The Modern House

I

FOR the last century American domestic architecture has been a series of fads. After the end of the Georgian tradition, houses were successively designed to look like Greek temples, mediæval fortresses, Italian villas, the Tuileries or perhaps the Alhambra, Renaissance palaces, Elizabethan mansions; finally they came back again to the Georgian, this time as an imitation. It is ironical that only one ideal runs continuously through all these changes, and that is the desire of our architects to build something characteristically up to date, and patently American. Each new decade had some fresh prototype to offer as the basis for a truly modern architecture; but it is obvious in retrospect that despite the whirlwind of controversy and bombast with which each new style was launched, and despite the vigor with which all preceding building was condemned, the actual product changed very little. It was the sales talk that varied, not the article. Through all the revolutions in make-up from the Egyptian to the Queen Anne, the conception of the house and the technique of building it developed very little. There was almost no increase in comfort. There was a definite decline in the general standards of architectural beauty.

It would seem that this process might go on forever. In architecture the American is always willing to believe that he stands on the threshold of a Golden Age which can be achieved through his own immediate efforts. And so, the colonial revival being a generation old, it is not surprising that during the depression the great American evangelist public should have discovered a new architectural panacea, Modern Architecture. Like the rest, it is a European importation. Like the rest, it is considered radically new, and contrasted sharply with stuffy conservatism of the immediate past. Like the rest, it is enthusiastically, almost extravagantly advocated, and generally misunderstood. Actually modern architecture is the culmination of a long development in America and Europe and represents a real break with our immediate past. It can therefore enable us to escape from the pageant of fancydress styles that has been our architecture for the past hundred years, but only if it is accepted less superficially than they were, only if it is thoroughly understood.

The average American has become so accustomed to a variety of styles that one more or less makes very little difference. To him modern architecture is just a new set of forms; its characteristics are flat roofs, corner windows, perhaps a dash of zigzag sculpture, or a projecting hood over the doorway, just as the characteristics of the colonial style are gabled roofs, paired windows, pseudo-baroque doorways.

In reality there is a far deeper difference than this. Any house built to-day differs from houses built before the twentieth century in four chief ways. In the first place, it includes much new equipment. Earlier houses were merely shelters for people; contemporary houses are shelters for machines as well. And these machines, plumbing, electricity, central heating, water supply, telephone, demand special planning and design. Moreover, since such utilities account for about 40 per cent of the total cost of building a house, nobody can afford to ignore them. In the second place, practically every material in the house of to-day is made by machine, while every material in the house of the past was made by hand. Furthermore, the contemporary house may be made of materials that are wholly without precedent in the past, such as plywood, and it may be put together by some wholly new system of construction like prefabrication. In the third place, the house fulfills a very different function from that which it fulfilled before. The colonial house included the shop or office of its owner. It was the centre of his social life. He lived in it all the year round. To-day the city house is often not in use more than half of the time. Few people work at home. Most find their amusements outside of the home. Many go away to another home during the summer. The colonial town consisted of three types of buildings — churches, schools, and houses. All the divers buildings of a modern town, the shops, theatres, restaurants, business buildings, have usurped functions that used to be performed in the home. Finally, the attitude of the man of to-day towards his house is wholly new. He demands new things of it. He looks for sunlight and ventilation, instead of for windows that can be sealed against the noxious night air. His house costs more. He purchases it rather than builds or inherits it.

It is obvious that of these four differences only the last can be much affected by any one individual. Accordingly, at best the contemporary house can only be superficially traditional. For example, a man may build himself a half-timbered cottage, à la Anne Hathaway; but he probably includes a frigidaire; he probably does not inveigle some relative into hewing out the timbers with an adze, or bake the bricks for the fireplace in the back yard; probably his wife does not spend her days spinning by the fireside. Fundamentally, therefore, this ‘Tudor Homestead’ is much closer to the Jones’s ‘Colonial Mansion’ next door than it is to Mrs. William Shakespeare’s picture-postcard paradise. The great difference between the modern house and the contemporary pseudo-traditional house is that the modern house recognizes these four peculiar characteristics that distinguish it from any house in the past, and uses them as a basis on which to establish a wholly new conception of the relation of the house to society and the house to the individual, and a wholly new conception of the house itself as a form. The contemporary traditional house tries to ignore these differentiating characteristics. It sells itself by trying to look a century or two older than it is.

