Architecture in the West

THE various stages in the slow developments of civilization from barbarism are marked by a corresponding series of visible monuments, in which may plainly be read the character and quality of the social conditions out of which they grew. The true value and significance of these almost ineffaceable records have never been duly recognized. The industry of the archæologist in classifying them, the ingenuity of the modern architect in quoting from them, the instinct of poet and novelist in using them darkly as the background of romance, have made their external aspects more or less familiar to all; but their subjective qualities have never been so analyzed as to make them accessible to the historian. They have never been used by him like traditions, documents, and chronicles, though their characteristics are the clearest, the most naive, unaffected, and deliberate expressions which humanity has uttered in any stage of its career. Since the Renaissance this contemporaneous record has been sophisticated by revivals, imitations, adaptations, combinations, and other affectations of the modern architect, so that it has apparently become more difficult to be deciphered ; yet its relation to the spirit and essential quality of the human life about us cannot be entirely obliterated, even by the most cleverly planned masquerading in the trappings of Greek or Roman, Romanesque, Mediæval, or Renaissance art.

Having in view this unconscious function of architecture, whether ancient or modern, skilled or unskilled, as a chronicle of mankind, there should be no manifestation of it without some interest to every intelligent observer, whatever qualities of art may be involved in it.

I propose to attempt a brief descriptive sketch of a modern phase of this architectural chronicle, which, by reason of the exceptional social conditions under which it is produced, presents some unprecedented features.

Civilization is advancing into the wilderness of the great West like a brimming and irresistible tide which knows no ebb. Its first waves of occupation bear upon their crests a human element of astonishing energy and force. No conquest or crusade of history has been accomplished with a greater display of hardy intelligence. It has planted cities and established civil order upon virgin soil in less than thirty days. The external aspects of these first occupations are remarkable for the skill, directness, and economy with which means are adapted to ends. The first settlers are comfortably housed in a week, so that all the processes of simple domestic life are made possible without delay. Structures to accommodate the land office, the saloon, the variety store, the railway station, the bank, the school, and the church arise to meet the emergencies of border life, and the visible town is begun. These structures, of course, have value only as temporary makeshifts ; but as material prosperity increases, and with it the ambition for permanent investments, the way is open for a much more definite expression of thought in building. At this stage of development the natural desire of every citizen to own property of the best possible appearance at the lowest possible cost leads to what may be called an architecture of pretense, an architecture intended to appear better than it is. This architecture, or, more properly, this method of building, has, without essential local characteristics, spread over the entire occupied territory of the West. It has met for many years, and will meet probably for many more, all the practical requirements, and has flattered the crude artistic aspirations of millions of intelligent and exceptionally ingenious and prosperous people. It must, therefore, be respectfully considered as, at present, the vernacular art of the country, though, when judged by the most liberal and catholic canons of educated taste, it fails to satisfy in esse if not in posse. Nowhere else in the civilized world can be found anything resembling it. It is peculiar ; it is ours.

I have called this characteristic and almost universal expression of Western civilization an architecture of pretense, because of its ambition and of its desire to make a vain show with small means. No people in the world understands cheap construction and economical methods of building so well, and is so inventive in providing for it. But, unwilling to let it appear what it is and to let it grow into a legitimate expression of art by natural processes of development, it has been forced to assume forms which do not belong to it, which contradict its proper functions, and which are devised to satisfy false and unsettled ideals of beauty and fitness. The facility with which wood and galvanized iron may be moulded, painted, and sanded to imitate stone or other nobler materials makes this baleful process possible, and tempts the builder to mask his honest work with crude travesties of conventional art.

It must be admitted that this method of architectural masquerading had its origin in the eastern part of our country ; but there, under the influence of better examples and higher education, it soon fell into disrepute, because, theoretically, it is an offense against fundamental principles of art, so gross that it cannot survive the first touch of intelligent criticism; and, practically, because this architecture of pretense cannot stand the test of time. Like all other experiments in the evolution of forms, only the fittest remain. But the West, eager to anticipate the fruits of success, too impatient to wait for a natural growth of art, ambitious to emulate the older civilizations, is, for the moment, contenting itself with an appearance. The vernacular style in the remoter districts has still undisputed sway, and. in tire hands of uneducated builders, plays with these dangerously facile materials such fantastic tricks before high Heaven as make the angels weep, and give no true and permanent satisfaction even to those whom they are intended to surprise and delight. It serves, for the time, to confer upon the newly built streets of the West a delusive aspect of metropolitan completeness and finish, until, after a few years, the paint wears off, the wooden sham begins to decay, and the galvanized iron to betray its hollow mockeries. “ A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” but a thing of cheap and vulgar ostentation, by a happy accident of fate, finds speedy oblivion. It is a piece of singular good fortune that the vernacular style has thus within itself the seeds of its own dissolution.

