American Architecture and Other Writings: Volume II American Architecture and Other Writings, Volume II [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674368774, 9780674368767

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THE JOHN HARVARD LIBRARY Howard Mumford Jones Editor-in-Chief

American Architecture and Other

Writings

by

MONTGOMERY

SCHUYLER

Edited by William H. Jordy and Ralph Coe

IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge,

Massachusetts 1961

© IQ6I by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved

Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number

61-13743

Printed in the United States of America

Contents Vol. II IV

BRIDGES: RATIONALISTIC ENGINEERING The Brooklyn Bridge as a Monument "Monumental Engineering" Art in Modern Bridges New York Bridges

V

SKYSCRAPERS: RATIONALISTIC ARCHITECTURE Architecture in Chicago: Adler & Sullivan D. H. Burnham & Co. The Evolution of the Skyscraper The Skyscraper Up-To-Date The Skyscraper Problem

VI

331 345 351 372

377 405 419 437 442

THE BEAUX ARTS REACTION Concerning Queen Anne The Vanderbilt Houses The Works of the Late Riehard M. Hunt Last Words About the World's Fair Schools of Architecture and the Paris School A Long-Felt Want Architecture Made Easy A Modern Classic

453 488 502 556 575 579 583 588

CONTENTS

vi

The New St. Thomas' Church, New York The Woolworth Building

VII

598 605

LATE SULLIVAN AND EARLY WRIGHT The People's Savings Bank of Cedar Rapids, Iowa — Louis H. Sullivan, Architect An Architectural Pioneer: Review of the Portfolios Containing the Works of Frank Lloyd Wright

625 634

BIBLIOGRAPHY

641

INDEX

655

Illustrations Vol. II 89. John and Washington Roebling. Brooklyn Bridge from the Brooklyn side of the East River, 1867-1873. Ibid.

333

90. Diagram of the saddle plates, Brooklyn Bridge. Ibid.

336

91. Diagram of the anchorages, Brooklyn Bridge. Ibid.

340

92. Louis Jean Resal. Mirabeau Bridge over the Seine, Auteuil (Seine et Oise), France, completed 1895. Photograph by H. Roger-Viollet.

347

93.· Resal and Alby. Alexander I I I Bridge over the Seine, Paris, 1896-1900. Photograph by H. Roger-Viollet.

347

94. A straight truss bridge. From Century Magazine, 60 (May 1900), 12.

353

95. T h e "caterpillar Mass. Ibid.

354

bridges"

over

the Charles,

Cambridge,

96. William R . Hutton, engineer; Edward H. Kendall, architect. Washington Bridge over the Harlem, New York City, 18861888. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York.

357

97. Gustav Lindenthal. Project for the North (or Hudson) River Suspension Bridge compared to the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, first plans c. 1887. From Century Magazine, 60 (May 1900), 24.

362

98. Tower for the North River Suspension Bridge. Ibid., p. 17.

363

99. Theodore Cooper, engineer. A bowstring girder (Sixth Street Bridge) over the Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1891-1892. Ibid., p. 21.

364

ILLUSTRATIONS

viii

100. A double-bowstring, or lenticular truss, bridge over the Isar in Bavaria. Ibid., p. 19.

365

101. Albert Fink, engineer. A "Fink truss" over the Ohio for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Louisville, Ky., 1868-1870. Ibid., p. 19.

365

102. Sir Horace Jones and Sir John Wolfe Barry. Tower Bridge over the Thames, London, open 1894. Ibid., p. 20.

368

103. Theodore Cooper, engineer; J . J . R . Cross, engineer of masonry. Bridge for the elevated over the Harlem at Second Ave., New York City, 1883-1886. Courtesy New York City Transit Authority.

373

104. Louis Sullivan. Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Mo., 18901891. Photograph by John Szarkowski.

391

105. Louis Sullivan. Guaranty Building, Buffalo, N.Y., 1894-1895. Photograph by John Szarkowski.

395

106. Louis Sullivan. Carson, Pirie, Scott (originally Schlesinger, Mayer) Department Store, Chicago, 1899-1904. Photograph by Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.

403

107. Burnham & Root, with later extension and redesign by Charles B. Atwood for D. H. Burnham & Co. Reliance Building, Chicago, 1890-1895. Photograph by Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.

413

108. Bradford Lee Gilbert. Tower Building, New York City, 18881889. From Scribner's Magazine, 46 (Sept. 1909), 258.

419

109. Richard Morris Hunt. Tribune Building after remodelling by additional stories, New York City, 1873-1876. Ibid., p. 259.

422

n o . George B. Post. Western Union Building after remodelling by additional stories, New York City, 1873. Ibid., p. 261.

423

H I . Burnham & Root. Monadnock Building, Chicago, 1889-1891. Ibid., p. 260.

426

112. Ernest Flagg. Singer Tower, New York City, 1906-1908. Ibid., p. 269.

113. Le Brun & Sons. Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, New York City, 1890-1894/ tower and wings 1905-1909. Ibid., p. 270.

426

429

114. Louis Sullivan. Bayard Building, New York City, 1897-1898. Ibid., p. 264.

430

ILLUSTRATIONS

ix

115. Ernest Flagg. Small Singer Building, 561 Broadway, New York City, 1902-1904. Ibid., p. 268.

430

116. Cyrus L . W . Eidlitz. New York Times Building, New York City, 1902-1904. Ibid., p. 267.

432

117. Ernest Flagg. West Street Building, New York City, completed 1905. Ibid., p. 265.

433

118. George B. Post. Union Trust Building, New York City, 18891890. Ibid., p. 262.

435

119. Bracket for a sign on George B. Post's Mills Building, New York City, 1881-1883. From American Architecture.

453

120. R . H. Robertson. Doorway, Fifth Ave. below 75th St., New York City. Ibid.

460

121. Charles C. Haight. Oriel of a house on 55th St., New York City. Ibid.

463

122. G. E. Harney; M c K i m , Mead & White. Doorways on Madison Ave., New York City. Ibid.

464

123. Bruce Price. House on 56th St., New York City. Ibid.

467

124. Richard Morris Hunt. Marquand house on Madison Ave., New York City, 1881. Ibid.

467

125. Doorway at Fifth A v e . and 67th St., New York City. Ibid.

474

126. Charles C. Haight. Library of the old campus, Columbia University, New York City, 1884. Ibid.

476

127. Calvert V a u x . Detail from Governor Tilden's house, New York City, 1872-1874. Ibid.

477

128. Richard Morris Hunt. Guernsey Building, New York City, 1881-1882. Ibid.

480

129. Peabody & Stearns. United Bank Building, New York City, 1880-1881. Ibid.

483

130. George B. Post. Post Building, New York City, 1880-1881. Ibid.

483

131. George B. Post. Gateway, Mills Building, New York City, 1881-1883. Ibid.

486

132. Richard Morris Hunt. William Kissam Vanderbilt house, New York City, 1879-1881. Ibid.

489

133. Oriel, William Kissam Vanderbilt house. Ibid.

491

χ

ILLUSTRATIONS

134· George Β. Post. Cornelius Vanderbilt II house, New York City, 1880-1894. Ibid. 135. Rear of the roof, Cornelius Vanderbilt IT house. Ibid.

.494 496

136. Herter Brothers. William Henry Vanderbilt house, New York City, 1880-1884. Mid.

497

137. Recessed balcony, William H. Vanderbilt house. Ibid.

498

138. Post and railing, William H. Vanderbilt house. Ibid.

500

139. Richard Morris Museum Hunt. Ε.ofKthe . Rossiter New York City, 1855. Courtesy City of house, New York.

506

140. Richard Morris Hunt. Tenth Street Studio Building, New York City, 1857. Photograph by Underhill.

508

141. Richard Morris Hunt. Presbyterian Hospital, New York City, completed 1872. Courtesy Museum of the City of New York.

511

142. Richard Morris Hunt. Cast-iron fronts on Broadway: Tweedy & Co. and Hammerslough Brothers, New York City, 18711872/ 1873-1874. Courtesy Winston Weisman.

518

143. Richard Morris Hunt. Stuyvesant Apartments, New Y o r k City, 1869-1870. Floor Plan. Courtesy Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress.

519

144. Richard Morris Hunt. T . G. Appleton house, Newport, R.I., 1870 or 1875-1876. Photograph by William H. Jordy.

521

145. Richard Morris Hunt. Lenox Library, New York City, 18701875. Courtesy Byron Collection, Museum of the City of New York.

523

146. Richard Morris Hunt. Scroll and K e y Society, Y a l e University, New Haven, Conn., 1869-1870. Courtesy Y a l e University Library.

525

147. Richard Morris Hunt. August Belmont T o m b , Island Cemetery, Newport, R.I., c. 1890 (the year of Belmont's death). Photograph by William H. Jordy.

527

148. Richard Morris Hunt. Professor Charles W . Shields house, Newport, R.I., 1881 or 1883. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

537

149. Richard Morris Hunt. Joseph R . Busk house, Newport, R.I., 1891. Clarence Stanhope Collection, courtesy William K i n g Covell.

537

xi

ILLUSTRATIONS 150. R i c h a r d Morris Hunt. Elbridge T . Gerry house, N e w Y o r k City, 1891. Courtesy Byron Collection, M u s e u m of the City of New York.

539

151. R i c h a r d Morris Hunt. Entrance front, " O c h r e C o u r t , " built for O g d e n Goelet, Newport, R . I . , 1885-1889. Photograph by W a y n e Andrews.

542

152. R i c h a r d Morris Hunt. " B i l t m o r e , " built for George Washington Vanderbilt, near Asheville, N . C . , 1890-1895. Photograph by W a y n e Andrews.

543

153. R i c h a r d Morris Hunt. " M a r b l e House," built for W i l l i a m Kissam Vanderbilt, Newport, R . I . , 1892-1895. Photograph by W a y n e Andrews.

548

154. Court of Honor looking toward Richard Morris Hunt's A d ministration Building, World's C o l u m b i a n Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Courtesy Burnham Library, A r t Institute of Chicago.

558

155. Plan of the World's Columbian Exposition. From Shepp's World's Fair Photographed (Chicago, 1893).

559

156. M c K i m , M e a d & White. Knickerbocker Trust Co., N e w Y o r k City, 1902-1904. Photograph by Wurts Brothers, courtesy of the architect.

590

157. Banking room, Knickerbocker Trust Co. From Monograph of the Work of McKim, Mead and White, 3, pi. 2 1 1 .

591

158. Basilica of the Giants at Agrigentum. From Eugene Violletle-Duc, Discourses on Architecture, 1, lecture 6, fig. 8.

593

159. Paul-Rene-Leon Ginain, buildings for the Faculty de M e d e cine, Paris, completed c. 1900. F r o m Η. H . Statham, Modern Architecture (London and N e w Y o r k , 1898), p. 157.

594

160. M c K i m , M e a d & White. C u l l u m (Memorial) Point, N . Y . , 1895-1898. Courtesy of the architect.

595

Hall, West

161. C r a m , Goodhue & Ferguson. St. T h o m a s ' C h u r c h , N e w Y o r k C i t y ; 1910-1913. Photograph by A . F. Sozio, courtesy St. Thomas' Church.

599

162. Cass Gilbert. Woolworth Building, N e w Y o r k City, 1913. Courtesy M u s e u m of the C i t y of N e w Y o r k .

607

1911—

163. Bruce Price. A m e r i c a n Surety Building, N e w Y o r k City, 1894-1896. From Η . H . Statham, Modern Architecture, p. 264.

612

xii

ILLUSTRATIONS

164. Louis Sullivan. People's Savings Bank, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1911. Photograph by Richard Nickel. 165. Banking Room, People's Savings Bank. 166. Frank Lloyd Wright. Perspective and plan of the Arthur Heurtley house, Oak Park, 111., 1902; from the Wasmuth portfolio of 1910. From Architectural Record, 31 (Apr. 1912), 428.

AMERICAN

ARCHITECTURE

and Other Writings by MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER

Bridges: Rationalistic Engineering

The Brooklyn Bridge as a Monument1 The total length of the bridge is 5989 feet, of which the central span between the towers is 1595 feet 6 inches, the "land spans" from the towers to the anchorages each 930 feet, the approach on the New York side 1562 feet 6 inches, and on the steeper Brooklyn side 971 feet. These dimensions do not make this the longest bridge in the world. But when it was built there was no single span which approached the central span over the East River; and though it has since been exceeded by two spans of the Forth Bridge, in Scotland (1710 feet each, sustained by cantilevers),2 it remains by far the largest example of a chain-bridge. It is half as long again as Roebling's Cincinnati Bridge (1057 feet between towers), and nearly twice as long as the same engineer's Niagara Bridge (821 feet). The span of the ill-fated bridge over the Ohio at Wheeling, which was built in 1848, and blown down in 1854, was 1010 feet.3 Noteworthy suspension-bridges in Europe are Telford's, over the Menai Straits (589 feet), finished in 1825; Chaley's bridge, at Fribourg (870 feet), finished in 1834; and Tierney Clark's bridge over the Danube at Pesth (670 feet), finished in 1849.4 The longest 1 Originally published as " T h e Bridge as a M o n u m e n t , " Harper's Weekly, 27 ( M a y 26, 1 8 8 3 ) , 3 2 6 . Reprinted in American Architecture, pp. 6 9 - 8 5 . Reproduced in full with all the original line cuts; see also F i g . 8. Cut of Griffith's suspension bridge (Fig. 70) shifted from its original position in this article. 2 See above, p. 1 1 6 η and Fig. 1 4 . 3 Cincinnati Suspension Bridge over the Ohio ( 1 8 5 6 - 1 8 6 7 , with a delay from 1 8 5 7 - 1 8 6 3 ; extant) and N i a g a r a Suspension Bridge ( 1 8 5 1 - 1 8 5 5 ; demolished), both by J o h n Augustus Roebling ( 1 8 0 6 - 1 8 6 9 ) . O n these and other American bridges, see Carl Condit, American Building Art: The Nineteenth Century (New York, i960), and Paul Zucker, American Bridges and Dams (New York, 1 9 4 1 ) , both with ills. 4 Suspension Bridge over M e n a i Strait ( 1 8 1 9 - 1 8 2 4 ; extant) by T h o m a s Telford (1757— 1 8 3 4 ) . Old Suspension Bridge, Fribourg, Switzerland, over the Sadne, ( 1 8 3 0 - 1 8 3 5 ; replaced 1 9 2 2 ) b y Chaley (c. 1 8 0 0 - c . 1 8 7 0 ) . It was the longest span in Europe of any type until close to the end of the century. O l d Chain Suspension Bridge at Pesth (i.e., Budapest) over the

