CHAPTER XADAPTATION

PLATE LXIII.“BELLWOOD,” MADISON, N. J. EPOCH 1878.

PLATE LXIII.

“BELLWOOD,” MADISON, N. J. EPOCH 1878.

architect this country has produced. His professional training occupied some twelve years of his life, which he spent mostly in universities abroad. He told me this himself when I called upon him, now many years since, for encouragement and advice. He sat me upon a high stool in his private office, and related about twelve chapters of his memoirs, as nearly as I can recollect, i. e., one chapter for each year of his prodigious scholarship, all of which I have no doubt was intended for my good, which I trust it has, in some measure, accomplished. Returning to this country laden with scholastic honors, for twenty-five years this brilliantdiploméconcerned himself principally with academic detail. Rarely did he go beyond the integument of a structure with his characteristic impress, apparently satisfied to decorate according to the canons of the Ecole des Beaux Arts the architecturesui generisof America.

About this time the Victorian-Gothic school of design was advertising its merits, in which school Mr. Hunt found a congenial medium to exploit his essentially grammatical detail, and Bellwood at Madison,New Jersey, supplies me a fine example of this once very fashionable architecture and of Mr. Hunt’s work of that period. In 1897 I was consulted by Mr. Bell, who had purchased the place from Mr. Twombly, regarding a proposed extension to the house. Although not at all in sympathy with what Montgomery Schuyler calls Mr. Hunt’s “staccato style,” I remembered the episode of Michelangelo and the plans of St. Peter’s by Bramante, and advised that the ruling spirit in any new work directly attached to the main building of the estate should be Victorian-Gothic notwithstanding that the style had gone completely out of vogue, and I, myself, had been obliged to remove some of the interior woodwork for Mr. Bell, which, while academic in every line, was crying ugly—so ugly that nobody could look at it a minute without irritability. But my devotion to art lost me the only profitable part of the work, for Carrère and Hastings were subsequently employed to erect an Elizabethan end which I have taken care not to show in the illustration, not because of lack of architectonic merit in the extension, but because it impairs just so much of the historic value of the subject.

Technically, Bellwood is admirable. It looks to me just like the Earl of Beaconsfield and the Congress of Berlin or the period at which the Victorian age was in the midst of glory, but from the standpoint of true, Anglo-Saxon home feeling, it does not satisfy. Mr. Hunt was an academician above everything. We see this one idea in all his early work, its culmination regardless of ugliness being exploited in theTribuneBuilding in Park Row.

But a new mission in life awaited Mr. Hunt. After all these years of mediocrity of talent, and when he was passed fifty years of age, it was as if some angel had descended in the night while he slept, and had whispered the one magic word with which he was ever after to immortalize himself, namely—“Adaptation!” For suddenly, without a word of warning, this remarkable man designed the house of W. K. Vanderbilt at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street, the pioneer and a very beautiful adaptation of French Renaissance which made its architect famous almost before it was completed (Plate LXX). More than this his success with the new medium of expression inwhich Mr. Hunt soon received other commissions, attracted to his office the life-long clients of other architects to whom no angels had whispered, and who were without sensations of their own. Notably was it so in the case of Mrs. Gerry, who had just come into possession of her father’s money, and who did not hesitate to turn down her father’s architects as well as those who had faithfully served her husband in order that Mr. Hunt might build her new house at Sixty-first Street; while even the late Cornelius Vanderbilt would not positively decide upon the amplification of his enormous dwelling at Fifty-eighth Street until Mr. Hunt had consulted with his architect. This was a signal tribute to Mr. Hunt, and required the greatest delicacy upon his part, to which I believe he was equal.

In justice to the apparent partiality of the adaptation angel for Mr. Hunt, I must say that he was not entirely alone in her favors, but that there were other architects who had learned how to adapt English Renaissance of the Georges as cleverly as Mr. Hunt could adapt French châteaux, and who were, therefore, not seriously inconvenienced. But I see I am running before my

PLATE LXIV.A QUEEN-ANNE HOUSE AT SHORT HILLS, N. J.Frederick B. White(deceased), Architect.

