered immunity
from taxation for fifteen years to all prospective builders, under
certain conditions as to character and cost of buildings, with the
result that the newer portion of the Hungarian capital was quickly
occupied by buildings of the most desirable kind; the Parliament
House, Opera, Cathedral, Technical School, and several club-houses and
private residences, each testify to the spirit with which the citizens
responded to this desire to beautify the city.
Since the unification of Italy there has been considerable building in
some of the principal cities, but very little of special importance.
In Rome, the changes are more perceptible than elsewhere; the
excavations of the Forum, the embankment of the Tiber, the widening and
straightening of the Corso, and the opening of the Via Nationale and
other streets, have destroyed comparatively little of the picturesque
that was worth retaining, have brought to light many treasures of art,
and, supplemented by the drainage of the Campagna by Prince Torlonia,
have certainly made it a healthier city to live in. The monument to
Victor Emmanuel, the National Museum, and the Braccia Nuovo of the
Vatican Museum, are among the few public structures of interest; the
many blocks of apartments and tenements are orderly and inoffensive,
though brick and stucco are the materials used in their construction.
Turin is the modern manufacturing city, while Florence preserves its
mediæval air, and Venice dreams of the bygone days when the splendor of
the Renaissance attracted the wealth, beauty, and talent of all Europe
to the city of the Doges.
Bologna and Genoa have each built in the suburbs a magnificent Campo
Santo, or cemetery, with chapels, colonnades, and other accessories of
architectural value; in Milan and Naples there are lofty glass-covered
arcades through the centre of a block and connecting with cross
streets, and the semi-circular colonnades of St. Francesco di Paolo, at
Naples, surround a piazza which is the great public resort of summer
evenings.
During the reign of King George a new Athens has sprung up alongside
of and overlapping the old city; although the nation is not wealthy,
the individual bequests of certain Greeks have given her the Museum,
University, and Academy, each of strict classic design, and a hospital
of Byzantine design. Under the sunny skies of Greece those buildings
certainly appear to much greater advantage than if in a more northern
atmosphere, and their statuary and polychromy show the value of these
accessories to such architecture in this climate.
[Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C.]
Abdul Aziz, the predecessor of the present Sultan of Turkey, had so
great a fondness for building that his extravagance in this respect was
one of the causes which led to his downfall. The Dolma Bagtche palace,
erected directly upon the shores of the Bosphorus from the designs of
Balzan, an Armenian architect, suggests Spanish work of the sixteenth
century. In Constantinople and at Therapia,—a summer resort at the
northern end of the Bosphorus,—many of the foreign governments have
built official residences for their representatives.
[Illustration: GLASS COVERED ARCADE, MILAN.]
As for the architecture of our near neighbors on the north, the
buildings of Canada have been sturdy and substantial rather than
comely; but the long continuance of cold weather and the lack of means
have often hampered the builders. Since the completion of the Canadian
Pacific Railroad, the prosperity of city and country seems more
assured; the older cities growing in importance and extent, and new
towns springing up along the line to the West. In Ottawa the Parliament
Buildings and the octagonal Library, in Toronto, and, to some extent,
in Montreal, the Universities’ buildings, are Victorian Gothic. The
later buildings of the University in Montreal, excepting the Girls’
College, are not so interesting; but there are two railroad stations,
a hotel, cathedral, with several banks, insurance buildings, and
residences that call for more than passing notice. Perhaps the finest
building in all Canada is the Château Frontenac, in Quebec,—built by
Bruce Price of New York,—on the Dufferin Terrace, overlooking the St.
Lawrence River, and commanding a view that is hardly surpassed on the
Bosphorus, the Rhine, or the Hudson.
Although the history of architecture in America cannot be written
without some reference to contemporary work in Europe,—since so
much of our architecture in the first half of the century is adopted
from that of our ancestors and adapted to our uses, and in the last
half so many of our architects have studied there and so many of our
citizens have traveled there,—the problems and their conditions in
the Old World are very different from those of the New. Europe was
already mature when steam and electricity were introduced; precedent
was always to be considered, and modern requirements were often forced
to conform to existing circumstances. There has, therefore, been
comparatively less change there during the century than during the past
thirty years with us. With our republican institutions, many of the
monarchical formulas soon became obsolete, though the general trend
of our architecture has been in the direction of classic models. As
the country has grown larger and more wealthy, the problems given to
architects have become more complex; less reliance could be placed upon
precedent and a premium was placed upon originality, which, in spite of
innumerable vagaries, has brought American architecture, at the end of
the century, to be the most notable of the day.