332

AMERICAN

ARCHITECTURE

spans bridged otherwise than by a roadway hung from cables are the central spans of Stephenson's Britannia (box girder) Bridge (459 feet), of Eads's St. Louis Bridge, of steel arches (520 feet), and of the beautiful Washington Bridge, of steel arches, at New York (510 feet).5 The largest span of an arch of masonry known to have been built in a bridge (251 feet) was in that built in the fourteenth century, and destroyed by Carmagnola in the fifteenth, which crossed the Adda at Trezzo. The largest now standing (220 feet) is an American work, the arch designed and built by General Meigs to carry the Washington Aqueduct over Cabin John Creek. The second is that of the Grosvenor Bridge at Chester (200 feet), and the third the central arch of London Bridge (152 feet).6 The Brooklyn Bridge is thus one of the mechanical wonders of the world, one of the greatest and most characteristic of the monuments of the nineteenth century [Figs. 8, 89]. Its towers, at least, bid fair to outlast every structure of which they command a view. Everybody recalls Macaulay's prophecy of the time "when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand upon a broken arch of London Bridge, to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." 7 But when our New-Zealander takes his stand above the saddles that are now ridden by the cables of the bridge, to look over the site of a forsaken city, there will be no ruins of churches—at least, of churches Danube, ( 1 8 3 9 - 1 8 4 9 ; rebuilt 1 9 1 4 except for towers and anchorages) by William Tierney Clarke ( 1 7 8 3 - 1 8 5 2 ) and completed by his brother, A d a m Clarke. For bibliography and ills, of most of these bridges, see Eric de Mare, The Bridges of Britain (London, 1 9 5 4 ) ; Charles S . Whitney, Bridges, A Study of Their Art, Science and Evolution (New York, 1 9 2 9 ) ; Elizabeth Mock, The Architecture of Bridges (New York, 1 9 5 0 ) ; Henry Grattan Tyrrell, Artistic Bridge Design (Chicago, 1 9 1 2 ) . O n suspension bridges, see the especially helpful chronological bibliography by A . A . J a k k u l a , " A History of Suspension Bridges in Bibliographical F o r m , " Bulletin of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, Engineering Experiment Series, No. 7 5 (College Station, Texas, 1 9 4 1 ) . 5 Britannia Bridge over Menai Strait ( 1 8 4 5 - 1 8 5 0 ; extant) by Robert Stephenson ( 1 8 0 3 1 8 5 9 ) . St. Louis Bridge over the Mississippi ( 1 8 6 8 - 1 8 7 4 ; extant) by J a m e s E a d s ( 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 8 7 ) . Washington Bridge over the Harlem at 181st St. linking Manhattan to the Bronx ( 1 8 8 6 1 8 8 8 ; extant) by William R . Hutton ( 1 8 2 6 - 1 9 0 1 ) , engineer, and E d w a r d H . Kendall ( 1 8 4 2 - 1 9 0 1 ) , architect, with William J . M c A l p i n e and Theodore Cooper, consulting engineers. O n the last, see Hutton's The Washington Bridge over the Harlem at 181st St., New Tork. A Description of Its Construction (New York, 1889). 6 Trezzo Bridge over the A d d a ( 1 3 7 7 ) . Washington Aqueduct over Cabin J o h n Creek, Washington, D . C . , ( 1 8 5 7 - 1 8 6 4 ; extant) by General Montgomery C . Meigs ( 1 8 1 6 - 1 8 9 2 ) . Grosvenor Bridge at Chester (England) over the Dee ( 1 8 2 7 - 1 8 3 3 ; extant) by Thomas Harrison ( 1 7 4 4 - 1 8 2 9 ) and J a m e s Trubshaw. L o n d o n Bridge ( 1 8 2 1 - 1 8 3 0 ; extant) by J o h n Rennie ( 1 7 6 1 - 1 8 2 1 ) with his sons George ( 1 7 9 1 - 1 8 6 6 ) and Sir J o h n Rennie, J r . ( 1 7 9 4 - 1 8 7 4 ) . 7

Macaulay, Collected Essays, " R a n k e ' s 'History of the Popes.' "

334

AMERICAN

ARCHITECTURE

now in being—for him to sketch or see. The web of woven steel that now hangs between the stark masses of the towers may have disappeared, its slender filaments rusted into nothingness under the slow corrosion of the centuries. Its builders and the generation for which they wrought may have been as long forgotten as are now the builders of the Pyramids, whereof the traveller, "as he paceth amazedly those deserts," asks the Historic Muse "who builded them; and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not." It is not unimaginable that our future archaeologist, looking from one of these towers upon the solitude of a mastless river and a dispeopled land, may have no other means of reconstructing our civilization than that which is furnished him by the tower on which he stands. What will his judgment of us be? This, or something like this, ought to be a question with every man who builds a structure which is meant to outlast him, whether it be a temple of religion or a work of bare utility like this. It so happens that the work which is likely to be our most durable monument, and to convey some knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not a palace, but a bridge. This is in itself characteristic of our time. It is true of no other people since the Romans, and of none before. Like the Roman remains, the duration of this work of ours will show that we knew how to build. " A Roman work," we often hear it said of the bridge, and it is in many ways true. It is far beyond any Roman monument in refinement of mechanical skill. It is Roman in its massiveness and durability. It is Roman, too, in its disregard of art, in resting satisfied with the practical solution of the great problem of its builders, without a sign of that skill which would have explained and emphasized the process of construction at every step, and everywhere, in whole and in part, made the structure tell of the work it was doing. There have been periods in history when this aesthetic purpose would have seemed to the builder of such a monument as much a matter of course, as necessary a part of his work, as the practical purpose which animated the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge. It would have seemed so to the engineer of a bridge in Athens in the second century before our era, or to the engineer of a bridge in Western Europe in the thirteenth century of our era. The utilitarian treatment of our monument is as striking and as characteristic a mark of the period as its utilitarian purpose. It is a noble work of engineering; it is not a work of architecture.

T H E B R O O K L Y N B R I D G E AS A M O N U M E N T

335

The most strictly scientific of constructors would scarcely take the ground that he did not care how his work looked, when his work was so conspicuous and so durable as the Brooklyn Bridge, and he must be aware that a training in scientific construction alone will not secure an architectural result. It is more probable that he looks upon the current architectural devices as frivolous and irrelevant to the work upon which he is engaged, and consoles himself for his ignorance of them by contempt. Architecture is to him the unintelligent use of building material. Assuredly this view is borne out by a majority of the "architecturesque" buildings that he sees, and he does not lack express authority for it. Whereas the engineer's definition of good masonry is "the least material to perform a certain duty," Mr. Fergusson declares that "an architect ought always to allow himself such a margin of strength that he may disregard or play with his construction;" 8 and Mr. Ruskin defines architecture to be the addition to a building of unnecessary features. 9 An engineer has, therefore, some warrant for considering that he is sacrificing to the graces and doing all that can reasonably be expected of him to produce an architectural monument, if in designing the piers of a chain-bridge he employs an unnecessary amount of material and adds unnecessary features. But if we go back to the time when engineers were artists, and study what a modern scientific writer has described as "that paragon of constructive skill, a Pointed cathedral," 10 we shall find that the architecture and the construction cannot be disjoined. The work of the mediaeval builder in his capacity of artist was to expound, emphasize, and refine upon the work he did in his capacity of constructor, and to develop and heighten its inherent effect. And it is of this kind of skill that the work of the modern engineer, in so far as he is only an engineer, shows no trace. Reduced to its simplest expression, and as it has actually been used for unknown periods in Asia and in South America, a suspensionbridge consists of two parallel ropes swung from side to side of a ravine ; and carrying the platform over which the passenger walks. As the span increases, so that the dip makes the ropes impracticable, the land ends of the ropes are hoisted some distance above the roadway Fergusson, History of Architecture, 2nd ed., ι, 22. Seven Lamps of Architecture, section 1. 10 Reference unlocated. 8 9

336

AMERICAN

ARCHITECTURE

which they carry. If nothing can be found there strong enough to hold them, they are simply passed over, say, forked trees, and the ends made fast to other trees or held down with stones. This is the essential construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. The ropes become four cables sixteen inches thick, of 5541 steel wires; the forked tree becomes a tower 276 feet high, and 8260 square feet in area at the base; the bowlder to hold down the end of the rope becomes a mass of masonry of 60,000 tons' weight; the shaky platform becomes a great street, 85 feet wide, of five firm roadways. But the man who first carried his rope over the forked tree was the inventor of the arrangement which, developed through all the refinements of modern mechanics, forms the groundwork of the Brooklyn Bridge. This statement of the germinal idea of a chain-bridge will, perhaps, give a clearer notion of the functions of the several parts of the Brooklyn Bridge than a consideration of the complicated structure in its ultimate evolution, in which these functions are partly lost sight of. But if the structure had been architecturally designed, these things would have been emphasized at every point and in every way. The function of the great "towers," so called, being merely to hold up the cables, it is plain that three isolated piers would have performed that function, and the stability of these piers, loaded as they are by the cables, would very possibly have been assured, even if they had been completely detached from each other. But in order at once to stiffen and to load them, so as to make the area of resistance to the force of the wind equal to the whole area of the towers, the openings through which the roadways run are closed above by steep pointed arches, and the spandrels of these filled with a wall which rises to the summit of the piers, where a flat coping covers the whole. There is a woful lack of expression in this arrangement. The piers should assert themselves starkly and unmistakably as the bones of the structure, and the wall above the arches be subordinated to a mere filling. It should be distinctly withdrawn from the face of the piers instead of being, as in fact it is, only distinguished from them by their shallow and ineffectual projections. It should be distinctly dropped below their summits instead of rising to the same height, and being included under a common cornice. T o see what a difference in effect this very obvious differentiation of parts would have made, glance at the sketch of a suspension-bridge at Minneapolis [Fig. 70]. This is not, upon the

THE BROOKLYN

BRIDGE AS A MONUMENT

337

whole, a laudable design, and it contains several survivals of conventional architectural forms meaningless in their present place. But the mere subduing of the archway to a strut between the piers explains—not forcibly, perhaps, nor elegantly, but unmistakably— the main purpose of the structure, and the functional relation of its parts. A drawing of one of the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge without its cables would tell the spectator nothing; the structure itself will tell our New-Zealander nothing of its uses. With its flat top and its level coping, indicating that the whole was meant to be evenly loaded, it would seem to be the base of a missing superstructure rather than what it is. The flatness of the top alone conceals instead of expressing the structure. It is of the first practical necessity that the great cables should move freely in their saddles, so as always to keep the pressure upon the piers directly vertical, and very ingenious appliances have been employed to attain this end, and to avoid chafing the cables. But the design of the piers themselves tells us absolutely nothing of all this. The cable simply disappears on one side and reappears on the other, as if it were two separate cables, one on each side, instead of one continuous chain. Look at this section of the top of the tower, and see how an exquisite refinement of mechanical arrangement may coexist

338

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with absolute insensibility to the desirableness even of an architectural expression of this arrangement [Figs. 8, 90]. The architecture of this crowning member of the tower has nothing whatever to do with the purpose for which the structure exists. Is it not perfectly evident that an architectural expression of this mechanical arrangement would require that the line of the summit, instead of this meaningless flat coping, should, to begin with, be a crest of roof, its double slope following the line of the cable which it shelters? Here the very channel through which the cable runs is not designed, but is a mere hole occurring casually, and not by premeditation, in the midst of the mouldings which form the cornice of the tower. This is architectural barbarism. Other opportunities offered for architectural expression in the towers themselves were in the treatment of the buttresses, in the treatment of the balconies which girdle the tower at the height of the roadway, and in the modelling of the arches. The girth of each of the towers at the water-line is 398 feet. At the roof-course it is 378 feet. The reduction is effected by means of five or six offsets, which withdraw each face of the tower four feet between the bottom and the top, and each end six feet. The counter-forts, eight in all, on the sides of the outer piers and on the faces of all the piers, are mere applied strips, very shallow in proportion to their width, and terminating in the capitallike projections which are casually pierced to receive the cables. It may make, perhaps, no serious difference in the mechanical efficiency of these counter-forts whether their area be narrow and deep or broad and shallow. But an increase of depth in proportion to width would of itself, with its higher lights and sharper shadows, have made forcible masses of what are now ineffectual features. This inherent effect would be very greatly enhanced if the offsets themselves were accentuated by sharp and decisive modelling. As it is, emphasis seems to have been studiously avoided. The offsets are merely long batterings of the wall, which do nothing to separate the piers into related parts with definite transitions, and so to refine the crudity of the masses. To see the difference between a mechanical and a monumental conception of a great structure, compare these towers with the front of Amiens, or of Strasburg, or of Notre Dame of Paris. Of course the designer of a modern bridge must not attempt to reproduce in his work "those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower." That would

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be a more fatal fault than the rudeness and crudeness with which we have to charge the design of the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. The ornament of the cathedrals, so far as it is separable from the structure, has nothing for the designer of the bridge even of suggestion. But to see how masses may be modelled so as to be made to speak, look at the modelled masses of the tower of Amiens, the stark lines of essential structure framing the screen of wall between them, in contrast with the uniform deadness here of buttress and curtain wall; the crisp emphasis of lines of light and hollows of black shade which mark the transitions between parts of structure in the west front of Rheims, in contrast with the lack of emphasis in the offsets of the bridge tower; the spirit of the gargoyled balconies that belt the towers of Notre Dame, and the spiritlessness of the parapeted balconies that encircle the tower of the bridge. And note, too (we are not now speaking of the decoration of the cathedrals), that all this transcendent superiority arises merely from a development and emphasis of the inherent expression of the masses themselves, which in the bridge are left so crude, and in the cathedral towers are refined so far. It need not, and indeed should not, have been carried so far in this architecture of reason and utility as in the architecture of a poetical religion. The mere rudiments of those works would have furnished all the expression that is necessary or desirable here. But these rudiments are wanting. What can we say but that the designer of the cathedral began where the designer of the bridge left off? If our New-Zealander should extend his travels, and come upon these monuments also, what would be his surprise at finding documentary proof that the bridge was built six hundred years after the cathedrals, and that the generation which built the bridge looked backward and downward upon the generation which built the cathedrals as rude and barbarous and unreasoning in comparison with themselves! What we have said of the towers is true also of the anchorages. The bowlder which the Peruvian rolls upon the end of his rope to hold it down is here a mass of 60,000 tons. Scientifically it is adjusted to its purpose, no doubt, with the most exact nicety. Artistically it is still but a bowlder rolled upon a rope. It would probably be impracticable to exhibit the anchor plate which takes the ultimate strain of this mile and more of cable, though we may be sure that our Greek or our Gothic bridge-builder would not have admitted its impracticability

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without as exhaustive an investigation as the modern bridge-builder has given to the mechanical aspects of his problem. But it was certainly practicable to indicate the function of the anchorage itself, to build it up in masses which should seem to hold the cable to the earth, or a double arch like—or rather unlike—the double arch of the main tower, turned between piers which should visibly answer the same purpose. Instead of either of these, or of any technical device for the same purpose, the weight above is a crude mass, so far from being adapted to its function in its form, that one has to look with some care to find it from the street below, and to distinguish it from the approaches [Fig. 91]. What we have called the balconies at the level of the roadway are not "practical" balconies, since they open from the driveways, and not from the walk, and are not accessible as points of view. The purpose of a projection at this point is to secure as great a breadth as possible for the system of wind-braces under the floor of the bridge. This purpose is attained by the projection, but is only masked by the imitations of balconies, instead of being architecturally expressed, as