PLATE LXIV.

A QUEEN-ANNE HOUSE AT SHORT HILLS, N. J.Frederick B. White(deceased), Architect.

A QUEEN-ANNE HOUSE AT SHORT HILLS, N. J.

Frederick B. White(deceased), Architect.

AN ULTRA-FASHIONABLE COLONIAL HOUSE OF THE PRESENT DAY. 1904.

horse to market, and must reserve the consideration of this later architectural development for a chapter upon the art of adaptation while I return for the present to “Fashion in Architecture.”

And now I come to a much execrated style of architecture—the Queen Anne style, the last direct influence of the Centennial Exposition and the first fashion to incorporate the vital spark of Anglo-Saxon home feeling. It was the suggestion of historic home atmosphere, though much disguised with American nonsense, that appealed to the better educated people without their knowing it. They thought Queen Anne architecture to be merely another clever fashion, more clever because odder and stranger than any of its predecessors; indeed, the architects themselves, most expert with its vagaries, could not have told you the real secret of its popularity. Like all fashions in architecture, it was burlesqued and ruined while its most active votaries still living have passed on to a higher plane—the plane of adaptation—and do not like to reflect upon the Queen Anne houses they once erected. The fact of it was, the nation was groping in the dark,and if the truth must be told, it is groping in the dark still; but we have learned this much beyond refutation: a purely sensational and affected style of architecture such as was the Queen Anne style practised in this country is relegated now to the cheap speculative builder; the better class of Americans know that the secret of successful architecture does not lie in odd conceits and invention, at any rate.

There was once a young man named Frederick B. White, whose short and brilliant life is worth putting on record here. For if there was ever an architect who wasfacile princepswith Queen Anne architecture, it was he. He came from Princeton University at a time when the revival was in its first flush, and nobody, it seems to me, ever grasped the spirit of the style in so admirable a way. InPlate LXIVI have the honor of presenting an edifying example of this architect’s work, the Queen Anne dwelling-house at its best, and between this example and the Queen Anne house shown inPlate LXIIthe reader will, without doubt, note many degrees of deterioration in both taste and harmony.

PLATE LXV.A COUNTRY HOUSE, SAN MATEO, CAL.Bruce Price, Architect.

PLATE LXV.

A COUNTRY HOUSE, SAN MATEO, CAL.Bruce Price, Architect.

A COUNTRY HOUSE, SAN MATEO, CAL.

Bruce Price, Architect.

To make his audience at the Brooklyn Tabernacle laugh the late Dr. Talmage called the Queen Anne style the most abominable of all styles of architecture. But when legitimately developed there is nothing the matter with the Queen Anne style at all. It was the Jacobin and bastard features without antecedents andraison d’êtrethat brought it into ridicule, and caused a composite style of American dwelling-house, Queen Anne in motive but Romanesque in detail, to make the necessary apologies to the public in the guise of an improved substitute. (SeePlate LXV.) Though an avowed composition crossed by this strain and by that, the Queen Anne substitute was yet academic and correct in all its detail, and has survived to this day. I mean to say that this ingenious composite style is still exploited by representative architects. It can be made to simulate home-feeling after a fashion, although there is always that bizarre note present which characterizes fashion as its first object, while by no stretch of the imagination may we associate our ancestors or history with such a palpably modern American suburbanite as is illustrated herewith.

I know not whose perspicacity it was that first discovered in the Colonial exemplars of the Grand Epoch a fashion the popularity of which was soon to eclipse all the foregoing fashions I have enumerated, and which, moreover, continues to be most in vogue. But the Colonial germ, during the early eighties, seems to have been in the air and sporadic throughout the country. It is the greatest fallacy, however, to say, as many learned reviewers of Colonial architecture do, that its symmetry, restfulness and good proportion generally caused it to rise superior to other schools of design, because that is not true. The preceding styles properly developed all had compensating virtues. The secret of the Colonial revival was the same inherent vital spark that had previously commended the Queen Anne architecture, only the Colonial houses possessed it to a far greater degree. For it was not only English history, always intimately associated with our own, that they expressed, but authentic memoirs of the American people themselves.

