(R. P. S.)
Modern Architecture
The beginning of the 19th century may be considered to mark the beginning of the modern era in architecture. The 19th century is the periodpar excellenceof architectural “revivals.” The great Renaissance movement in Italy already described was something more than a mere revival. It was a new spirit affecting the whole of art and literature and life, not an architectural movement only; and as far as architecture is concerned it was not a mere imitative revival. The great Italian architects of the Renaissance, as well as Wren, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor in England, however they drew their inspiration from antique models, were for the most part original architects; they put the ancient materials to new uses of their own. The tendency of the 19th-century revivals, on the other hand, except in France, was distinctly imitative in a sense in which the architecture of the great Renaissance period was not. Correctness of imitation, in the English Gothic revival especially, was an avowed object; and conformity to precedent became, in fact, except with one or two individual architects, almost the admitted test of excellence.
The earliest classical London building of note in the 19th century is Soane’s Bank of England, which as a matter of date belongs in fact to the end of the 18th century; but its architect lived well into the 19th century, and the bankClassical revival in British architecture.may be classed with this section of the subject. Soane had to make something architectural out of the walls of a very extended building of only one storey, in which external windows were not admissible; and he did so by applying a classical columnar order to the walls and introducing sham window architraves. The latter are indefensible, and weaken the expression of the building; the columnar order was the received method at the time of making a building (as was supposed) “architectural,” and the building has grace and dignity, and could hardly be taken for anything except a bank, although a more robust and massive treatment would have been more expressive of the function of the building, as a kind of fortress for the storage of money. It was only some years later that the Greek revival took some hold of English architects (the Bank of England is rather Roman than Greek); the impetus to it was probably given by the “Elgin marbles”; Stuart and Revett’s great work on theAntiquities of Athenshad been issued a good while previously, the three first volumes being dated respectively 1762, 1787 and 1794; but the appearance of the fourth volume in 1816 was no doubt influenced by the transportation to London of the Elgin marbles, and the sensation created by them. One of the first architectural results was the erection, at an immense cost in comparison with its size, of the church of St Pancras in London (1819-1822), designed by Inwood, who published a fine and still valuable monograph on the Erechtheum, and showed his enthusiasm for Greek architecture by copying the Erechtheum order and doorways for his façade, and erecting over it a tower composed of the Temple of the Winds with an octagonal imitation of the monument of Lysicrates imposed above it. This use of Greek monuments was architecturally absurd, though at the time it was no doubt the offspring of a genuine enthusiasm.
A better use was made of the study of Greek architecture by William Wilkins (1778-1839), who was in his way a great architect, and whose University College (1827-1828), as designed by him, was a noble and dignified building, of which he only carried out the central block with the cupola and portico. The wings were somewhat altered from his design but not materially spoiled, but the university authorities permitted the vandalism of erecting a low building as a partial return of the quadrangle on the fourth side, for the purposes of a mechanical laboratory, which ruined the appearance of the building.4Wilkins’s other well-known work is the National Gallery (1832-1838), which he was not allowed to carry out exactly as he wished, and in which the cupola and the “pepperpots” are exceedingly poor and weak. But his details, especially the profiles of his mouldings, are admirably refined, and show the influence of a close study of Greek work. Among other prominent English architects of the classic revival in England are Sir Robert Smirke and Decimus Burton (1800-1881). To Burton we owe the Constitution Hill arch and the Hyde Park screen. The latter is a very graceful erection of its kind; the arch has never been completed by the quadriga group which the architect intended as its crowning feature, though for many years it was allowed to be disfigured by the colossal equestrian statue of Wellington, completely out of scale and crushing the structure. Smirke is kept in memory by his fine façade of the British Museum, which has been much criticized for its “useless” colonnades and the wasted space under them. The criticism is hardly just; for classic colonnades have at least some affinity with the purposes of a museum of antique art, and it conveys the impression of being a frontispiece to a building containing something of permanent value and importance. The early classic revival set its mark also, in a very fine and unmistakable manner, on the capital of the sister island. Dublin is almost a museum of fine classic buildings of the period, among which the most remarkable is the present Bank of Ireland (fig. 85), originally begun as the Parliament House. The beginning of the building belongs to the 18thcentury, but it was not completed in its present form till 1805, and was the work of five successive architects, only one of them, James Gandon (1743-1823), a man of the first importance; but it was Gandon who in 1790 did most to give the building its effective outline on plan, by introducing one of the curved quadrant walls, the building being subsequently finished in accordance with this suggestion. It is a remarkable combination of symmetry and picturesqueness, and as a one-storey classic building is far superior to Soane’s Bank of England, with which a comparison is naturally suggested. Gandon’s custom house, with its fine central cupola, is another notable example. Edinburgh too can show examples of the classic revival, and bears the title of “modern Athens” as much from her architectural experiments as from her intellectual claims; she illustrates the application of Greek architecture to modern buildings in two really fine examples, the Royal Institution by W.H. Playfair (1780-1857), and the high school by Thomas Hamilton (1784-1858). It was a pity that she added to these the collection of curiosities on the Calton Hill.
But before we quit the classic revival in England, there are two architects to be named who came a little later in the day, living in fact into the time of the Gothic revival, who were superior to any of the earlier classic practitioners: Harvey Lonsdale Elmes and C.R. Cockerell. Elmes, who died very young, seems to have been as completely a born architectural genius as Wren, and his great work, St. George’s Hall at Liverpool, has done more than any other building in the world to glorify the memory of the classic revival. Granting all that may be said as to the unsuitability of Greek architecture to the English climate, one can hardly complain of any movement in architecture which gave the opportunity for the production of so grand an architectural monument. It is true that it is badly planned and lighted, and the exterior and interior do not agree with each other (the exterior is Greek, and the great hall is Roman); but if from our present point of view it is a mistake, it is certainly one of the finest mistakes ever made in architecture. Cockerell, who completed the interior of the building after Elmes’s death, was an architect permeated with the principles and feeling of Greek architecture, who brought to his work a refinement of taste and perception in regard to detail which has rarely been equalled and never surpassed. Perhaps the very best example of his scholarly taste in the application of classic architecture to modern uses is to be found in his façade to the branch Bank of England at Liverpool (fig. 86).
Plate IX.
Plate X.