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it might have been unmistakably expressed, by the bold projection of a granite spur from the angle of the pier. There are, probably, few arches in the world—certainly there can be none outside of works of modern engineering—of anything like the span, height, thickness, and conspicuousness of those in the bridge towers which are so little effective. Like the brute mass of wall above them, they are impressive only by magnitude. The great depth of the archway is only seen as a matter of mensuration, not felt as a poetical impression, as it would have been if the labors of the constructor had been supplemented by the labors of an artist; if the shallow strips of pier had become real buttresses, and the jamb and arch had been narrowed by emphatic successions of withdrawal, instead of being merely tunnelled through the mass; if the intrados of the arch itself had been accentuated by modelling, instead of being weakened by the actual recession of its voussoirs behind the plane of the wall. The approaches themselves are greatly impressive, as indeed the towers are also, by magnitude and massiveness. The street bridges are uniformly imposing by size and span, and especially attractive also by reason of the fact that through them we get what is to be got nowhere else in our rectangular city, glimpses and "bits" of buildings. The most successful of them all, and the most successful feature architecturally of all the masonry of the bridge, is the simple, massive, and low bridge of two arches which spans North William Street, in New York. The arcades between the streets are imposing by number and repetition as well as by massiveness, and by the Roman durability which marks all the work. They suffer, however, from two causes. The coping, the arches, and the piers, which are the emphatic parts of structure, are lighter in color than the unemphasized and rockfaced fields of the wall, and this is always a misfortune when it is not an error. The arches are of the form called "Florentine"—that is to say, round within and pointed without. The deepest voussoirs are thus those at the crown of the arch. This is the reverse of the disposition which would be dictated by mechanical considerations alone. Architecturally it has the drawback of interrupting at every arch the successive and diminishing wheelings which make a long arcade of great openings so impressive in a perspective view. The form seems to have been chosen on account of the facility it afforded, by lengthening the

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upper voussoirs, to conform the ridge line of the arches to the slope of the roadway, while keeping the springing line horizontal. This gradual diminution of the arches shoreward enhances the apparent length of the approach looking in that direction, but correspondingly shortens it looking towards the bridge; and it seems, upon the whole, that it would have been better to carry the arches through level, without attempting to dissemble the difference between their line and that of the roadway. There are some shabby and flimsy details of ironwork, which mar the monumental effect of the great roadway itself, while the design of the iron stations at either end is grossly illiterate, and discreditable to the great work. Imitations in cast iron of stone capitals surmount and emphatically contradict posts profusely studded with bolt-heads; and other solecisms, alike against constructional reason and architectural tradition, are rife in these unfortunate edifices, which do what they can to vulgarize the great structure to which they give access. Vulgarity certainly cannot be charged against any integral portion of the great work itself. There is nothing frivolous and nothing ostentatious even in the details which we have noted, and in which we have not been so much criticising the crowning work of a great engineer's career as noting the spirit of our age. It is scarcely fair to say, even, as was said by an architectural journal when the completion of the bridge was doubtful, that if it were left incomplete its towers would stand "in unnecessary ugliness." 11 Its defects in design are not misdeeds, but shortcomings. They are the defects of being rudimentary, of not being completely developed. The anatomy of the towers and of the anchorages is not brought out in their modelling. Their fingers, so to speak, are all thumbs. Their impressiveness is inherent in their mass, and is what it could not help being. The ugliest of great bridges is undoubtedly Stephenson's Brittania Bridge; and this is ugly, not because it is square and straight, but because it tells nothing of itself.12 It is a mere flat surface, and almost absolutely inexpressive, compared, for example, with such a piece of ironwork as the truss which carries the roadway of the bridge over Franklin Square, in which the function 11

Reference unlocated. See above, p. 3 3 2 η , for a different appraisal of the Britannia Bridge, see Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture, 1, 5 i 8 f and plates. 12

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of every joint and member is apparent. But a far nobler thing than this is the central span of the great bridge itself, its roadway slowly sweeping upward to meet the swift swoop of its cables. We have complained of the lack of expression in the towers of their anatomy, but this is anatomy only, a skeletonized structure in which, as in a scientific diagram, we see·—even the layman sees—the interplay of forces represented by an abstraction of lines. W h a t monument of any architecture can speak its story more clearly and more forcibly than this gossamer architecture, through which its purpose, like "the spider's touch"— So exquisitely fine, Feels at each thread, and lives along the line? 13 This aerial bow, as it hangs between the busy cities, "curving on a sky imbrued with color," is perfect as an organism of nature. It is an organism of nature. There was no question in the mind of its designer of "good taste" or of appearance. He learned the law that struck its curves, the law that fixed the strength and the relation of its parts, and he applied the law. His work is beautiful, as the work of a shipbuilder is unfailingly beautiful in the forms and outlines in which he is only studying " w h a t the water likes," without a thought of beauty, and as it is almost unfailingly ugly when he does what he likes for the sake of beauty. T h e designer of the Brooklyn Bridge has made a beautiful structure out of an exquisite refinement of utility, in a work in which the lines of forces constitute the structure. Where a more massive material forbade him to skeletonize the structure, and the lines of effort and resistance needed to be brought out by modelling, he has failed to bring them out, and his structure is only as impressive as it needs must be. It has not helped his work, as we have seen, to trust his own sense of beauty, and to contradict or to conceal what he was doing in accordance with its dictates. As little would it have helped him to invoke the aid of a commonplace architect to plaster his structure with triglyphs or to indent it with trefoils. But an architect who pursued his calling in the spirit and with the skill of the mediaeval builders of whom we have been speaking, who knew in his province the lesson the engineer has re-enforced in his, that "Nature can only be commanded by obeying 13

Pope, Essay on Man, and Browning, " O n e Word More."

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her," and that the function of an organism, in art as in nature, must determine its form—such an architect might have helped the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge to make it one of the noblest monuments of architecture in the world, as it is one of the greatest and most honorable works of engineering. 14 14 The architect to whom Schuyler refers is Leopold Eidlitz, see above, pp. 49 and I54f. The literary allusion is to Bacon, New Atlantis: specifically, "We cannot command nature except by obeying her."

"Monumental" Engineering15

O n e of the queerest anomalies in the present condition of the fine art of architecture is that the designers of certain classes of structures are in practice exempted from taking any pains about the appearance of the structures they erect. A n d this not because these structures are the least conspicuous, for they are very apt to be the most conspicuous. Here in New York, for example, if one were asked to pick out the most conspicuous and far seen of all our buildings, as well as the most enduring, and therefore that by which we are likely to be judged by the furthest posterity, he would have to name the Brooklyn Bridge, or at least the towers o f t h a t edifice, which in virtue of the massiveness of their masonry may be expected long to outlast the web of metal that swings between them, and also the metal cages, veneered with irrelevant masonry, that constitute the "skyscrapers" which in point of conspicuousness are their nearest rivals. Nobody will maintain that the towers are worthy of their conspicuousness, as good as they ought to be or as they might have been made. T o many observers, indeed, the grim utilitarianism of the skeleton towers of the newer bridge, now rising stark on the opposite shores,16 is more impressive, although perhaps because the art in them is unconscious. But their design is at least an exposition, which is more than can be said of the older. 15 Architectural Record, g ( O c t . 1901), 6 1 5 - 6 4 0 . E x c e r p t e d . T h e article discusses the c o m p e tition of i 8 g g for the M e m o r i a l Bridge over the P o t o m a c ; see 56th C o n g . , H . of R e p . , D o c . 578, Memorial Bridge Across the Potomac River at Washington, D.C. ( W a s h i n g t o n , 1900). T h i s d o c u m e n t contains ills, of the designs of all finalists. A project by W i l l i a m H . Burr ( 1 8 5 1 1934), see a b o v e , F i g . 9, w o n the c o m p e t i t i o n . T h e bridge, h o w e v e r , was o n l y realized b y M c K i m , M e a d & W h i t e as the A r l i n g t o n M e m o r i a l Bridge ( 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 3 2 ) . T h i s is a reinforced concrete bridge i n a R e n a i s s a n c e design, faced with granite; ill. in Z u c k e r , American Bridges, plate 3 1 . See discussion a b o v e , pp. 5of. 16 R e f e r e n c e to the towers of the W i l l i a m s b u r g Bridge w h i c h he attacked in " A r t in M o d e r n Bridges ( 1 9 0 0 - D ) a n d " O u r F o u r Big B r i d g e s " ( 1 9 0 9 - C ) , see a b o v e , pp. 53f.

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Since the building of the future is evidently to be increasingly the work of the engineers, it behooves the rest of us, as well as themselves, that it should become worthy of its conspicuousness. The only way in which this can really be accomplished is to add some training in artistic expression to their training in practical construction. Modern engineering is a very modern thing. With the enormous advantages it has brought to the world, it has brought this disadvantage, that for the first time in human history a broad line has been drawn between scientific construction and artistic construction, and that the designers of one class of constructions do not hold themselves responsible, nor does anyone, for the looks of their work. If an engineer builds safely and cheaply, in a word scientifically, his work may be as ugly as it will, without any impairment of his professional reputation. As we say, this is a novelty in history. The times in which scientific building was carried to its highest pitch have been those in which artistic building flowered. Every mechanical advance made during the Middle Ages was at once translated into terms of fine art, so that, when the culmination of the work of many generations was reached in the fully developed Gothic cathedral, it is impossible to separate our admiration of the scientific skill of the builders from that of their artistic skill. The work is artistic because it is the artistic expression of what the artist was doing in his capacity of scientific constructor. That one man should devise a construction and another make it presentable was a proposition never heard in the world till within a generation. Evidently, except to a veritable Gradgrind, it is a deplorable condition when that is the rule. Evidently, also, the only real remedy for it is to give the scientific constructor an artistic training. In this country, where engineering has already achieved some of its greatest triumphs, and where, visibly, "that which it has done" is but "the earnest of the things that it shall do," no attempt is made, I believe, in any school of engineering to teach its architecture. I have been looking through some volumes of the "Proceedings of the Society for Engineering Education." They cover a very wide range of subjects, but I have failed to find a single suggestion in them that there was any occasion for educating engineers in the art of giving artistic expression to what they were doing. In France there is a professorship of architecture adjoined to the Department of Roads and Bridges, and it is fair to suppose that it has had some-

Fig. 92. Louis Jean Resal. Mirabeau Bridge over the Seine, Auteuil (Seine et Oise), France, completed 1895.

Fig. 93. Resal and Alby. Alexander I I I Bridge over the Seine, Paris, 1896-1900.

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thing to do with the vast superiority of the bridges across the Seine, for example, over the bridges across the Harlem. One of the latest of the Parisian bridges is also one of the most exemplary, the Pont Mirabeau, away down at Auteuil, and therefore beyond the range of ordinary tourists [Fig. 92]. 17 In this we may see how a modern bridge, which is not only of metal but a "cantilever" can be made as beautiful as an arched structure of masonry by taking thought for its beauty. A later work, by the same engineers, and a much admired work, is by no means so successful. The Alexander I I I Bridge is admired, 18 we must suppose, by those who have considered only its broad roadway, the bronze group at the summit of its flat, low arch, and the groups of marble that adorn the piers at the entrances [Fig. 93]. For nothing could be more ineffectual as an example of artistic engineering than the detail of the actual construction, as it is seen from the river or from the shore underneath. Here are such meaningless and ugly solecisms as a riveted metal post, which is of course, constructionally, a continuous and connecting member, turned into the shaft of a pseudo-classical column, with a capital and a base of carved stone which merely conceal, and even deny, the essential facts of the case. But nevertheless a comparison of the bridges across the Seine with the bridges across the Harlem, 19 including the modern bridges of metal in the older city, cannot be satisfactory to the American engineer. Making every allowance for the swing span 20 which no engineer has yet found entirely tractable in an artistic sense, and making allowances also for the differences in artistic merit among the bridges across the Harlem, it is overwhelmingly evident that the French engineer is, artistically, a far better trained man than the American engineer. For it is not only in the architectural adjuncts of his bridges, of which the American bridges are commonly devoid, and for which architects and sculptors have been invoked, but in the engineering conception and the engineering details that the artistic superiority is manifest. And it is impossible to see how this defect is to be removed except by the artistic training of the engineer himself. Not only is there no such provision 17 Pont Mirabeau at Auteuil, a suburb of Paris, (completed 1 8 9 5 ; extant) by Louis J e a n Resal ( 1 8 5 4 - 1 9 1 9 ) . See below, " A r t in Modern Bridges" ( 1 9 0 0 - D ) , pp. 3 6 4 ^ 18 Pont Alexandre I I I , Paris, ( 1 8 9 6 - 1 9 0 0 ) by Resal and A l b y . 19 See below, pp. 3 7 2 f . 20 Reference to the fact that the typical Harlem bridge, a low, flat-decked truss pivoting on a central pier so as to permit the passage of boats, was inherently less beautiful than the arched construction of the typical Seine bridge.

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made for such instruction in his schooling, but there is next to nothing about it in his text books. A technical handbook of "Modern Framed Structures," issued in 1894, contains a chapter on " T h e Aesthetic Design of Bridges," which is declared by the editor to be an essay "in an entirely new field." 21 Its precepts, though doubtless generally sound and sometimes even striking, seem rather too vague and general for practical purposes. There is an architectural chapter in the manual on "Highway Bridges," by Mr. A. P. Boiler, whose own works are honorably distinguished, among those of his profession, by the evident and generally successful pains taken with respect to their appearance. 22 And, in a still later manual of bridge building, there is a chapter by Mr. Henry Van Brunt, but this is avowedly, and in the circumstances almost unavoidably, written rather for reproof than for instruction. 23 With these exceptions I know of no attempt to set forth instruction in artistic design expressly for the use of American engineers. But evidently such things must be too slight or too vague to supply the place of systematic training in the art of expression. Evidently the modern engineer will not be on the same plane as the ancient builder until, like him, he seeks and finds the appropriate and artistic expression for every mechanical device he employs. And even the desirableness of such an expression does not, as we see, appeal to the engineering profession, but only to here and there an exceptional engineer. It is even expressly denied by some engineers. One of them maintains that a bridge, being a "tool of transportation," 24 it does not matter how it looks, which is as if one were to maintain that a house being the supply of the need of shelter, it did not matter how that looked. And, to some 21 David A . Molitor, " T h e Aesthetic Design of Bridges," i n j . Β. Johnson, C . W. Bryan, and F. E . Turneaure, The Theory and Practice of Modern Framed Structures, ist ed. (New York, 1893), chap. 26. T h e introduction points out that Molitor's chapter discusses " a n entirely new field." Molitor spent some time in professional practice in Europe, and used his private library and photographs collected abroad to illustrate his chapter, although he also cites American examples, especially the Washington Bridge over the Harlem, for which he reproduces all the competition designs. 22 Alfred Pancoast Boller, Practical Treatise on the Construction of Iron Highway Bridges for the Use of Town Committees (New York, 1876), pp. 82-87. 23 T h e reference is to a long letter from Henry V a n Brunt included i n j . A . L . Waddell, De Pontibus (New York, 1898), pp. 4 0 - 4 5 ; reprinted in the same author's Bridge Engineering (New Y o r k , 1 9 1 6 ) , 2, 1 1 5 0 - 1 1 5 4 , 1 i72f. This statement, by the translator of Viollet-le-Duc, invokes organic metaphor in a plea for the esthetic possibilities of straightforward metal girder design. 24 George S. Morrison, who submitted by far the most utilitarian design among those published in the competition for the Potomac bridge, did so with an expressly anti-monumental

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considerations adduced by the present writer, in another magazine, to indicate the need of a higher training in artistic as well as scientific construction, a journal which aspires to represent the engineering profession observed that the criticism was entirely irrelevant since the engineer was commonly willing to hire an architect to make his work presentable, whenever his employer was willing to go to that additional expense.25 The avoidance is in effect a confession. Evidently it is the author of a construction who must express it if it is to be well expressed. " I t is difficult for a man to give expression to an idea of which he is not possessed." 26 By reason of the modern divorce between scientific and artistic construction it has come about that in the skyscraper we cover up the engineering with a mask of irrelevant architecture, and in the metal bridge leave it in a nudity which often seems to be an indecent exposure. bias. To him, a bridge was merely " a tool of transportation." Schuyler attacks Morrison's routinely ugly design and his philosophy at the end of the original article {pp. 633-637), which is not reproduced here. Morrison's work leads Schuyler to his final hope (p. 640) for a time when it will " n o longer be possible for a professed vandal to remain an eminent engineer." 25 The article of his own to which Schuyler refers is " A r t in Modern Bridges," here reprinted as the next chapter. The adverse comment on this article published in an engineering journal sometime between May 1890 and Oct. 1901 has not been located. 26 This recurrent phrase in Schuyler's writing, which he at one point attributes to a "Texas legislator," has eluded a bevy of scholars in Texas history.