The present building methods and architectural character maintained in the rural districts in France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Russia, etc., differ from those of five centuries ago only in proportion to the advance of civilization and progress of knowledge ; and they differ contemporaneously, one from another, as much now as they did in the Middle Ages. Even the cities which are planted along the highways of the world, subject to the cosmopolitan influences, such as are afforded by rapid and constant intercommunication, by the interchange of books, prints, and photographs, by technical schools and schools of art, remain almost as distinct in their architectural character as they were when they were the strongholds of civil liberty against the feudal system. Their frank attempts to imitate the street facade of Paris are betrayed by the unconscious instinct of localism. The foreign accent is readily detected. The common and distinctive architectural forms in these older communities of the world are the results of established customs and ancient traditions, which have their roots not only in characteristics of politics, race, and religion, but in the soil itself, which has furnished the materials of building, and, through these, has dictated the forms by which they are most readily adapted to meet the wants of mankind. The arts of civilization, thus significantly grouped and ordered in the progress of history, rise slowly

The deliberateness of these changes, their independence of permanent influence from individual vagaries and experiments, are an assurance that they are developed unconsciously out of the essence of the time. Architecture, under these conditions, must be recognized as a true exponent of the quality of contemporary civilization.

By contrast with these established, slowly growing, indigenous styles, it cannot be doubted that the fantastic vernacular of the West, where there are absolutely no inherited traditions, no customs rooted to the soil to keep the architecture in a reasonable path of development, is merely provisional, a feverish expression of transition, a groping after a natural expression in art. It is carelessly compounded of exoteric and heterogeneous elements, and, so far as its decorative or architectural character is concerned, it has no basis in the essential conditions of the people. The very fecundity of undisciplined and misapplied invention which makes it what it is ; the distortion and exaggeration of conventional forms of architecture, which convert some of its productions into a grotesque travesty of art; the fact that none of these experiments give such permanent satisfaction as to cause their repetition, but that they are succeeded by new experiments of illiterate fancy, — these things indicate very clearly to my mind that the necessity for a more orderly system of forms, capable of natural growth and expansion, is unconsciously felt. A reign of caprice in architecture, with frequent new departures, may be accepted prima facie as proof of the need of such a system, in order that the civilization of the time may express itself in a copious language of its own, instead of using dumb signs and gestures, or trying to find quotations from other tongues and adapting them to its use.

In the absence of such a natural language, by which all the ideas which are to be expressed in building may be expressed at least grammatically without the need of especial training in art, architecture is completely at the mercy of architects. When they happen to be men of education, as we shall presently see, there is an astonishing activity in the development of legitimate style. When, as is usually the case, they are not educated, this process of natural evolution is very much embarrassed, if not entirely interrupted. It is pathetic to see towns of thirty to fifty thousand energetic, public-spirited, intelligent, enterprising inhabitants, with factories, school-houses, churches, public halls, convenient dwellings, and all the external signs of prosperity, but without a single building really good, grammatically constructed, or conceived in a spirit of subordination to any type of art. The people are not indifferent to this state of things. They are intelligent enough to recognize a work of architecture when they see it; and, as a general rule, their judgment encourages good things. Never has the missionary of art had such a fruitful field for his labors. A fair building, planted in such a town, is like the preaching of a gospel of truth among an eager and sympathetic people. It bears its legitimate fruit with amazing promptness. In a twelvemonth there will be fifty imitations. It gives a distinct stimulus to architectural life. Details of design taken from the new model may be seen, copied with various degrees of fidelity, on every hand. It proves to be not only a source of pride to the citizens and a most grateful enlargement of the resources of the builder, but, to a great extent, a correction and rebuke of prevailing errors. Of course not one or two or even a dozen good models are sufficient to obliterate all the evils of architectural illiteracy and inexperience in a given locality. A free and unrestricted foraging by undisciplined practitioners among the commonplaces of architecture has made them bad disciples of reform. It has created a singular disrespect for all the safe and conservative elements in design, an unwholesome ambition to inject an undue amount of their own personality into architectural work; and when they instinctively recognize a piece of sound construction expressed in an artistic manner, they are prepared only to imitate some of its exterior aspects, not its essential spirit, which alone can fructify.