In Germany, and especially at Berlin and Munich, the Greek revival took hold of architecture in the early part of the century in a more decisive but also in a more academical spirit than in England. The movement is connectedClassical revival in Germany.more especially with the name of one eminent architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who must have been a man of genius to have so impressed his taste on his generation as he did in Berlin, where he was regarded as the great and central power in the architecture of his day; yet his buildings are marked by learning and academical correctness rather than original genius. Elmes’s St George’s Hall, already referred to as one great English work of the classic revival, is by no means a mere piece of academical architecture; it exhibits in some of its details a great deal of originality, and in its general design a remarkably fine feeling for architectural grouping. In particular, the solid masses and the heavy square columns at theends of his building, which seem like Greek architecture treated with Egyptian feeling, give support to, while they form a most effective contrast with, the richer and more delicate Corinthian order of the central portion. The only work of Schinkel’s which shows something of the same feeling for contrast in architectural composition is one of his smaller buildings, the Konigswache or Royal Guard-house, in which a Doric colonnaded portico is effectively flanked and supported by two great masses of plain wall. But in general Schinkel does not seem to have known what to do with the angles of his buildings, or to have realized the value of mass as a support to his colonnades. This is strikingly exemplified in his museum at Berlin, where the tall narrow piers at the angles have a very weak effect, and are quite inadequate as a support to the long open colonnade. His Royal theatre also (fig. 87), though the central portico is fine, is monotonous and weak in its two-storeyed repetition of the small order in the wings, and it has also the fault (which it shares, no doubt, with a great many theatres, large and small) that its exterior design gives no hint of the theatre form; it might just as well be a museum. His. Nikolai Kirche (1830-1837) at Potsdam (fig. 88), which has considerable celebrity, though not so merely academical in character, and in fact possessed of a certain originality, has a fault of another kind, in its entire lack of architectural unity; the dome does not seem to belong to or to have any connexion with the substructure, while the portico is quite out of scale with the great block of building in its rear, and looks like a subsequent addition. The fault of the Schinkel school of architecture is an almost total want of what may be called architectural life; it is an artificial production of the studio. The same kind of cold classicism prevailed at Munich, where Leo von Klenze (1784-1864), though a lesser man than Schinkel, played somewhat the same part as the latter played at Berlin. His Propylaea (fig. 89), in which Greek and Egyptian influences are combined, is a characteristic example of his cold and scholastic style. His well knownRuhmeshalle, with its boldly projecting colonnaded wings and the colossal statue of Bavaria in front of it, is in its way a fine architectural conception—perhaps finer and more consistent in its kind than any one work of Schinkel, though he evidently did not exercise so wide an influence on the German art of his day. A third eminent name in the German classic revival is that of Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), somewhat later in date (Schinkel was born in 1781), but more or less of the same school. Semper practised successively at Dresden and at Zurich, but finally settled in Vienna, where, however, he did not live to see the execution of his two most important designs, the museum and the Hofburg theatre, which were carried out by Baron Karl von Hasenauer (1833-1894) from his designs, or approximately so. Semper’s theatre at Dresden, however, shows that he could recognize the practical basis of architecture, as the expression of plan, in a way that Schinkel could not; for in that building he frankly adopted the curve of the auditorium as themotiffor his exterior design, thus producing a building which is obviously a theatre, and could not be taken for anything else, and putting some of that life into it which is so much wanting in Schinkel’s rigid classicalities.
In spite of the Romanizing influence of the First Empire, the classic revival did not leave by any means so academical a stamp on French as on German architecture of the early period of the century. French architects in theFrench Classicism.main have always had too much original genius to be entirely taken captive by a general movement of this kind. There is the weak classicism of Bernard Poyet’s façade to the chamber of deputies, a very poor affair; and there are two important buildings in the guise of Roman peripteral temples, devoted respectively to business and to religion—the Bourse, by Alexandre Théodore Brongniart (1739-1813), and the Madeleine, begun under Napoleon, as a “Temple de la Gloire,” by Pierre Vignon (1763-1828), and completed as a church in 1841 by Jean Jacques Huve (1783-1852). Both of these are very well carried out externally, and enable us to judge of what would be the effect of a Roman temple of the kind. It must be admitted that the plain oblong mass of the Bourse has really been very much improved by the recent addition of the two wings, carried out by Cavel, though there was a great deal of opposition at first to meddling with so celebrated a building. Unfortunately, the exterior of the Bourse is a mere piece of architectural scenery, quite unconnected with the internal object and arrangement of the building. The Madeleine is a really fine exterior in its way; if a modern church was to put on the guise of a pagan temple, the task could hardly have been better carried out; and the interior might have been as fine if properly treated, but it has little artistic relation with the noble exterior, and is spoiled by poor architectural treatment and bad ornament. The church of St Vincent de Paul, by Jacques Ignace Hittorff (1792-1867), an architect who was one of the most learned students of Greek architecture of his day, is another important example of the French classical church of the period (Plate XII., fig. 125). In this the interior is more consistent with the exterior than is the case in the Madeleine; and by adding a tower at each angle of the façade, above the colonnaded portico, the architect gave it more the expression of a church, which the Madeleine wants. In the Arc de l’Étoile, by Jean François T. Chalgrin (1739-1811), we have a really great, even sublime work, which, though suggested by the Roman triumphal arches, is no mere copy, but bears the impress of the French genius in its details as well as in François Rude’s grand sculptures on the east face, while its great scale places it above everything else of the kind in the world. It is only after ascending the interior and seeing the vaults carrying the roof that one fully realizes what a stupendous piece of work this is. Under Napoleon there was at least no jerry-building.5
Returning to the consideration of architecture in England, we come, at about the close of the classic revival, to the name of the man who was undoubtedly the most remarkable English architect since Wren, Sir Charles Barry. ToBarry’s “common-sense” style, in England.class him, as some would do, with the classic revival, would be a misapprehension. Barry was no revivalist; he never attempted to recreate Greek architecture on English soil. He adopted for most of his works what has been called, for want of a better name, the Italian style, which may really rather be called the common-sense style of a civilized society. The two first works which brought him into notice, the Travellers’ and Reform clubs in London, were no doubt based on special Italian models, the Pandolfini and Farnese palaces; but a consideration of his whole career shows that he was in fact anything but a copyist. The comparison of him with Wren is justified by the fact that he was, like Wren, a born architect, in the sense that he grasped every problem presented to him from the true architect’s point of view; with both of them architecture was not the dressing up of an exterior, but the fashioning of a building as a conception based on plan and section as well as on the desire to secure a certain external appearance; and, like Wren, he never failed to grasp the true requirements of a site and to adapt his architectural conception to it; a power perfectly different from that of merely producing agreeable elevations in this or that adopted style. Though very careful of his detail, he did not rely on detail, but on the general conception of an architectural scheme. This power was never so remarkably shown as in his grand scheme, unhappily never carried out, for the concentration of all the British government offices in one great architecturalensemble, which was to extend, on the west of Parliament Street and Whitehall, from Great George Street nearly to Charing Cross, the whole of the buildings to be carried out as one design, distributed into quadrangles, each of which was to be connected with one department of the administration, while all would have internal communication. Had this great idea been carried out we might at the present day have found some of the detail of the building unsatisfying to our taste, as we often find the detail in some of Wren’s buildings, but we should have had a grand architectural achievement which would have made London pre-eminent among the capitals of the world. Nothing so great had been proposed in England since Inigo Jones’s plan for Whitehall Palace, which also survives only in drawings, except the one noble bit of classic architecture known as the Banqueting House (Plate VI., fig. 75). It was one of the greatest misfortunes to London as a capital city that the government of the day could not rise to the height of Barry’s ambitious scheme, in which there was nothing financially insuperable, since it was all designed to be carried out by portions at a time, as funds could be spared; but each government office built would in that way have been one step towards the completion of a great central idea; whereas the nation now spends the same money in erecting detached government buildings which have no architectural connexion with each other.