At the end of the eighteenth century, this republic consisted of hardly
more than a number of communities extending at intervals along the
Atlantic seaboard, with an occasional settlement beyond the Alleghany
Mountains and across the Ohio River. Their resources were extremely
limited, their wants very few, and their intercommunication irregular;
but their methods of living were simple and frugal, and their courage
and endurance phenomenal.
Among the settlers of New England were many mechanics and
manufacturers, and these soon began to replace the primitive log
cabins with frame dwellings; those of the Southern States were chiefly
planters, who imported much of their labor, and often the bricks as
well as the glass, hardware, tiles, and other materials for their
houses. Many of those who colonized the Middle States had come from
countries in Europe where these materials were made, and brought their
secrets with them, while others were farmers and stock growers, whose
snug little cottages and enormous barns may be seen to this day in New
York and Pennsylvania.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century we possessed a national
style of architecture, which, although it had come to us from Italy,
through France and England, was yet distinctly American. It was,
however, almost exclusively confined to residences, and there were very
few public buildings of any description, except certain churches,—said
to have been designed by followers of Sir Christopher Wren, some of
whom were doubtless ship carpenters who had studied the works of Sir
William Chambers.
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D. C.]
The Colonial style, as we now term it, was sufficiently elastic in
its adaptability to conform to the requirements of the merchant,
manufacturer, or mariner living at Salem, Boston, or Newport, as well
as to those of the planter living at Charleston or Savannah. There were
certain differences, more or less pronounced, peculiar to each section
and to each city, but all houses were alike in this respect,—there was
no gas or water, and the open fireplace was depended upon for heat.
In New England the dwelling-houses were placed near the ground; the
chimneys built in an interior cross wall, the kitchen, with its
accessories, as near to the dining-room as possible; the ceilings
were low, with cornices sometimes of plaster, sometimes of wood. The
roof,—which was often hipped and often of the gambrel shape, but
rarely a gable of even slope,—was always covered with shingles, which
covering was occasionally used also on the exterior walls.
In the South, some of the characteristics were the high basement, broad
piazzas, frequently at the level of the second as well as the first
story, and placed on the south and west sides; the chimney on outside
walls; the kitchen in a separate building, detached from the dwelling;
a broad hall through the centre, giving access to large rooms with high
ceilings; the roof quite as frequently hipped as gabled, and often—in
either case—a huge fanlight set in a low gable on the front for
ventilation of the attic; dormers were seldom used, as the attic was
not inhabited; the gambrel roof was uncommon; slate, and occasionally
tile or shingle, was used for roof covering.
Our first public buildings of any importance, and which show the
influence of contemporary work in England, were the White House,
designed by Hoban in 1792; the Capitol, begun by Dr. Thornton in
1793 and completed by B. H. Latrobe in 1830; the wings, containing
the present Senate and House of Representatives, were added later;
the dome, designed by Thomas U. Walter, was begun in 1858, but not
completed until 1873.
Our early Presidents took much interest in architecture, Washington
directing and criticising the planning of the Capitol and building
his own home at Mount Vernon, and Jefferson designing the dome and
colonnades of the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, and his
own home at Monticello.
Massachusetts was the first State to erect its capitol,—the State
House in Boston, by Bulfinch, dating from 1795.
The City Hall of New York was our first work of unmistakable French
character, and shows the influence of the time of Louis XVI. It was
designed by Mangin, a Frenchman, begun in 1803, and completed in 1812.
After the war of 1812, many state and national buildings were erected;
from that time colonnades and domes seem indispensable to the proper
dignity of the capitol or court house. The use of both brick and stone
became more general, and, for private houses, the form of the gambrel
roof gradually disappeared in favor of the hip and gable. Subsequent
to 1830, the accepted type of the larger or more pretentious house was
the Italian villa, with a square tower accentuating the front entrance,
often one story higher than the main building; all roofs of low pitch,
covered with tin; the exterior walls faced with stucco. About this time
bay windows and sliding doors for principal rooms of first story, and
better facilities for the use of heat, light, and water were introduced
and the symmetrical disposition of parts often neglected.
The very steep pointed Gothic roof denoted the modest cottage,
and the perforated wooden tracery of windows and porches, or the
barge-boards of gables, became the simple beginning of that riotous
growth of jig-sawed fretwork afterwards so prominent upon those houses
constructed with Mansard or French roofs of rectilinear, concave, or
convex form. The works and writings of Downing had much influence at
this time, and it was shown not only in these Italian villas or Gothic
cottages, but also in landscape gardening about suburban residences.
The political disturbances in various countries of Europe in 1848
brought very many immigrants to our shores, and the discovery of gold
in California, in 1849, was the beginning of that steady flow of
settlers which has since then peopled so many of our Western States and
Territories.
[Illustration: LIBRARY BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.