Thus the progress of the transition, though it receives in an indirect way a slight impetus in the right direction, is not logical and steady, as it was when, by a series of experimental buildings, each an improvement on its predecessor, rising by “ stepping-stones of their dead selves,” the debased Roman was gradually developed into Byzantine art in the East, and into the various forms of Romanesque art in the West; or when these, in turn, grew inevitably, by changing social conditions, into the arts of the Middle Ages. If the ministers of these great historical transitions, unconsciously interpreting and giving visible form to the spirit of their respective eras, “ builded better than they knew,” it was because, unlike the multitudinous architects of the West, they were familiar only with a certain accepted method of construction and a certain limited set of architectural forms connected with it. Undistracted by a more or less exact knowledge of other methods and other sets of forms; knowing only what their fathers and grandfathers did before them ; seeing no journals illustrating what contemporary builders were doing elsewhere within and without the boundaries of Christendom ; reading no books and studying no prints in which the achievements of classic times were measured and analyzed for their instruction ; attending no schools of art save those which were established under the builder’s scaffolds, or in the cloisters where the religious traditions were preserved, they were the servants of a single style, and happily could concentrate all their energies upon it. Changes came about by natural growth and by logical processes of induction, not by caprice or by reviving old forms according to individual taste.

It is to be observed that the scene of transition in the West is enacted on so broad a stage, with so many distracting incidents and episodes, and, withal, we are so near to it and so much a part of it, that it is difficult for us to appreciate its progress and to understand its ends. We do not realize that the great transitions of history are made clear to us by the fact that there remain to us only a comparatively few isolated monuments in which we can read readily the progress of the civilizations. The great multitude of inferior contemporary structures which lay between these monuments, and in which were tried the experiments, do not remain to distract and complicate our views. Moreover, in the perspective, compelled by our distant point of observation, the great spaces of time which stretched between them are abbreviated. And though the advance of the great transition now going on in the West is far more rapid than any known to history, we must remember that this transition is governed by far more complicated conditions of life, and is illustrated by a perplexing infinity of ephemeral buildings. The prejudices and desires of the most impartial observer must necessarily color his deductions. It is scarcely for us to separate the wheat from the chaff in the products of these mills of God. I venture to believe, however, that the forward movement has gone far enough to enable us to appreciate the spirit of it, if not to comprehend the general direction of its progress.

I believe I am justified in stating that what, for the want of a more convenient name, I have called the vernacular art of the West — that which accompanies the first advances of civilization into the new lands, and lingers long after the successful establishment of all the institutions of civil order and prosperity — will not be recognized in the future history of American architecture ; much less, that it will be stigmatized as a reproach. In fact, it is merely preliminary to architecture, though for the moment it pretends to be the real thing. It is evidently a hasty growth out of the immediate necessities of an enterprising people, too busy with the practical problems of life and the absorbing question of daily bread to have established ideals of art, or to have deliberately formulated in building an adequate expression of their civilization. It is an art whose essential characteristics have been derived from expediency, — an art which has been mainly concerned with mechanical devices for quick and economical building. These devices have been invented by practical men to meet practical wants in a practical way. When freed from the misleading adornments imposed upon them by ignorance and pretense; from shams of wood, galvanized iron, machine-made mouldings, and all the other delusive rubbish of cheap deceit, which have no connection whatever with the structure, these practical devices will develop style. Until these quips and cranks of undisciplined imaginations shall have shabbily descended into their inevitable oblivion, and have been replaced by methods of decoration developed out of the construction according to the spirit of precedents furnished by the best eras of art which remain to us for our delight and instruction, deliberate and permanent architecture will not come into existence.

Upon this simple proposition rests the hope of architecture in the West.

Chicago seems to have fairly won the distinction of being the fountain-head of architectural reform in the West. The healthy impulses from this active and intelligent centre are felt in the remotest towns as soon as opportunities have occurred for permanent improvements. The dangerous liberty which the entire absence of schools, traditions, precedents, and consequently of discipline in art has conferred upon the architects of the New World, and more especially of the West, and which has given rise to all the crudeness and vulgarity of our vernacular building, has proved, in the hands of a few well-trained young men in Chicago a professional privilege of the most conspicuous importance, — a privilege, indeed, which has not been enjoyed to the same extent in any other city in the world. The resistless enterprise and public spirit of the Western metropolis, its great accumulations of capital, the phenomenal growth of its commercial and social institutions, and the intelligent ambition of its people to achieve a distinctive position in all the arts of civilization have given abundant opportunity for monumental expressions in architecture. The manner in which these opportunities have been used during the past eight or ten years gives encouragement to the hope so long cherished that we may at last have an American architecture, the unforced and natural growth of our independent position in art.

