Art

THE men who had the building of the old Boston which we remember — the Boston, of the first half of this century — worked under many disadvantages which we at this day are very ready to recognize ; but they had also certain advantages, which we are more apt to forget. There was very little chance, fifty or a hundred years ago, for an American architect (no great chance, in truth, for any architect) to get a liberal professional training. Our community was poor, building materials were few and simple. The work that was done, therefore, was small in scale and of no great architectural significance ; moreover, it was executed in the formal, frigid style which we inherited from the English architects of the Georgian period. We are familiar with these disadvantages of our fathers, but we forget their compensations. The forms and rules by which they worked had been carefully studied out by artists of large experience and finely developed sense of proportion. Their work, in spite of its monotony and want of life, always retained traces of the judgment, often of the elegance, of those from whom it was derived. Thus, if the men who designed buildings lacked knowledge and skill, they were guarded by rules horn of the knowledge and skill of others.

But later years brought many changes in our way of building. The Greek revival came, and, soon after, the Gothic revival ; then, classical discipline once broken through, a flood of confused novelties spread over the land, and architecture fell a prey to empiricism. Fortunately in our large cities it had already attained in a degree the consistency of a profession; aud Boston, though she began to lose the quiet air of uniform good-breeding that had characterized her, probably suffered less than most cities from the popular outbreak. Her architecture gained in vigor : it lost the consistency of form that had before given it unity and character. Amid a great deal of building that was commonplace, and somewhat vulgarized by relaxing the strict ideas of form and detail that had preceded, much was interesting and vigorous, and some was elegant and artistic.

It is useless to rehearse the faults of our structure and employment of material: they have been often recounted and are well known. The fire came, and our people seemed anxious to leant the lessons to which the tires of Portland aud Chicago had scarcely attracted their attention. Yet, except for the giving up wooden pitched roofs and mansards, with their wooden dormers and cornices, the carrying up of party walls into parapets above the roofs, and perhaps some other general precautions, and a little increase of material in party walls, there is not much apparent diflerence between the old system of construction and the new, although we are glad to believe that the recent building acts have caused a gain in solidity.

An examination of the enormous mass of buildings that has been put up in the burnt district is, on the whole, very encouraging to the lover of good architecture. The first impression is perhaps one of flatness, and even monotony, not on account of actual similarity, but of the general absence of salient features and of relief in detail. A large part is, of course, the product of rapid routine work, hastily designed and contentedly commonplace. A good deal is the work of what may he called building-brokers, careless of architecture. But there remains a good deal that shows the marks of intelligence, skill, and honest study. We trace the influence, especially in detail, of a variety of styles, and the eclectic habit of our day — notably of French architects, from whom more than from others ours derive inspiration—makes this entirely natural. Yet in the best work a certain common perception of needs and of the ways of satisfying them, and a common feeling in detail, suggest a kinship of' spirit under the confusion of form which is very hopeful.

The requirements suggested by the fire set considerable difficulties in the way of our architects, and more than anything else dictated the expedients in design they have adopted. Combustible mansards caused the spread of the fire ; therefore mansards have been mostly avoided. Wooden cornices are abolished, and our better architects are too wise and too candid to use those of galvanized iron. The somewhat overstrained avidity of business-men for the use of every foot of a deep store-lot forbids any bold breaks in their walls, even when their fronts are wide enough to warrant them; while the walls themselves, in qur system of building, are too thin to allow of deep recession. High-pitched roofs are proscribed equally with mansards, while use, and perhaps necessity, cull for four stories in height. The problem was, then, to arrange and decorate a flat front, four stories high, generally quite narrow, often even lean, with no visible roof, a straight or nearly straight cornice of brick or stone, with as many windows as possible, and a row of columns at the bottom as slight as was admissible, These conditions left but a narrow field for display ; they afforded the least possible scope for picturesque treatment, but they had the advantage of being hard to dissemble, and have generally been dealt with in a very straightforward way, which in itself gives an agreeable character of manliness to the work.

The main resources which the limits of the problem left were light and shade, grouping and arrangement of openings, and color. But even here were difficulties. Bold projections in cornices and string courses are costly, and difficult to effect in thin walls, and in narrow streets cut off light. Moreover, hut a small part of the fronts in a closely built city ever get much full sunshine, or effect of shadow. When window’s must he everywhere, much variety and effect in fenestration is hard to get, especially in narrow fronts, Nevertheless, considerable effort bus been made in this direction, and with good effect; a good deal more may undoubtedly be accomplished without violating the necessary conditions. There remains color, beautiful in itself, and the natural adjunct or substitute for light and shade when these fall short. Of its use in decoration we can remember but a single instance in the neighborhood of the burnt district before the fire; at all events it was very rare. It is fortunate that nowadays we have a large supply of good and varied colored material at hand, and its frequent use in the new buildings is a refreshing characteristic. A natural association has given a Gothic or quasi-Gothic character to most of the work in which it is employed.