To the first Colonial revivalists the true merit of the Colonial houses was entirely latent in them, though

THE H. A. C. TAYLOR HOUSE, NEWPORT, R. I. EPOCH, 1885.(From a sketch by the Author.)

THE H. A. C. TAYLOR HOUSE, NEWPORT, R. I. EPOCH, 1885.

(From a sketch by the Author.)

influenced by it as by a magnet: and I regret that the cleverest architects to-day are still working upon the fallacious formula of symmetry, restfulness and good proportion while they often garble American history with much interpolated foreign material and anachronism. I do not want the reader to suppose that the ultra-fashionable Colonial house herein illustrated (Plate LXIV), was the work of the cleverest architect in America, but I needed to make clear this point about interpolated material, and so have selected a most unblushing example of it.

On page 129 I submit a hurriedly executed sketch of one of our earliest adaptations of a Colonial house of the Grand Epoch. This house was designed in 1885 by some of our cleverest architects indeed, though it is extremely doubtful if they had any deeper purpose in it than to exploit a fashionable dwelling for Newport at the time. To-day, these same architects would do it very differently. On no account would they put two Palladian windows with huge sheets of plate glass in such close conjunction as is seen in the sketch imposing triplet windows with cornices, elaborated by

PLATE LXVI.DOORWAY AT SHARON, CONN.“By evening I was so tired looking at fashionable architecture that my invitation to supper at Aunt Muriel’s was grateful beyond words. We had sugar-cured ham (cured on the place), home-made bread, toasted and buttered, Ceylon tea, brewed at table from an antique Dresden tea-caddie, old-fashioned raised cake, and honey as put up by the bees.”

PLATE LXVI.

DOORWAY AT SHARON, CONN.“By evening I was so tired looking at fashionable architecture that my invitation to supper at Aunt Muriel’s was grateful beyond words. We had sugar-cured ham (cured on the place), home-made bread, toasted and buttered, Ceylon tea, brewed at table from an antique Dresden tea-caddie, old-fashioned raised cake, and honey as put up by the bees.”

DOORWAY AT SHARON, CONN.

“By evening I was so tired looking at fashionable architecture that my invitation to supper at Aunt Muriel’s was grateful beyond words. We had sugar-cured ham (cured on the place), home-made bread, toasted and buttered, Ceylon tea, brewed at table from an antique Dresden tea-caddie, old-fashioned raised cake, and honey as put up by the bees.”

applied ornament directly overhead. Such modern obtrusion would be relegated to their draughtsman who has set up in business for himself, and to whom they might direct the poorer-class client seeking a low-priced plan. Experience alone has taught these architects that the closer the adaptation up to a certain point, the greater the success. I do not believe that they ever think of expressing history in executing their designs. Certainly, they do not look upon their profession as eleemosynary to make the world a more beautiful world, a kindlier world, a happier world for mankind generally. The chances are they are still figuring very closely with American cunning and expediency for commercial martinets, whose favor means the largest commissions, and whose unwelcome personal influence we so often run across when least expecting in modern architecture, and which is sure to disenchant us with it.

A representativearchitect in New York city has declared impressively, “We are no longer architects, but adapters!” To him, looking upon his own achievement and that of his contemporaries as well as the general tendency of the times in which we live, it seemed, indeed, he had framed an unimpeachable aphorism. It is a funny thing about architecture:—nearly as it concerns our every day needs, much as it is criticised about our ears, our knowledge of it, nevertheless, continues to be absurdly inexact and experimental. I am speaking now of architecture as a fine art, not as the science of an engineer. One has only to read the reviews to note how little the authors themselves know to tell us, how they go ’round and ’round the animal, with more or less entanglement, as we have read of picadors doing in a bull fight. And when they have finished can we call

PLATE LXVII.“It seemed they were coming to—to a river—a sombre, swift-flowing river, and a huge gray building resting upon arches spanned its width. Ascending a little elevation in the road, further up, the vision becomes clearer and fascinating to the dreaming horseman. It is the Château of Chenonceau.”—Miss. Polly Fairfax.