It is difficult to appreciate at once the full difference between the modern house and the contemporary traditional house. Often the distinction is summarized in a catch phrase, — the modern house is functional, — but this hackneyed statement really avoids the main issue. For functionalism as it is commonly understood concerns only architectural features. To say that a house is functional is merely to imply that it has good communication facilities, ample ventilation, and simple structure frankly expressed. This sort of functionalism is a secondary characteristic of modern architecture. Many people, however, elevate it to the rank of a major principle, and thereby permit any style-steeped architect who turns out a good practical job to call himself a modern. There is a whole school of critics whose highest compliment is to say, ‘Beneath this gabled roof there lurks a modern plan.’ Actually the modern architect does not design a house to flatter the whim of the individual of to-day, any more than he designs it specifically for the society of to-day. The house is designed for the ideal man, and for life as it should be lived in the ideally ordered world. Modern architecture is the expression of a point of view which extends beyond merely professional considerations over the whole range of thought. Accordingly every modern house is something of a manifesto, social, economic, æsthetic. And it is its utopian qualities that distinguish it from the ordinar^ practical house, planned for the average man in a workaday world, functional though such a house generally claims to be.

II

The general point of view of the modern architect is characterized by an implicit faith in science. This results in a conception of the house as a responsibility of society, which completely changes the relation of the architect to the client. For science has established certain minimal material standards of living, such as adequate protection from the weather, light, air, quiet, some little plumbing, proximity to work and recreation, which are declared to be among the first essentials for the public good. Since nowhere in a world which has considered housing as a responsibility of the individual do even an impressive minority achieve these standards, obviously society must assume the responsibility for housing. In a negative sense this means that society must regulate building. The individual must not be allowed to build himself a fine house at the expense of all the other members of the community. The rich must not be permitted to build themselves super-slums like the apartment houses along Park Avenue. In a positive sense this means that society must provide housing that measures up to these standards for all who cannot afford to pay for it themselves. Therefore the great problem of the modern domestic architect is to determine what is necessary for the healthy life — how much light, air, plumbing — and then how this minimum can be most conveniently and cheaply provided. In this field, as in so many others, the ideal of our technical age is ‘not the single piece of work, nor the individual highest attainment, but the creation of a common usable type, the development of the “Standard.”'

It follows that the architect is less the employee of an individual than the executive of society. He is less concerned with catering to the preferences of his employer than with satisfying his scientifically determined needs. The client presents a problem which the architect solves by synthesizing the appropriate opinions of a group of specialists — psychologists, economists, sociologists, town planners, and so forth. Thus the attitude of the architect toward the client is paternalistic, and the client is lowered from the status of patron to that of patient. A specific illustration of this new relationship occurred in connection with one of the housing projects sponsored by the National Resettlement Administration. Before planning the new houses the architects investigated the actual living habits of the workmen for whom they were building. They found, among other things, that the living room was very little used. It was a musty Sunday parlor, full of bric-a-brac and reserved for weddings, funerals, and ‘company/ From a scientific point of view it is sheer waste to use the living room only as a social holy of holies. Accordingly the architects decided to change the habits of their clients. In all but a few of the new houses they put the stairway in one corner of the living room, making it in part a hallway. Thus they hoped that with daily use the living room would lose some of its sanctity and become an integral part of the house.

This point of view toward architecture, if it is ever to be realized, implies a wide reorganization of society; for it is in complete conflict with the existing arrangement of the building industries almost everywhere. But modern architects in general are not agreed as to how this reorganization shall be brought about. For all its social doctrine, modern architecture is not hitched to any one political theory. Indeed it is almost equally popular in Democratic England, Socialist Sweden, and Fascist Italy, while in Communist Russia and Nazi Germany it is almost equally in disfavor.

