VOL. LXX.

Copyright, 1900, by the AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS COMPANY, Boston, Mass.

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RETROSPECT of the architectural development of the nineteenth century suggests some curious reflections. The profession is, necessarily, so much concerned with the current architectural fashions that it does not have time to reflect upon the singular rapidity with which these fashions have succeeded each other within a hundred years, or to study the circumstances on which they have depended. Two hundred years ago, William of Orange and his Court had just begun to import the fashion of Amsterdam brickwork into England, to relieve the dull and heavy Classic forms which the Renaissance had taken there. The Dutch freedom and originality, more or less tempered with British primness and heaviness, prevailed over all English-speaking countries until the end of the eighteenth century, when a remarkable change took place, not only in architectural styles, but in the way in which styles were suggested and made fashionable. Before that time, a change in architectural forms was the work of architects, under the patronage, usually, of some royal personage. Thus, Francis I brought the Renaissance to France from Italy, in the person of Primaticcio and his subordinates; Inigo Jones, and other architects, under the patronage of the English nobility, disseminated it in Great Britain, as the architects connected with the Court of the House of Orange spread the Dutch version of it later. With the French Revolution, however, people began to read for themselves about architecture, instead of taking it on trust from architects and princes. The enthusi asm of political regeneration which led the Parisians to dress themselves in togas, hoping in that way to revive in France the Roman republic of Scipio and Cincinnatus, turned, not only the architects, but every one who could read, to the study of classical antiquity, and the beautiful style known as that of the Empire was the fruit, not of the talent of any one architect, or group of architects, but of the taste of the profession and the public combined. This was the first, as it was the most successful, of what may be called the literary styles which have followed each other with astonishing rapidity throughout the nineteenth century. In England, which is, above all others, the reading country, the place of the French Empire style was taken, a little later, by the Grecian fever, for which the books of Stuart and Revett and others furnished the infection; and, as in France, just previously, and in England itself subsequently, the fashion, originated by a book, spread far more rapidly, and raged more fiercely while it lasted, than any that had ever been due to the talent of architects. The Grecian fever in England, after a few years, received a check through other books. Mr. Pugin discovered that he could not fix his mind upon spiritual things in any but Gothic buildings; and the British public, which is easily alarmed about its soul, began to inquire whether what Sir Christopher Wren called "mountains of stone, but not worthy the name of architecture" |

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might not be, in some mysterious way, conducive to salvation. The Reverend Mr. Rickman, about the same time, began his Attempt to Discriminate " between the different varieties of what had formerly been lumped together as "a congestion of heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles," and Brandon's "Open Timber Roofs of the Middle Ages," Nash's and Hall's books, Scott's novels, and many other artistic and literary works, began to call public attention to what their authors were pleased to call the indigenous architecture of Great Britain. For a time, the new Gothic existed only side by side with the prevailing Classic, now relapsed from its Grecian aspirations into a heavy Renaissance; but when Gilbert Scott announced that natural scenery could only be properly seen through leaded lights, and Ruskin sneered and roared by turns at the "architecture of pride," the British public felt its eternal welfare again in danger, and, renouncing the Renaissance Satan and all his works, devoted itself to Gothic with its most elephantine energy as well as clumsiness. Unfortunately, Mr. Ruskin had observed that, while the columns of the porticos of Renaissance churches stood on bases that looked like "piles of collectionplates," some of the tracery in the windows of English Gothic churches looked like "carving-knives," which was almost as bad, and the British public, followed, with less fury, by our own, fled to what it imagined to be Italian Gothic, as being the only style free from reproach.