Barry’s two clubs before mentioned are almost ideals of club architecture—the architecture of a civilized society; his Bridge-water House is a building on a larger scale of the same type. That he had architectural ideas less staid and sober than these is shown, however, by the remarkable tower and spire of the Halifax Town Hall (fig. 90), his last work, which he did not live to see carried out, in which he contrived with remarkable success to give the Gothic spirit and multiplicity of effect to a tower which is nevertheless classic in detail. This tower is one of the most original and striking things in modern English architecture and shows how Barry’s architectural ideas were developing up to the close of his life.
Barry’s great building, the Houses of Parliament (Plate X., fig. 118), with which his name will always be more especially associated, comes accidentally, though not by natural development nor by his own choice, under the head of the Gothic revival. The style of Tudor Gothic was dictated to the competitors, apparently from a mistaken idea that the building ought to “harmonize” with the architecture of Henry VII.’s chapel adjacent to the site. Had Barry been left to himself, there is no doubt that the Houses of Parliament, with the same main characteristics of plan and grouping, would have been of a classic type of detail, and would possibly have been a still finer building than it is; and since the choice of the Gothic style in this case was not a direct consequence of the Gothic revival movement, it may be considered separately from that. The architectural greatness of the building consists, in the first place, in the grand yet simple scheme of Barry’s plan, with the octagon hall in the centre, as the meeting-point for the public, the two chambers to north and south, and the access to the committee-rooms and other departments subordinate to the chambers. The plan (fig. 91) in itself is a stroke of genius, and has been more or less imitated in buildings for similar purposes all over the world; the most important example, the Parliament House of Budapest (Plate IX., fig. 115 and fig. 92), being almost a literal copy of Barry’s plan. Thus, as in all great architecture, the plan is the basis of the whole scheme, and upon it is built up a most picturesque and expressive grouping, arising directly out of the plan. The two towers are most happily contrasted as expressive of their differing purposes; the Victoria Tower is the symbol of the State entrance, a piece of architectural display solely for the sake of a grand effect; the Clock Tower is a utilitarian structure, a lofty stalk to carry a great clock high in the air; the two are differentiated accordingly, and the placing of them at opposite ends of the structure has the fortunate effect of indicating, from a distance, the extent of the plan. The graceful spire in the centre offers an effective contrast to the masses of the two towers, while forming the outward architectural expression of the octagon hall, which is, as it were, the keystone of the plan.The detail is another consideration. Barry, having had a style forced upon him (most unwisely), which he had not studied much and with which he was not much in sympathy, associated Pugin with him to design a good deal of the detail; exactly how much is not certainly known; probably Pugin was responsible for all the interior detail and fittings; the exterior detail may have been only suggested or sketched by him. On this ground absurd attempts have been made, by people who do not seem to understand what architecture in the true sense means, to claim for Pugin what they call the “artistic merit” of the Houses of Parliament. The artistic merit consists in the whole plan, conception and grouping, whichare entirely Barry’s, and which represent something beyond Pugin’s grasp; the detail is in fact the weak element in the building. That Pugin’s Gothic detail is better than Barry’s would have been is very likely the case; but had Barry been left unfettered to work out the detail in his own school, the result would probably have been still better. Even as it is, however, the Houses of Parliament is one of the finest buildings in the world, ancient or modern, and it is to be regretted that Englishmen generally seem to be so little aware of this.
Barry’s great building, the Houses of Parliament (Plate X., fig. 118), with which his name will always be more especially associated, comes accidentally, though not by natural development nor by his own choice, under the head of the Gothic revival. The style of Tudor Gothic was dictated to the competitors, apparently from a mistaken idea that the building ought to “harmonize” with the architecture of Henry VII.’s chapel adjacent to the site. Had Barry been left to himself, there is no doubt that the Houses of Parliament, with the same main characteristics of plan and grouping, would have been of a classic type of detail, and would possibly have been a still finer building than it is; and since the choice of the Gothic style in this case was not a direct consequence of the Gothic revival movement, it may be considered separately from that. The architectural greatness of the building consists, in the first place, in the grand yet simple scheme of Barry’s plan, with the octagon hall in the centre, as the meeting-point for the public, the two chambers to north and south, and the access to the committee-rooms and other departments subordinate to the chambers. The plan (fig. 91) in itself is a stroke of genius, and has been more or less imitated in buildings for similar purposes all over the world; the most important example, the Parliament House of Budapest (Plate IX., fig. 115 and fig. 92), being almost a literal copy of Barry’s plan. Thus, as in all great architecture, the plan is the basis of the whole scheme, and upon it is built up a most picturesque and expressive grouping, arising directly out of the plan. The two towers are most happily contrasted as expressive of their differing purposes; the Victoria Tower is the symbol of the State entrance, a piece of architectural display solely for the sake of a grand effect; the Clock Tower is a utilitarian structure, a lofty stalk to carry a great clock high in the air; the two are differentiated accordingly, and the placing of them at opposite ends of the structure has the fortunate effect of indicating, from a distance, the extent of the plan. The graceful spire in the centre offers an effective contrast to the masses of the two towers, while forming the outward architectural expression of the octagon hall, which is, as it were, the keystone of the plan.
The detail is another consideration. Barry, having had a style forced upon him (most unwisely), which he had not studied much and with which he was not much in sympathy, associated Pugin with him to design a good deal of the detail; exactly how much is not certainly known; probably Pugin was responsible for all the interior detail and fittings; the exterior detail may have been only suggested or sketched by him. On this ground absurd attempts have been made, by people who do not seem to understand what architecture in the true sense means, to claim for Pugin what they call the “artistic merit” of the Houses of Parliament. The artistic merit consists in the whole plan, conception and grouping, whichare entirely Barry’s, and which represent something beyond Pugin’s grasp; the detail is in fact the weak element in the building. That Pugin’s Gothic detail is better than Barry’s would have been is very likely the case; but had Barry been left unfettered to work out the detail in his own school, the result would probably have been still better. Even as it is, however, the Houses of Parliament is one of the finest buildings in the world, ancient or modern, and it is to be regretted that Englishmen generally seem to be so little aware of this.
1. Reading Clerk.
2. Dressing Room.
3. Clerk of the Parliament.
4. Clerk Assistant’s Dressing Room.
5. Clerk Assistant.
6. Clerk, House of Lords.
7. Messengers.
8. Waiting Room.
9. Lord Chancellor’s Secretaries.
10. Lord Chancellor.
11. Lord Chancellor’s Dressing Room.
12 Permanent Secretary.
13. Sergeant-at-Arms.
14. Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod.
