Suggestions on the Architecture of Schoolhouses

THERE is an acknowledged recognition of the fact that man is strongly influenced by his environment, and a natural inference can be drawn that this influence is most active during the early years of his life. Hamerton assumes that the mind crystallizes at the age of thirty-five, and that all subsequent action is along the lines of previous trends of thought. However this may be, the surroundings of youth and of early manhood leave most vivid memories, and the reminiscences of after life are prone to revert to early experiences. The adolescent stage should therefore be even more carefully considered in its relation to public welfare than any other period of man’s existence, and the impressions of that plastic time be made beneficial. Of the senses, that of sight is constant in its action, and quiescent only during unconsciousness. Things seen, whether or not appreciated, are developing likes and dislikes, prejudices and opinions. The effect alone of propinquity, of permanent association, accounts for eccentricities of mental attitude, for both coarse and refined tastes, for capability of receiving and giving both pleasure and pain. It does not require an analysis of phrases, such as “to the manner born ” or “ love at first sight,” to make us realize that noble surroundings reflect themselves in manners, or that a sense of beauty accompanies association with it. The recognition of such trite statements as these is so universal, so axiomatic, that the failure of the public to act in accordance with the facts is the more amazing.

Utilitarianism and the desire for beauty appear to be sadly at odds, and the former, being apparently the absolutely necessary thing, is receiving attention, while the latter is considered if time and money will permit. Especially is this the case in architecture wherever it is related to minor public service. In tlie larger public buildings, there has been an attempt — unintelligent, it is true, but praiseworthy — to make the edifice of importance and of a character befitting its occasion ; but in the less pretentious work the general impression of the building is made secondary to its capability for practical use. While this is logical in its inception, and is necessarily the preliminary to all that is best in architecture, it is by no means the entire solution of the problem. The factor of art is as important as the factor of utility. Mere practicability, even under complicated conditions, is but the beginning of the work, and can, by experience and research, be formulated and gradually reduced to recognized methods ; but after this is done, there appears the greater problem of setting these formulated requirements so that they may leave an impression more than that of satisfactory utility upon those who live in and amongst them.

This is the chief raison d’être of architecture, and it bids fair to be forgotten. Practicable plan, sanitation, and ventilation, — these are essentials, it is true, and the neglect of proper attention to them is an unpardonable offense ; but they are neither inimical to beauty, nor are they productive of it, if dependence is placed upon them alone. In fact, they are merely parts of the healthy organism of that complicated thing, a modern building, and may impress their health upon the observer in the same manner as does the health of a Basque peasant, while being equally ignoble and ugly. The nearer that construction, whether of wood, iron, or stone, approaches to the ideal performance of its duties, the nearer it approaches beauty of form ; but this ideal fitness of form to requirement seldom exists, and is more likely to appear in engineering than in architecture. By far the larger number of buildings of the present day are constructed, not ideally, but merely economically, and their skeletons are hideous.

There are now being built in the towns and cities throughout the country small town halls, libraries, and schools, which are to form the ganglia of a higher public life, and will he associated in the memories of the citizens with all that is best in the body politic. The town meeting, the commemorative exercises, and the education of children and youths will be within their walls. To the citizen, next to the love of home will he the memory of these chief buildings of his town. Abroad, each community has the church or cathedral and the municipal building as the nuclei around which the daily life ebbs and flows. With us, the diversity of religious beliefs, the lack of concentration towards any one faith, has eliminated the preëminence of the church, and the library and school have become the most prominent factors in existence. Fortunately for the architecture of the small libraries, Mr. Richardson developed a type which has been generally imitated, and which, while often primitive, is picturesque. But the school still remains a factory for education. Those of us who have seen Rugby and Harrow, or have visited the board-schools of the smaller English towns, such as Chester or Leamington, remember the fascination of the ivied walls and porches, the long mullioned windows, the oriels and gables, and the surrounding lawns and closes of an English school. And with the pleasure of the memory is mingled the regret that no such association clings to the American school, which is bare and forbidding, set in a waste of gravel, serving its purpose as a shelter, and always kept at an equable temperature. These things we recall, but never can the municipal schoolhouse of America form the background for a Tom Brown. Yet the boy is at his most impressionable age during the years in which he is studying within the walls of the modern school: his hours of work and his time for recreation are influenced by its vicinity, and for eight months of the year at least one half of his waking hours have this school for their setting.

The boy may not feel that his surroundings are anything more to him than a part of the great educational machine that is forming him for future action ; if so, the greater pity for a lost opportunity. He may, on the other hand, develop an admiration for the mechanical perfection of his surroundings, in which case he is likely to underestimate and think poorly of beauty which is unaccompanied by technical perfection.