Although the political platform of the modern architect is nebulous, his architectural platform is definite. It has three major planks. The first of these is economy. The need for cheaper houses is fairly obvious, even if one considers only the United States. Here, not only are a majority of the population ill housed, but the proportion is increasing, because, broadly speaking, the cost of decent shelter is increasing. Since the American Revolution the portion of the individual budget spent on shelter has grown 60 per cent. Meantime the portion spent on food has been about halved; the portion available for miscellaneous expenditures like education, recreation, and medical attention has nearly trebled. Since 1900 the cost of all industrialized services has fallen relatively. Clothes are cheaper; food is cheaper; transportation is far cheaper, and these economies have permitted the introduction of wholly new items such as communication services. Only the cost of housing has risen, and this has climbed enormously. The result is that at least half of the population are inadequately housed according to any standard,while according to the exacting standards of the modern architect the proportion is much higher. It is not merely that there are seventeen square miles of slums in New York City alone, or that in parts of the South as many as 85 per cent of the farms have no sanitary facilities, not even privies; but the majority even of ‘high-class’ apartment houses are badly lit, ill ventilated, and crowded together, while the tolerable suburban homes are far from work and recreation. With the present organization of society and of the building industries in America there is a large group of the population that cannot afford the necessities of good housing. A second large group cannot afford them if they are only to be obtained in the wasteful and expensive house that has hitherto been the only type available. There is a third large group that can afford these necessities, but cannot obtain them under existing conditions, or from existing facilities.

The second objective of the modern architect is large-scale planning. In the first place, this is economical. The greatest single saving it effects is probably in the purchase and development of land. But through purchasing in large quantities and large-scale construction it also reduces costs, and further it cuts down the expense of advertising and selling the individual houses, an item that sometimes amounts to 25 per cent of the total price to the purchaser. Finally, large-scale work enables the building corporation to experiment and determine the most economical solution of a given problem.

But an even better reason for largescale planning is that usually by this method alone can many of the necessities of good housing be achieved. For example, light and air generally can be obtained only, at reasonable cost, by access to a park. Too often in America the park is added after the houses are built, thus favoring some rather than others. Soon it is monopolized by a girdle of tall apartment houses which effectively screen it from all the neighborhood. Still another necessity, good transportation, can only be provided if there is coöperative planning on the part of the city transit corporations and the large-scale builders. Finally, a housing programme can be wrecked by vindictive taxation. The individual builder is not in a position to combat these dangers, or to obtain these privileges, so that, considered as a widespread style, modern architecture implies coöperative housebuilding and large-scale planning.

Probably, therefore, the most complete exemplification of the whole conception of the modern house is to be found in some of the European housing developments. But, numerous and important as these are, they do not compare in fame with the modern houses built for private individuals. These are not perhaps as pure examples of modern architecture, since they do not admit of as great a development of the conception of the house as a social institution, and since in them the part played by the preferences of the patron is too great, but they are important historically, for in them the modern architect had his first opportunity to exemplify his ideas. Even to-day they are in many cases more advanced than anything yet executed for the general public. What they lack in social idealism they compensate for in freedom from traditional æsthetic predilections and conventional habits of life. It is in them, therefore, that the third plank of the modern architect’s programme is most highly developed. This is perhaps best called flexibility. In reality it is a group of minor reforms which affect the house primarily in its relation to the individual, in contradistinction to the first two ideals.

It is one of the axioms of nineteenthcentury æsthetics that taste does not change. ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever.’ And so the traditional house is built to last, at least for the lifetime of its owner. To consider the traditional house as a lifelong investment is, indeed, the only way to justify its cost. This way of thinking was natural enough at a time when the average man lived all his life in one place, but such is no longer generally the case. Accordingly the modern architect places much less emphasis on durability and much more emphasis on economy. For, aside from the freedom of movement that this permits the owner, the modern architect realizes that a house whose form is determined ultimately not by taste but by scientific theory will become out of date in a comparatively short time. This relative impermanence permits the modern architect to design his house in much closer conformity to immediate conditions — to be much more ‘functional.’ He generally allows little space for servants, and makes the mechanical equipment a more vital and integral feature. The laundry is not consigned to the basement, the bathroom ceases to be a glorified closet at the head of the stairs, and becomes often, in conjunction with a dressing room, part of a sleeping suite.