It is not to be understood that these fortunate men have deliberately set to work to invent a new architecture. They have been too well trained in the best schools and offices of the East, and often by travel and study abroad, not to respect the great achievements of the past, and not to make the fullest use of their rich inheritance of architectural forms. But their merit consists in the fact that some quality in the civilization of the West — its independence of spirit, perhaps, its energy, enterprise, and courage, or a certain breadth of view inspired by its boundless opportunities — has, happily, enabled them to use this inheritance without being enslaved by it. It would have been easiest for them to quote with accuracy and adapt with grace the styles of the Old World, to be scholarly, correct, academical, and thus to stand apart from the sympathies of the people, and to constitute themselves an aristocratic guild of art. They preferred to play the more arduous and nobler part ; to become, unconsciously, ministers of an architectural reform so potent and fruitful, so well fitted to the natural conditions of the strenuous liberty of the West, that one may already predicate from it the speedy overthrow of the temporary, experimental, transitional vernacular art of the country, and the establishment of a school which may be recognized in history as the proper exponent of this marvelous civilization. The hope that we are entering upon such an era rests mainly upon the fact that the characteristics of the best new work of the West are based, not on the elegant dilettanteism, which is appreciated only by the elect, but by the frank conversion of practical building into architectural building without affectations or mannerisms ; thus appealing directly to the common sense of the people, and creating a standard which they may be capable of comprehending. It is based on a sleepless inventiveness in structure ; ou an honest and vigorous recognition of the part which structure should play in making a building fitting and beautiful ; on an intelligent adaptation of form to the available building materials of the West; upon the active encouragement of every invention and manufacture which can conduce to the economy or perfecting of structure and the embellishment of structure ; upon an absolute freedom from the trammels of custom, so that it shall not interpose any obstacles of professional prejudice to the artistic expression of materials or methods ; and, finally, upon knowing how to produce interesting work without an evident straining for effect. These are the qualities of true artists who accept the natural conditions of their environment, and can adapt themselves to those conditions without surrender of any essential principles of building as a fine art. Any architect of education and accomplishments is fortunate who finds himself a part of a young community so ambitious, enterprising, and resistless in the pursuit of wealth and power, — doubly fortunate if he can make his art keep step with a progress so vigorous without losing the finer and more delicate artistic sense.

I am conscious of the extreme inadequacy of words, unaccompanied by a series of graphic illustrations, to make clear to the laity in art the characteristics of this interesting architectural situation. If one can imagine how a plain, concrete idea may, by an unskillful writer, be overlaid with conceits, affectations, and verbiage, not growing out of it or inspired by it, frequently expressed in bad grammar, and generally offending against the simplest rules of rhetoric, he may have a fair type of the protean vernacular. If it is elegantly set forth in correct Greek, Latin, or Old French, or paraded in the language of the Elizabethan era, or imitates the style of Browning, or Tennyson, or Carlyle, with ingenious quotations of their characteristic phraseology or methods of expression, he may understand by the obvious analogy how the educated architect is tempted by his learning, misses his opportunities, and appeals over the heads of the people to the few who are versed in the history and æsthetics of architecture. If one can distinguish the subtle essence which, infused into a concrete idea expressed in plain and straightforward prose, elevates it into the region of poetry, he may be enabled, without the technical training which analyzes and dissects, to comprehend how a sound construction in building may be converted into architecture. To this task inspiration alone is inadequate. The conditions of modern architecture are so complex that without a thorough training in construction and design, based upon a familiar appreciation of the history of art, inspiration is speechless.