Much of the carping criticism, the dissatisfaction with simple means, that is so characteristic of certain types of citizens can be traced to association with the complex surroundings of modern buildings. The effect of quiet beauty, of walls growing old gracefully with the soft colors that age enhances, of stretches of sward from which vines clamber and cling to projections and spread lovingly over broad surfaces, to gather in swaying masses from stringcourses and label mouldings; the intimate affectionate character of diamond-paned windows, and of postern doorways, which seem to court companionship by the very necessity for close contact in passing through them, — all is absent from the dry formality of the schoolhouse which we build. Perfected methods of lighting, of providing fresh air and of withdrawing vitiated air, of heating and of plumbing, receive full meed of attention, the needs of association with beauty little or none. This is well enough so far as it goes, but is not productive of pleasant reminiscence to the pupil. He is taught little by his environment: there are no sermons in the stones of his school; there is no subtle influence teaching him by the best of examples, that of the object lesson, to appreciate light and shade and color, and to grow fond of them, so that he looks back upon them with affection, and demands that they enter into his life in after years. It is the stimulation of this desire for good things that is so important and so abiding a quality in the education of a child. To have only the best about one means that nothing short of the best will satisfy. And this does not imply extravagant tastes or perpetual disappointment. The best things are more a matter of choice than of cost, and they may be quite as frequent as the inferior products, if we only know how to discriminate between the two. To be educated to know good architecture foreshadows the elimination of bad architecture, and the education is all the better for having been imbibed while young. There are attempts being made to beautify the interiors of schoolrooms, by hanging photographs and prints of paintings, sculpture, and architecture upon the walls ; the walls themselves to be tinted in harmonious and quiet colors. Casts upon pedestals and bas-reliefs used as friezes are also suggested. These are all of value as object lessons; they instruct and influence the pupil’s taste, and awake an appreciation that would otherwise lie dormant. It is hardly probable, however, that the memory of these will cause strong affection for the places in which they are to be found ; certainly not as strong affection as would be felt for the inclosed playground, the columned porch, and the gabled walls of an English school. It is not sufficient to crown a wall with a pleasing cornice, or to space windows in just intervals upon a plain facade in order to have that facade remembered with pleasure.

Appreciation of subtle proportions is a trained and acquired taste ; it does not exist in early years. During the adolescent period of which we are speaking, the fantastic appeals more than the austere, the picturesque more than the classic. These are the days in which we are intense, in which we love Ivanhoe and Peveril of the Peak, when Dumas means much to us, and our heroes are those of the strong arm. Exaggeration is truth to us, and our sense of perspective is perverted. It is almost amusing to read the titles of the early friends amongst books of an architectural student. His first purchases, the small volumes that are all that his purse can compass, are usually upon Gothic art, or upon the luxuriant pomposities of Spain. Finials, crockets, corbels, gargoyles. the very names have a rich, mellifluous sound, and recall depths of light and shade, wealth of color and fascination of grotesque carving. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is not more bizarre than the plates in these volumes, that, with rich lithographic chiar-oscnro, show the fantastic conceits of the Gothic architect. As time passes, the books that shoulder each other in the student’s library tend more and more towards austerity of line and dignity of mass rather than picturesqueness. Among the more florid Gothic volumes appear works upon Early English mouldings or upon the pure style of the Isle de France, to be succeeded by the delicacies of the style of Francois Premier. Venetian facades, symmetrical in conception but with constantly varying detail, Byzantine domes rich with the glory of mosaics, the romantic epics of architecture, one by one are found among more sensational predecessors, and in their turn give place to works full of the subtleties of Italian Renaissance ; and at last there appear three or four ponderous volumes which give evidence by the wear of their bindings of their frequent use. The choice of the best has at last occurred, and Letaronilly’s Édifices de Rome and Stewart and Revett’s Athens hold the honored places upon the shelves.

The sequence is suggestive. The mind of the pupil is incapable of an entire appreciation of the most noble architecture, and the purse of the public is either insufficient or unwilling to provide that architecture in any but its most meagre form. But picturesque architecture is within the public means, and is thoroughly enjoyed by the student. Classic architecture is suited to large cities, where the long lines of buildings, the flat roofs and facades without advancing or retreating planes, do not lend themselves to picturesque groupings; therefore it may he as well to build in classic styles the city schools which are not isolated. But even under these circumstances there should he more motives in the facade than ordinarily occur. There is no objection to grouped windows in schoolrooms, yet they seldom appear, and there is but slight opposition to the use of mullions and transoms, both of which are most effective upon exterior and interior. In isolated suburban or small town schools, the necessity for classicism, caused by the immediate surroundings, ceases to exist, and the picturesque treatment of architectural forms is by far the most agreeable that can be adopted. Greater subdivision of both mass and surface than is now customary is desirable.