UR readers do not need to be told the history of the Gothic Revival. Some of its works, both in England and in this country, are beautiful, but the style was unsuited to modern requirements, while it lent itself to dreadful caricaturing, and the craze, which had been years in incubation, vanished, almost in a moment. While architects were looking vaguely for a new style to fill the void, Stevenson's book appeared, full of examples of the sober, sensible, semi-Dutch, or Queen Anne, buildings of the previous century, and an impulse was given to a movement which has continued in England to the present day, and will probably persist until some gifted writer finds that true felicity is only possible in houses of some different sort. In this country, the Gothic Revival marked the termination of the architectural dependence of America upon England. By the time that polychromy, polished colonnettes and plate tracery had ceased to charm, many American architects, educated at Paris, Zurich or Berlin, had begun practice, and had introduced a variety of fashions, mostly of Renaissance character, enlivened, we may say, by eccentricities, such as NeoGrec vagaries, antics in cast-iron, and occasional excursions into the "Moorish" or the "Egyptian" style. Although there was no great substance to these American fashions, they were too numerous, and too popular, to be set aside by a book like Stevenson's, and no American had then, or has yet, undertaken to tell his readers what style of architecture was necessary to the soul's health. About thirty years ago, however, Richardson, then a young architect, fresh from the most vigorous and original atelier of the Paris School of Fine Arts, conceived the idea that the French or Spanish Romanesque, which pleased him by its massiveness and simplicity, would be suited to our climate, and he carried out several buildings in this style. His talent would have made his buildings interesting in any form, but the effectiveness and dignity of the newborn Romanesque gave them immediate success. By this time a new agency had begun to take part in shaping architectural movements, that of photographic illustration. By photographs, and newspaper cuts taken from photographs, the Richardson buildings were hardly finished before they were known all over the country, and immediately imitated. The imitation was not, as a rule, extremely successful, and the Richardsonian-Romanesque has now almost disappeared, to give place, as before, to a miscellaneous assortment of variations on the Renaissance.

press, throughout the country, it is useless for an American
Ruskin to tell people that one style of building is moral and
another immoral. This sort of talk may make an impres-
sion upon people who never saw a building in either style, ex-
cept in imagination, but not on persons who have photographs
of both before their
eyes.
On the other hand, the rapid dis-
semination of accurate representations of new buildings can-
not but have a great effect in popularising the work of men of
conspicuous talent, and while we may expect to see architec-
tural fashions succeed each other as rapidly during the next
century as they have in this, they are likely to be led, like the
Richardsonian-Romanesque movement, by architects, and not
by rhetoricians. Of course, it is impossible to foretell the
form which the development may take, but the beautiful, al-
though shortlived, manifestation of picturesque rural archi-
tecture which, after it had won the admiration of the profession
throughout the world, was choked by the Colonial flood, shows
that American architects possess as keen an artistic sense as
those of any other nation; and the man who can produce
beautiful, original and refined architecture, whatever may be
its style, will be better appreciated during the next century
than ever before.

censure.

through whom he is to be approached, with which such practice is encompassed. Of course, there are as many upright and law-abiding citizens in New York as in any other city in the world, and the good citizens of New York are, as we have often thought, more self-sacrificing and conscientious than those of other cities, but even the best and most courageous citizen does not like to invest his money in buildings which he can never rent in competition with other buildings in the neighborhood, erected in defiance of the laws which he has tried to obey; while the people of moderate means, and more timid character, shrink in terror from the thought of making public complaint of the corruption which they see around them; and, if they have occasion, prefer to make a friend of the official who has most power to hurt them, by the means which they know to be most effective for that end. Whether the Tenement House Commission will be able to reform any of the abuses which they have incidentally exposed to the public gaze is, to our mind, more than doubtful; but it is not impossible that their proceedings may, like the similar inquiries which have been made at short intervals for the last twenty-five or thirty years, help to prepare the public mind for the change which will, sooner or later, take the government of the city out of the hands of those who utilize it avowedly to enrich themselves, and confide it to persons whose ambition takes a higher form than that of a desire simply to fill their pockets with the filthy proceeds of bribery and extortion.

HE Mayor of Philadelphia has sent a message to the Councils, recommending that the street in front of the old Christ Church should be widened by taking property on the side opposite the church, and that a house adjoining the church on the west side should be taken and demolished, so as to leave an open space, thirty-six feet wide, between the church and the nearest building. These improvements would not ancient structure from the danger of fire to which it is now exinvolve a very great expense, while they would protect the posed. It may be observed that the churches of the Colonial towns, are not only among the most interesting of all the period, many of which are still preserved in our cities and

