Part 19

King Louis of Bavaria, having lived in Rome when Crown Prince, cultivated so great a fondness for the architecture of Greece and Italy, that when he came to the throne he commissioned his architects to design for his capital city of Munich the Walhalla, Ruhmeshalle, Glyptothek, and Pinakothek, after classical models.

In Dresden, the most interesting buildings designed upon Greek or Italian traditions are the theatre and the picture gallery, by Semper, who will long be ranked as the foremost German architect of his day.

In Berlin there is a theatre,—unique of its kind, with stage in the centre, and an auditorium for winter use at one end and one for summer at the other,—designed by Titz; at Carlsruhe, Stuttgart, and Strasburg there are theatres and schools in the same style. The present Emperor has added many schools throughout the empire, but they are of late German Renaissance.

The public buildings of Germany and Belgium show few designs of interest in recent years; the Parliament House at Berlin, by Wallot, and the Palais de Justice at Brussels, by Polaert, being colossal in mass and clumsy in detail. Many of the private houses designed in the Italian Renaissance were very elegant and attractive, but within the past decade there has been a woeful deterioration in the character of both surface and line—the grotesque replacing the graceful.

[Illustration: NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, KENSINGTON, LONDON.]

The villages built for their employees by Krupp, the gun manufacturer, and Stumm, the maker of steel, are notable instances of the application of private capital to the improvement of the domestic conditions of the laboring class.

In Austria, Vienna has developed wonderfully since the days of Maria Theresa. The classic Parliament House by Hansen, in 1843, is one of the most delightful of its kind to be found anywhere; Schmitt’s Gothic town-hall is interesting, but cannot be said to be so successful in design; the Votive Church by Ferstel, in 1856 (also Gothic), the Opera House by Siccardsburg and Van der Nüll, with the City Theatre, an elaborate Renaissance structure, by Semper and Hasmauer, are all worthy of note. The University with the two Museum buildings, facing each other upon a small park, and other public buildings and residences along the Ring Strasse, are extremely satisfactory, in spite of the fact that stucco has been so extensively employed.

Only a few years ago the municipality of Buda-Pesth offered immunity from taxation for fifteen years to all prospective builders, under certain conditions as to character and cost of buildings, with the result that the newer portion of the Hungarian capital was quickly occupied by buildings of the most desirable kind; the Parliament House, Opera, Cathedral, Technical School, and several club-houses and private residences, each testify to the spirit with which the citizens responded to this desire to beautify the city.

Since the unification of Italy there has been considerable building in some of the principal cities, but very little of special importance. In Rome, the changes are more perceptible than elsewhere; the excavations of the Forum, the embankment of the Tiber, the widening and straightening of the Corso, and the opening of the Via Nationale and other streets, have destroyed comparatively little of the picturesque that was worth retaining, have brought to light many treasures of art, and, supplemented by the drainage of the Campagna by Prince Torlonia, have certainly made it a healthier city to live in. The monument to Victor Emmanuel, the National Museum, and the Braccia Nuovo of the Vatican Museum, are among the few public structures of interest; the many blocks of apartments and tenements are orderly and inoffensive, though brick and stucco are the materials used in their construction.

Turin is the modern manufacturing city, while Florence preserves its mediæval air, and Venice dreams of the bygone days when the splendor of the Renaissance attracted the wealth, beauty, and talent of all Europe to the city of the Doges.

Bologna and Genoa have each built in the suburbs a magnificent Campo Santo, or cemetery, with chapels, colonnades, and other accessories of architectural value; in Milan and Naples there are lofty glass-covered arcades through the centre of a block and connecting with cross streets, and the semi-circular colonnades of St. Francesco di Paolo, at Naples, surround a piazza which is the great public resort of summer evenings.

During the reign of King George a new Athens has sprung up alongside of and overlapping the old city; although the nation is not wealthy, the individual bequests of certain Greeks have given her the Museum, University, and Academy, each of strict classic design, and a hospital of Byzantine design. Under the sunny skies of Greece those buildings certainly appear to much greater advantage than if in a more northern atmosphere, and their statuary and polychromy show the value of these accessories to such architecture in this climate.

[Illustration: THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C.]

Abdul Aziz, the predecessor of the present Sultan of Turkey, had so great a fondness for building that his extravagance in this respect was one of the causes which led to his downfall. The Dolma Bagtche palace, erected directly upon the shores of the Bosphorus from the designs of Balzan, an Armenian architect, suggests Spanish work of the sixteenth century. In Constantinople and at Therapia,—a summer resort at the northern end of the Bosphorus,—many of the foreign governments have built official residences for their representatives.

[Illustration: GLASS COVERED ARCADE, MILAN.]