There is still another side to the question. Study of any kind, even the enforced study of the child, requires a certain amount of seclusion to produce the best result. Its associations should be those of the library, the recitation room, and even of the cloister. A resemblance to a factory is the last thing to be desired in a school. The bare brick walls and raw beams trussed with iron rods, which are only too evident, and which accompany the so-called mill construction in all its nakedness, are being used in schools in exactly the same manner that they are in mills ; in fact, a school interior could often be mistaken for a room in a factory excepting that school furniture is present. It has even been proposed that schoolhouses be so designed that they may have interchangeable parts ; that there may be several stock patterns of porches from which to select, cornices of various shapes and patterns, and windows of regulation sizes. To accept such a proposal is to herald the apotheosis of utilitarianism. While this mechanical perfection of assorted schoolhouses may be advocated seriously, it will hardly be accepted in the same manner, but is, nevertheless, an indication of the lack of perception that a school should be something more than a practical workshop. Though the gymnasia of Greece and of Rome, with peristyles and columned facades, approached by avenues between groups of statues, may be impracticable in our congested cities, it is still possible to make dignified the entrances to our schools, and to build them in attractive forms. An attempt has been made in this direction in the rehabilitation of the colonial school, in the adoption of palladian motives over entrances, and the occasional use of marble with the brick. Much more, however, might be done in this direction, and the colonial facade, which is nothing more nor less than an economical translation of classic forms, while it is a distinct advance in the architecture of a city school inclosed amongst adjacent buildings, is bald and uninteresting when isolated. Under these latter circumstances, it looks what it is, a plausible, praiseworthy attempt to beautify economically an unattractive mass. The monasteries were the schools of mediæval times ; and whether from their character of contemplative seclusion, or from the amount of imagination displayed in the curving of their capitals, stringcourses, and arch mouldings, or in the imagery of the tympana above the doorways, these monastery cloisters appeal more to the emotions than do many of the nobler forms of classic architecture. The monk in the cloister garden, the bees humming amid the flowers, and the reflected sunlight from the monastery walls lighting the page of manuscript that he is skillfully illuminating, or the black - letter volume which he is reading with such zeal, — this is the ideal of scholastic quiet, of repose, which has not lost its charm even in the midst of the bustle of the nineteenth century. There are many who dream that if such quietude were still possible, they could bring to fruition, under its influence, the seeds of originality that they possess. It is too much to expect that the peace of the cloister can have even a faint reflection in the activity of the school; perhaps it is as well that it should not; but the surroundings of the cloister, which went so far to make the monastic life agreeable, are suggestive in the adoption of a type of architecture for the school. Classic architecture does not permit individuality of minor forms, though it insists upon their refinement to an extent that needs training to appreciate. It requires the use of stone finely cut, with perfect surfaces and accuracy of detail, and ornament which will show the least deviation from precision of line and modeling. It confines its forms of openings to the lintel, the round arch, and the circle or oval; it permits no accidental effects, no accommodation of one mass to another. Every part must be as perfect as the whole. To construct a small and comparatively inexpensive building in such a style almost necessitates the use of meagre detail. The more picturesque styles, upon the other hand, give much greater latitude in design. At the very beginning, masses do not require such careful balancing ; there are all sorts of methods of accommodating forms to one another. Any size or shape of opening may be used ; each piece of carving or of ornament may be individual, and may form an object lesson in itself. The variety of material which can be used is unlimited, and brick seems us well suited to the styles as stone. In designing the suburban school, the first thing to be done is to avoid absolutely the appearance of an ornamented box ; and this can be done either by the adoption of advancing or retreating wings, or, if this is impossible, by variation in the planes of the facade. The roofs, instead of being flat, should be pitched at greater or less angles. As it is desirable to have as much light as possible iu the rooms, and as arched windows cut off the amount of light equivalent to the space occupied by their spandrels, it would be as well to adopt square-headed windows, but these should be grouped with mullions, and perhaps with transoms.

The school should have an inclosure or green upon either front or rear, and it would be better to have this walled than to leave it open. If it is possible to have a colonnaded or arcaded side aisle to this inclosure as an open air space for play in rainy weather, so much the better. The interiors of the schoolrooms should be plastered, and the walls wainscoted with high paneled wainscot; the expense of this wainscot above that of the usual sheathed wainscot would not be excessive. The large hall should be made as beautiful as possible, with high vaulted or trussed ceiling with ornamented trusses ; and this hall should have leaded windows, with the mottoes of the different classes of the school as ornamental escutcheons. These windows should not be of colored glass, excepting of the palest tints, and color should be confined to the escutcheons mentioned. If sculpture is possible,—and it should be possible in memorial schools, and before long in municipal schools by private bequests, — it should be confined to the entrances, to capitals and stringcourses and cornices. Pavements of encaustic tile, the ironwork upon the doors, grilles in the windows, each and all can be made to give character to the work.

It will be seen that the styles best suited to this class of work are the so-called free classic styles ; that is, the Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and the actual Queen Anne, not its spurious American namesake.

There are, in addition to these stydes, suggestions to be found in the architecture of the smaller French towns, especially those of Normandy and of the district of the Loire. This architecture has in common with those of England a freedom from excessive formality, and a consequent attractiveness when adopted for small buildings. If there is opportunity for any considerable expenditure, schools designed with classic porticos, with impressive arched entrances and vestibules, express civic dignity in the noblest terms, but such schools are seldom likely to appear. By far the larger proportion are necessarily of modest requirements, and it is particularly to these that the foregoing remarks are to be applied. When our cities become architecturally as well as numerically great, the school will naturally be built in a style to correspond with the nobility of the architecture surrounding it.

C. Howard Walker.