The opportunities afforded by the West to architecture on the high plane which I have endeavored to describe are mainly commercial. It is in making the wisest use of these that the leading architects of Chicago have achieved their characteristic successes. A tenstory office and bank building, fireproof throughout; with swift elevators for passengers and freight, a battery of boilers in the deep sub-basement, giving summer heat throughout, and supplying energy for pumps, ventilating fans, and electric dynamos ; equipped like a palace with marbles, bronze, and glass ; flooded with light in every part; with no superfluous weight of steel beam, fire-clay arch, or terra-cotta partition, no unnecessary mass of masonry or column; the whole structure nicely adjusted to sustain the calculated strains and to bear with equal stress upon every pier of the deep foundations, so that no one shall yield more than another as it transfers its accumulated burden to the unstable soil beneath, — such a problem does not call for the same sort of architectural inspiration as the building of a vaulted cathedral in the Middle Ages, but, surely, for no less of courage and science, and, in providing for the safe, swift, and harmonious adjustment of every part of its complicated organism, for a far wider range of knowledge. The one required a century of deliberate and patient toil to complete it ; the other must be finished, equipped, and occupied in a year of strenuous and carefully ordered labor; no part of its complex being overlooked, all the details of its manifold functions being provided for in the laying of the first foundation stone, and the whole satisfying the eye as a work of art as well as a work of convenience and strength. Whether one compares a modern building of this sort with a cathedral of the first class, with one of the imperial baths or villas of Rome, or with the Flavian amphitheatre itself, it must hold equal rank as a production of human genius and energy, not only in the skillful economy of its structure and in its defiance of fire and the other vicissitudes of time, but as a work of fine art developed among practical considerations which seem fundamentally opposed to expressions of architectural beauty.

A problem of this sort cannot be satisfactorily solved by academical formulas. The education derived from venerable traditions, from the teachings of the schools, from the examples and models furnished by the masters, from the admirable monuments of history, when confronted by the inexorable requirements of modern commercial civilization, is confounded. Between the practical question and the discipline of the schools there seems sometimes to be an irrepressible conflict. If the prejudices of the schools are permitted to prevail, a correct and scholarly result may be achieved, but practical interests are apt to be sacrificed in important particulars ; if practical interests are faithfully provided for, there is likely to be a palpable offense against some of the most accepted formulas of art. But there is a conflict still more apparent and still more incessant between these formulas and the methods of structure imposed upon building by the application of modern science to all its details. The progress of invention is so rapid and constant that it is almost impossible for the architect to keep abreast of it with his work. It is in constant warfare with the precepts of Vitruvius, which guided our grandfathers in a safe but uneventful path ; with all the consecrated traditions of mediæval masonry, which were followed by our fathers with religious awe; with all the wealth of precedent available to us in the history of architecture. If the office of the architect is hospitable to these modern influences, there must be a revolution. The results of this revolution must constitute the ultimate style of the nineteenth century.

Indeed, the history of modern architecture during the last ten years is a chronicle of the various fortunes of this struggle between the conservatism, which separated architecture from the people, and reform, which brings them into sympathy with it. The Old World is the natural stronghold of the former; the New World is the natural theatre whereon the latter is making its most hazardous and successful advances.

When a mighty political leader was required to carry our country through the mortal perils of the civil war, a new man, modeled on a new plan out of

was raised for this heroic service. I am tempted to believe that we may look to the same virgin and prolific source for the spirit which may give us, in due time, a national art. This would be logical, and, if I do not read too hopefully the signs of the times, the fulfillment is not far removed.

It is proper that the centres of culture in the East should, in a large degree, sympathize with the conservative tendencies of the Old World, and that Boston and New York, like the monastic cloisters, should be to the New World the guardians of the precious traditions of art, as the latter were to the Middle Ages. This lamp of memory is kept trimmed and burning, also, in the professional schools of the colleges and universities of the North. From these schools, where they learn the theory, and from the principal offices, where they are taught the practice of architecture, goes forth every year a crowd of young men, whose business it, is to replace the provisional vernacular of our country with an architecture which, while it preserves the mellow traditions of art, shall, in proportion to the various capacities and opportunities of the architect, represent the especial conditions of our civilization. The effort to make an architecture without these traditions has been tried for the first time in our country, and it has failed, as we have seen. We have been trying to write essays and poems without a knowledge of grammar or of the structure of language. The result has been a vulgar vernacular, made up of commonplaces, catch-words, and slang. The graduates of the schools are steadily purifying the language, enlarging the vocabulary, and endeavoring to reconcile what often seems the almost irreconcilable interests of practice and theory.