As for the architecture of our near neighbors on the north, the buildings of Canada have been sturdy and substantial rather than comely; but the long continuance of cold weather and the lack of means have often hampered the builders. Since the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, the prosperity of city and country seems more assured; the older cities growing in importance and extent, and new towns springing up along the line to the West. In Ottawa the Parliament Buildings and the octagonal Library, in Toronto, and, to some extent, in Montreal, the Universities’ buildings, are Victorian Gothic. The later buildings of the University in Montreal, excepting the Girls’ College, are not so interesting; but there are two railroad stations, a hotel, cathedral, with several banks, insurance buildings, and residences that call for more than passing notice. Perhaps the finest building in all Canada is the Château Frontenac, in Quebec,—built by Bruce Price of New York,—on the Dufferin Terrace, overlooking the St. Lawrence River, and commanding a view that is hardly surpassed on the Bosphorus, the Rhine, or the Hudson.

Although the history of architecture in America cannot be written without some reference to contemporary work in Europe,—since so much of our architecture in the first half of the century is adopted from that of our ancestors and adapted to our uses, and in the last half so many of our architects have studied there and so many of our citizens have traveled there,—the problems and their conditions in the Old World are very different from those of the New. Europe was already mature when steam and electricity were introduced; precedent was always to be considered, and modern requirements were often forced to conform to existing circumstances. There has, therefore, been comparatively less change there during the century than during the past thirty years with us. With our republican institutions, many of the monarchical formulas soon became obsolete, though the general trend of our architecture has been in the direction of classic models. As the country has grown larger and more wealthy, the problems given to architects have become more complex; less reliance could be placed upon precedent and a premium was placed upon originality, which, in spite of innumerable vagaries, has brought American architecture, at the end of the century, to be the most notable of the day.

At the end of the eighteenth century, this republic consisted of hardly more than a number of communities extending at intervals along the Atlantic seaboard, with an occasional settlement beyond the Alleghany Mountains and across the Ohio River. Their resources were extremely limited, their wants very few, and their intercommunication irregular; but their methods of living were simple and frugal, and their courage and endurance phenomenal.

Among the settlers of New England were many mechanics and manufacturers, and these soon began to replace the primitive log cabins with frame dwellings; those of the Southern States were chiefly planters, who imported much of their labor, and often the bricks as well as the glass, hardware, tiles, and other materials for their houses. Many of those who colonized the Middle States had come from countries in Europe where these materials were made, and brought their secrets with them, while others were farmers and stock growers, whose snug little cottages and enormous barns may be seen to this day in New York and Pennsylvania.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century we possessed a national style of architecture, which, although it had come to us from Italy, through France and England, was yet distinctly American. It was, however, almost exclusively confined to residences, and there were very few public buildings of any description, except certain churches,—said to have been designed by followers of Sir Christopher Wren, some of whom were doubtless ship carpenters who had studied the works of Sir William Chambers.

[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES CAPITOL, WASHINGTON, D. C.]

The Colonial style, as we now term it, was sufficiently elastic in its adaptability to conform to the requirements of the merchant, manufacturer, or mariner living at Salem, Boston, or Newport, as well as to those of the planter living at Charleston or Savannah. There were certain differences, more or less pronounced, peculiar to each section and to each city, but all houses were alike in this respect,—there was no gas or water, and the open fireplace was depended upon for heat.

In New England the dwelling-houses were placed near the ground; the chimneys built in an interior cross wall, the kitchen, with its accessories, as near to the dining-room as possible; the ceilings were low, with cornices sometimes of plaster, sometimes of wood. The roof,—which was often hipped and often of the gambrel shape, but rarely a gable of even slope,—was always covered with shingles, which covering was occasionally used also on the exterior walls.

In the South, some of the characteristics were the high basement, broad piazzas, frequently at the level of the second as well as the first story, and placed on the south and west sides; the chimney on outside walls; the kitchen in a separate building, detached from the dwelling; a broad hall through the centre, giving access to large rooms with high ceilings; the roof quite as frequently hipped as gabled, and often—in either case—a huge fanlight set in a low gable on the front for ventilation of the attic; dormers were seldom used, as the attic was not inhabited; the gambrel roof was uncommon; slate, and occasionally tile or shingle, was used for roof covering.

Our first public buildings of any importance, and which show the influence of contemporary work in England, were the White House, designed by Hoban in 1792; the Capitol, begun by Dr. Thornton in 1793 and completed by B. H. Latrobe in 1830; the wings, containing the present Senate and House of Representatives, were added later; the dome, designed by Thomas U. Walter, was begun in 1858, but not completed until 1873.

Our early Presidents took much interest in architecture, Washington directing and criticising the planning of the Capitol and building his own home at Mount Vernon, and Jefferson designing the dome and colonnades of the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, and his own home at Monticello.