One difficulty which besets modern city architects is the adjustment of the different stories. Every one who has practised architectural composition knows how impatient of graduation or subordination a series of four members is. A triple group lends itself easily to such discipline, and so is used as the basis of beautiful combinations everywhere ; but a quadruple group is much more intractable, especially in vertical divisions, and business requirements seem to have prescribed four stories in the majority of cases here. The difficulty is sometimes got over by turning the fourth story into an attic above the main cornice; sometimes by treating the lower story in so distinct a manner as to throw the other three into an opposing group, to be redistributed among themselves ; sometimes it is plumply ignored. Perhaps the most common and direct expedient is to throw two adjoining stories into one, as it were, by an order of strongly marked pilasters running through both, the wall panel between the two windows above and below being let in as if it were a transom. This has the merit of boldly seizing on and utilizing the uprightness of a narrow facade, and so gives a certain force and unity to it; but, while it exaggerates one vertical division to a degree that is difficult to balance or carry off in the rest of the facade, it suggests a want of candor, and may not: unfairly be called a trick; for the second and third stories of one of our buildings have commonly no more to do with each other, that they shoald be thrown together, or seem to be one, than any other two. The Trench expedient of making the second story an entresol, or halfstory, although it may offer some business advantages in adding to the value of the upper floors, thus brought nearer the ground, seems not to find much favor among us.

In point of detail there has been, as we have hinted, a marked gain, and this at once in sobriety, richness, and refinement as well as in animation, especially in sculptured ornament. We notice a tendency to introduce decorated tiles in brick facades. These tiles are a very valuable aid in interior decoration, and even in exteriors where they are avcII placed and borne out by sufficient fineness of adjoining material and delicacy of ornament, but are apt to be killed by the rugged detail of neighboring briekAvork, and are doubly lost when, as is common, they are placed so high that their design is undecipherable. In the treatment of brick detail there is a great improvement in profile and proportion over the clumsiness of a decade or two ago, but the supply of forms and combinations is by no means exhausted.

The most noticeable group of buildings in which color is prominent is on Devonshire Street, at and near the corner of Franklin Street. The large building on the northeast corner is a pleasing combination of warm buff and brown sandstones skilfully disposed. There is a fairly successful effort to group the many windows for general effect and to centralize the facade. The iron columns are excellently designed, and an admirable instance of the proportioning of shaft and capital to their immediate charge. The upper stories hardly carry out the breadth of treatment promised by the second, but are agreeably emphasized in the centre of the facade. The color is well accentuated by polished shafts of black marble, and the roof line broken with effect, though apparently aspiring to some forbidden termination. The ornament is throughout fresh, well executed, and excellently placed ; the whole design vigorous, rich, and beautiful in color,—a good specimen of modern eclectic Gothic with a distinctly French infusion, and with a mastery of detail that is unusual. There seems a want of raison d'etre for the quasi gargoyles perched upon the parapet, idly overlooking the descent of the water which in old times it would have been their duty to discharge themselves ; but they are at least designed with spirit. The adjoining building on Devonshire Street shows a wellchosen and refined contrast of white marble and olive sandstone, but is rather lacking in general effect from want of concentration or well-studied accentuation; and the long, thin edge-shafts on the jambs of the second-story windows, with their rudely proportioned capitals and bases, are unfortunate. Opposite is a large building of red brick and white marble. The marble, pretty uniformly distributed over the whole front, gives the building a spotty and all-overish look which does injustice to the studied and even elegant character of some of the detail, especially in the iron-work of the rather stilted lower story, which is nicely designed and colored with very pleasing effect. It is seldom safe, in combining colored materials, to repeat certain members in one color wherever they occur, for structural needs are apt to place the same members all over a building, and spottiness is almost sure to he the result. Here it reminds one of the effect of Dutch architecture, treated in the same way, but with greater boldness and picturesqueness of form ; as, for instance, in the great marketplace at Haarlem. The neighboring building on the northwest corner of Franklin Street and Devonshire Street, opposite the one first mentioned, is of black and white marble, combined with better judgment than in its neighbor, and so producing a better effect, in spite of the strongly marked attempt to fuse two stories into one. Not far from these buildings, on the westerly side of Hawley Street, is some clever and spirited detail in brick-work in a small front with square-headed windows, the northernmost of two which stand together next to Trinity Church lot.