It has been said that the fundamental ideal of domestic architecture in France is a monument of art, while in England it is comfort and fitness. Certainly the former is characteristically symmetrical, and the latter characteristically picturesque, save for a brief period when it was under the dominion of an Italian revival, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The social conditions of our own country have been the first influence to affect the character of our own domestic architecture, and it has yielded to this influence with a frankness which has had the most satisfactory results. The sentiment of domesticity has presided over the development of the dwelling - house in this country, so unrestricted by the affectations of fashion and style; and the methods of wood construction which have been almost universally applied to it have been brought to such mechanical perfection that it may safely be asserted that no people in the world are so comfortably and decently housed as our own. Under these circumstances, the domestic branch of architecture has been the first to take upon itself definite characteristics of style. Of course, as a matter of art, the facility and cheapness of the materials used have given us in dwelling-houses the most grotesque and fantastic forms of the vernacular. On the other hand, the builders have shown themselves very sensitive to good impulses, and the first architecture which we see in a Western town is invariably exhibited in buildings of this class. They are, in fact, playing no inconsiderable part in the great movement of reform. They prepare the way, as it were, for demonstrations of a more permanent and monumental character.

The attitude of the West towards architecture, as distinguished from that of the more cultivated parts of the East, may, I think, best be illustrated by the fact that a graduate of the best schools and practice of the East, who, finding himself in one of the rapidly growing Western cities, should insist on being scholastic, and should confine himself to the correct use of strictly classic or mediæval motifs, would soon have no opportunities for the exercise of his proclivities ; because, in the first place, he would not be understood, and because, in the second, he could not effect a reconciliation between his academical convictions and the modern methods of structure which he is compelled to adopt, at whatever cost of purity of style. Indeed, his most anxious study must be bestowed on the structural part of the problem. If the artistic is one part, the structural is nine parts, of his endeavor. The question which must preoccupy his mind is how he can meet the practical conditions with the greatest economy of material and labor; how he may adjust the dimensions, forms, and connections of every girder, beam, column, pier, and other parts of his structure, so that each shall be adapted to the service which it has to perform, with no superfluity of weight and strength, on the one hand, and so that, on the other, all considerations of stability shall be duly provided for within the limit of safety. His inventive zeal must be constantly on the alert to improve on the known methods, for there are none which are not subject to improvement more or less fundamental. Fireproof structure, in especial, makes a never-ceasing demand upon his resources. An envelope of fire-clay, porous terra cotta, plaster, or some other material impervious to fiercest heat must cover every piece of structural iron or wood. There must be no brute masses of material, such as formed the basis of Roman structure. None of these devices and methods were dreamed of when the old masters of architecture perfected their forms and proportions ; so that the decoration or artistic expression of this complicated and, in each case, to a certain extent, unprecedented organism, and the conversion of it into an object of architecture, as contrasted with one of engineering, must demand of the architect such a freedom from academical restraint, such a command of the resources of design, as to make his task at once inspiring and perilous. Under these conditions, error is far easier than success: the grooves of custom, if indolently followed, will sooner or later lead him astray from the opportunities of original expression which are lying in wait for his use. The silent growth of the building on the drawing-boards must be attended by a constant strain of doubt and anxiety. The spirit of a recognized historical style must be followed, in any case, but these new practical conditions of construction and service compel him to various and perplexing degrees of divergence from the consecrated types. To meet these difficult emergencies with adequate spirit, he must possess the thorough knowledge of the scholar, the exact training of the engineer, the enthusiastic zeal and inventive courage of the artist, and the prompt decision of the man of business. The stimulus of enterprise and the incitements of emulation are in the air which he breathes. The qualities which I have named have certainly been exhibited in some of the best buildings of the West to a degree and in a manner which distinctly differentiate them from any contemporary work of the Old World, which challenge the best endeavors of the East to emulate them, and are already giving cheering evidence of the establishment of a vigorous architecture characteristic of the West.

Architecture has not kept pace with the advance of science and invention during the present century. This has been one of its gravest reproaches. But an architecture which, like this of the West, is frankly based upon science and invention must keep fairly abreast with them, and thus redeem the waning influence of this noblest of the arts. If it can thus be made a living art instead of a studio art, it will not be long before it will be justifying its function as an expression of our civilization.

We are too near to these developments to judge of them without prejudice, but it is certainly true that the architectural publications of the Old World which illustrate the current work of our era in that quarter have ceased to have that same degree of interest with and authority over the profession which they exercised three or four years ago. Previous to that time all the movements of the modern schools in Europe, all the changing fashions of design, and all the characteristic revivals of England in especial were marked and closely followed in our own country. Now, our own publications, setting forth our own achievements, are studied with equal if not greater interest. They certainly show that, in fundamental respects, we have broken loose from the old bondage, and are entering upon developments of style which seem to be actuated by our own local conditions. If we still (as we must always of necessity) send our students to the ancient and exhaustless fountain-heads of art in Europe, to draw from them inspiration, refinement, and culture, we have the satisfaction of receiving in our own country diligent scholars, who come to us from England and the Continent for the refreshment to be obtained from our own methods of structure and design. If they come expecting to patronize and criticise, they remain to study and to acquire a broader professional vision. This is a pilgrimage full of significance and promise.