PLATE LXVII.

“It seemed they were coming to—to a river—a sombre, swift-flowing river, and a huge gray building resting upon arches spanned its width. Ascending a little elevation in the road, further up, the vision becomes clearer and fascinating to the dreaming horseman. It is the Château of Chenonceau.”—Miss. Polly Fairfax.

to mind a single statement wherein they have committed themselves to anything definite? The whole proposition architectonic is to the average reviewer an egregious bugbear before which he is anything but sure of himself.

He hints at the mysteries of design, half advocating, half condemning, the two salient American traits—namely, originality and enterprise; for he readily sees that if he commends those traits unequivocally, he must acknowledge the architects of our Reign of Terror to have been the greatest of all American architects whose work has passed into history, as they were assuredly the most original and enfranchised. And this, of course, would never do for the Della Cruscan critic of America.

Upon the other hand, he is expected, by a species of professional jealousy which is somehow perennial, to cavil at that kind of architecture called at the present time “adaptation.” From which fault-finding the reader gathers that adaptation is but a polite synonym for cribbing and thieving from the masterpieces of antiquity. Then, while preparing his argument, numerous contradictory things suggest themselves to the reviewer that are exceedingly difficult of assimilation. If he be fair, sincere with himself, while caviling at adaptation, how can he make use of such a class of architecture as we have exemplified in every-day acquaintances like Trinity Church by Upjohn and Grace Church by Renwick, two intensely American designs, yet gauged by the standard of modern criticism, out and out adaptations of mediæval Gothic! Again, it will not do for him to endeavor to extricate himself with credit by declaring that adaptation belongs by right only to ecclesiastic edifices, for there, before one in a moment, stands the Capitol at Washington sharply cutting a piece out of the blue sky on the horizon of Maryland, the pride of every American citizen, acknowledged to be the most successful specimen of American Renaissance of its class (legislative buildings), yet the most loyal to its Italian antecedents, making the newer State capitols with domes look tawdry in consequence, proportionately as they are less Italian and significant historically. So that altogether the case appears to be one hopelessly involved and complicated.

PLATE LXVIII.KINGDOR, SUMMIT, N. J.

PLATE LXVIII.

KINGDOR, SUMMIT, N. J.

CANTERBURY KEYS, WYOMING, N. J.

PLATE LXIX.THE LOUVRE.

PLATE LXIX.

THE LOUVRE.

To cry out against adaptation is nothing new, peculiar to our day. It was ever thus from history’s early hour. Popular criticism in France during the seventeenth century was against the Louvre, Fontainebleau and Versailles as being Italian palaces without significance in France, save that of national vacuity in the creative faculty. Saint-Simon, in his memoirs of the epoch, makes out Louis XIV. and his principal architect, Hardouin-Mansart, to have been unskilful bunglers. But to us, the splendid monuments are French Renaissance without dissent, thoroughly French and historically correct because they coincide with the legitimate, historic development of that nation’s art. They have become part of the French landscape, Italian no longer, just as the now familiar town house of W. K. Vanderbilt, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street, which in 1883 (see Plate LXX) was so intensely French as to seem entirely out of its element in New York, has gradually grown to look to us what it really always was, i. e., good American Renaissance adapted from the Valois propaganda of architectural composition. In the more recent day of Ruskin it was the fashion tobelittle the work of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren as work of no inspiration; and I have no doubt there were architects, once upon a time, envious of the talents of Michelangelo, who did not hesitate to say the great Italian simply copied.

In lieu of further recurrence to all that has since transpired, and is transpiring to-day with the same moral, I should say without qualification that adaptation—let us call it so until we discover a better term—is the soul of architecture, presupposing the highest kind of talent, most extended education, and artistic susceptibility.