A contrast analogous in tone to that in brick and marble which we have mentioned, but incomparably pleasanter because less crude, may be seen in a small front on the south side of Summer Street next the vacant lot on the corner of Chauncey Street . The materials are white marble and dark-brown sandstone of a peculiarly rich color. The darker material is sparingly used and excellently disposed, the arrangement of the front very simple, the detail well designed, — the whole a good example of quiet and effective treatment in charming color of a small facade on the shaded side of a street. Two quiet buildings next this—side by side and of almost identical design, hut one of marble and the other of brick and stone — are excellent examples of unassuming treatment with considerable refinement. A truncated brick building nearly opposite, on the corner of Summer Street and Arch Street, shows the beginning of a design of striking, perhaps hazardous, boldness, with promise of considerable beauty in the upper stories. An unobtrusive front next the west corner of Summer Street and Kingston Street, though with less character, and a mean lower story of' iron, is a good combination of white and black marble. It has a well-treated second story and an excellent cornice. A marble block on the neighboring south corner of Kingston Street, and one of granite on the corner of Otis Street, are good specimens of a quiet, well-considered, gentlemanlike character, which marks much of the new work. The building on Otis Street adjoining has a front of yellow sand-stone admirable for its distribution of a small facade, and its expression of repose without tameness.

Passing down into Federal Street, one finds very good examples of what we used to hear called “ brick with stone trimmings,” in two or three buildings on the west side between High Street and Franklin Street. Beyond, on the northeast corner of Franklin Street, a building of black and red brick and gray stone, though of somewhat cheap effect in comparison with its neighbors above, has some bits of good sculpture and spirited design in the two upper stories, hut is discredited in its general aspect by an unfortunate roof.

At the corner of Franklin Street and Pearl Street a large structure repeats the glaring contrast of red brick and white marble which we have spoken of above. The front on Pearl Street has the defects we then mentioned ; hut the Hank produces a better effect from the greater concentration of the lighter material, and has an air of considerable dignity.

Of iron architecture there is less than we had feared to see after the fire ; but we should be glad to see less still. In spite of the fact that iron is the advancing, and we might say encroaching material of our time, there has been as yet no serious study of its proper employment in architecture,—except in France, where, as in the new markets of Paris, excellent use has sometimes been made of it, — and no suitable forms for its use have been developed, it being almost universally employed thus far iu debased imitation of forms which were invented for stone. It is refreshing therefore to see in the large building at the corner of Milk Street and Devonshire Street a step in the right direction, - towards the invention of a system of design which shall be distinctively iron, and not bastard stone or bastard wood. The design is undeniably awkward in shape and proportion, hut has an expression of force and even of grandeur which is as rare as it is appropriate to a material to which minute graces and enrichments are utterly foreign. Its distribution is in keeping, in spite of the fault we have noticed of running two stories into one, which is less disagreeable here than elsewhere because it accords butter with iron construction than with masonry. The detail, though uneven in scale, is hold and not ungraceful, except where it condescends to he minute, when it becomes at once coarse and feeble. Adjoining this is a narrow front, of the same substance, which, though somewhat cowed by its energetic neighbor, is agreeably arranged and shows a refined feeling in detail. The other iron buildings in the district are designed on what we believe to he entirely false principles, though for the most part commonplace and inoffensive in form, excepting a straddling facade on Summer Street nearly opposite Chauucey Street, and the uncouth and pretentious successor of the Cathedral.

There is very little of what is called street effect in our building, whether new' or old. Indeed, not only does our habit of doing every man as he pleases, without concert, prevent for the most part any continuity of line or adjustment, hut our way of building rejects the forms that can alone give picturesqueness of general effect under such difficulties. Thus horizontal lines, which clamor for extension and exaggerate enormously the discord of illadjusted successive facades, are strongly insisted on, especially at the most important points, — cornices and roof lines; but vertical features are banished, — such as the bold breaks, the bays and dormers and high gables which give such richness of general effect to the streets of Nuremberg, to the old Jew’s quarter in Frankfort, where the houses are crowded together with more than New York compactness, and to the main street of Augsburg and many a provincial town in France and Germany. The increased width of many of the new buildings brings some relief to this trouble : the rows of flat marble fronts on Summer Street give some breadth of effect; the plain uniformity of the buildings which line the concave side of the great sweep on Franklin Street gives a good opportunity, hut it is thrown away utterly, caricatured, in fact, in a weak stretch of thin, irregularly-broken polygonal lines, instead of the bold continuous curve that might have been looked for. It is to he hoped that our architects and their clients will learn to consider not only their individual structures, but what is as necessary in facades as in sidewalks, the conjoint effect.