Art in Modern Bridges27

ι Some twenty years ago a German commissioner, appointed by his government to inquire into the railway system of the United States, observed, in the course of his report, that "in America public works are executed without reference to art." 28 The comment was the more severe in that it was evidently made with the object not of disparagement, but only of elucidation. The observation of every American traveler in Europe complements the observation of this European traveler in America. O f those public works which by necessity or custom are confided to engineers rather than to architects, bridges are the most conspicuous, and it is in bridges that the "reference to art" is felt most gratefully by its presence in Europe, and most painfully by its absence in America. Perhaps, after all, the real contrast is between the modern scientific bridges and the ancient bridges, which were built by rule of thumb, and in which "reference to art" is not less effectual for being in part unconscious. Certainly the announcement of an unprecedented engineering feat in bridge-building on either side of the Atlantic is apt, to the experienced observer, to foretell a new architectural terror— monstrum horrendum, informe, in proportion as it is ingens. The bridges of the world which are acknowledged to be among the masterpieces of the world's architecture belong to the preengineering era. From the 27 Century Magazine, 38 (May 1900), 12-25. Reproduced in full with most of the original line cuts from the original article, some having been either omitted or supplemented by photographs. 28 Reference unlocated.

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point of view of the modern engineer they are child's play. It was in 1 8 5 2 , according to an authority, that "the first successful attempt was made to analyze correctly the stresses in a framed structure, and to proportion the members to resist the given external force."

29

This

was one of the longest strides ever taken by man in the conquest of nature. T h e new system thus introduced has now been carried so far that, whereas the largest single span ever covered before the engineering era was three hundred and ninety feet, the projected North River Bridge, now awaiting for its construction only the demonstration that it will pay, has a clear span of three thousand. 30 I f America is more conspicuously behind Europe in bridge-building than in house-building the reason must be sought in the early and sudden development here of modern engineering, coming in turn from the early and modern development of railroad-building. A

British

authority has traced most of the differences between European and American railroads to the fact that, whereas in Europe the railroads have gradually supplanted highways already long established, America the railway has been the pioneer road of the country."

"in 31

It

29 T h e reference seems to be an approximation of a statement in Johnson et al., Modern Framed Structures, pp. 8f, where the American engineer, Squire Whipple, is credited with being " T h e first man who ever correctly and adequately analyzed the stresses in a truss, that is, in a framework by which loads are carried horizontally from joint to joint by means of chord and web systems and finally delivered vertically upon abutments." He published his analysis in A Work on Bridge Building (New York, 1847), but only designed his first truss bridge fully embodying his analysis in 1852 for a bridge seven miles north of T r o y , N . Y . For the Latin phrase and pun on ingens, see below, p. 446η. 30 Project for the North (i.e., Hudson) River Bridge (first design c. 1887; revised c. 1923) by Gustav Lindenthal ( 1 8 5 0 - 1 9 3 5 ) . He founded the North River Bridge Company in 1890 to begin a lifelong attempt to realize his project for what would have been the largest suspension bridge in existence when first projected. Although superseded in span, first by the George Washington, then by the Golden Gate Bridge, even these later bridges do not match Lindenthal's gargantuan transit scheme. As finally elaborated, his bridge was to have been doubledecked, with twelve rapid transit tracks on the lower level, and no less than two trolley tracks, two bus lanes, sixteen vehicular lanes, and two sidewalks, each fifteen feet wide, on the upper level. Its cost (estimated at 8180,000,000 at a time when the S a n Francisco B a y Bridge cost $77,000,000) discouraged its realization, although some work was begun on the bridge before 1900. Later, reaction mounted against the concentration of traffic which Lindenthal's super-transit system would have created. T h e necessity for Lindenthal's bridge diminished with the tunneling of the Hudson, and, finally, with the completion of the George Washington Bridge at 179th St. ( 1 9 2 9 - 1 9 3 1 ) by the Port of New York Authority, with Ο. H . A m m a n as chief engineer, and Cass Gilbert as architect. Lindenthal's bridge was first to have crossed the River at 14th St., later at 57th St. For a complete annotated bibliography, see A d a S. Couillard, " B r i d g i n g the Hudson River at New York C i t y , " Municipal Reference Library Notes (published by the New Y o r k Public Library), 10 (Feb. 6 - M a r . 5, 1924), 2 1 - 4 0 , especially 3 1 - 3 6 ; also Archibald Black, The Story of Bridges (New York, 1936), pp. I46f. 31

Reference unlocated.

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Fig. 94. A straight truss bridge.

is accordingly only in the longest-settled parts of the country, between the Atlantic and the mountains, that we have any examples to show of the indigenous highway bridges, the arches of stonework built by village masons, or even the trusses devised according to rule of thumb by village carpenters, which are made for their places, and fit into the landscape with an easy and familiar air. But the railroad has reacted upon the design even of these humble and vernacular structures. It is only the old bridges, even in the oldest parts of the country, that can seem part of the landscape; that can be gratefully seen or fondly remembered; that can ever weather or molder into keeping with a passage of rural scenery. The trail of the railroad engineer is over all but these. Bridge-building companies deal out scientific constructions in assorted sizes to the local authorities, and substitute the attenuated angularity of their product for the homely and home-grown erections. If the engineering age had begun a century sooner, Emerson would have had to begin his famous hymn with a line upon which Whitman himself would scarcely have ventured: By the steel truss that spanned the flood. In the newer parts of the country, the parts of which the railway was really the pioneer road, a picturesque highway bridge can scarcely be said, and can scarcely be imagined, to exist. Of what landscape can the straight iron truss be a harmonious part? [Fig. 94.] What stream, except the Styx, can it appropriately span? One of its misfortunes is that it can never gain anything from time. A stone arch comes to be mellowed out of its newness by parasitic vegetation, and a timber truss, if left alone, grows venerably gray. But to leave the iron truss alone is

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Fig. 95. The "caterpillar bridges" over the Charles, Cambridge, Mass.

to abandon it to destruction. T h e frequent refreshment of paint is a condition of its existence. Not but that there is a choice, here as everywhere, between the offerings of modern engineering. There is a series of chain bridges in the "southern tier" of New York, and within sight of the Erie Railroad, which are by no means ungrateful objects in the landscape, with the drooping curves of their cables, and their supporting towers incased in wooden erections which have been favored with a wise and salutary neglect in the article of paint. 32 T h e family likeness among them is strong enough to suggest that they are the productions of a factory. But it is satisfactory to find that a form which commends itself to the inexpert as appropriate has also at some time been found to be the most available from a structural point of view, for the attractiveness of these structures is apparently quite unconscious. I do not mean to overpraise them, but since the age of engineering they and their like elsewhere are nearest approaches that have been made in this country to the vernacular structures which they displaced. T h e fact that they are all of moderate span, and by no means tours deforce from the engineering point of view, tends to assist this impression. T h e famous old bridges are by no means tours de force. T h e multiplied supports and narrow openings and low roadway ally them with what the Autocrat has so happily called the "caterpillar bridges" of the Charles [Fig. 95] ,33 From a 32 33

Bridges unlocated. Holmes, Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, chap. 7.

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modern point of view they are all timid. Karl's bridge at Prague, with its many arches, its huge, projecting ice-breakers, and the rich, quaint unsymmetrically roofed tower at its portal, makes its appeal to the picturesque tourist, not to the scientific constructor. The eight arches that of old were needed to cross the Main at Frankfort, and that glass themselves so prettily in the lazy stream below, attest the lack of modern science in the ancient builder.35 The eighteen arches of the old London Bridge, or even the five arches of the new, over a stream of eight hundred feet or less, are far from being feats of engineering, though the middle arch of the latter is the third in span now standing. As for the bridges of old Paris, whereof the builders required five arches to cross a river of five hundred feet, the railway engineer would scoff at you if you suggested them to him for models. "Why, sir, the progress of science has been such that a cantilever of a single span, at one tenth of the expense . . . . " The only famous old bridge that would greatly interest him is the single granite arch of two hundred and fifty feet that was sprung over the Adda in the thirteenth century, and destroyed in the fourteenth; for this remains a "record," and is likely to remain so, now that metal has superseded masonry for great spans. The nearest approach to it now extant is a recent and exemplary work of a modern engineer, if not a typical example of modern engineering, General Meig's 220-foot arch over Cabin John Creek for the Washington city aqueduct.36 II But of course we cannot restrict our bridge-building to what can be done with masonry. If we could, the matter of designing public works with reference to art would be comparatively simple. A stone arch, simply and straightforwardly designed for its purpose, cannot be ugly. The same dispositions which insure, in fact, its stability and sufficiency assure the eye of those qualities. Here also there are differences, and here also the work of engineers is apt to miss the heightening of an intrinsic 34 Karls (Charles) Bridge over the Vlatava (1357-1378), the historic span of six masonry arches by Peter Parier. 35 The masonry bridge of 1222 at Frankfurt over the Main was destroyed during World War I. On the " n e w " London Bridge of 1 8 2 1 - 1 8 3 0 , see above, p. 332η. This replaced the much patched and rebuilt " o l d " Bridge (first version 1176-1205), which originally had nineteen arches (not eighteen, as Schuyler says) and a draw. On the Trezzo Bridge mentioned below, see above, p. 332η. 36 See above, p. 332η.

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effect which comes from the architectural development of structural forms. The great arch of the Washington aqueduct would evidently be the better for the clearer elucidation which only an architectural training can enable a designer to supply. Nay, in the Brooklyn Bridge it is noteworthy that the drawbacks to the architectural success are in the treatment, not of the metal, but of the masonry. 37 A considerable pecuniary sacrifice was made in order to construct the towers of solid stone, instead of a skeleton of metal, and to secure for them the effect of mass, which our inheritance of four thousand years leads us to associate with strength. Perhaps it would be unjust to say that the expense was wasted; but it remains true that, whereas the reticulation of metal which they sustain is an artistic success, the towers themselves are comparative failures. The solid filling of the spandrels obstructs the perception that the three great piers are the bones of the structure, and the interstitial walls merely a connection. The central pier, instead of being detached and emphasized, is almost effaced. A still more grievous fault, common to the Brooklyn Bridge with many other chain bridges, is that the channels of the cables, instead of determining the design of the crowning member of the tower, are casually cut through it, as through an independent and preexisting structure. The whole aspect of these towers is crude, rudimentary, and barbarous, compared with the exquisite refinement of the web that swings between them. Another work, an admirable and exemplary work, perhaps the most conspicuously successful monument that American engineering has produced—the Washington Bridge over the Harlem River in New York City 3 8 —yet suffers from the inferiority in treatment of the masonry to the metal [Figs. 13, 96]. The shallow, unmolded arches of the approach, doubtless adequate structurally, are less than adequate architecturally for want of the emphasis, of the exaggeration if you please, which is needed to certify their sufficiency, and which an architectural artist would have known how to supply. The bridge proper it would be difficult to overpraise. The completed work so perfectly and evidently fulfils its function and fills its place that the general scheme seems to the spectator a matter of course. Such a spectator may be recommended to trace in the monograph of the bridge prepared by its engineer, Mr. Hutton, the long series of tentative essays that were made before even 37

See above, pp. 48f and 336-341.

38

See above, p. 332η.

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Fig. 96. William R . Hutton, engineer; Edward H. Kendall, architect. Washington Bridge over the Harlem, New Y o r k City, 1886-1888.

the essential scheme was hit upon, and the long evolution into the design, now embodied in steel and granite, of the germinal idea of the competitor who secured symmetry by two equal arches, of which one was the "channel span." T h e airy Kirchenfeld Bridge that spans the Aare at Bern, 39 though as a work of engineering much less considerable than the New York structure, may very probably have served as its artistic prototype. In each the need is felt of a more powerful and conspicuous central feature to unite and dominate the two equal arches. Probably few sensitive spectators have passed under the Washington Bridge without considering into what an unequaled pedestal for a far-seen statue the central pier of the bridge could be developed, in a city in which every project for a new monument is attended by a public wrangle over its site, and one of the competitive engineers recognized this opportunity in his design. Not the least praise that is due to the builders of the Washington 39 Kirchenfeld Bridge over the Aare at Berne (1882-1883; strengthened 1913; extant) by Probst and Röthlisberger; ill. by Molitor in Johnson et al., Modern Framed Structures.