Perhaps an even more striking illustration of the ideal of flexibility comes in the planning of the modern house. The living portions of the traditional house are a series of rooms, a study, a parlor, a dining room, perhaps a breakfast nook. In the modern house these are frequently thrown into one great room, the separate portions of which may be divided off by means of curtains or folding partitions. This creates a feeling of increased space, while permitting an actual reduction of it.

Similarly the traditional house is a box rigidly differentiated from its surroundings. The modern house avoids a sharp contrast. Large windows create an apparent unity between exterior and interior, while terraces, sunrooms, and sleeping porches make a transition from one to the other. For though Mr. Pickwick, like the provincial Frenchman of to-day, preferred the stuffiest room to the slightest draft, the man of the twentieth century worships the out-ofdoors. His ideal indoor climate would be temperate natural conditions. So the house, instead of being a sanctuary set apart, becomes a sheltered corner of the garden.

III

But as Sir Henry Wotton wrote, ‘Well building hath three conditions, commodity, firmness and delight,’ so that a physical problem and the social idealism with which it is solved are only two of the factors that determine an architectural form. Actually æsthetic preferences and techniques of building have played quite as important a part as social ideals in the creation of the modern house, for these two additional factors give form to the conception of the house as a social institution. They represent the contribution of the architect and the builder, whereas the social conception of the house is primarily the contribution of the client, be he a patron, a corporation, or a government.

Every major building epoch has a dominant architectural problem. In solving it a basic architectural type is evolved, and this type is reflected in all the other buildings of the period. For the classic tradition this archetype was the temple. For the mediæval tradition it was the vaulted basilica. For the Renaissance tradition it was the monument. Most classical buildings were girt with the colonnades of the temple. Most mediæval buildings copied from the church its buttresses and tracery. Most Renaissance buildings, by their symmetry, axes, and porticoes, sought to achieve an effect of monumentally. Similarly the dominant problem of the modern tradition has been the problem of the commercial and industrial building. Accordingly the forms of the modern house are not strictly germane to it. Rather they are the application to the house of forms that had their origin in the solution of the problems of the factory, the grain elevator, and the skyscraper.

This type of building has several important characteristics. It is constructed of steel. It consists of an assemblage of rooms varying in size and differing in purpose, whose character, requirements, and relationship to one another are determined by non-æsthetic considerations. Typically it is large, but built as cheaply as possible. These characteristics are responsible for general principles of design and even specific usages and forms that are applied in all modern building. These principles and practices differentiate modern architecture from all earlier manners of building. But they do not in theory constitute the essence of the modern architectural tradition.

The first principle of modern design is that the modern building is not necessarily symmetrical. The basis of its composition is a regular structural unit. The temple and the church were essentially great single halls, with sometimes lesser buildings grouped about them. The palace was an arrangement of small rooms about a few large state apartments. The modern industrial building, however, is a miscellaneous assortment of rooms which cannot be ordered symmetrically or in any other predetermined way without impairing the efficiency with which they function. This is likewise true of the modern house. It is difficult to arrange a simple contemporary house within an absolutely symmetrical form. The modern house is therefore frankly asymmetrical. But this asymmetry is not based on a desire to be picturesque, as was so often the case in the nineteenth century. It is the expression of a plan whose sole object is to provide for the performance of the functions of the house.

The essence of steel construction is a box-like unit of steel beams. Essentially these units are all alike. Their height is determined by the distance between floors, their other dimensions by other practical considerations. As each part of a building is normally built out of an even number of such units, the parts are simply and obviously related to one another in their proportions. The tendency in design is to treat the separate parts as entities, and so the building becomes a juxtaposition of distinct forms, which interest primarily by their inherent character and by their relationship to one another, rather than by their producing a cumulative effect through dramatic coördination, as does a skyscraper, for example. Standard steel construction is comparatively rarely used in houses. On the other hand, architects have become so accustomed to think in terms of a fixed modulus that the method of composition which results from it is carried over into the house, even where it has no strictly logical place.