How would it fare with an author who coined words habitually in preference to using those given in the dictionary, or who invented a syntax of his own? But, of course, nobody in his right mind would do this. The object of literature is simply to adapt the words and sentences to express our thoughts original so far as we know. In architecture we have the analogy. An architect is bound to adapt in spite of himself; and conversely, the poorest adapters are the poorest architects in whose hands the art of adaptation falls into

PLATE LXX.VANDERBILT HOUSE, FIFTH AVENUE & 52d ST.

PLATE LXX.

VANDERBILT HOUSE, FIFTH AVENUE & 52d ST.

manifest plagiarism—plagiarism mostly of these architects’ more successful contemporaries in America. But the varying requirements of individual cases compel even those architects to adapt or else invent to meet contingencies where no precedent is available, so in practice it has come to be that nobody copies anything exactly.

Certainly, nobody copies a building of an earlier epoch that is susceptible of reincarnation to-day. I explained this point very clearly, I imagined, in an article I wrote for theHouse Beautifulin May, 1901, entitled “How to Make a Successful House,” which magazine holds the copyright thereof, so that I cannot use the particular reference here I should like to use. The economy of the age would not let an architect reproduce Lambton Castle, for instance (see Plate LXXI), fascinating proposition though it be, and the architect wanted to do so, and could afford the expense of making the necessary minute examination, the necessary drawings and measurements, which I can assure you would be a work onerous and tedious almost beyond endurance for the impatient temperament of anAmerican. Centuries have elapsed, and the province of the architect now is to make the castle perform its whole process of evolution noiselessly in his brain, and come down to date so as to meet the problem of a twentieth century home without disturbing the illusion of its history, a process entailing concerted tension of heart and brain to which the conditions imposed by mere abstract architectural design are puerile.

I have selected a Tudor castle because the field is practically untouched in American Renaissance and modern architecture generally. If there be fashion in adaptation, the fashion has been for Elizabethan and Jacobean adaptations rather than Tudor; but the real reason why we have no creditable offspring of that delightful old rambler—Haddon Hall (seePlate LXXII), in America is to be found in the fact that no American architect capable of exploiting the thing has thought about it or else he has lacked the opportunity, more probably the latter. I have often contemplated that ancient and wonderful staircase on the castle terrace while thrilling romances architectural have filled my

PLATE LXXI.LAMBTON CASTLE.

PLATE LXXI.

LAMBTON CASTLE.

PLATE LXXII.HADDON HALL.

PLATE LXXII.

HADDON HALL.

PLATE LXXIII.CHARLECOTE HALL.

PLATE LXXIII.

CHARLECOTE HALL.

head, though no appreciative client materialized to employ me.

Charlecote Hall (Plate LXXIII) dwells in a unique borderland of the Elizabethan style. What a gracious subject this beautiful edifice supplies for adaptation to date. Any progressive American architect should be able to do it—in fact, he should be expected to improve somewhat upon the original with all the modern science there is at his command. It is true that metal window frames and sashes are not manufactured ordinarily in this country, but it is high time they were, and their appearance in the catalogues of what they would call in England our “ironmongers” cannot be delayed for long, if indications count for anything.

The open-timbered work of Elizabethan houses in America has become very common, and I do not know that I may add any observations of importance concerning this treatment. In theHouse Beautifulfor March, 1901, will be found an article upon the subject, mostly in reference, however, to a cottage named “Canterbury Keys,” illustration of which herein appears (Plate LXVIII). Open-timbered work is alsocommon to France, Holland and Germany, and, notwithstanding an occasional inimical critic upon the way we construct it in America, is thoroughly good architectural development, and will continue to live in the history of the future because it has history of the past to tell—delicious reminiscences of snug old Anglo-Saxon homes. Moreover, Elizabethan architecture instances a scientific focus of the Gothic and Renaissance spirits, habitually unfriendly, where under the hand of the master these spirits are made to coalesce in love and tranquillity delightful to see.