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Bridge is due to them for resisting a temptation which is found almost irresistible by engineers in general, and usually quite irresistible by American engineers in particular—the temptation to make an engineering record. The St. Louis Bridge was already completed when this was begun 40 —completed with a clear span of five hundred and twenty feet. The temptation to stretch theirs out at least ten feet longer into "the biggest steel arch in the world" must have been very great. To have resisted the temptation and stopped ten feet short of "the record" is an evidence of the same restraint and moderation which, applied to the design, has made this architecturally so far the most successful of great American bridges. A modern metallic structure, "mathematically conceived," may, we see, attain a result more than Roman in power and more than Roman in beauty. There are two works constructed at the very beginning of modern engineering—indeed, before the beginning of the scientific design of framed structures in metal—which offer a most exemplary contrast. It was in 1819 that Telford began the erection, across the Menai Strait, of a suspension bridge of a span, till then undreamed of, of five hundred and seventy feet. 41 This was a highway bridge, which still survives and does its daily work, remaining a beautiful object. It was a quarter of a century later when Stephenson, summoned to erect a railroad bridge over the same estuary, and within a few hundred yards of the earlier structure, devised and executed the Britannia tubular bridge, in which the extreme of ugliness was attained at a single bound. 42 The year 1845 was the infancy of engineering, and Stephenson's work remains a feat of engineering in the ingenuity of the devices by which he overcame the mechanical difficulties imposed by natural conditions and artificial limitations. The "stiffening struss," by which modern engineering has facilitated the carrying of railroad-trains on suspension bridges, was unknown to him, and his solution of the problem was mechanically the best, very likely, that his time afforded. But he could have made nothing uglier if all the accumulated engineering experience of the interval had been at his command. No truss construction, however bizarre, not the cantilever of Niagara or the "fishbelly" girders of Hamburg, 43 could approach the repellent baldness of this brute mass of a plate-girder four hundred and sixty feet long and 40 43

41 42 See above, p. 3 3 2 η . See above, p. 3 3 1 η . See above, pp. 3 3 2 η , 3 4 2 η . Cantilever bridge for the Michigan Central over the Niagara (built 1 8 8 3 ; replaced

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thirty feet high. For a visibly articulated structure at least bears evidence of design, and the layman who cannot follow the demonstration made by its joints and members is yet able . . . to apprehend A labor working to an end.44 But the Britannia and the other railroad bridges of like structure and vacuous expanse are absolutely inexpressive. This is an example that might be instructive if engineers were trained to regard the expression, or the expressibility, of the primary forms of their bridges as an element in the choice of constructions, instead of confining themselves to the points of stability and economy; if, as Mr. Russell Sturgis has reminded the American Society of Civil Engineers, 45 instead of concentrating their attention upon the question whether their works would stand, they would direct some of it to the question whether they were fit to stand. It is the primary form of a great work of engineering that determines its artistic success. Respecting these works the dictum of Polonius is particularly sound—" 'Beautified' is a vile phrase." 46 If the general form does not in itself appeal to the sense of beauty, it is quite futile for the engineer to attempt any subsequent beautification, either by his own efforts or by invoking the aid of architects. Such cooperation is feasible only in the accessories, including, it is true, the portals, which are more than details, are among the attractive features of the most admired European bridges, and are seldom admirable in American bridges, for lack of architectural cooperation. 47 The scientific designer of a work of engineering must be the artistic designer also, if it is to be a work of art. It is the choice of a construction that primarily determines the artistic result. So long as the consideration of economy is controlling, and is virtually exclusive in ordinary engineering practice, one must expect it to prevail when the engineers are left to themselves, 1925) by Charles C. Schneider (1843-1916). It was the third railroad bridge over the river, having been preceded by two suspension structures. See "Michigan Central to Build a New Bridge over the Niagara," Railway Age, 74 (Jan. 13, 1923), 17; also Condit, American Building Art, p. 157. The "fish-belly" girders (really Lohse-type lens girders) appear in the Old Elbe River Bridge (1868-1872). 44 Reference unlocated. 45 Reference unlocated. 46 Shakespeare, Hamlet. 47 On Schuyler's insistence on the need for cooperation between engineers and architects in bridge design, see above, pp. 50-55, also pp. 345-350.

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even in works of which the conspicuousness makes their appearance an important condition in the problem of design. It may be questioned whether the consideration of utility is so exclusive with the engineers as they pretend, whether mere fashions do not impose themselves in engineering as well as in architecture. There are engineers who maintain that the building of cantilevers has become a fad that has led to the erection of cantilevers in places in which they do not form the most appropriate construction. Certainly the ravine of Niagara seems to furnish the conditions of "deep gorges with rocky sides" which render an arch, according to the engineering authorities, "eminently proper and economical," and they have been recognized as doing so in the projection of the latest crossings of the gorge. Ill " T h e arched bridge of stone, the catenary curves of the modern suspension bridges with their high towers, and some forms of bridges constructed with bowstring-girders," are designated by Mr. Henry V a n Brunt, in a very interesting paper on the esthetics of bridges, as forms artistically eligible in contrast with "the straight bridge truss spanning from pier to pier, the cantilever overhanging the perilous abyss, the pivoted draw-span, all constructed with cold geometrical precision." 48 Mr. V a n Brunt gives his impressions only and not his reasons; but it seems that an examination of the constructions he accepts and of those he rejects ought to shed some light upon the reasons of the eligibility of those and the ineligibility of these, and so upon the conditions of engineering esthetics. It may be doubted whether the ordinary beholder who finds the form of the arch beautiful and the form of the cantilever ugly knows much more clearly how its work is done by the construction he admires than by the construction he resents. It is certain that he could come no nearer to "analyzing the stresses" in one, case than in the other; but it is also true that by inheritance and custom he is certified both that the arch does its work and how it does it, while the novelty irritates and puzzles him. Even more evident than the operation of an arch is the operation of a chain bridge. A catenary curve cannot " h a n g wrong," nor is there any suspension bridge that makes the effect of 48

Henry van Brunt in Waddell, De Pontibus, p. 41.

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ugliness between the piers. It is in the towers and the approaches only that the engineer is apt to betray his architectural helplessness. On these things architectural counsel might profitably be taken. Such counsel was rejected in the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was invoked in the New York approach with results that were worth the trouble, although they have been in a great part nullified by the recent reconstruction of the terminal, including the widening of the roadways, a work in which it is evident from afar that a railroad engineer has taken no counsel but his own. 49 The same helplessness is shown in the first published drawings of the design for the newer East River Bridge, into the scheme of which it is too plain that only practical considerations have been allowed to enter [Fig. 11]. 5 0 In this opportunity to show what noble objects two solid towers three hundred and thirtyfive feet high, forming the portals of a great bridge, might become, with a development of their forms in which structure corresponded to function, was foregone, and a trussed skeleton of metal substituted, with straight sides, which are not even of an equal slope throughout, but nearly upright below the road-bed, and of a considerable inclination above. This gaunt anatomy makes much the same effect as would be made by a creature which wore its skeleton outside. The connection of the towers with the anchorages, which in the existing bridge [that is, the Brooklyn Bridge] is a curve, corresponding to the curve of the main cable and sustaining the roadway, is here a series of straight and rigid backstays, and the continuity of the stiffening truss is broken to the eye, and its purpose confused, by making a "through span" between the towers and a "deck span" outside. In all these respects the engineer's design for the North River suspension bridge is in gratifying and exemplary contrast with the engineer's design for the new East River Bridge [Figs. 97, 98]. It was doubtless out of the question that the towers of six hundred and twentyfive feet that were required to carry a span of three thousand should be of masonry. But the metal towers in this case are undeniably impressive and even monumental objects, with their structure of eight powerful ribs, sweeping outward and downward in a gentle concave 49

On the New York approach to the Brooklyn Bridge see American Architect and Building Mews, 2 (July 28, 1877), 242. 50 Reference to the Williamsburg Bridge (1896-1903; extant), Schuyler's bete noir among New York's largest bridges. See also above, pp. 53f.

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Fig. 97. Gustav Lindenthal. Project for the North (or Hudson) River Suspension Bridge compared to the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, first plans c. 1887.

curve to their spreading foundations, and with the web between them of a latticework that forms a decent drapery for the interior bracing, which, nevertheless, makes itself apprehended within, while the stiffening truss is apparently continuous, and the backstay again becomes a curve, swinging with grace as well as with power to the huge mass of the anchorage. Between the mere "bones" of a metal tower and such a development of it there has plainly gone on a process of artistic as well as of scientific evolution. Undoubtedly the cantilever seems at present to be among the constructions artistically hopeless. Certainly our own most famous examples—that across the Niagara and that across the Hudson at Poughkeepsie—seem, to most observers, to deface the landscapes in which they are respectively so conspicuous.51 It is the "suspended span" which complicates the construction into unintelligibility,52 and which has thus far put the stamp of ugliness upon every structure of which it forms, but does not appear to form, an organic part. And for this there is an evident reason. Let us substitute for the hard word "cantilever" the easy word "bracket," and conceive the construction as what in bridges it really is, a double bracket balanced upon its support. While it may thus both be and seem secure, the case is altered, as to the appearance 51 On the Niagara cantilever, see above, p. 358η. The Poughkeepsie cantilever was built by the Central New England Railroad (1878-1888, with an interruption c. 1880-1886; reconstructed 1906-1907) and leased to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Incidentally, Tyrrell, Artistic Bridge Design, ill. 237, includes the Poughkeepsie bridge in his corpus, and Condit, American Building Art, pp. I57f, underscores its importance. 52 By "suspended span" Schuyler means that the "brackets" (as he refers to them immediately below) of the cantilever construction project outward from their piers toward one another, until the distance between them can be bridged by a simple span, suspended between them and supported by them.

Fig. 98. Tower for the North River Suspension Bridge.

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Fig. 99. Theodore Cooper, engineer. A bowstring girder (Sixth Street Bridge) over the Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1891-1892.

if not in reality, as soon as a load is imposed upon the projecting points of two brackets and they hold it between them. Plainly they are holding it in the most awkward way, at arm's-length, even at the length of the finger-tips, with the maximum of effort instead of the minimum which reassures the eye in a work of architecture as in a work of sculpture. The sense of effort, of strain, is incompatible with the sense of a load carried with ease and thus with grace; is destructive, therefore, of the sense of repose which is the first of artistic qualities. The cantilevers themselves of the Forth Bridge make an impression which is the result of a most forcible and even eloquent expression [Fig. 14]. 53 It is the lack of clear expression of what they sustain, and how they sustain it, that gives the work as a whole the air of an uncouth puzzle. The faith that for every mechanical arrangement there is an appropriate and significant expression can survive the shock of the great cantilever bridges only by the admission that here is a mechanical arrangement which, if it be expressible, has not yet found its expression. It is yet fera natura. It is so merely by reason of the suspended span, for without this there are not wanting proofs that a cantilever may be 53

See above, p. 116η.

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Fig. 100. A double-bowstring, or lenticular truss, bridge over the Isar in Bavaria.

beautiful. The clearest proof that it may become a beautiful object by a thoroughly expressive treatment is to be found in the Pont Mirabeau, one of the latest bridges that span the Seine at Paris [Fig. g2]. 54 No spectator could mistake the construction for anything but what it is. The suggestion of an arch in the general form of the central span is successfully controverted by the design. One cannot help seeing that the bridge consists merely of two double brackets balanced upon the low piers, and the expression of this mechanical arrangement is the design of the bridge. The one defect of expression is a defect also of Si-

Fig. 1 0 1 . Albert Fink, engineer. A "Fink truss" bridge over the Ohio for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Louisville, K y . , 1868-1870.

beauty. It is that the bearings of the cantilevers, instead of visibly resting upon the piers with an evident freedom of movement, seem to be embedded in them, and there fixed. It is only from a point of view close to the surface of the river that the actual arrangement is made manifest. But the exquisite, though simple, modelling of these piers themselves, the design of the system of struts and braces in the spandrels, heightened by decoration, which is but the emphasis of their functions in the structure, the indications in the masking-plates of the construction of 54

See above, p. 348η.

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the roadway behind them, and the ornament of the railing—in all these things the scientific constructor and the artistic constructor have worked as one, and the result of their labor, or of his, is a beautiful cantilever bridge, with that character of inevitableness which belongs alike to a true work of science and to a true work of art. Mr. V a n Brunt's contrast of "some forms of bridges constructed with bowstring-girders" with "the straight bridge truss spanning from pier to pier" is especially in point as bearing upon the contention that the beauty of a construction is its expressiveness. For the straight truss, with parallel top and bottom chords, and intermediate members apparently of equal size, and apparently equally spaced throughout, is an expression scientifically as inexact as it is esthetically ugly [Fig. 94]. It ignores or dissembles the essential fact that, in order to be of equal strength throughout, such a span needs to be most strengthened at the point at which it is inherently weakest, that is to say, the point farthest from its support. In the bowstring-girder, whether plated or trussed, as in the lenticular, or double bowstring, as in the Fink truss, this need is recognized and visibly met [Figs. 99, 100, 101]. 5 5 In the straight truss it is mechanically met by imperceptible, or at least unnoticeable, expedients of thickening or multiplying the members. The result is inexpressiveness in contrast with expression, formlessness with form, ugliness with beauty. " T h e pivoted draw-span," 56 as we commonly see it in the crossing of a navigable stream by a railway bridge, is, without doubt, a gaunt and unsightly object. Indeed, it presents a difficult problem to the artistic constructor, and in the hands of the inartistic constructor, for whom esthetic problems do not exist, we might expect it to produce the frightful results which we see. A movable bridge is necessarily a makeshift, an expedient for avoiding what, if the constructor were unhampered by considerations of expense, would be met by raising the structure so that neither its own traffic, nor the water-borne traffic which passes beneath it, should be subject to interruption. The swing 55 A "bowstring girder" consists of a curved member and a horizontal member serving as a chord thereto, with vertical tie-rods connecting them. The Fink truss is not a bowstring. The American bridges illustrating these types are the Sixth Street Bridge over the Allegheny (1891-1892) by Theodore Cooper (1839-1919), and the Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge over the Ohio at Louisville, K y . , (1868-1870; extant) by Albert Fink (1827-1897). Although the Sixth Street Bridge was replaced in 1927, the original spans were floated down the river to where they now connect the town of Coraopolis with Neville Island. 56 See above, p. 348η.

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bridge has the further disadvantage, when of considerable extent, that the weight of the outlying arms is carried in the most awkward way, the tendency to sag, assisted by the great leverage, requiring to be counteracted by an elaborate construction which shall refer their weight to the central pivot, and which has no apparent meaning or purpose when the draw is closed and the bridge in repose. Perhaps the best that can be done with it is exemplified in the Central Railway Bridge over the Harlem in New York, 57 a work which shows throughout a careful consideration of the esthetic problems involved, and in which the treatment of the masonry is especially rational and expressive. T h e introduction of the hooded shelters at the ends of the draw-span not only gives needed emphasis to the rest-piers, but serves to bound and define the drawbridge itself as a separate or separable feature. But the pivoted draw-span is none the less an intractable structure, and it is gratifying that the older form of drawbridge, that by which the medieval moat was crossed, has been found to be, in certain respects, more practical. This, the bascule bridge, in which the movable span is hinged and turned upward to clear the channel, has been employed in purely utilitarian works where the swinging span, when open, took up more space than could be spared from the channel. One of the most admired of modern drawbridges is the Tower Bridge in London, 58 in which the water traffic is accommodated by the lifting of a pair of bascules, while an uninterrupted footway is provided overhead, accessible through lifts in the piers [Fig. 102]. This scheme offered opportunities for expression which have not been made the most of, although the cost of the structure is many times that of a purely utilitarian bridge of metal. T h e towers, which serve the double purpose of pier and elevator shaft, are treated as five-story buildings. They are, moreover, like our own skyscrapers, mere veneers of masonry upon a construction of steel which carries them. Mr. Η. H. Statham has justly criticized the work upon this ground, 59 and upon the ground that the masonry screen of the towers seems to carry the suspension chains, which are, in fact, attached to the girders that form the foot57 N e w Y o r k C e n t r a l Bridge over the H a r l e m at Park A v e . (1895; replaced b y a vertical lift bridge 1 9 5 5 - 1 9 5 6 ) . 58 T o w e r Bridge, L o n d o n , (open 1894) b y Sir H o r a c e Jones ( 1 8 1 9 - 1 8 8 7 ) a n d Sir J o h n Wolfe B a r r y ( 1 8 3 6 - 1 9 1 8 ) . T h e f o o t w a y s at tower top h a v e l o n g been closed. 59 S c h u y l e r p r o b a b l y refers to H . H e a t h c o t e S t a t h a m , Modern Architecture ( L o n d o n a n d N e w Y o r k , 1898), p p . 17af. F o r a more extensive criticism of the b r i d g e b y S t a t h a m , see J . A . L . W a d d e l l , Bridge Engineering, 2, 1163.