I do not mean to assert that, even in some of the most successful examples of new work in the West, there are not evidences of crudeness and caprice as well as the usual sophistications apt to result from high training in art, though I might name a dozen characteristic buildings in Chicago and some of the larger cities of the West which combine extreme boldness and ingenuity of design with scholarly reserve and refinement. But, on the whole, the errors seem to me rather errors of force than of weakness; they are such as we are accustomed to see in the earlier expressions of every healthy and vigorous style which proved to possess the elements of life and the capacity for a long career. I certainly can assert that none of the work which, by happy instinct, commends itself to builders and is copied and travestied with various degrees of success, according to the degree of education in the practitioners, is characterized by that fastidiousness and elegant dilettanteism which belong to styles which have said all that they have to say, and have lost their reproductive power.

I think I can discern in this architecture of promise just such points of difference from the more finished, elegant, and scholarly contemporaneous work of Boston and New York as should grow naturally out of the peculiarities of Western life. The best Eastern architects frequently have some practice in the West, and have set up in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver, San Francisco, and elsewhere examples of refined work of high artistic quality, full of inspiration and suggestiveness to local practice. All of them are doing good missionary work, putting out of countenance the buildings of coarse and florid pretense and cheap ostentation about them, and rendering more and more improbable the baleful repetition of them in the future. But by far the most effective missionary work in the West is done by the few structures which have risen “ like an exhalation ” from its own spirit.

It is difficult to specify in words the details or characteristics of composition which constitute this difference between the works of the East and the West.

In the latter, however, one can certainly detect a greater freedom from the restraints of the European schools. Qualities of material and the nature of the peculiar constructive methods evolved by practical experience are allowed to appear in the decorative scheme to an extent which, I fancy, the conservatism of the East has not encouraged. I have seen Western work wherein the capacities of terra cotta, for instance, have been recognized in the architectural design with a boldness and ingenuity, and a resultant success, which the East has not yet equaled. It is properly treated like a part of the face-brick structure, and the terra-cotta forms are not merely substituted for stone forms without change, as is customary in the East. Ornaments are contrived for the baked moulded clay suited to its capacities and without regard to precedents in stone, and they are built into the brickwork in a manner which shows that they are made of the same material. The same independence of the conventionality which keeps architecture in safe but unprogressive and comparatively uninteresting grooves may be seen in the decorative treatment of metal, both on the inside and the outside of the best buildings, and its fireproof envelope is treated often with a distinction which is at once bold and felicitous. The diminished importance of the exterior cornice, in eases where that member has lost its characteristic function as a gutter, is frequently accepted in the design, and its form is changed to that of a mere wall coping. Buildings of ten or twelve stories are treated with a different expression from that made conventional by buildings of four or five stories, and the usual procrustean processes are not admitted. No accepted formulas are permitted to interfere with the primary necessity of abundant interior light.

The first consideration is that windows shall be large enough and frequent enough for this exacting service, without regard to any studio predilections, furnished by the noble wall surfaces of Italian palaces and mediæval monasteries, or by any of the buttressed or pilastered symmetries of the Old World. There is no attempt to avoid the enormous difficulty forced by the requirements of modern shop fronts, and by the priceless invention through which they can be occupied with vast single sheets of polished plate glass set under girders of iron and steel, — a condition important enough in itself to set at defiance nearly all the precepts of all the academies, and, if frankly accepted by the architect, to create, perhaps, out of this nettle, the flower of a new art. It is the disposition to meet these unavoidable and increasing obstacles of structure and practice with hospitality instead of hostility, and the ability to provide for them in a manner at once fitting and distinguished, that mark the work of the best trained architects of the West.