A second principle of design is the result of the size of commercial and industrial buildings. The unit of design in a Renaissance structure was apt to be the single window. But modern commercial and industrial buildings are too large to be designed on this principle. With hundreds of windows, it is impossible to use the individual one as the point of departure. Fortunately steel construction, by concentrating all the weight of a building at a few points, enables the architect to get around this difficulty. A steel building is a cage of columns and beams, and the walls between them are reduced to the mere function of screens, to keep out the weather and to insulate against sound. These screens are stretched between the points of support, or may be outside and completely independent of them. Because the material of which the screen is made need not carry any load there is practically no limit to the amount of window area on the exterior of a building. The architect can therefore organize his fenestration in one of two ways. He can either ignore the distinction between wall and window and treat the whole exterior surface as a skin in one or two materials stretched tightly over the steel frame, or else he can organize windows in groups, ribbons of glass, horizontal or vertical. Either system creates an impression completely different from the bulky Renaissance building, with its alternation of wall and window, solid and void. On the one hand, the result is a clear-cut geometrical volume, or group of volumes; on the other hand, it is a series of superimposed planes. In either case the architect takes great care to avoid all feeling of weight. He never considers his building as a mass to be hollowed out, as earlier designers had to do perforce.

Of course the distinction between buildings composed as volumes and buildings composed as groups of planes is not absolutely rigid, particularly in domestic work. Many buildings cannot finally be classed as either one or the other. Often a house is treated as a central volume with planes projecting from it in the form of slabs over doorways, wing walls, and so forth. But the two diverse tendencies remain, and find their most complete expression, perhaps, in the work of Le Corbusier and of Miës van der Rohe. Le Corbusier thinks of the house as an entity, comprising terraces and garage as well as the conventional living quarters. Typically the ground floor is used for the utilities. Posts support a much larger second floor containing the living quarters. Everything is subordinated to its simple form, and the house is apparently a prism, almost floating off the ground. By contrast, Miës designs in terms of a single story. His houses are essentially two parallel planes, a floor plane and a roof plane supported by steel posts. A sheet of glass runs from one to the other; there is no exterior wall. Within, here and there a vertical plane interrupts the sweep of space, without creating a feeling of enclosure.

To those trained in the historical styles the most offensive characteristic of modern architecture is its bareness, its ascetic disdain of all decoration. This is not indeed a principle of modern design; on the contrary, the modern architect consciously makes use of certain features such as lettering, iron railings, and spiral staircases for decoration. But nonetheless, compared to the traditional manners of building, modern architecture is bare. This bareness arose, perhaps, because of the necessary cheapness of most commercial and industrial building, but the modern architect has made a virtue of the necessity. He commonly justifies his chastity by some such crude dogma as that only what is useful is beautiful, therefore all mere decoration is taboo. However, this trait is better understood if it is accepted as the natural negative corollary of the positive æsthetic interests of the modern architect, and not as the expression of a dogma. An architecture as largely made up of decoration as that of the nineteenth century can only occur when there is general satisfaction with the basic architectural forms and little inclination to develop them further. This is anything but the case at present. The social ideal of the modern architect is to provide an appropriate instrument for the new scientific conception of the ideal life. His æsthctic ideal is to discover new and significant relationships between the simplest architectural elements, the cube, the plane, and the cylinder. Hence, as an artist, the modern architect is concerned with two things: the total form of his building, as distinguished from - any specific aspect of it, and the relationship of the parts of the building to one another, as distinguished from the prettification of these parts in themselves.

To the nineteenth century a building was rarely a unified form. Rather it was four elevations backed up against each other. The symbol of nineteenthcentury architecture is the public building with a resplendent ashlar façade, and a bare brick rear — the Queen Anne front on the plaza, and the Mary Ann back on the alley. The modern architect has no conception of the façade, no belief that one face of a building is more important than the others. The interest in a simple form such as a cube is in the comprehension of its complete character, in the intuitive perception of all its dimensions simultaneously. In the same way a modern building is a unity that must be conceived as a whole to be appreciated. And hence it is not surprising that many a modern building looks better from the air than from any other view, for from the air one can get a fuller grasp of the total form than from anywhere below.