15. Private Bill Office.
16. Chairman’s Dressing
17. Chairman of Committees.
18. Clerk to Private Bill and Taxing Office.
19. Chairman of Committees Counsel.
20. Royal Staircase.
21. Clerk to Public Bills.
22. Minutes.
23. Peers’ Staircase.
24. Inner Office.
25. Printed Papers Office.
26. Private Bills and Taxing Office.
27. Earl Marshal.
28. Strangers’ and Reporters’ Stairs.
29. Peers’ Standing Order Committee Room.
30. The Thrones.
31. Bar of the House.
32. Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords.
33. Premier.
34. Telegraph.
35. Solicitor-General.
36. Attorney-General.
37. Lord Advocate.
38. Resident Superintendent.
39. Archbishops.
40. Principal Stairs.
41. Residence of the Yeoman Usher of the Black Rod.
42. Sitting Room.
43. Residence of the Clerk of Parliament.
44. Members’ Entrance.
45. Dining Room of the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms.
46. Turret Room.
47. Private Stairs of the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms.
48. Journal Office Stores.
49. Police.
50. Ministers.
51. Opposition Ministers.
52. Members’ Entrance Stairs.
53. Members’ Conference Room.
54. Members’ Private Secretaries
55. Members’ Small Conference Room.
56. Votes and Proceedings.
57. Accountant and Chief Public Bill Office.
58. Old Treasury Stairs.
59. Post Master.
60. Strangers’ Stairs.
61. Cistern Tower.
62. Irish Whips.
63 Government Whips.
64. Opposition Whips.
65. Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms.
66. Clerk to Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms.
67. Speaker’s Counsel.
68. Speaker’s Counsel’s Clerk.
69. Vote Office.
70. Bar Lobby.
71. Speaker’s Lobby.
72. Ministers.
73. Clerk Assistant.
74. Train Bearers.
75. Speaker’s Retiring Room.
76. Old Prison Rooms Lobby.
77. Sergeant-at-Arms’ Smoking Room.
78. Clock Weight Shaft.
79. Air Shaft.
80. Smoking Room Lobby.
81. Butler.
82. Speaker’s Secretary.
83. Audience Room.
84.TimesReporters.
85. Strangers’ Gallery.
86. Waste Paper.
87. Mess.
We may now turn to consider the Gothic Revival movement itself, of which Pugin was one of the most important pioneers. New ideas, however, as to the importance of Gothic architecture had been in the air before he came on the scene, andThe Gothic Revival, England.quite early in the century John Britten’sArchitectural Antiquities of Great BritainandCathedral Antiquities, with their beautiful steel engravings by Le Keux, had done much to call attention to the neglected beauty of English medieval churches; and Thomas Rickman’s remarkable and (for its day) masterly analysis of the variations of style in Gothic architecture, which first appeared in 1817, and went through edition after edition in succeeding years, gave the first intelligent direction to the study of the subject. Pugin supplied to the movement not analysis, but passion. He had the merit of having perceived, when quite a youth, that one thing wanted was better craftsmanship, and that craftsmanship in the medieval period was something very different from what it was in the early Victorian period; he set up an atelier of craftsmen, and was the real pioneer of what may be called the Arts and Crafts movement in England. An enthusiast by nature, he flung his whole soul into the task of reviving, as he believed, the glory of English medieval architecture; nothing else in architecture was worth thinking of; Classic and Renaissance were only worth sarcasm. The result in his works was a curious inconsistency. Pugin was not in the true sense a great architect; his mind was not practical enough to grasp an architectural problem as a whole, plan and building combined; in fact, he was no master of plan, and does not seem to have troubled himself much about it. But he had a remarkable perception of interior effect; whenever you go into one of his churches you recognize the desire to realize the greatest effect of height, the most soaring effect of lines, possible within the actual vertical measurements. But in his passion for this soaring expression he seems to have entirely lost sight of the essential quality of solidity and genuineness of material in the medieval architecture which he was trying to emulate or to outvie. So long as he could get his effect of height, his poetic interior, he was content to have thin walls and plaster vaults and ornaments; or, in other words, he spent upon height what should first have been spent upon solid and monumental building. The result has been gently but effectively satirized by Browning in “Bishop Blougram’s Apology”:—
“It’s different preaching in BasilicasTo doing duty in some masterpieceLike this of brother Pugin’s, bless his heart.I doubt if they’re half-baked, those chalk rosettes,Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;It’s just like breathing in a limekiln, eh?”
“It’s different preaching in Basilicas
To doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin’s, bless his heart.
I doubt if they’re half-baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;
It’s just like breathing in a limekiln, eh?”
It is too true; and there is something pathetic in Pugin’s career, in this passionate and sincere pursuit after a revival of the medieval spirit in life and in architecture—a pursuit which towards the close of his life he himself evidently more than half suspected to have been a fallacy.
The full tide of the Gothic revival is connected more especially with the name of Sir Gilbert Scott. He was hardly a pure enthusiast like Pugin; he was a shrewd man of the world, the commencement of whose professional career coincided with the rising tide of ecclesiological reform, and he had the ability to make the best of the opportunity. He appears to have had, even as a child, an inborn interest in church architecture and in Gothic detail (witness the description, in hisMemoirs, of his astonishment and interest, at the age of eleven, at the first sight of capitals of the Early English type), and he acquired by unremitting study a knowledge of English Gothic architecture in its every detail which few architects have ever equalled. His numerous churches were, intentionally and confessedly, as close reproductions as possible of medieval architecture, generally that of the Early Decorated period; and if it were desirable that modern church architecture should consist in the reproduction of medieval churches, the task could not have been carried out with more learning and exactitude than it was by him. It was this minute and accurate knowledge of medieval church architecture which made him such a power when the idea of restoring English cathedrals became popular. He had an acquired instinct in tracing out the existence of details which had been overlaid by modern repairs or plasterwork; in going over a cathedral to decide on a scheme of restoration he seemed to know it as an anatomist knows the suggestions of a fossil skeleton; and in the course of his restorations he unearthed many points in the architectural history of the buildings which but for him would never have been elucidated. We now recognize that much of this “restoration” was a mistake, which destroyed the real interest of the cathedrals; and it is unhappily a mistake which cannot be undone. But the violent reproaches which have been heaped upon Scott’s memory on this account are rather unjust. It is forgotten that he was doing what at the time every oneconsidered to be the right thing; cathedral bodies vied with each other in restoration, and were enthusiastic in the cause; there were few if any dissenting voices; and in regard to the interiors of the cathedrals which were in modern use as places of worship, much that he did really required to be done to put them into decent condition. His churches have ceased to be interesting now, as is usually the case with copied architecture; but when they were built they were exactly what every one wanted and was asking for. And he produced at all events one original work which is a great deal better than it is now the fashion to think—the Albert Memorial. It is injured by the statue, for which the commission went to the wrong sculptor; but Scott’s idea of producing, as he phrased it, “a shrine on a great scale,” was really a fine one, and finely carried out. The most important objection to it is one which popular criticism does not recognize, viz. that the vault is tied by concealed iron ties, and would hardly be safe without them. But apart from that it is a fine conception, and Scott was right in regarding it as his best work.