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Fig. 102. Sir Horace Jones and Sir John Wolfe Barry. T o w e r Bridge over the Thames, London, open 1894.

way; and he has made his criticism constructive by a sketch which exhibits the actual construction and converts the towers into masses of masonry visibly adequate to their function. Another bascule bridge, which as yet exists only on paper, is worthy of note as the only extensive bridge in this country which has been monumentally conceived. This is the proposed Grant Memorial Bridge across the Potomac at Washington. 60 In this the engineer, Captain Symons, had the architectural cooperation of Mr. Paul J. Pelz, the principal designer of the Library of Congress, and the result of their joint labors justifies the combination. [Fig. 10.] T h e draw-span of one hundred and sixty feet is signalized by all the devices at the command of the architect as the central and dominating feature of the structure, although in extent it is inferior to the span of two hundred and forty feet on each side of it. But the flanking piers of the draw-span are the ultimate abutments of the arcades, and when the draw is open are evidently so. In a work of mere engineering their actual sufficiency would alone be considered, but in a work of monumental architecture this sufficiency must be put visibly beyond question. No doubt the huge and solid masses that are shaped into the central towers are, from the engineer's point of view, exaggerated; but this very exaggeration constitutes what Mr. V a n Brunt happily calls the "decorative emphasis" of a construction, 61 which the training of an architect enables him to 60

See above, pp. 51 f.

61

Van Brunt in Waddell, De Pontibus, p. 42.

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apply, and with which the training of an engineer inculcates upon him to dispense. It may be questioned whether the subordinate turrets of this design might not advantageously be still further subordinated; but it will not be questioned that the general conception is very noble, and that the completed work would be one of the chief ornaments of the capital. It is especially to be noted in this work that there is no discordancy between masonry and metal, although the decorative emphasis is given in the one case by accumulation, and in the other by attenuation and articulation. That graphical demonstration which constitutes the expression of a framed structure in metal, by reducing it to an abstraction of its structural lines, seems to be incompatible with the more, massive material. The new metallic architecture is precisely that "substitution of the line for the mass as the element of decoration" which Mr. Ruskin deplored in Gothic architecture, and to which he attributed its decline. 62 And yet, in fact, in the most complete and most typical examples of Gothic groined vaulting, the modern engineering method was anticipated, and stonework was really anatomized, as the modern engineer anatomizes steel. IV This examination seems to indicate that the eligibility of a construction, from the artistic point of view, depends upon its expressibility, and the impressiveness of the completed work upon its expressiveness. There are, of course, many questions arising in every engineering work—countless questions of detail and of degree—the answers to which make or mar its ultimate success, that are, in fact, appeals to artistic sensibility and tact, the tact that comes bf artistic training. The mere desire for expression no more involves the power of expression in this art than in any other. In order to express a construction intelligibly, much more in order to express it with power and with grace, a course of special training is requisite which, as we see all about us, is not involved in the education of an engineer. For this training no systematic or comprehensive provision is made in our technical schools. "They manage these things better in France," where a professor of architecture is attached to the national department of engineering, 62

Ruskin, Seven Lamps, " L a m p of Truth," section 23. See also Stones of Venice, "Nature of Gothic," sections 100 and 105.

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with results that may be judged by a comparison of the Pont Mirabeau with the best of our own works in the same kind. They manage them better in Germany, which, no doubt, has its share of ugly bridges, but in which the ugliness of the ugly bridges is more or less masked, and the beauty of the beautiful bridges enhanced, by the evidences they bear, in their accessories, of architectural training or of architectural cooperation. But undoubtedly the desire for beauty, the desire for expression, is the root and starting-point of the matter. Until this is felt no progress is possible. And as among American engineers there are many who pay no attention to how their work looks, it might be expected, since "man's philosophy is the supplement of his practice," that there should be some to maintain that it does not matter how it looks. One such has declared in public that a bridge, being merely a "tool of transportation," is to be judged, like any other tool, by its efficiency, without reference to its appearance, "without reference to art." 63 To a stalwart scientific vandal of this temper, a Gradgrind-Attila, discussions of the esthetics of engineering naturally seem frivolous and vexatious. He might be expected to find a stern joy in shocking the weaklings who trouble themselves about such trifles, and when he had executed some especially revolting work, to paint it a triumphal red, and exult over the insulted landscape or the disfigured city like a conquering savage. But the practice of the profession has been to treat its esthetics not so much with animosity as with contempt. "Unless- the artistic appearance of a structure is imposed as a necessary feature," says one authority, "it is rarely, if ever, considered by contractors." 64 And even when it is imposed, we have seen that there is nothing in the training of an American engineer, as an engineer, that enables him to supply it. The American engineer who desires that his work may appear appropriate to its place and expressive of its purpose can find little help from his books, and none at all from his schools, but must rely upon his own unaided and unprecedented efforts. With some engineers exhibiting a wilful, and most engineers a careless, indifference to the appearance of their work, the public may be pardoned for imagining the whole profession to be made up of scientific vandals, grossly unjust to individual engineers as inquiry will show such a generalization to be. The 63 64

See above, p. 349η. Molitor in Johnson et al., Modern Framed Structures, p. 4 1 1 .

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public knows that the Rialto or the Ponta della Trinita 65 is as much a "tool of transportation" as the ugliest device of the contemporary bridge-builder, but it is also aware that the ancient builder, in addition to the purpose of providing a tool of "transportation," cherished the purpose of embellishing his city, which the modern engineer sometimes ostentatiously disclaims, and oftener implicitly rejects. The public more or less dimly feels that something is very wrong when it is proposed to flank a great American city with such erections as are threatened by the respective engineers' designs for the new East River Bridge and the Manhattan Valley Viaduct in New York, 66 and that an art commission provided to protect a city against the works of professed artists all the more should be called upon to protect it against the works of professed or practical anti-artists. Where "the artistic appearance of a structure is imposed as a necessary feature," the engineers are on their defense, and the signs multiply that they feel themselves to be so. It is for themselves to convert their new science into a new and glorious art, by reuniting, with new methods and new material, the scientific building and the artistic building that since the middle ages have been divorced. There are already promisings and beginnings of this re-creation; some of the illustrations of this paper bear witness to them. These things justify, far better than the tall buildings of Chicago, of which they were written, the eloquent words of Paul Bourget: " T h e sketch appears here of a new kind of a r t , . . . an art of science, in which the certainty of natural laws gives to audacities in appearance the most unbridled the tranquillity of geometrical figures." 67 65 Ponte Rialto, Venice, ( 1 5 8 8 - 1 5 9 1 ; extant) by Antonio da Ponte. Ponte della Trinita, Florence, ( 1 5 6 6 - 1 5 6 9 ; destroyed World W a r I I ) by Michelangelo and Bartolomeo A m m a n a t i (1511-1592). 66 Reference to the Williamsburg Bridge again. Manhattan Valley Viaduct, carrying Riverside Dr. over the dry depression from 1 2 5 t h to 1 3 5 t h Sts., (c. 1 8 9 7 - 1 8 8 8 ) by F . Stuart Williamson (died 1 9 3 6 ) ; ill. and discussed in Schuyler's " N e w York Bridges" ( 1 9 0 5 - C , pp. 249f). 67 See below, p. 380η.

New York Bridges68 [In this essay, Schuyler examines the bridges over the Harlem River. He has been speaking of various non-monumental, purely utilitarian, swing-span structures, having cited f A. P. Boiler's Central Bridge linking Seventh Ave. (at 155th St.), Manhattan, to Jerome Ave., Bronx. Then he turns to two bridges which he considers even superior to Central Bridge.] But, in the clearness and force of the expression it seems to me to yield to the less complicated and pretentious bridge of the Northern Railway 69 just above it, in which the design is a graphical exposition, made with the neatness, clearness, conciseness and grace that entitle us to apply the term "beautiful" to a geometrical demonstration, and gaining force from the very absence of ornamental accessories, and the reduction of the demonstration to its simplest expression. It has an Euclidian "beauty." And the same may be said in equal measure of the bridge at Second Avenue, in which not the smallest superfluity has been added to the essentials, but in which these have been completely expressed [Fig. 103]. 70 The general form of the swingspan is nearly identical with that we have just been considering, while an additional element of expressiveness has been introduced by the innovation of removing the "operating room" from the basal pivot in which it is commonly concealed and establishing it aloft as an eyrie. To the spectator from the river, this bridge gains much in effect from the very lucky choice of material for the abutments, as well as from their admirable design, the material being a dark and mottled granite 68

Architectural Record 18 (Oct. 1905), 243-262. Excerpted. See also above, pp. 6of. t Northern Railway Bridge (also known as the Old Putnam), at 8th Ave., (erected 1880; extant but abandoned) by Alfred P. Boiler (1840-1912). 70 t Second Avenue Bridge carrying the 3rd Ave. Elevated over the Harlem (1883-1886; demolished 1956) by John J . R . Croes (1834-1906), designer, Theodore Cooper, engineer, and J . J . H. Cross, engineer of masonry. 65

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Fig. 103. T h e o d o r e C o o p e r , engineer; J . J . R . Cross, engineer of masonry. Bridge for the elevated over the H a r l e m at Second A v e . , N e w Y o r k C i t y , 1883-1886.

which weathers into great picturesqueness. If these two bridges be, as it seems to me they must be allowed to be, artistically the most successful and satisfactory of all the crossings of the Harlem, it is worth inquiring what they have in common. O n e finds that what they have in common is their austerity, the rigid rejection of the unessential which assists the spectator's comprehension of their clear and forcible expression of the essential. If this again be true, the truth of it shows how idle is the attempt to beautify an essentially ugly construction by invoking an artist after the scientist has ruined it artistically, by getting an architect to add some architectural "features" to the work of the engineer. T h e observation of Polonius that " 'beautified' is a vile phrase" applies with particular force to bridge building. 71 [After rating the bridges across the Harlem as good, middling, or poor—and including in his top category, along with the three abovementioned swing-spans, the High Bridge aqueduct, and Washington Bridge—he calls for the engineer-artist, utilizing the material which appeared in the preceding essay, " A r t in Modern Bridges." He concludes with Gustav Lindenthal's efforts to collaborate with architects in the design of the Queensborough and Manhattan Bridges (see above, pp. 54-56), and with the dispute which led to Lindenthal's resignation as the city's Commissioner of Bridges.] 71

Shakespeare, Hamlet.

V. Skyscrapers: Rationalistic Architecture

Architecture in Chicago: Adler & Sullivan 1

It is impossible fairly to estimate the work of the leading architects of Chicago without some preliminary reference to the conditions of their work. In part, perhaps in the main, these are the same conditions that preside over the evolution of American architecture in general, but some of them are really local, and those of them that are general are applied in Chicago with a peculiar strictness and intensity. It is from this stringency of application that the characteristics of Chicago building come, and that it comes that the individuality of that building is so much more local than it is general that from the first sight in a photograph of a new Chicago building one can "place" it so much more readily than one can assign it to its particular author. Here, more than elsewhere, "the individual withers, and the world is more and more." 2 O f course, what I have in mind in saying this is "the heart of Chicago," the business quarter, for it is by that that Chicago is characterized, especially in its architecture. Its architectural expressions are twofold only, places of business and places of residence. It would be impossible to mention another great city of which this is so strictly true. It is indeed curious how the composite image of Chicago that remains in one's memory as the sum of his innumerable individual impressions is made up exclusively of the sky-scraper of the city and the dwellings of the suburbs. Not a church enters into it, so as to count, as churches count for so much elsewhere. Scarcely a public building enters into it. There is the old Art Institute, indeed, excellent and impressive build1 A separate monograph as No. 2, Part I, in the " G r e a t American Architect Series" by Architectural Record (Feb. 1896), pp. 3-48. Excerpted. 2 Tennyson, Locksley Hall.

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ing. 3 There is the new A r t Institute, scholarly and academic, and the new library, of a more modern and exuberant as well as of a more vigorous aspect, and there is the city and county building which is exuberant exclusively. 4 Still later, there is the Newberry Library at one end of the town and the Chicago University at the other. 5 But this brief list, which must be very nearly exhaustive, is not a list of characteristic buildings. In spite of the respectable dimensions of several of these in longitude and latitude their inferiority in the third and most characteristic dimension of altitude denotes that they are incidental and episodical to the real task of the architects, which is to produce skyscrapers and homes,—and factories, indeed, which architecturally are neither here nor there, but which occupy much of the attention and contribute much to the incomes of the busiest architects. T h e deficiency of churches, which in magnitude and costliness are commensurate with the populousness and wealth of the city, and in architectural interest are comparable with its utilitarian structures, is a fact that must strike every stranger. T h e men who project and "finance" the utilitarian buildings are the same men who are ready to incur expenditures for public purposes with a generosity and a public spirit that are elsewhere unparalleled, and that constitute one of the justest of the boasts of the place. But it seems that churches do not enter into their scheme of public benefaction, and any lavishness of expenditure on churches appears to strike them as a little frivolous and dilettante. There is a kernel of real meaning and applicability in the legend of the inhabitant of a "boom town" further to the West, who was bragging about the hotels and the saloons and the "opera house" of it to a stranger, who at See above, pp. 256f a n d note. C h i c a g o P u b l i c L i b r a r y , M i c h i g a n A v e . at W a s h i n g t o n St., ( 1 8 9 2 - 1 8 9 7 ; extant) b y Shepley, R u t a n & C o o l i d g e . See above, p p . 25of. a n d note. 5 N e w b e r r y L i b r a r y , N E cor. N . C l a r k a n d W . W a l t o n Sts., (completed 1892; extant) b y H e n r y Ives C o b b . T h e m o n u m e n t a l i t y at the University o f C h i c a g o was also C o b b ' s design. H e b e c a m e the architect oC the university in J u n e 1891. B y 1895 he h a d c o m p l e t e d C o b b L e c t u r e H a l l , K e n t C h e m i c a l L a b o r a t o r y , W a l k e r M u s e u m , R y e r s o n Physical L a b o r a t o r y , a n d a considerable cluster of dormitories ( i n c l u d i n g a g r o u p o f g r a d u a t e a n d divinity dormitories, Snell H a l l for u n d e r g r a d u a t e m e n , as well as Beecher, K e l l y , a n d N a n c y Foster H a l l s for w o m e n ) , a n d , finally, t e m p o r a r y structures for the library a n d g y m n a s i a . T h e p e r m a n e n t structures were erected in a simplified G o t h i c of blue-gray Bedford stone, embellished w i t h p r e d o m i n a n t l y early F r e n c h Renaissance o r n a m e n t . C o b b ' s G o t h i c dominates the c a m p u s to this d a y . See Julius Lewis, " H e n r y Ives C o b b a n d the C h i c a g o S c h o o l , " unpublished Master's thesis, University of C h i c a g o , J u n e 1954, chap. 2; T h o m a s W . G o o d s p e e d , A History of the University of Chicago ( C h i c a g o , c. 1 9 1 6 ) ; Cap and Gown (student y e a r b o o k for 1895). 3