Mr. Gotch in his “Early Renaissance of England” calls all three schools of design—Tudor, Elizabethan and Jacobean—uniformly Renaissance development because all were influenced by the architecture of Italy, though the Tudor style, hardly perceptibly; but the real English Renaissance, classified for the better understanding of the term, belongs to the later development under the Georges. And it was to this subdivision of the mighty subject that American Renaissance served its apprenticeship, although the articles of indenture, I contend, were legally canceled by the

PLATE LXXIV.HAMPTON COURT—WOLSEY PALACE.

PLATE LXXIV.

HAMPTON COURT—WOLSEY PALACE.

PLATE LXXV.HAMPTON COURT—SOUTH PALACE.

PLATE LXXV.

HAMPTON COURT—SOUTH PALACE.

responsibilities of the “Grand Epoch” (see Chapter V). If there ever existed a condition of unproductive tutelage in America as is imputed by envious critics, it was during the Transitional period. In the earlier chapters of this review, I have defended American Renaissance against all detracting imputations concerning its legitimacy, its honor and its merit, and I do not think I wish to amend anything I have said.

In PlatesLXXIVandLXXVI submit two remarkable views of Hampton Court, one, the Wolsey palace in the earliest Renaissance, according to Gotch, and the other the South palace (time of William and Mary) by Sir Christopher Wren, in the latest. The latter façade has already served for American adaptation, and in all probability will continue to do so, being very easily adapted to American use. And if the feat be historically accomplished the resulting composition becomes,ipso facto, American Renaissance, not English, however exotic it may at first appear, and although it be the custom to call such an architectural development “pure adaptation.” But when we consider that St. Peter’s cathedral at Rome was once anadaptation, the beautiful library of San Marco by Sansovino, also an adaptation, the Louvre and Fontainebleau, adaptations as well, I do not know that we need be particularly scandalized, nor do I doubt for one moment that, if our work be good, it will soon outlive an appellation of uncertain reflection—a word, nevertheless, which every so often must play its part in the history of art.

The school of design which has proved the greatest attraction to the blossoming genius of America is, of course, French Renaissance, preëminently at the time I write. To say that an architect is a Beaux Arts man is equivalent to speaking of a certain much advertised brand of whiskey, in that compliments are superfluous. You call him “a Beaux Arts man,” and—“that’s all.”

No Brahmin of India has his faith more absolutely defined than has the Beaux Arts man his. And he must progress, and ply his art as though he were a bishop on the chess-board, always in a designated line, and always with the same local color of the place of his matriculation except, we shall say, when he is off

PLATE LXXVI.CHAMBORD, “THE VALOIS SHOOTING-BOX.”

PLATE LXXVI.

CHAMBORD, “THE VALOIS SHOOTING-BOX.”

PLATE LXXVII.AZAY-LE-RIDEAU.—THE CELEBRATED COUP D’OEIL OF THE CHATEAU.

PLATE LXXVII.

AZAY-LE-RIDEAU.—THE CELEBRATED COUP D’OEIL OF THE CHATEAU.

for a spree, which, to be sure, does him no credit, and he dabbles in Colonial, Elizabethan and other diversions. But his art is French Renaissance, not the graceful Renaissance of Pierre le Nepveu at Chambord (see Plate LXXVI), nor the romantic Renaissance so insinuating of Azay-le-Rideau (see Plate LXXVII), the designer of which no modern ascription names, but the colder, impersonal, mathematical Renaissance of the time of Viollet-le-Duc or the ultra, over-decorated Renaissance of the last exposition, and the present generation of French architects. The Ecole des Beaux Arts (Department of Architecture) is essentially a school of material art to which there is no spiritual side. It is the art which we measure by metres and centimetres, not an art we may measure by psychical balances and our affections. And the personal side of architecture—the side which ministers so largely to us when we come to that complex embodiment of our joys and sorrows complete in the one word “home”—well, sentiment has nothing to do with the case in the estimation of the Beaux Arts man.