G.E. Street, who was a pupil of Scott, was a greater enthusiast for medieval architecture (which, with him, as with Pugin, included medieval religion) than even Scott, and an architect of greater force and individuality. He was especially devoted to the early Transitional type of Gothic, and in all his buildings there is apparent the feeling for the solidity and monumental character, and the reticence in the use of ornament, which is characteristic of the Transitional period. His churches are noteworthy for their monumental character; and he had a remarkable faculty for giving an appearance of scale and dignity to the interiors of comparatively small churches. Hence his modern-medieval churches retain their interest more than Scott’s, but in respect of secular architecture his taste was hopelessly medievalized, and his great building, the law courts in London, can only be regarded as a costly failure; it is not even beautiful except in regard to some good detail; it is badly planned; and the one fine interior feature, the great vaulted hall, is rendered useless by not being on the same floor with the courts, so that instead of being asalle des pas perdusit is a desert. Street’s career is a warning how real architectural talent and vigour may be stultified by a sentimental adherence to a past phase of architecture. No modern architect had more fully penetrated the spirit of Gothic architecture, and his nave of Bristol cathedral is as good as genuine medieval work, and might pass for such when time-worn; but that is rather archaeology than architecture.
The competition for the law courts was one of the great architectural events of the middle of the century, and made or raised the reputation even of some of the unsuccessful competitors. Edward Barry (the son of Sir Charles) gained the first place for “plan,” which the advisers of the government had foolishly separated from “design” (as if the plan of a building could be considered apart from the architectural conception!), giving first marks for plan, and second for design. E. Barry therefore had really gained the competition, “design,” which was awarded to Street, counting second; but Street managed to push him out, and it is a nemesis on him for this by no means loyal proceeding that the building he contrived to get entirely into his own hands has served to injure rather than benefit his reputation. William Burges (1827-1881), an ardent devotee of French early Gothic, produced a design in that style, which, though quite unsuitable practically, is a greater evidence of architectural power than is furnished by any of his executed buildings. J.P. Seddon (1828-1906), an old adherent of Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, an architect of genius who never got his opportunity, produced a design which was wildly picturesque in appearance but in reality more practical than might be thought at first sight, and his proposal for a great Record tower for housing official records was a really fine and original idea.
Among the ecclesiastical buildings of the Gothic revival those of William Butterfield (1814-1900), much less numerous than those of Scott and Street, have a special interest as the work of a revival architect who was something more than a mere archaeologist. All Saints, Margaret Street (1859), is the production of an architectural artist using medieval materials to carry out a conception of his own, and hence, like Babbacombe church and others by the same hand, it has an interest for the present day which Scott’s churches have not. His Keble College chapel rather failed from an exaggeration of the use of polychromatic materials, which in some of his other churches he had used with moderation and with good effect. J.L. Pearson was another distinguished architect of the later period of the Gothic revival who was able to put something of his own into modern Gothic churches. No one was more learned in medieval architecture than he was; and as of Street’s nave of Bristol, so we may say of Pearson’s nave of Truro, that it is as good as medieval Gothic; indeed Truro nave is finer in character than some of the ancient cathedral naves, and represents pure Gothic at its best. But in the exteriors of his churches, as at Truro and in the churches of Kilburn and Red Lion Square, Pearson evolved a Gothic of his own which is Pearsonesque and not merely archaeological. James Brooks (1825-1901) also deserves an honoured place in the chronicle of the Gothic revival for being the first to show how large town churches might be erected in brick (fig. 93), in which largeness of scale and a certain grandeur of effect could be obtained without extravagant cost, and in which it was practically demonstrated that architecture in the true Gothic spirit could be produced without depending on ornament.
Alfred Waterhouse began his remarkable career as an adherent of the Gothic revival, and merits separate mention inasmuch as he was the only one of the Gothic revivalists who from the first set himself to adapt Gothic to secular uses and to make out of it a modern Gothic manner of his own. His first success was made with the Manchester law courts, a design more purely Gothic than his later works, and an admirably planned building (the only good point in the national law courts plan, the access to the public galleries, is taken from it); his special style was more developed in the Manchester town hall, a building typical both of the defects and merits of his secular Gothic style. This style of his received the compliment, for a good many years, of an immense amount of imitation; in fact, during that earlier period of his work it may be said to have influenced every secular building that was erected in the medieval style all over England. His Gothic detail was, however, not very refined, and he has been subject to the same kind of retrospective injustice which has fallen on Scott, critics in both instances forgetting that what they do not likenowwas what every one likedthen, and could not have enough of. Waterhouse was a master of plan, and a man of immense business and administrative ability, without which he could not have carried out thenumber of great building schemes which fell into his hands, and he had much more of the qualities of a great architect than are to be found in the works of some of his latter-day critics. His later works, one or two of which will be referred to, do not come under the head of the Gothic revival.
In France, the Gothic revival, which so strongly affected the whole school of English architecture for thirty or forty years, took little hold. Its most remarkable monument is the church of Ste Clotilde at Paris, built about theFrance.middle of the century from the designs of Ballu. In size it equals a second-class cathedral, and is a fine monument, though it does not show that complete knowledge of medieval Gothic which we find in the churches of Scott, Street, Pearson and G.F. Bodley. But as with the Classic, so with the Gothic revival—the leading French architects of the period had too much personal architectural feeling to be carried along in the wake of a “movement.” Two very important Paris churches, built just after the middle of the century, illustrate well this independence of spirit. The one is the domed church of St Augustin in the Boulevard Malesherbes (Plate XII., fig. 122), designed by Victor Baltard (1805-1874). It may be called a Classic church treated in a quasi-Byzantine manner. A remarkable point about it is that, standing between the divergence of two streets at an acute angle, the outer walls of the nave follow the line of the two streets, the church thus expanding towards the centre; internally the colonnades are parallel, the chapels outside of them increasing in depth from the entrance of the nave towards the centre—a very clever device for reconciling exterior and interior effect. The other church referred to, built about the same time, is La Trinité (Plate XII., fig. 123) by Théodore Ballu (1817-1885)—a church which is Renaissance in detail and yet distinctly Gothic in its general effect and in the multiplicity of its detail, somewhat recalling in this sense Barry’s Halifax tower before referred to. The sense in which there has really been a general movement in church architecture in France has been in the direction of a kind of modernized Byzantine, of which one of the earliest and best examples is the church of St Pierre de Montrouge, by Joseph Auguste E. Vaudremer (Plate XII., fig. 124). A later and more important example is the cathedral of Marseilles, by Leon Vaudoyer (1803-1872) and Henry Espérandieu (1829-1874), a mingling of Romanesque and Byzantine, and in many respects a fine building (Plate XIII., fig. 126). This modern feeling in favour of a Byzantine type of church architecture culminated in the great church of the Sacré Coeur on Montmartre, at Paris, begun in the early ’eighties from the designs of Paul Abadie (1812-1884). This grand building stands on a most effective site, and is of a monumental solidity seldom met with in modern architecture; it is more pure and consistent in style than many of the smaller churches of the same school of architecture. These latter are not for the most part very attractive; they represent in general a kind of Frenchified Byzantine detail which exhibits neither Byzantine spirit nor French grace and finish; and on the whole it may be said that church architecture is the field in which the French architects of the 19th century were least successful.