(Thos. Jefferson, Designer.)]
Then followed our own Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, and subsequent to
that the period of reconstruction, during which time there was some
building, but very little architecture, throughout the country.
In 1869 the Pacific Railroad was completed, and this not only gave a
new impetus to Western mining and farming, but created a new market for
Eastern manufactures.
So great was this manufacturing and commercial activity that vast
fortunes were made, and there were many opportunities calling for
the services of architects; but as they had hitherto been rarely
employed, except in a few of the larger cities, upon churches or
public buildings, a great proportion of them were untrained amateurs
or self-taught carpenters and masons. However, the first school of
architecture had just been organized at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, in Boston, and to William E. Ware,—who was its professor
of architecture from 1866, and who organized a similar school at
Columbia College, New York, in 1880,—the profession and the public owe
more than to any other one man for well-directed efforts towards the
development of such, qualifications as may eventually give a national
character to our architecture. These schools came none too soon, and
within the past twenty-five years many others have been founded and
many traveling scholarships endowed; collections of books, photographs,
and casts have been provided in various cities; architectural
periodicals published, and architectural societies and sketch clubs
formed, each of which has contributed to the higher education of the
profession and to the greater appreciation by the public.
Prior to this time, each section and each city had certain
peculiarities of architecture, as of speech, which were unmistakable.
The white New England meeting-house, the red school-house, the country
house with its kitchen, wash-room, and wood-shed trailing in the
rear, or the swell-front city house, were as characteristic as the
endless blocks of brown stone, high stoop houses of New York, or the
monotonous rows of red brick dwellings with white marble trimmings of
Philadelphia, or the broad verandas and halls of the Southern home.
Cast-iron was the recognized material for the front of business
buildings, the designs being chiefly in the Corinthian or composite
orders, and the arch or lintel used indiscriminately; and when the dry
goods store of A. T. Stewart & Co. was built, in 1872, to occupy the
whole block from Broadway to Fourth Avenue, and from Ninth to Tenth
Streets, it was the largest and most important of its kind. Before this
class of commercial architecture disappeared, a front was designed
by R. M. Hunt, about 1878, for a store on Broadway, near Broome
Street, where the plastic forms of the tile and stucco of Saracenic
architecture were used as being more logical for this material than an
imitation of Roman forms in stone.
There were not many summer resorts, and a few weeks at Saratoga,
Newport, or the Virginia Springs was the limit of the annual vacation;
the orthodox hotel was a rectangular frame building, with veranda on
one or more sides, covered by a flat roof supported by square piers
having the height of several stories; the length, width, and height
of the building were governed by no other proportion than that of the
number of guests.
In the South and West there were virtually no hotels, and the belated
traveler applied for food and shelter for himself and his horse to the
nearest friendly farm.
These were the prevailing conditions when the _nouveau riche_ appeared
upon the scene; to him as citizen prosperity meant a better home, to
the congregation a larger church, to the community a new city hall or
court house, to the State a more expensive capitol.
While these buildings were being everywhere erected, in accordance
with the time honored fashions of construction and with elaborate
finish, the disastrous conflagrations of 1871 in Chicago, and of 1872
in Boston, called general attention to the necessity for more permanent
building; and the precautions now taken against similar occurrences
were the beginning of efforts toward methods of fireproof construction.
Granite, marble, and limestone were discarded in favor of sandstone,
brick, and terra cotta; iron beams carrying brick or concrete
(subsequently hollow terra cotta) arches were introduced, and metal
laths were substituted for the wooden strips to a certain degree; but
as these fires were mainly in the business districts, such reforms have
been confined almost exclusively to commercial architecture.
[Illustration: TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK.]
In 1873 the financial panic gave a check to many building operations,
but it was of comparatively short duration, for in 1876 all the other
nations of the earth were invited to unite with us at Philadelphia in
celebrating the centennial anniversary of our independence.
This was our first international Exposition, and it was not remarkable
that in our eagerness to learn, and in the enthusiasm of prosperity, we
sought inspiration from all those peoples who had brought their goods
for our inspection. At once we began to build Queen Anne cottages or
to remodel existing houses with many bays and towers, rooms set at all
angles, floors at different levels, walls of many materials, and roofs
of varying slopes, as well as to apply many tints and shades of color
within and without.
The summer hotel and summer cottage began to appear at the seashore,
in the mountains, and along the shores of the great lakes, and the
winter resorts of the Carolinas, Florida, and California to attract the
seekers for health and pleasure.
The interior decoration of our houses was the chief lesson of 1876, and
having once seen the European and Oriental hangings, draperies, rugs,
and bric-à-brac, we set about furnishing our rooms with them.