This form is not primarily the way in which the building material itself is arranged. It is rather the arrangement of voids about the building material. For the prime artistic medium of modern architecture is not mass but space. Accordingly the disposition of the building material is not an end in itself, but merely the means of indicating a spatial composition. Therefore the personality of the individual features — the walls, the windows, the floors, and the roofs — is unimportant. Indeed it is perhaps better that they be largely drab, lest by too great interest they call attention to their own character as surfaces, instead of serving inconspicuously as planes bounding a space. For this reason the modern architect makes great use of reënforced concrete and other synthetic materials. Their smooth, mechanical finish, the complete negation of the charming but trivial individuality of craft work, is the perfect medium for his purposes.

There have been other architectures whose primary interest was spatial composition, but for them space was merely the volume enclosed within the masonry shell. Modern architecture — and particularly the modern house — has freed our imaginations from the limitations of conventional masonry structure. It has indicated æsthetic values undreamed of before the era of steel construction and reënforced concrete. The space it deals with is no longer merely the interior content, for the distinction between exterior and interior has been largely abolished. Modern architecture deals with all space; it harnesses the out-of-doors.

IV

Despite the fact that an American, Frank Lloyd Wright, contributed perhaps more than any other single individual to the development of the modern house, modern architecture is not common in America. Wright’s work aside, one could almost number the significant modern houses in America on one’s fingers. For it is one of the tragedies of our architectural history that he was an inspiration to Europeans, but not to his own countrymen. Modern architecture in America is not the result of pursuing a stylistic development starting with Wright’s works, but of copying enthusiastically the European derivations from Wright. The modern American architects are therefore not Wright’s children, but his bastard grandchildren, and he has disowned them in no uncertain terms. Nor is he entirely unjustified. Although modern architecture is the climax of a long period of experimental development here and abroad, it actually took form during the post-war period in Europe, and it was the needs and thought of that period that to a large extent determined its character. Merely to imitate the architecture of Europe is to ignore the slight difference in problems, the considerable difference in conditions, and the great difference in ideas between America of 1936 and Germany, France, and Holland of 1926. It remains to be seen whether American architects can accept the essence of modern architecture, yet modify its forms to suit our peculiar situation.

After the war, building by private individuals of moderate means nearly ceased in many European countries. Modern houses were therefore chiefly of two sorts, mansions for the wealthy, or large-scale housing projects put up by governmental or at least semiphilanthropic corporations. This fact was in part responsible for many of the characteristics of the modern house as they have been outlined. But the architectural problems of Europe at that period do not entirely correspond with those of America to-day. Private building was prostrated by the depression, but seems to be reviving rapidly. However, this does not mean that the conclusions reached in Europe as to the character of the house are necessarily inapplicable in America of to-day. At present there are essentially three kinds of dwellings being constructed in America. First there are the great apartments and housing projects, built by some central corporation, and rented rather than sold. Ownership and administration are vested in a group which is not the group that uses the buildings. These constitute a relatively small portion of the field. The same is true of the second class, custommade houses, built, used, and owned by a specific individual. Over 90 per cent of the new dwellings belong to the third category, speculative real-estate developments. This group combines the characteristics of the other two. On the one hand, the houses are not designed for a specific individual; on the other hand, ownership is generally in the hands of the user. In any case it rarely remains in the hands of the corporation that constructed them. Once they are completed and sold, the responsibility of the builder is over.

Leaving aside the question of the houses planned for individuals, it is obvious that it would be perfectly possible to apply a modern solution to the remainder of the American housing problem. The apartment house is not designed for a specific person. It is designed for everybody. Emphasis is necessarily on making the appeal as general as possible so as to ensure an easy turnover and a large percentage of rented area. An architecture which seeks essentially to establish a standard dwelling would be a splendid apartment-house architecture. The same conclusion holds true for the speculative developments. The need here again is for a salable norm — and that is in fact what is produced. But the salability of the product is based not on performance but on a handful of trick gadgets that catch the public eye. At the moment the prime requisite for salability is individuality in the home; but anyone who goes through a few speculative real-estate developments will see how shallow and specious is the individuality achieved. The house built for a specific person is quantitatively a minor factor. There is, however, no reason why we should not handle this problem as intelligently as it has been handled in Europe. It is evident, therefore, that although the problem of the house is posed slightly differently in America from the way it was in Europe, the solution called for is not essentially different.