Massachusetts was the first State to erect its capitol,—the State House in Boston, by Bulfinch, dating from 1795.

The City Hall of New York was our first work of unmistakable French character, and shows the influence of the time of Louis XVI. It was designed by Mangin, a Frenchman, begun in 1803, and completed in 1812.

After the war of 1812, many state and national buildings were erected; from that time colonnades and domes seem indispensable to the proper dignity of the capitol or court house. The use of both brick and stone became more general, and, for private houses, the form of the gambrel roof gradually disappeared in favor of the hip and gable. Subsequent to 1830, the accepted type of the larger or more pretentious house was the Italian villa, with a square tower accentuating the front entrance, often one story higher than the main building; all roofs of low pitch, covered with tin; the exterior walls faced with stucco. About this time bay windows and sliding doors for principal rooms of first story, and better facilities for the use of heat, light, and water were introduced and the symmetrical disposition of parts often neglected.

The very steep pointed Gothic roof denoted the modest cottage, and the perforated wooden tracery of windows and porches, or the barge-boards of gables, became the simple beginning of that riotous growth of jig-sawed fretwork afterwards so prominent upon those houses constructed with Mansard or French roofs of rectilinear, concave, or convex form. The works and writings of Downing had much influence at this time, and it was shown not only in these Italian villas or Gothic cottages, but also in landscape gardening about suburban residences.

The political disturbances in various countries of Europe in 1848 brought very many immigrants to our shores, and the discovery of gold in California, in 1849, was the beginning of that steady flow of settlers which has since then peopled so many of our Western States and Territories.

[Illustration: LIBRARY BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.

(Thos. Jefferson, Designer.)]

Then followed our own Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, and subsequent to that the period of reconstruction, during which time there was some building, but very little architecture, throughout the country.

In 1869 the Pacific Railroad was completed, and this not only gave a new impetus to Western mining and farming, but created a new market for Eastern manufactures.

So great was this manufacturing and commercial activity that vast fortunes were made, and there were many opportunities calling for the services of architects; but as they had hitherto been rarely employed, except in a few of the larger cities, upon churches or public buildings, a great proportion of them were untrained amateurs or self-taught carpenters and masons. However, the first school of architecture had just been organized at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Boston, and to William E. Ware,—who was its professor of architecture from 1866, and who organized a similar school at Columbia College, New York, in 1880,—the profession and the public owe more than to any other one man for well-directed efforts towards the development of such, qualifications as may eventually give a national character to our architecture. These schools came none too soon, and within the past twenty-five years many others have been founded and many traveling scholarships endowed; collections of books, photographs, and casts have been provided in various cities; architectural periodicals published, and architectural societies and sketch clubs formed, each of which has contributed to the higher education of the profession and to the greater appreciation by the public.

Prior to this time, each section and each city had certain peculiarities of architecture, as of speech, which were unmistakable. The white New England meeting-house, the red school-house, the country house with its kitchen, wash-room, and wood-shed trailing in the rear, or the swell-front city house, were as characteristic as the endless blocks of brown stone, high stoop houses of New York, or the monotonous rows of red brick dwellings with white marble trimmings of Philadelphia, or the broad verandas and halls of the Southern home.

Cast-iron was the recognized material for the front of business buildings, the designs being chiefly in the Corinthian or composite orders, and the arch or lintel used indiscriminately; and when the dry goods store of A. T. Stewart & Co. was built, in 1872, to occupy the whole block from Broadway to Fourth Avenue, and from Ninth to Tenth Streets, it was the largest and most important of its kind. Before this class of commercial architecture disappeared, a front was designed by R. M. Hunt, about 1878, for a store on Broadway, near Broome Street, where the plastic forms of the tile and stucco of Saracenic architecture were used as being more logical for this material than an imitation of Roman forms in stone.

There were not many summer resorts, and a few weeks at Saratoga, Newport, or the Virginia Springs was the limit of the annual vacation; the orthodox hotel was a rectangular frame building, with veranda on one or more sides, covered by a flat roof supported by square piers having the height of several stories; the length, width, and height of the building were governed by no other proportion than that of the number of guests.

In the South and West there were virtually no hotels, and the belated traveler applied for food and shelter for himself and his horse to the nearest friendly farm.

These were the prevailing conditions when the _nouveau riche_ appeared upon the scene; to him as citizen prosperity meant a better home, to the congregation a larger church, to the community a new city hall or court house, to the State a more expensive capitol.