4

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last inquired about the churches. "Well, no," Occidentalis Gloriosus had to own; "there was some talk about one, but the boys thought it would look too dudish." Whether the Chicago man thinks that he can do without monumental churches, or is only postponing them till a more convenient season, the lack of them restricts the range of architectural practice to a simplicity unknown in older cities. Theatres would elsewhere constitute a variation and a relief, and Chicago is a very playgoing place, but it no more possesses a monumental theatre than a monumental church. It has no more a Nouvel Opera than it has a Notre Dame. Burke, speaking of the new London theatres of a century ago, described them as "large and lofty piles, which lift their broad shoulders in gigantic pride, almost emulous of the temples of G o d , " 6 and in more than one modern capital the emulation has been carried further. In Chicago the theatres are housed in "huge and lofty piles," but they are not altogether monumental for the reason that they are but incidents of the piles. T h e two theatres that are of the chief architectural interest interiorly, and one of them is of the greatest architectural interest, are inclosed and in great part concealed, the one in a hotel and the other in an office building. T h e fact is very characteristic. It is the characteristic fact, for in the dwellings there is little of strictly local color. T h e y might be in Buffalo, or in St. Paul, or in a suburb of any American city. Hardly in New York, because the expanse of Chicago permits a spaciousness and a detachment that the projector of a town house upon cramped Manhattan Island cannot afford, or thinks he cannot, which comes to the same thing. It is only "the heart of Chicago" that is straightened for room. It is accordingly only in the heart of Chicago that we find Chicago buildings. Even before the introduction of the " C h i c a g o construction," which first appeared in the Home Insurance Building some six years ago, 7 the sky-scrapers were noticeable for two Chicagoan characteristics, their extreme altitude and their strictly utilitarian treatment. Now that the Chicago construction has R e f e r e n c e unlocated. H o m e Insurance B u i l d i n g , N E cor. S. L a S a l l e a n d W . A d a m s Sts., ( 1 8 8 3 - 1 8 8 5 ; t w o stories a d d e d 1891; demolished 1931) b y W i l l i a m L e B a r o n J e n n e y ( 1 8 3 2 - 1 9 0 7 ) , generally recognized as the first tall building to be virtually supported by skeletal metal f r a m i n g and hence a c k n o w l e d g e d as the "first skyscraper" f r o m a technical point of view. See T h o m a s E. T a l l m a d g e , ed. The Origin of the Skyscraper ( C h i c a g o , 1939), w h i c h is the report of the c o m mittee appointed by the trustees of the Estate of Marshall Field for the e x a m i n a t i o n of the structure of the H o m e Insurance Building, substantially reproduced in Architectural Record, y6 ( A u g . 1934), 1 1 3 - 1 1 8 + , with discussion. 6 7

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come to prevail, they are still noteworthy in comparison with the skyscraper of other towns for these same qualities. A n d this brings me to remark upon the very great share which the Chicago "business m a n " has had in the evolution of commercial architecture in Chicago, a share not less important than that of the architects, and not less important for being in the main negative. We all like to hear the intelligent foreigner upon the characteristic manifestations of our national spirit, if he be candid as well as intelligent, to see ourselves as others see us, and it gives me pleasure to quote a very intelligent and a very candid foreigner, M . Paul Bourget, in " O u t r e M e r , " 8 upon the commercial architecture of Chicago, what he says is so true and so well put: At one moment you have around you only "buildings." They scale the sky with their eighteen, with their twenty stories. The architect who has built, or rather who has plotted them, has renounced colonnades, mouldings, classical embellishments. He has frankly accepted the condition imposed by the speculator; multiplying as many times as possible the value of the bit of ground at the base in multiplying the supposed offices. It is a problem capable of interesting only an engineer, one would suppose. Nothing of the kind. The simple force of need is such a principle of beauty, and these buildings so conspicuously manifest that need that in contemplating them you experience a singular emotion. The sketch appears here of a new kind of art, an art of democracy, made by the crowd and for the crowd, an art of science in which the certainty of natural laws gives to audacities in appearance the most unbridled the tranquillity of geometrical figures. It is noteworthy that the observer had seen and described New Y o r k before he saw Chicago. T h e circumstance makes more striking his recognition that it is in Chicago that the type of office building has been most clearly detached and elucidated. O n e is arrested by the averment that this art, so evidently made "for the crowd," is also made " b y the crowd," since a crowd cannot be an artist, one is inclined to say. But there is not only the general consideration that in architecture an artist cannot even produce without the co-operation of his public, and cannot go on producing without being popular. There is the particular consideration that in this strictly utilitarian building the requirements are imposed with a stringency elsewhere unknown in the same degree, and very greatly to the advantage of the architecture. Elsewhere the designer of a business building commonly attempts to persuade or to hoodwink his client into sacrificing something of utility to " a r t , " and 8

Paul Bourget, Outre Mer (Paris, 1895), 1, i 6 i f . Schuyler made his own translation.

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when he succeeds, it is commonly perceptible that the sacrifice has been in vain, and that the building would have been better for its artistic purpose if it had been better for its practical purpose. There used to be an absurd story current in New York as to how the owner of two examples of florid classic in cast-iron (the Gilsey Building in lower Broadway and the Gilsey House in upper Broadway they were), exclaimed, when the second was finished, that now he had done enough for art, and henceforth he meant to build as a matter of business.9 Commercial architecture in Chicago is long past that stage, and that it is so is due rather to the business man than to the architect. In this way and to this extent the architecture is made "by the crowd," is an architecture of the people and by the people as well as for the people. I asked one of the successful architects of Chicago what would happen if the designer of a commercial building sacrificed the practical availableness of one or more of its stories to the assumed exigencies of architecture, as has often been done in New York, and as has been done in several aggravated and conspicuous instances that will readily occur to the reader familiar with recent building there. His answer was suggestive: "Why, the word would be passed and he would never get another to do. No, we never try those tricks on our business men. They are too wide awake." Another successful architect explained to me his procedure in designing a sky-scraper. " I get from my engineer a statement of the minimum thickness of the steel post and its enclosure of terra cotta. Then I establish the minimum depth of floor beam and the minimum height of the sill from the floor to accommodate what must go between them. These are the data of my design." It is not the question whether the piers would not look better for somewhat more of massiveness, whether the skeleton could not be more "padded round with flesh and fat" to its aesthetic advantage, without too serious an infringement upon its suitableness for its purpose, whether the designer could not make a workable compromise between what it might please him to call his artistic conscience and the duty he owes as the agent and adviser of the owner in directing an investment for the largest possible return. Modern com9 T h e most significant of the Gilsey Buildings, whether " f o r a r t " or " f o r business," was a cast-iron building designed in 1 8 5 4 , ostensibly by J o h n W . Ritch (born 1 8 2 2 ) , but probably substantially designed by the fabricator, the Daniel Badger Iron Works; ill. in Weisman, Art Bulletin, 36, fig. 11 following p. 296. T h e other (or, at any rate, another) Gilsey Building, Broadway at 28th St., appears in King's Handbook of New York City, 2 n d ed., p. 6 0 1 . Gilsey also owned a hotel, the Gilsey House.

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mercial architecture in general, when it is done by artistic designers, is such a compromise. It bears the scars of a conflict, if not between the architect and the client, between the claims of utility and of art, or I should prefer to say between the facts of the case and the notions of the architect. It is only the work of the "artchitect," the work that nobody looks at twice or thinks of once, or cares to talk about, that evinces a purpose, not indeed to fulfill perfectly the real requirements of the building, but to carry out the "artchitect's" confused notion of the owner's confused notion of the manner of satisfying those requirements. T h a t is as different a matter as possible from putting the resources of a trained and artistic intelligence absolutely at the service of an employer, and the results are as different as possible. T h e architects of Chicago are not so radically different as all this from architects elsewhere. They are different on compulsion. They have "frankly accepted the conditions imposed by the speculator," (the word I translate "frankly" is brutalement, and I wish that M . Bourget had chosen to say "loyally" instead), because they are really imposed, and there is no getting away from them, if one would win and keep the reputation of a "practical" architect. And mark that the business men who impose these conditions are not the most private-spirited; they are the most public-spirited body of business men of any commercial city in the world. They are willing to make the most generous sacrifices for their city to provide it with ornaments and trophies which shall make it something more than a centre of pigsticking and grain-handling. They are willing to play the part of Maecenas to the fine arts, only they insist that they will not play it "during business hours." They are too clear-headed to allow themselves or their architects to confuse their several and distinct capacities of money-makers and Maecenases. If they allow themselves to be confused upon this point, in the first place they would not have so much money to do their public benefactions withal, and in the second place their commercial architecture would not have the character that in fact it has, and that comes from their insistence upon a rigid adherence to the real requirements of their commercial undertakings. Into that architecture, then, their influence enters as a very potent factor, and, whatever the architect beginning his practice in Chicago with his head full of "classical embellishments" may have thought or said, it enters, as every discerning beholder must now perceive, as a very beneficent factor.

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In one respect, and this a respect that more or less affects commefcial architecture everywhere, the influence is not beneficial. The architect is too much pressed for time. His client is aware that parsimony is not economy, and is willing to give him all the money that he really needs. He is aware also that mere greediness defeats its own purpose, that to erect a very lofty building on a very restricted site is to increase the comparative cost both of building and of maintenance, and that to occupy with rentable apartments space that is needed for light and air is a very costly proceeding. In all such things he shows a spirit of large and intelligent liberality. But it is especially true of him, what our French critic has noted as a national characteristic, that he cannot spare time. From the hour that the ground for a new building is put at his disposal the work of construction must go on at the highest rate of speed. If the plans are not matured at that moment, they must be executed in their immaturity, or with such ripening only as can be allowed while the work is actually going forward. There is after that no time left for the leisurely correction and completion upon which artistic perfection depends. There is no atmosphere in the world that less resembles "the still air of delightful studies" than that of the heart of Chicago. And so the successful practitioner of architecture in Chicago is primarily an administrator. He absolutely must be that. If he be secondarily an artist, all the better; but in that case he is an artist working under pressure, a condition which is peculiarly abhorrent to the "artistic temperament." All the questions of arrangement of construction and of design which enter into the design of that very complicated organism, the modern office building, are presented at once, with a peremptory demand for an immediate answer. In the answer to them must concur the constructor, the designer and the "practical man." Whether these three are united in one person or distributed among three, the primary and co-ordinating qualification is that of an administrator. " T h e readiness is all." A busy practitioner must have his professional apparatus, including his professional library, at his fingers' ends. The irrefutable criticism in the Vicar of Wakefield that "the picture would have been better if the artist had taken more pains," is irrelevant. It is not a question whether the study of another month might not invigorate the masses and chasten the detail. The foundation-plans must be ready as soon as the ground is cleared, and the building must not at any stage wait a day for drawings. Here, it is true, the general uniformity of the problem is a

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great resource to the designer. An architect who lives by and upon office buildings has always, it is to be presumed, designs adumbrated in his mind—alternative designs, very possibly, for past buildings, rejected as less eligible for the past purpose than the design executed, but more eligible for the future purpose, or designs entirely ideal, drawn from a consideration of the abstract sky-scraper. Much of the preliminary and general work of design may thus be done before the commission arrives, much more than if the practice were more varied. But with whatever mitigations there may be of the conditions, the conditions are so especially stringent in Chicago as to make the successes all the more remarkable. And, indeed, it would be worse than idle to find fault with the conditions because, as we have seen, the successes have been won by an absolute loyalty to the conditions, and by the frank abandonment of every architectural convention that comes in conflict with them. [Here follows a brief biographical account of the two partners, with Adler's statement that Sullivan was the designer of the firm—all of which conveniently appears in Hugh Morrison's Louis Sullivan. Then Schuyler discusses the exterior of the Auditorium building, making essentially the same observations as in his earlier essay at greater length (see pp. 257-261), with the exception that he here indicates the important role the client played in determining the severity of the elevations. Finally Schuyler turns briefly to the interiors, which had gone unnoted in the earlier discussion.] But of course the exterior is a compromise, the environment and concealment of a monumental theatre by a commercial building, and it is the interior that alone affords a gauge of the capacity of the architect for monumental design. The success of this, interior is striking and unchallenged. The type of an opera-house, which the auditorium essentially is, is so well settled and so universally accepted that the variations ordinarily attempted upon it, even by architects of original force, are comparatively slight. While the component parts of the accepted type are retained in this interior, they are transmuted into an entirely new result. The general forms are determined, as Mr. Adler has explained, entirely by acoustical considerations, and it is pleasant to know that in this instance the science of acoustics, which so many architects deny to be for their purpose a science at all has been vindicated, and that the auditorium is in fact an excellent place in which to hear. But the devices adopted for this purpose have been so treated as

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to produce a most impressive and quite unique interior. T h e succession of the concentric elliptical arches which frame for the spectators the spectacle of the stage has the result of bringing all parts of the auditorium, huge as in fact it is, into much closer relation with the performers than is attained in theatres more conventionally treated, even of m u c h less dimensions, and it attains a very noble largeness and simplicity, which the designer has been careful not to impair b y his detail, rich and intricate as this often is, or by his color-decoration. It is not fanciful to say that this great and simple interior, with its expanding arches above, and its expanding terraces below, extending and proclaiming a hospitality as nearly as m a y be equal and undistinguishing, illustrates, as plainly as the exterior of the many-storied office buildings, and in contrast with the " r o y a l " and " i m p e r i a l " opera-houses, M . Bourget's conception of " a new kind of art, an art of d e m o c r a c y . " It was in this building that was announced urbi et orbi, first beyond C h i c a g o if not first in Chicago, M r . Sullivan's singular endowment as a decorator. This is so eminent and remarkable, indeed, that it has induced some of his professional brethren to regard him and describe him as a decorator only. T h e A u d i t o r i u m alone would suffice to refute that unjust limitation, for the largeness and simplicity and liberality of the general scheme are eminently "architectonic" qualities, and these qualities are equally exhibited in the treatment of the features, of the exterior features, the balcony on the lake front and the crowning tower [Figs. 46, 49, 50], and of the interior features, the auditorium proper, the public banquet room and the dining room of the hotel, in which a perfectly straightforward following out of the indications of the plan has issued in a highly artistic and a very original apartment. A n y one of these features in its general composition, without a single ornament, would suffice to vindicate its author as an architect in contradistinction to a decorator. N a y , the adjustment of ornament itself, in place and in scale, so that it heightens and carries further the inherent expressions of the disposition and the structure is the work of the architect and not of the decorator. It remains true that the ornament of the auditorium and of M r . Sullivan's work in general is extremely well worth looking at on its o w n account. T h e r e is no disputing that in such a matter, the French professional verdict carries more authority than any other in the modern world. T h e medal of the Societe Centrale des Arts Decoratifs, awarded to M r . Sullivan after the C o l u m b i a n Exposition, and the only French