Of all the historic châteaux in France, Chenonceau (see Plate LXVII) has received the most attention from American architects. Replicas of its fascinatingtourelles—some faithful, some deformed—greet one very frequently in the modern residences of America. We have to recognize the Chenonceau dormers, too, though they be dwarfed and squatted according to the limited roof space at the disposal of the American designer. Such tremendous roofs as were supported with ease by the formidable walls of the old châteaux are prohibitory with us, that is, if we cipher with American expediency and commercial economy. But the right way to adapt a French cháteau is really to make believe restore one, pretending for the nonce, that one is M. Pierre Lescot, M. Claude Perrault or M. Gabriel, and that the king or some grand seigneur of the realm has commanded one’s services for the purpose. As in the elevation of the house for Mrs. H. at Morristown (see Plate LXXVIII) I made believe to myself that the mediævaltourwas genuine, already there, but requiring immediate restoration. It was easy to set imaginary masons to work pointing the machicolations and curtain. I made believe that long disuse had

PLATE LXXVIII.ELEVATION OF A COUNTRY HOUSE FOR MRS. H—AT MORRISTOWN.

PLATE LXXVIII.

ELEVATION OF A COUNTRY HOUSE FOR MRS. H—AT MORRISTOWN.

vanquished the portcullis, leaving its yawning pockets to be disposed of. Commercialism said “wall them up,” not I. It would be a pity to lose a particle of the thirteenth century atmosphere that consents to linger. So I decided upon a bold innovation as the privilege of adaptation. I could anchor the chains for holding up the glass canopy over the carriage entry, in those pockets that once housed the arms of the portcullis; and thus, the spooky oldtourcould be saved intact. The main part of the American château is in this case supposedly modern, developed from motives supplied by the minor châteaux of France—themanoirs, thefermes, with a little American household planning within, necessary for comfort.

But you have noticed that no American, however rich, has yet amassed sufficient fortune to warrant an undertaking anything like an adaptation of Chambord (see Plate LXXVI). A class of architecture in itself, the Valois shooting-box is quite too tremendous in extent for any modern use as a private domicile. The palace of Fontainebleau, also, would entail most too much of a contract for even the president of a trust,and I may add to these names, delightful to pronounce, the Louvre (see Plate LXIX), which the people of Philadelphia alone had the hardihood to caricature in a municipal building. Shades of François Mansart, what crimes have we enacted in thy name! [My acknowledgments to Mme. Roland].

Perhaps the most inviting and as little explored field of architecture suitable to domestic purposes in this country that I can think of to suggest to our talent is the opportunity we have in the Swiss châlets of the eighteenth century. There is a great variety of types from which to choose—high-roofed châlets and low-roofed châlets, châlets of stucco and châlets of wood. And there never was a sounder theory than that of Switzerland concerning the construction of wooden edifices. I do not except Norway, nor Sweden, nor Japan, for the ancient[7]châlets of Switzerland are in academic Gothic, if you please, architecturally of a high order which has withstood the vicissitudes of art and awaits the homage of future generations. To American architects who still have

PLATE LXXIX.KINGDOR. FRONT ELEVATION.

PLATE LXXIX.

KINGDOR. FRONT ELEVATION.

DETAIL “KINGDOR”.

more to do with wood than any other building material these châlets should prove both instructive and useful. Mr. Jean Schopfer has contributed, in theArchitectural Record(New York), two very interesting papers about the eighteenth century châlets, and I will devote what remains of my space in this chapter to an American châlet I had some little difficulty in prevailing upon its owner to have, but with which, now that it is finished, he has assured me he is perfectly satisfied. (See Kingdor, PlatesLXVIII.,LXXIX.)

Cypress, which in this part of the country has come to be our main reliance in the absence of good white pine, answers admirably for American adaptations of these Colonial houses—let us call them—of Switzerland. Most any size timbers may be specified without bankrupting the client or inconveniencing the contractor, while some durable stain will form an excellent ground for a venerable patina by infinitesimal particles to attach itself. I confess my only disappointment in Kingdor was that I was not permitted to carve the scriptural legends in archaic missal text that should always adorn the long horizontal timbers of a“truly” châlet. For in the most part of the adaptation it became my privilege, much to my unspeakable delight, to say to the black beast that besets the path of all architects—namely, the everlasting spirit of commercialism—expressively what Beau Brummel tells the importunate bailiffs in the play: “Oh, go and walk in Fleet Street!”