The present is a most interesting because most significant time in our architectural progress. Our people, who hitherto have been busy organizing communities and providing against want, have got together wealth, and are beginning to think of architecture ; educated men are filling the profession ; the advance of our generation in the study of history in general has influenced the study of architecture; the means and the system of professional training are greatly improved ; the multiplication of professional books, and especially the invention of photography, have increased the amount of accessible example beyond account. The result is an embarras de richesses in the immense number of forms that are added to the “ five orders which formed the little stock in trade of our immediate ancestors, and the danger is that a confused eclecticism may take the place of a consistent development among us. As there is no dominant style with us, so there is no general mastery of design : but there is some training, some skill, much life, and much promise. If we must needs have had the fire, it would have been to the gain of the burnt district to have had it deferred two or three decades. But it has given a strong impulse, though too sudden and hurried, to architectural development ; and it is very encouraging to see how much improvement there is in the evidences of intelligent study, in freshness and grace of detail, especially in the liveliness of much of the sculptured ornament.

— It is pleasant to find the name of Powers still connected with sculpture, and to find the bearer of it in this country, too, in a studio almost within stone’s throw of the bronze figure of 'Webster, designed by Hiram Powers, which stands in front of the State House in Boston. Mr. Preston Powers, however, has not relinquished Italy, and will indeed shortly take his departure for that country, with the clay models, now in his studio, of Mr. Alvin Adams of Boston, and the poet Whittier, for completion in marble, abroad. Something of the father’s distinguishing qualities as a sculptor reappear in these two works of the son, as well as in a finished marble bust of Mrs. Powers, The same studied softness characterizes them which won for the Eve and Greek Slave their extensive popularity; and they bear also the stamp of careful transcription from the life. In the one, we have the intense, strong-featured countenance of the practical man, thoroughly American in its bearing, and businesslike in its characteristics; in the other, the firm, straightforward, almost sternly uncompromising face of the famous antislavery poet and ballad-maker of New England. And yet we are inclined to think that they have fallen short of what constitutes great plastic portraiture. A little bas-relief in plaster, at Messrs. Williams and Everett’s, by Mr. Conkey, of Chicago, representing Robert Collyer, offers itself also as subject, with these, to certain criticisms to be made upon modern portrait sculpture in general. Mr. Conkey’s relief is a small and tentative work, hardly to be compared with the more scientific modelling of Powers’s busts ; but he has thrown a simple energy into it which promises well, provided he does not lose this in acquiring the nicer skill he needs. Powers, on his part, possesses a trained eye and obedient hand; but with greater energy he would merit higher praise. These faces are doubtless correct; but they are approached too much from without. We do not say it would be easy to convey more than one side of a man, through a countenance necessarily bearing predominantly the impress of special characteristics which yet do not constitute all his strength ; but it is the sculptor’s office to meet this difficulty, and to bring out hidden meanings through the very lines that hide them. What is the reason that our modern modellers so often fail in this ? Examine the reproductions of famous marbles in foreign museums, and observe the comprehensive grasp with which the sculptor has seized the leading — and not only the leading, but the unconsciously revealing — traits of the face, in the Augustus, the Antoninus Pius, or the Julia Pia of the Vatican. Solid form was to them a natural means of expressing ideas and observations. But our moderns fed form more artificially, apparently ; and, relying too much upon the mechanically exact tracing of lines (forgetting that poetic feeling is as important as accuracy), are misled by superficialities. They worry themselves incredibly over the hair and heard, where a master of the old mettle would be content to indicate by a symbol, and even then would tell much more than we. The typical modern sculptor is wanting in imaginative analysis. If this be so important in portraits in color, how much more necessary that a sympathetic conception should abide in the snowy core of the marble, before it can bloom into a sufficient life of its own. Por ourselves, we are unwilling to write the obituary of sculpture as yet. There are signs enough of a potential rejuvenescence in the art. We miss the Greek type, of course : but the Romans were obliged to put up with a type of their own ; and a very little observation will convince us that .American physiognomies bear a strong resemblance to those of the Romans, who worked up into pretty fair statues, on the whole. And as for physique, there is assuredly enough still in the human race to employ the sculptor amply once more, if he could only find out how to occupy himself with it to the best advantage. Meantone, while we wait for some one who shall apply himself to representation in sculpture with something of the spirit of the discoverer, we may welcome in Mr. Powers a patient and faithful laborer, and may from Mr. Conkey hope for something of a larger scope as sincere as his profile of Collyer.