While these buildings were being everywhere erected, in accordance with the time honored fashions of construction and with elaborate finish, the disastrous conflagrations of 1871 in Chicago, and of 1872 in Boston, called general attention to the necessity for more permanent building; and the precautions now taken against similar occurrences were the beginning of efforts toward methods of fireproof construction. Granite, marble, and limestone were discarded in favor of sandstone, brick, and terra cotta; iron beams carrying brick or concrete (subsequently hollow terra cotta) arches were introduced, and metal laths were substituted for the wooden strips to a certain degree; but as these fires were mainly in the business districts, such reforms have been confined almost exclusively to commercial architecture.

[Illustration: TRINITY CHURCH, NEW YORK.]

In 1873 the financial panic gave a check to many building operations, but it was of comparatively short duration, for in 1876 all the other nations of the earth were invited to unite with us at Philadelphia in celebrating the centennial anniversary of our independence.

This was our first international Exposition, and it was not remarkable that in our eagerness to learn, and in the enthusiasm of prosperity, we sought inspiration from all those peoples who had brought their goods for our inspection. At once we began to build Queen Anne cottages or to remodel existing houses with many bays and towers, rooms set at all angles, floors at different levels, walls of many materials, and roofs of varying slopes, as well as to apply many tints and shades of color within and without.

The summer hotel and summer cottage began to appear at the seashore, in the mountains, and along the shores of the great lakes, and the winter resorts of the Carolinas, Florida, and California to attract the seekers for health and pleasure.

The interior decoration of our houses was the chief lesson of 1876, and having once seen the European and Oriental hangings, draperies, rugs, and bric-à-brac, we set about furnishing our rooms with them.

Hitherto American architecture had been most influenced by English precedent, and the Victorian Gothic had able advocates, especially in Boston, where the Art Museum by Sturgis & Brigham, as well as many stores, residences, and churches by Cummings & Sears, Peabody & Stearns, and others, showed much vigor and originality. William A. Potter, as supervising architect for the Government, adopted this style, in 1875, for his buildings at Fall River, Mass., Nashville, Tenn., and Covington, Ky., and R. M. Upjohn designed for Hartford, Conn., the only Gothic State Capitol in this country.

R. M. Upjohn and Henry M. Congdon of New York had already done much Gothic ecclesiastical work and, with the possible exception of Grace Church in 1840, and St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in 1886 by Renwick, there is no example of this style which shows such appreciation of proportion or of form, in mass and in detail, as Trinity Church (1843) by the first-named architect.

It was perhaps rather fortunate that just as the Queen Anne fashion, with its multiplicity of detail, was brought to us from England, H. H. Richardson, of Boston, called our attention to the bigness and (almost brutal) simplicity of the Romanesque from Southern France. From the date of the building of Trinity Church, in Boston (1876), may be reckoned the parting of the ways. Heretofore everything we had done of any importance had an English stamp upon it; henceforth the work that was done showed the result of training of the Parisian _atelier_ or of the well-filled sketch books of Continental travel.

Not only in this church, but in his libraries at Woburn, North Easton, Quincy, Milford, Burlington, and New Orleans, did Richardson show his grasp of the subject. Trinity is unmistakably a Christian temple, and its bigness most conducive to the sense of awe and reverence. His libraries leave no doubt as to their having been built for the storing and reading of books; his stone buildings, whether the Court House and jail in Pittsburg, the Chamber of Commerce in Cincinnati, or private houses in Buffalo or Chicago, show their purpose and emphasize their material; his brick buildings, whether a college building at Cambridge, railway station at New London, or residence at Washington, tell their story in brick; and his country houses about the suburbs of Boston, to be what they are, could not have been other than of wood.

His influence upon the architecture of the day was therefore not surprising, but there was a subtleness in the character of his designs that his imitators could never acquire and even his immediate successors could not long retain after his personality was lost to them; and from the lack partly, perhaps, of true sympathy, partly from the modification of conditions, his art may be said to have died with him.

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE’S HALL, PHILADELPHIA.]

As R. M. Hunt had the last word on the cast-iron front, so he had the first on the modern sky-scraper, a peculiarly American production; the walls of the Tribune Building, however, carry both their own weight, and that of the floors, being built before the days of the methods of steel skeleton construction. Hunt was trained in Paris, as was Richardson, and had assisted in the design of the Pavillon de Flore under Lefnel, and he showed his appreciation of the Neo-Grec movement in his design for the Lenox Library. It is somewhat unusual for an artist to do his best work in his latest years, but surely no better work of its kind has been done in modern times than the residences which he designed for three members of the Vanderbilt family at Newport, in New York city, and at Biltmore, N. C. The design which he left for the Fifth Avenue front of the Metropolitan Museum, now being carried out by his son, is a magnificent Corinthian order, whereas much of his other work is late French Gothic.

That he was called upon to design the base for Bartholdi’s Liberty in New York Harbor, and the Administration Building at the International Exposition of 1893, and that a portrait bust has been erected to his memory, all testify to the appreciation in which he was held by the profession.