PLATE LXXX.A COTTAGE AT EAST ORANGE, N. J.Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

PLATE LXXX.

A COTTAGE AT EAST ORANGE, N. J.Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

A COTTAGE AT EAST ORANGE, N. J.

Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

PLATE LXXXI.DOORWAY, BRISTOL, R. I.

PLATE LXXXI.

DOORWAY, BRISTOL, R. I.

Theresult of the best adaptation is the gradual formation of a national style of architecture. The closest adaptation that has been exploited in America both in recent and what we call our ancient work, compared with its separable prototypes, who shall say is not unmistakably modern and American? Style is never evolved by the empirical architecture of irrepressible inventors. Invention belongs to science. Happily, in the field of art, everything was planted, arranged and cultivated for us ages ago, so that we have only to wander as children, in an enchanted garden that our days are not half long enough to encompass. We observe, but wait for the planchette to move—to guide.

Style in architecture and literature alike is something which shapes itself unconsciously to the mind—something which will neither be coerced nor cajoled, but obeyed. Style selects its craftsman rather than craftsmen their style. Style is the master, and we are the students ever observing, listening, trying to understand, waiting for our cue, and finally speaking our lines according to the histrionic ability there is in each of us, for style is eminently dramatic.

But the moment we set up for ourselves and say, “Go to, let us make a style!” that moment we miss our usefulness in the economy of art.

I knew of a young student of literature who, convalescing from an attack of grippe, was found by his physician one day, sitting upright in bed surrounded by a lot of new-looking books. As the visitor failed to conceal some surprise, the enthusiast hastened with an explanation for which the reader is scarcely better prepared. “Doctor,” he said. “I am reading Kipling for style!”

Now, no matter how encouraging to the physician was the patient’s interest in the books, it was a most discouraging thing as a matter of art. For you don’t want to read anybody to copy his style, much less a

PLATE LXXXII.MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE.

PLATE LXXXII.

MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE.

PLATE LXXXIII.DETAIL—MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE,Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

PLATE LXXXIII.

DETAIL—MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE,Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

DETAIL—MITCHELL COTTAGE, EAST ORANGE,

Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

contemporary of your own. And no architectural student should want to imitate the style of his master or employer, for it is heresy. It is mockery.

If you have not sense enough to listen to your own muse, to study the history of art for yourself, to speak the language of architecture as all your honored predecessors have spoken it, following religiously the splendid historical chart that is ever at your service for reference while leaving your style to take care of itself—I am sorry for you.

In my own very limited scope of usefulness, I am quite willing to confess that I have never bothered about style, and do not consider that I have any worth mentioning; although, I suppose, an occasional architect is annoyed past endurance by somebody who comes with an illustration of a particular piece of my work which has appeared in the magazines, requesting that my style be copied. Of course, it is not my style that is desired, but the expression of Anglo-Saxon home feeling as opposed to whatever is advectitious—out of place there—however correct academically, and according to the rules of harmony, good form or anything else you choose to call it. All tendency in myself toward mannerism, prejudice, partisanship and eclectic theory I have endeavored to repress, for I found that good style needed no suggestions from me.

Good style means the historical note which measures the success of an architectural design. It is the distinct theme we must be able to recognize throughout, no matter how elaborate or original the accompaniment. To exemplify which point I have selected the Searles cottage, erected in 1889, at Block Island (see Plate LXXXVI), not because it was erected without regard to expense or financial returns, for there is much domestic architecture in America erected quite as independently of either consideration which would ruin my argument were I to use it; but because the Searles cottage is one of the most original designs in American Renaissance, without in the least compromising good style, that I know of in contemporary work. It is said to have been designed by a decorator, but in that case merely adds another instance of the truism that there are decorators who should be architects and architects who should be decorators. The illustration shows the

PLATE LXXXIV.PRINCESSGATE.

PLATE LXXXIV.

PRINCESSGATE.

PRINCESSGATE—REAR.Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

PRINCESSGATE—REAR.

Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.

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