As regards secular buildings, on the other hand, the Paris of the middle portion of the 19th century can show some of the most unquestionable architectural successes of the period. The modern portions of the Palais de Justice by Louis Joseph Duc (1802-1879)—not Viollet-le-Duc, as is often mistakenly asserted in guide-books—and of the École des Beaux-Arts, by Jacques Félix Duban (1797-1870), are among the best examples of the application of classic forms of architecture to modern buildings; and the Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève (Plate XIII., fig. 128), by Henri Labrouste (1801-1875), was in its day (about 1850) a new creation in applied classic architecture; a building in which the exterior design was entirely subservient to and expressive of the requirements of a library, a large portion of the wall being left unpierced for the storage of books, windows being only inserted where they did not interfere with this object; and the manner in which these walls are treated so as to produce a decorative architectural effect without having recourse to sham colonnades and sham window openings, was entirely new at the time in modern work. It is instructive to compare this design with that of the Bank of England, as examples of the right and the wrong way of treating buildings in which much blank wall space was required. The new buildings of the Louvre (Plate XIV., fig. 129), built under Napoleon III. from the designs of Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti (1791-1853), are not to be passed over, though they have too much of the showy and flaunting character which belonged to both the society and the art of the Second Empire; a fault which also destroys some of the value of the Grand Opera house, a remarkable work by a remarkable architect (Jean Louis Charles Garnier), and typical, more than any other structure, of the epoch in which it was built. Some of its effect it owes to the admirable painting and sculpture with which it is decorated, but the grand staircase is a fine architectural conception (seeGarnier).
In England and in the United States, the last quarter of the 19th century was a period of unusual interest and activity in architectural development. While other nations have been content to carry on their architecture, for theRecent English architecture.most part, on the old scholastic lines which had been prevalent since the Renaissance, in the two countries named there has been manifest a spirit of unrest, of critical inquiry into the basis and objects of architecture; an aspiration to make new and original creations in or applications of the art, without example in any other period in the modern history of architecture. In England, the “note”—heard with increasing shrillness ofcrescendotowards the very last year of the century—was the cry for originality, for throwing off the trammels of the past, for rendering architecture more truly a direct expression of the conditions of practical requirement and of structure. This was no doubt to some extent the effect of a reaction. During the greater part of the century architectural strength, as has been already shown, had been spent in revivals of past styles. Churches indeed, up to the close of the century, continued to be built, for the most part, in revived Gothic; but this was owing to special clerical influence, which saw in Gothic a style specially consecrated to church architecture, and would be satisfied, as a rule, with nothing else. Efforts have been made by architects to modify the medieval church plan into something more practically suited to modern congregational worship, by a system of reducing the side aisles to mere narrow passages for access to the seats, thus retaining the architectural effect of the arcade, while keeping it out of the way of the seated congregation; and there have been occasional reversions to the ancient Christian basilica type of plan, or sometimes, as in the church in Davies Street, London, attempts to treat a church in a manner entirely independent of architectural precedent; but in the main, Gothic has continued to rule for churches. Apart from this special class of building, however, revived Gothic began to droop during the ’seventies. All had been copied that could be copied, and the result, to the architectural mind, was not satisfaction but satiety. Gothic began to be regarded as “played out.” The immediate result, however, was not an organized attempt to think for ourselves, and make our own style, but a recourse to another class of precedent, represented in the type of early“Queen Anne.”18th-century building which became known as “Queen Anne,” and which, like Gothic before it, was now to be recommended as “essentially English,” as in fact it is. It can hardly, however, be called an architectural style; it would have no right to figure in any work illustrating the great architectural styles of the world. It was, in fact, the last dying phase of the English Renaissance; the architecture of the classic order reduced to a threadbare condition, treated very simply and in plain materials, in many cases shorn of its columnar features, and reflecting faithfully enough the prim rationalistic taste in literature and art of the England of the 18th century. Though not to be dignified as astyle, it was, however, a recognizable and consistentmannerin building; it made extensive use of brick, a material inexpensive and at the same time very well suited to the English climate and atmosphere; and it was generally carried out in very solid proportions, and with very good workmanship. To a generation tired of imitating a greatstyle at second hand, this unpretending and simple model was a welcome relief, and led to the erection of a considerable number of modern buildings, dwelling-houses especially, the obvious aim of which was to look as like 18th-century buildings as possible. A typical example is the large London house by Norman Shaw, at the corner of Queen’s Gate and Imperial Institute Road The Chelsea town hall (fig. 94), by J.M. Brydon (1840-1901), is a good example of a public building in the revived Queen Anne style.
Plate XI.
Plate XII.
A change of front from copying a great style like the medieval to copying what is at best a bastard one, if a style at all, might not seem to promise very much for the emancipation of modern architecture; yet there turned out to be one element of progress in it, resting on the fact that the comparatively simple detail of the 18th-century buildings formed a kind of vernacular of building workmanship, which could be comprehended and carried out by good artisans as a recognized tradition. Now to reduce architecture to good sound building and good workmanship seemed to promise at any rate a better basis to work upon than the mere imitation of classic or medieval detail; it might conceivably furnish a new starting-point. This was the element of life in the Queen Anne revival, and it had, as we shall see, an influence beyond the circle of the special revivers of the style. But almost concurrently with, or following hard upon, the “Queen Anne” movement arose the idea of a modern architecture, founded on a free and unfettered treatment of the materials of our earlier Renaissance architecture, as illustrated in buildings of the Stuart period. This“Free classic.”new ideal was styled “free classic,” and it gave the prevailing tone to English architecture for the last fifteen years of the century, though it had its commencement in certain characteristic buildings a good many years earlier than that. In 1873, for instance, there arose a comparatively small front in Leadenhall Street, under the name of “New Zealand Chambers” (fig. 95), designed by Norman Shaw, which excited more attention, and had more influence on contemporary architecture than many a building of far greater size and importance. This represented the playful and picturesque possibilities of “free classic.” Its more restrained and refined achievements were early exemplified in G.F. Bodley’s design for the front of the London School Board offices on the Thames Embankment,6a comparatively small building which also exercised a considerable influence. There were no details here, however, but what could be found in Stuart (or, as it is more often called, Jacobean) architecture, but the building, and the prominence of its architect’s name, helped to draw attention to the possibilities of the style, and it has been discovered that free classic is susceptible of a great deal of original treatment based on Renaissance elements. As an example we may cite a street front built some twenty years later by another academician-architect, viz. the offices of the Chartered Accountants in the City, by J. Belcher. More dignified and more monumental than New Zealand Chambers, more original than the School Board offices, this front contains some details and a general treatment which may be said to be absolutely new; it affords another example of a piece of street architecture which attracted a great deal of attention, and has had an effect quite disproportionate to its size and importance as a building; and it gives a general measure of the progress of the “free classic” idea. During the last decade of the century “free classic” was almost the recognized style in English architecture, and has been illustrated in many town halls and other large and important buildings, among which the Imperial Institute is a prominent example (fig. 96).