RHAPS we should say a few words in regard to the action of the Convention of the Institute iu censuring three members for conduct in connection with the competition for the Harrisburg Capitol, some three years ago. We do not propose to enter into the merits of the cases in question, but it is at least a satisfaction to know that the Executive Committee found nothing to warrant more severe discipline than a formal Meanwhile, it seems to us, as a matter of general policy, that the language of the Institute's censure might be improved. As now expressed, it describes its object as being guilty of conduct "prejudicial to the best interests of the profession," but without specifying whether it means the moral or the material interests. It is conceivable that an architect of independent fortune might take a fancy to make gratuitous plans for all applicants; in fact, some architects without independent fortunes are too much inclined in this direction already. Evidently, this proceeding would be prejudicial to the material in-memorials of the past that we possess, but have suffered, terests of the other architects of the locality, yet it need not imply moral turpitude, and the reproof with which it would deserve to be visited might with advantage differ from that applicable to cases of bribery, or collusion with contractors to defraud, or other misdemeanors of the sort, which, although, happily, very rare in the profession, are not altogether unknown. If a member of the Institute should come under condemnation for mis

deeds of this sort, the censure applied to him should distinguish the circumstances in some definite way, so that the public might know whether the object of it had been guilty of conduct rendering him unworthy of any person's confidence, or only of eccentricities which, although annoying, and perhaps damaging to other architects, involved nothing discreditable to his per

sonal character.

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'RCHITECTS have a sad interest in reading the accounts of the proceedings of the New York Tenement-House Commission. It is difficult enough for an architect at any time to carry out the work entrusted to him with the necessary skill, and to comply, as he is bound to do, with the laws, the violation of which exposes his client, as well as himself, to severe penalties; but where, as in New York under the present régime, the architect has the most employment who can violate the law most impudently, and corrupt officials most successfully, and where owners who employ such architects, and themselves continue the work of corruption and misdemeanor, keep their tenements full at the expense of their law abiding competitors, it is impossible for the professional man not to have his integrity severely tried. According to the evidence presented to the Commission, less than five per cent of the tenement houses now in process of erection in the borough of Manhattan are constructed in accordance with the law, yet the records of the Corporation Counsel's office show that only four small fines were imposed last year for all violations of the law in all classes of buildings in the entire city.

as a rule, the least alteration, and are in the best condition.
The dwelling-houses of the Colonial period, in too many cases,
have advanced far on the way to shabby decay. Most of them,
at least in the cities, have long since been divided into tene-
ments, and even where they have remained in the hands of
families of the better class, few have escaped the alterations
churches, the case is quite different.
necessary to adapt them to modern modes of living. With
system of church management is substantially the same as
Our congregational
that of our forefathers; and, while we no longer listen to
tain us from the same pulpits, and in the same manner,
sermons on Popery and the Scarlet Woman, our divines enter-
with their views on Imperialism and the Eastern Question.
Moreover, the ecclesiastical atmosphere is always that of
conservatism, so that an American who would consider him-
self humiliated by living in an "old-style" house is rather
proud of occupying his great-grandfather's pew in a church
which has not been altered since the Revolution; and the same
feeling has kept churches respectable and in good repair while
the dwelling-houses around them have perished in dirt and
neglect. The same influences would probably continue to pro-
tect and preserve our Colonial churches, were it not for the
danger from fire, which increases every day. While we sing
the same hymns, and listen to sermons in the same way, as
our forefathers, we are no longer content to do so in a room
the temperature of which is the same as that of the outer air,
and churches must be warmed, usually by furnaces in the cel-
lar. Sooner or later, the churches are set on fire by sparks
from these furnaces, and our most interesting old buildings are
rapidly perishing from this cause. Except in the cities, where,
as in Philadelphia, the crowding of buildings around them
adds to the danger, the risk of fire from their own heating ap-
paratus is almost the only one to which the Colonial churches
are exposed, and the proposed society for the preservation of
our ancient buildings, or even the existing semi-historical so-
cieties, might spend a little effort, and, possibly, a little money,
to great advantage in urging the adoption of simple precau-
tions, in the shape of metal lathing on cellar ceilings, tin cov-
erings on exposed woodwork, and fireclay linings to chimneys,
which, while very inexpensive, would be the means of pre-
serving many an ancient building for future generations.