There is more of a gap between America to-day and Europe of the boom period in the underlying conditions affecting the house. This does not apply to living conditions, for despite our fabled American standard of living there is certainly as great a need for improvement in housing here as anywhere. There are, however, significant differences in questions of building technique, which affect the modern house as they affect all modern architecture. The most important factor is the relatively higher cost of labor and the lower cost of standard industrial work in America. For example, much modern architecture depends for its effect upon extremely skillful workmanship in concrete. This is much more available in Europe, where labor is cheap and competent, than here where skilled labor is expensive. On the other hand, the size of the American market enables our architects to make much greater use of such standard industrial articles as plumbing and heating equipment, which are comparatively inexpensive over here. It makes standard steel construction much more feasible; it even opens up the serious possibility of prefabrication in small-house architecture.

But the great difference between Europe and America is in the attitude toward the house. The ideas of the evangelical liberals and of the ultrasophisticated aristocrats who were its original sponsors left an even deeper imprint upon the character of the modern house than did their specific needs. The dependence of the modern house on scientific theory and the conception of the modern house as an institution serving the public are the architectural expression of the point of view of the post-war liberal; while in its elaborate intellectual basis, in its concern with extremely abstract æsthetic values, in its search for a form that shall be broadly twentieth-century and not narrowly national, the modern house reflects an exclusive patronage. Like the writing of Joyce, like the music of Schönberg, like the painting of Dali, modern architecture disdains the crass tastes of the articulate public. In a broad way the architecture of the nineteenth century was a vulgarization, for the benefit of the middle classes, of ideas and types whose value had been established by the connoisseurs of the eighteenth century. By contrast modern architecture, while in a sense an art both of the plutocrats and of the proletariat, is never an art of the bourgeoisie.

Herein the spirit of the modern house is profoundly at variance with the facts of contemporary America. On the one hand, the militant liberalism that gave modern architecture in Europe so many of its opportunities hardly exists. What could be a more striking proof of this than the fate of housing under the New Deal? Federal Housing has come to almost nothing because it lacked the consistent intelligent support of a strong organized minority that knew exactly what it wanted. On the other hand, such aristocracy as exists in America is not nearly as entrenched, as self-conscious, as differentiated in ideals and tastes from the bourgeoisie as aristocracies in Europe.

One can only wonder, therefore, what will be the fate of the modern house in America, and what will follow our present confused enthusiasm of discovery. There are three possibilities. Perhaps some genius will succeed in redirecting modern American architecture into a channel more adapted to our conditions. Perhaps a style will be evolved as native as Wright’s, as original as European modernism. But such a man has not yet appeared, and the chances are that, like Wright and Sullivan, he would battle for years almost unrecognized against the orthodox who transplant European architecture. Again we may be witnessing the beginning of a period of transition. Perhaps private building will never recover from the depression, as it never recovered from the war in so much of Europe. Perhaps the coöperative movement, the labor unions, the government in business, will develop rapidly. Perhaps the men of wealth will become more differentiated. In short, perhaps we shall approximate conditions such as they were in Europe of the post-war period. Then we may get an architecture such as was developed in Europe at that period, except that it will probably never develop as far here. For we shall always be conscious of the reaction against the post-war point of view that has come into power in just those parts of Europe where that outlook was most developed, and where accordingly modern architecture reached its apogee.

The final alternative is a return to pre-depression conditions. Then we can only expect that modern architecture will turn out to be but one more of those style phases that were so characteristic of nineteenth-century architecture under bourgeois domination. We cannot expect creative design, for why should the prosperous grocer worry about spatial composition? We cannot expect deep understanding, for why should the successful speculator concern himself with the social implications of the mansion he is building? The ideal of a standard dwelling, based on scientifically determined needs and experimenting with new materials, new methods of construction, new æsthetic ideas, can make little headway in a society whose ultimate desire is a little gray home in the west.