Concurrently with this tendency towards a free classic style there has arisen another movement which has had a considerable influence on English architecture, viz. an increased perception of the importance of decorative arts—sculpture,The allied arts.painting, mosaic, etc.—in alliance with architecture, and of the architect and the decorative artist working together and in harmony. This is no more than what has long been understood and acted on in France, but it has been a new light to modern English architecture, in which, until a comparatively recent period, decorative painting was hardlythought of, and decorative sculpture, where it was introduced, was too often, or indeed generally, the mere work of some trading firm of masons But of late years sculpture has taken a far more prominent place in connexion with architecture; it has become a habit with the best architects to rely largely on the introduction of appropriate and symbolic sculpture to add to the interest of their buildings, and to associate with them eminent sculptors, who, instead of regarding their work only in the light of isolated statues or groups for the exhibition room and the art gallery, are willing to give their best efforts to produce high-class sculpture for the decoration of an architectural design which forms the framework to it.
Notice should be taken, however, of another movement in English architecture during the closing years of the 19th century. Reference has already been made to one idea which prompted the culture of the “Queen Anne” type ofThe craftmanship ideal.architecture: that it presented a simple vernacular of construction and detail, in which solid workmanship a more prominent element than elaboration of what is known as architectural style. To a small group of clever and enthusiastic architects of the younger generation it appeared that this idea of reducing architecture to the common-sense of construction might be carried still further; that as all the revivals of styles since the Renaissance had failed to give permanent satisfaction and had tended to reduce architecture to a learned imitation of the work of former epochs, the real chance for giving life to architecture as a modern art was to throw aside all the conventionally accepted insignia of architectural style—columns, pilasters, cornices, buttresses, etc.—and to begin over again with mere workmanship—wall-building and carpentry—and trust that in process of time a new decorative detail would be evolved, indebted to no precedent. The building artisans, in fact, were collectively to take the place of the architect and the form of the building to be evolved by a natural process of growth. This was a favourite idea also with William Morris, who insisted that medieval art—the only art which he recognized as of any value (Greek, Roman and Renaissance being alike contemptible in his eyes)—was essentially an art of the people, and that in fact it was the modern architects who stood in the way of our having a genuine architecture of the 19th century. Considering how much of merely formal, conventional and soulless architecture has been produced in our time under the guidance of the professional architect, it is impossible to deny that there is an element of truth in this reasoning; at all events, that there have been a good many modern architects who have done more harm than good to architecture. But when we come to follow out this reasoning to its logical results, it is obvious that there are serious flaws in it. Morris’s idea that medieval architecture alone was worthy the name, we may, of course, dismiss at once; it was the prejudice of a man of genius whose sympathies, both in matters social and artistic, were narrow. Nor can we regard the medieval cathedrals as artisan’s architecture. The name of “architect” may have been unknown, but that the personage was present in some guise, the very individuality and variety of our English cathedrals attest. Peterborough front was no mere mason’s conception. And when we come to consider modern conditions of building, it is perfectly obvious that with the complicated practical requirements of modern building, in regard to planning, heating, ventilation, etc., the planning of the whole in a complete set of drawings, before the building is begun, is an absolute necessity. We are no longer in medieval times; modern conditions require the modern architect. The real cause of failure, as far as modern architecture is a failure, lies partly in the fact that it is practised too much as a profession or business, too little as an art; partly in the deadening effect of public indifference to art in Britain. If the public really desired great and impressive works of architecture they would have them; but neither the British public nor its mouthpiece the government, care anything about it. Their highest ambition is to get convenient and economical buildings. And as to the theory of the new school, that we should throw overboard all precedent in architectural detail, that is intellectually impossible. We are not made so that we can invent everythingde novo, or escape the effect on our minds of what has preceded us; the attempt can only lead to baldness or eccentricity. Every great style of architecture of the past has, in fact, been evolved from the detail of preceding styles; and some of the ablest and most earnest architects of the present day are, indeed, urging the desirability of clinging to traditional forms in regard to detail, as a means of maintaining the continuity of the art. This does not by any means imply the absence of original architecture; there is scope for endless origination in the plan and the general design of a building. The Houses of Parliament is a prominent example. The detail is a reproduction of Tudor detail, but the plan and the general conception are absolutely original, and resemble those of no other pre-existing building in the world.
It is necessary to take account of all these movements of opinion and principle in English architecture to appreciate properly its position and prospects at the time with which we are here dealing. Turning now from EnglandUnited States.to the United States, which, as already observed, is the only other important country in which there has been a general new movement in architecture, we find, singular to say, that the course of development has in America been almost the reverse of what has taken place in England. The rapidity of architectural development in America, it may be observed, since about 1875, has been something astonishing; there is no parallel to it anywhere else. Before then the currently accepted architecture of the American Republic was little more than a bad repetition of the English Gothic and Classic types of revived architecture. At the present day no nation, except perhaps France, takes so keen an interest in architecture and produces so many noteworthy buildings; and it may be observed that in the United States the public and the official authorities seem really to have some enthusiasm on the subject, and to desire fine buildings. But the stirring of the dry bones began in America where it ended in England. The first symptoms of an original spirit operating in American architecture showed themselves in domestic architecture, in town and country houses, the latter especially; and the form which the movement tookwas a desire to escape conventional architectural detail and to return to the simplest form of merebuilding; rock-faced masonry, sometimes of materials picked up on the site; chimneys which were plain shafts of masonry or brickwork; woodwork simply hewn and squared, but the whole arranged with a view to picturesque effect (figs. 97 and 98). This form of American house became an incident in the course of modern architecture; it even had a recognizable influence on English architects. About the same time an impetus of a more special nature was given to American architecture by a man of genius, H.H. Richardson, who, falling back on Romanesque and Byzantine types of architecture as a somewhat unworked field, evolved from them a type of architectural treatment so distinctly his own (though itsorigineswere of course quite traceable) that he came very near the credit of having personally invented a style; at all events he invented a manner, which was so largely admired and imitated that for some ten or fifteen years American architecture showed a distinct tendency to become “Richardsonesque” (see also Plate XVI., fig. 137). As with all architectural fashions, however, people got tired of this, and the influence of another very able American architect, Richard M. Hunt, coupled perhaps with the proverbial philo-Gallic tendencies of the modern American, led to the American architects, during the last decade of the 19th century, throwing themselves almost entirely into the arms, as it were, of France; seeking their education as far as possible in Paris, and adopting the theory and practice of the École des Beaux-Arts so completely that it is often impossible to distinguish their designs, and even their methods of drawing, from those of French architects brought up in the strictest regime of the “École.” By this French movement the Americans have, on the one hand, shared the advantages and the influence of what is undoubtedly the most complete school of architectural training in the world; but, on the other hand, they have foregone the opportunity which might have been afforded them of developing a school or style of their own, influenced by the circumstances of their own requirements, climate and materials. Figs. 133 and 134, Plate XV., show examples of recent American architecture of the European classic type. Thus, in the two countries which in this period have shown the most activity and restlessness in their architectural aspirations, and given the most original thought to the subject, England has constantly tended towards throwing off the yoke of precedent and escaping from the limits of a scholastic style; while America, commencing her era of architectural emancipation with an attempt at first principles and simple but picturesque building, has ended by a pretty general adoption of the highly-developed scholastic system of another country. The contrast is certainly a curious one. Only one original contribution to the art has been made by America in recent days—one arising directly out of practical conditions, viz. the “high buildings” in cities; a form of architecture which may be said to have originated in the fact that New York is built on a peninsula, and extension of the city is only possible vertically and not horizontally. The tower-like buildings (see Plate XV., fig. 131, andSteel Construction, Plate II., figs. 3 and 4), served internally by lifts, to which this condition of things has given rise, form a really new contribution to architecture, and have been handled by some of the American architects in a very effective manner; though, unfortunately, the rage for rapid building in the cities of the United States has led to the adoption of the false architectural system of running up such structures in the form of a steel framing, cased with a mere skin of masonry or terra-cotta, for appearance’ sake, which in reality depends for its stability on the steel framing. It must be admitted, however, to be a new contribution to architecture, and renders New York, as seen from the harbour, a “towered city” in a sense not realized by the poet.