If the attitude of the government of the United States in regard to its public buildings were one of fostering care, as is the case with all other civilized nations, instead of crass indifference, we should look to these for examples of the most characteristic and advanced monumental work. The profession of architecture is not recognized by the general government, and for many years it has petitioned in vain for employment upon work which should be the greatest prizes of the profession and the most representative of our highest aspirations in art. The architect of the Treasury Department, to whom, against his own annual remonstrances, has been committed this great trust, has been constrained to adopt an official style in the public buildings, — one so ordained as to be capable of convenient and almost mechanical adaptation to the various and complicated service of the government with the least practicable expenditure of thought and study, so that no official time may be wasted in conferring upon them especial character. Generally, this work has been done according to the most conventional formulas, making it easiest to design and most costly to execute; consequently, it is absolutely without interest and has had no influence whatever upon the development of architecture in the West or elsewhere, even in places where there is the most manifest eagerness for good instruction. The same is true, though perhaps in a less degree, of most of the state capitols. They have usually been erected under conditions which have afforded little or no scope for the same sort or quality of architectural thought which is bestowed upon private work of much less conspicuous character. Therefore, whatever advance is making in this great art is to be attributed entirely to the people as individuals or corporations ; never to the State.

The buildings of the general government, and those of the States, counties, and cities, are usually well constructed and frequently quite correct in the academic sense, though the vernacular has expressed in them some of its most vicious fancies ; but foreigners seek in vain among them for an exposition of national character. In Chicago, where one might expect at least to find a type of the energy and sound common sense of the people, the county, city, and national buildings are monuments not only of civic corruption and barbaric extravagance, but of a total eclipse of art. But alongside of them are private structures, erected with judicious economy of means and a lavish expenditure of well-directed study, betraying at all points the spirit which has made Chicago, and surpassing in ingenuity and felicity of design any other commercial buildings in the world.

To name names is a guaranty of good faith, but at the same time it commits the writer of an essay, intended to be very general in its statements, to a certain definiteness which subjects him to the danger of serious omissions. It is obviously impossible to make an exhaustive list of the men and works most potent in the national transition which I have endeavored to describe. But I venture to think that my argument will be strengthened as well as illustrated by distinct reference to the Rookery office building, the Phœnix, the Insurance Exchange, the Art Institute, and other buildings in Chicago, by Burnham and Root, of that city, who also built the beautiful Board of Trade building and others in Kansas City ; to several of the best theatres of Chicago, notably to the new auditorium building, which promises to be one of the most scientifically constructed and perhaps the best appointed large hall in existence, by Adler and Sullivan, of that city ; to the Union Club, the Chicago Opera House, the Owens building, and many fine dwellings, by Cobb and Frost, also of Chicago ; to certain excellent ecclesiastical and domestic work bv Burling and Whitehouse, of the same city ; to some miscellaneous work of high merit by W. L. B. Jenny, Edbrook and Burnham, Holabird and Roche, and other young men who promise to become distinguished in the active work of reform. I cannot refrain from referring also to Buffington’s work in Minneapolis, where the transition is receiving some of its most notable impulses.

I do not believe there are as yet a dozen men really conspicuous for a capacity to express their art in those indigenous terms which take root and fructify in the great West. But the work to be done is so great and the field so vast that, if these were the only effective missionaries of art in the West, we might well despair of seeing the establishment and confirmation of a national art there within the century. Fortunately, they are closely followed by a crowd of trained workers, earnest and honest, doing yeoman’s service in the great towns ; all of them tending, I think, to unity of effort in the right direction. If they can be held together long enough by the influence of powerful examples, the result is assured.

I cannot properly close this essay without referring to the work of the lamented Richardson, whose genius was large enough and robust enough to belong to the whole country, and whose influence for reform has been greater for his day and generation than that of any other architect of the century. I can almost say that the direct results of his powerful example may be seen in the principal streets of nearly every city of the West, not unfrequently, indeed, with “ a damnable iteration.” These results are often rude and undisciplined caricatures of the phase of Romanesque, which he was great enough to make peculiarly his own ; on the other hand, there are sufficient evidences that the strong style, of which he was the chosen heir, is being acclimatized and developed under Western influences beyond the point to which he was able to carry it in his brilliant but brief career, until it promises to become one of the most effective agencies in establishing the architecture of the West. With varying fortunes it has been adapted to buildings of every kind and degree. Sometimes it is merely the sentiment or spirit of it which can be detected, indicating, perhaps, that it is being unconsciously merged with the other fructifying forces, in that great amalgam of precedents which constitutes historical architecture. Any architecture deserving this name must be compounded of too many elements to be the work of any one man or set of men, however illustrious. It must emanate by slow and indistinguishable processes from the essential spirit of the times. Individuals and schools must presently be lost in a movement so large.

Henry Van Brunt.