Some sketch of the state of recent architectural thought or endeavour in England seemed essential to the subject, since it is there that what may be called the philosophy of architecture has been most debated, and that thoughtEnglish progress.has had the most obvious and most direct effect on architectural style and movement. That this has been the case has no doubt been largely due to the influence of Ruskin, who, though his architectural judgment was on many points faulty and absurd in the extreme, had at any rate the effect of setting people thinking—not without result. In other countries architecture continued to pursue, up to the close of the century, the scholastic ideal impressed upon it by the Renaissance, without exciting doubt or controversy unless in a very occasional and partial manner, and without any changes save those minor ones arising from changing habits of execution and use of material. In Germany there appears to be a certain tendency to a greater freedom in the use of the materials of classic architecture, a certain relaxation of the bonds of scholasticism; but it has hardly assumed such proportions as to be ranked as a new movement in architecture.
The last years of the 19th century witnessed the progress to an advanced stage of the most remarkable piece of English church architecture of the period, the Roman Catholic cathedral at Westminster, by J.H. Bentley (1839-1902),English churches.a building which is not a Gothic revival, but goes back to earlier (Byzantine) precedents; not, however, without a considerable element of novelty and originality in the design, especially in some of the exterior detail. The interior was intended for decoration in applied marble and mosaic, yet even as a shell of brickwork, with its solid domes and theimmense masses of the piers, it is one of the most impressive and monumental interiors of modern date.
In ordinary church architecture, though there is still a good deal of mere imitation medieval work carried out, England has not been without examples of a new and original application of Gothic materials. The interior of the church of St Clare, Liverpool, by Mr Leonard Stokes (fig. 100), is a good example of the modified treatment of the three-aisled medieval plan already referred to, the side aisles being reduced to passages; and also of the tendency in recent years to simplify the treatment of Gothic, in contrast to the florid and over-carved churches of the Gothic revival. The churches of James Brooks, as already noted, have shown many examples of a solid plain treatment of Gothic, yet with a great deal of character; and J.D. Sedding (1838-1891) built some showing great originality, among which the interior of his church of the Holy Redeemer, Clerkenwell, affords also an interesting example of the modern free treatment of forms derived from classic architecture.
The event of most importance in English church architecture at the beginning of the 20th century was the commencement of a modern cathedral at Liverpool. In the early ’eighties the proposal for a cathedral had led to an important competition between three sets of invited architects, Sir William Emerson, Messrs Bodley and Garner and James Brooks. Nothing, however, resulted, except the production of three very fine sets of drawings. Subsequently the subject was taken up again with more energy, and a sketch competition invited for a cathedral on a new site (the one originally intended being no longer available); from among the sketch competitors five were invited to join in a final competition, viz. Messrs Austin and Paley, C.A. Nicholson, Gilbert Scott (grandson of Sir Gilbert Scott), Malcolm Stark and W.J. Tapper. Mr Scott’s design was selected (May 1903) and the building of it commenced not long after. It is a design in revived Gothic, of the orthodox type as to detail, though containing some points of decided originality in the general treatment. The condition proposed in the first instance by the committee, that the designs sent in must be in the Gothic style, gave rise to a strong protest, in the architectural journals and elsewhere, on the ground that the revival of ancient styles was a mistaken and exploded fallacy; and in deference to this expression of opinion the committee officially withdrew the limitation as to style. That, in view of their obvious bias, they would confine their selection to designs in the Gothic style, was, however, a foregone conclusion. It is much to be regretted that the opportunity was not taken to evolve a modern and Protestant type of cathedral, with a central area and a dome as its principal feature.
In the architecture of public buildings one of the earliest incidents in this latest period was the completion of the Albert Hall, which, though the work of an engineer, and commonplace in detail, is in the main a fine and novel architectural conception,English public buildings.and a practical success (considering its abnormal size) as a building for musical performances. Had its constructor been bold enough to roof it with a solid masonry dome, with an “eye” in the centre (as in the Pantheon) instead of a huge dish-cover of glass and iron, there would have been little to find fault with in its general conception. It was also the first modern English building of importance to be decorated externally with symbolical figure composition, in the shape of the large frieze in coarse mosaic of terra-cotta, which is carried round the upper portion of the exterior, and which, if not very interesting in detail, at all events fulfils very well its purpose as a piece of decorative effect. The subject of the government offices in London forms in itself an important chapter in recent architectural history. The home and foreign office block was finished in 1874; a sumptuous, but weak and ill-planned building designed by Scott,invita Minerva, in a style alien to his own predilections. In 1884 took place the great competition for the war and admiralty offices conjointly, won by a commonplace but admirably drawn design, presenting some good points in planning. The building was to stand between Whitehall and St James’s Park, with a front both ways. The competition came to nothing, and the successful architects were eventually employed to build the new admiralty as it now stands, a mean and commonplace building with no street frontage, in which economy was the main consideration, and totally discreditable to the greatest naval power in the world. In 1898-1899 it was at last resolved to a war office and other government offices much needed, and an irregular site opposite the Horse Guards was selected for the war office and one in Great George Street for the others. In this case there was no competition, but the government selected two architects after inquiry as to their works (“classic” architecture being asine qua non); W. Young (d. 1900) for the war office, and J.M. Brydon for the Great George Street block. The war office site is inadequate and totally unsymmetrical, the boundary of the building being settled by the boundary of the street curb, and the inner courtyards are of very mean proportions compared with the great courtyard of the home and foreign office. Both architects produced grandiose designs, but in regard to the war office at least the government threw away a great opportunity.