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testimonial elicited b y the architectural display at the Fair, 1 0 is but an official recognition of the fact that in felicity and fertility of invention, the designer to w h o m it was awarded is of the first rank among his contemporaries throughout the world. A m o n g his contemporaries in this country is there one w h o can in these respects be compared with him without an invidiousness involving cruelty? T h e traceried grill of the proscenium in the auditorium, the fronts of the boxes, the detail of the staircase in the hotel, the frieze at the end of the dining-room, the detail of the bar, all these are worthy examples, in wood or baked clay or metal, of their designer's unique talent. A s our illustrations show, and as visitors to the World's Fair are aware, he has since furnished even more striking examples of this faculty. But the first of his conspicuous works sufficed to summon attention to a new and striking individuality in design. A n unexecuted project is worth preservation here as an illustration not only of its architect's powers and methods, but also and eminently of the genius loci. It is immensely characteristic of C h i c a g o that a building which bears the same relation to the ordinary "sky-scraper" that this bears to the old-fashioned five-story building of the pre-elevator period should have been projected b y "practical m e n " as a practical structure. T h e first project for a twenty-story building came from still further West than C h i c a g o , and was viewed with apprehension and alarm b y the architects of the country some ten years ago. 1 1 But that was not a practical project. T o look at the illustration of the Fraternity T e m p l e 12 one would suppose that it was intended as a " f a n c y sketch," showing the imaginative possibilities of the C h i c a g o construction. In fact, however, it was very seriously meant, and it came near being executed before the l a w intervened to limit the height of buildings. Neither, indeed, does any reason appear w h y it should not have been T h e a w a r d h o n o r e d the o r n a m e n t of its " G o l d e n P o r t a l . " R e f e r e n c e to the p u b l i c a t i o n of a design for a twenty-eight-story skyscraper b y L e r o y S. Buffington in Northwestern Architect, 6 ( M a r . 1888), 23, in w h i c h he asserted his claims as the " i n v e n t o r " of skeletal f r a m i n g for w h i c h he h a d t a k e n out a p a t e n t in 1887. T h e claims m a d e by B u f f i n g t o n h a v e b e e n fully discussed a n d exploded in a series of articles: Ε . M . U p j o h n , " B u f f i n g t o n a n d the S k y s c r a p e r , " Art Bulletin, iy ( M a r . 1935), 4 8 - 7 0 ; H u g h M o r rison, " B u f f i n g t o n a n d the I n v e n t i o n of the S k y s c r a p e r , " D m i t r o s Tselos, " T h e E n i g m a of Buffington's S k y s c r a p e r , " a n d M u r i e l B. Christison, " H o w B u f f i n g t o n S t a k e d His C l a i m , " all in Art Bulletin, 26 ( M a r . 1944), 1 - 2 4 . 10

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1 2 f Project for F r a t e r n i t y T e m p l e ( 1 8 9 1 ) , the first design for a skyscraper stepped so as to g u a r a n t e e light, air, a n d v i e w to offices. F o r further description a n d ills, of this a n d other A d l e r & S u l l i v a n buildings, see Morrison, Sullivan.

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built and have proved an excellent investment. The scheme of a detached structure, narrowing from the base to the top by successive stages of recession is evidently that which promises the most abundant supply of air and light to its own tenants, and also that which threatens the least interference with the easements in these respects of neighboring owners. Given a detachment complete enough, indeed, and absolute protection against fire, and there is no reason why a thirtyfive-story building should be any more an example of "incivism" than one of ten. One can even imagine a building of the dimensions of the Fraternity Temple at the centre of each square mile, or even less, of a crowded city, 13 so prepared for in its surroundings as well as so planned in itself as to involve no abatement of their utility, although in that case its owners ought perhaps to be the owners of all the land within its "sphere of influence," and the building of this to be planned with reference to the towering central structure; In its showing of the possibilities of the Chicago construction the project is most interesting, especially now that it is certain those possibilities cannot be realized in Chicago itself. As a design it is entitled in a particular degree to the praise that M . Bourget has given to the tall buildings of Chicago in general. In this, very eminently, the "certainty of natural laws gives to audacity apparently the most unbridled the tranquillity of geometrical figures." 14 Still, it seems to me fortunate that the Auditorium, young as it is, antedates the Chicago construction. Its admirable basement would have lost either its impressiveness or its pertinency if it had not been an actual wall, and had not had an actual wall to carry. Indeed, we must own that the Chicago construction in its latest development, has not yet found its artistic expression, that no designer has yet learned to deal successfully with a structural change so radical that it has abolished the wall, which is the chief datum of every one of the historical styles of architecture, excepting only the developed Gothic. Look at the steel cage that forms the skeleton of the sky-scraper, and that is run up so many stories in advance of the architectural envelope, which is also a structural necessity! There is the problem crudely stated, and it does not seem to suggest its own solution. It contradicts almost every assumption of the schools. It contradicts especially the fundamental assumption of a 13 A prefiguration of Le Corbusier's " U n e ville contemporaine" (1922) and other skyscraper urban projects of the twenties. 14 See above, p. 380η.

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building that is composed of walls, and that is that it must be more solid at the bottom than at the top. In the steel cage which here is the structure there is no sensible diminution of massiveness as it rises. The diminution which does or may take place as the load is lightened is slight enough to be negligible, is too slight to have been thus far found expressible. In the project we have just been considering, the aesthetic necessity of a more massive base to the structure has been recognized, and the base has been provided, but by ignoring the structure of a cage and by making it an actual wall, apparently adequate to its own support and that of the superstructure, which reveals or rather betrays itself as a cage in uprights evidently too slender to do their work if they were built of the material with which they are faced. T o give the cage a solid base and an enriched top, and to leave the interval as a cage is the method adopted by our best designers to meet the new requirements, and it would be difficult to suggest a better. But it is always to be borne in mind that this method is provisional and tentative, rather an evasion than a solution, and that it is the work of more than a decade, of more than a generation, to carry so far the analysis of the new mode of building as to produce the artistic expression of it which it is yet an article of artistic faith that it supplies in itself the means for attaining. Meanwhile, the architects who undertake to reconcile so far as may be the old artistic requirements with the new structural requirements, to observe the Aristotelian precept of a beginning, a middle and an end, with a construction that is uniform and virtually equivalent from the ground to the sky line are entitled to be judged by their success in their own aim, and some of the successes have been very brilliant. In the Schiller theatre 15 Mr. Sullivan was enabled to carry out imperfectly and on a smaller scale the scheme of "progressive recessions from base to pinnacle," which he projected in so complete and so grandiose a fashion for the Fraternity Temple. Here the problem was to design on an inside lot an office building containing a theatre. The stopping of the wings at the ninth story evidently secures permanently by the reservation of the space on each side the effective lighting of the offices above that point, while the architectural advantage of the central tower, flanked by the lower wings and rearing its detached and unbroken shaft through fifteen stories is equally manifest. The bowed 15

t Schiller Theater, 103-109 Randolph St. (1891-1892; demolished 1961).

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balcony was a very bold, but also a very successful expedient for designating and emphasizing the base, and the summit with its spreading cornice and its belvedere-finial is a picturesque object from any point of view. In the interior, the theatre suffers, of course, in comparison with a theatre so monumentally conceived as the Auditorium, by the cramped dimensions from the sense of which it is difficult to escape, but it shows the same felicity of detail. Another theatrical interior of Mr. Sullivan's, that of McVicker's, 16 is noteworthy for the treatment of the proscenium in which the arch-form is abandoned for a square and deeply-moulded picture frame as effective as it is original. In the artist's later office buildings, the purpose is uniformly evident to give as much importance as may be to the basement and the upper division, the base and the capital, to confine the enrichment to these and to leave the intermediate division, the shaft, as a confessed cage coated with fire-proof material. This, indeed, is the method arrived at by the concensus of the most successful designers of elevator-buildings, but Mr. Sullivan applies it with a special stringency. In the Chicago Stock Exchange 17 the main motive of the composition is supplied by the necessity for the unusually spacious and lofty apartment required by the institution from which the building takes its name. Though it is but an incident of such a pile, it seems that a still more specialized treatment of it might have been adopted, with great advantage to the expressiveness of the building, and without too much sacrifice of uniformity. As it is, the Exchange is not distinguishable from the offices on the same level, of which its height includes two ranges. Neither is the relation between the basement and the superstructure fortunate, nor the demarcation sufficiently signalized. The decorative detail of the basement is rich and refined, it is true, when one comes to look at it, but it is scarcely emphatic enough to take its proper place. What impresses one in looking at the building and what one carries away from it is the effective treatment of the cornice, including the plain colonnade beneath, that gives value to the enrichment of the cornice itself, in which the ornament is as well adjusted in scale as it is effective in design; this cornice and the principal entrance, which is excellently composed and excellently detailed, and which has in Chi16 t Renovation of the interior of McVicker's Theater, 25 W. Madison St. (1890-1891; demolished). 17 f Chicago Stock Exchange, SW cor. W. Washington St. (1893-1894; extant).

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cago no rival in its own kind, excepting always the entrance to the Phoenix Building, 18 in which carving in stone takes the place of modelling in terra cotta [Fig. 55]. The Wainwright Building in St. Louis 19 is of a simpler composition and of a plainer treatment, and it is distinctly more successful, partly by reason of its greater simplicity and plainness, mainly by reason of its superior coherency and unity, to which the greater emphasis of its distribution conduces [Fig. 104]. The basement, in brownstone, is absolutely bare of ornament, excepting the enrichment of the doorways, and this is confined to the reveals. The emphatic string-course that divides this from the superstructure of red brick and red terra cotta is not even moulded and it is judiciously stopped at the angles so as not to interrupt the vertical mass of the pier; but the baldness does not here give the sense of crudity or want of finish. In the superstructure, the skeleton, the cage, is confessed, and although the envelope is of brickwork it rather accentuates than dissembles the stark continuous posts of which the lines are nowhere interrupted between base and cornice. Only at the angles is a mass permitted of such magnitude as to deserve to be called a pier. At the top alone is there any contradiction of the actual structure. T o crown a vertical post of coated steel with a pilastercapital, is, however, plainly a solecism. The expanding capital of masonry holds its place by weight, and expands in order to receive a load of greater area than that of the shaft. The arrangement is irrelevant and unmeaning when applied to a frame of uprights and cross beams that are riveted together, and produces confusion in the minds even of those spectators who do not analyze the cause of the confusion. The solids of the building, apart from the beams, are only the panels filling the spaces between sills and floor-lines, and these are treated as the mere screens that they are, being withdrawn from the plane of the piers, or rather of the posts, and being very properly decorated, for the decoration not only promotes the understanding that they are insertions extraneous to the stark structure, but also defers to the material. T o leave plain a material so plastic is almost, if not quite, to deny its character. That the decoration is effective by design and by scale need scarcely be said. The real enrichment of the structure, however, is in 18 O n the entrance of the Phoenix Building by Burnham & Root, see above, pp. 2 7 3 f and Fig. 5 5 . 19 f Wainwright (now Missouri Insurance) Building, N W cor. 7th and Chestnut Sts., St. Louis, M o . ( 1 8 9 0 - 1 8 9 1 ; extant).

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Fig. 104. Louis Sullivan. Wainwright Building, St. Louis, M o . , 1 8 9 0 - 1 8 9 1 .

the cornice and the cornice-story, where it forms an appropriate crown and here the richness, intricacy and refinement of the ornament amount to a signature. The building of the Union Trust Company, also in St. Louis,20 in spite of its far superior richness and elaboration, is an alternative solution of 20

f Union Trust Company (later Central National Bank, now Holland) Building, NW cor. 7th and Olive Sts., St. Louis, Mo. (1892-1893, extant but much remodeled).

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a problem in its essentials the same as that presented in the Wainwright. In the basement the cage is here ignored, except for the necessity of providing for the prolongation to the ground of the posts of the superstructure, and the basement becomes a complete two-story building which, while remaining an adequate base for the superstructure, is designed for its own sake, and does not pretend to foretell, as that of the Wainwright so clearly foretells, what manner of edifice is the sequel to it. This separateness is promoted and may possibly have been suggested by the scheme of the building, an open court at the centre of the principal front, of which the principal entrance at the bottom determines the height of the base and requires, or at least justifies some enrichment for itself. The scheme is not unusual. The novelty here is that the entrance, a very dignified and a somewhat ornate portal, is flanked by wings in the first story absolutely plain, but in the second far more elaborate and fantastic in design than itself. We may complain of the inordinate richness, for a commercial building, of this mezzanine, and logically the complaint is just enough. But for all that we cannot really blame the architect in letting himself loose upon the basement of a business building in the absence of temples and palaces upon which to discharge the fantasies of his teeming brain. O n the contrary, we are extremely obliged to him for giving us something, even "in business hours," so very well worth looking at, and if we prescribed to other designers not to make decorative basements to business buildings unless they could make them as truly decorative as this of the Union Trust Company, I do not think we should be practically embarrassed by the superfluity of ornateness. And, indeed, even if beauty were not its own excuse for being, the designer here would have something to say for himself in the fact that the building is not only commercial in the sense of a building erected for rental, but that it is also the abode of a commercial institution, and that it is the quarters of the institution that he has signalized in his design. Above this basement, which is very vigorously separated as well as distinguished from it, the ten-story shaft is of an absolute simplicity and reveals the Chicago construction as plainly as the Wainwright Building, more plainly, indeed, by the wider spacing of the parts, which not only enlarges the cellular unit but accounts for the structural posts throughout their whole length, whereas what becomes of the intermediate uprights of the Wainwright Building in the unbroken openings of the first floor, and why should they not be recognized as subordinate, as is done

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in the Union Trust by diminishing them to mere mullions? 21 The capital here on the other hand, occupying two stories, is a little bald, not only in comparison with the lavish prodigality of the design of the base, but for the purpose of distinguishing its treatment from that of the shaft. With the plainness of the two upper stories moreover, the necessity was increased that the cornice should be emphatically modelled and furnish "beetling brows" for the lofty mass, whereas it is a simple unmoulded cavetto, and the decoration which takes in it the place of modelling is ineffectual to supply that place, counting only, in a view of the whole, as a delicate intaglio. In scale it is little bolder than the surface decoration of the mezzanine. If the capital here had been a more effectual counterpart of the base, the Union Trust would have been as successful in execution as it is in conception. As it is the basement, in which the conditions of the Chicago construction are kept in abeyance and allow it to be judged as a self-subsisting structure of masonry, and not as a protective envelope, is one of the most attractive examples of our author's power of composition as well as of decorative invention, and one of the signal successes of our architecture. The Guaranty building at Buffalo 22 is in its scheme a variant upon that of the Wainwright, the main difference being the substitution of terra cotta both for the masonry of the basement and for the brickwork of the superstructure [Fig. 105]. The more facile material is recognized throughout in the treatment by reticulations of surface ornament differing in density and character of design, according to the function of the surface treated and to the function of what is behind it.23 I know of no steel-framed building in which the metallic construction is more palpably felt through the envelope of baked clay. The designer has in this respect fully availed himself of the plasticity of his enclosing material. Here again it is the capital which forms the questionable feature, for this is formed by arches turned from post to post, a cornice-story of bulls' eyes aligned above the voids and an umbrageous cornice, the 21 Reference to the identical size of all vertical window mullions in the Wainwright Building, although only every other shaft contains a structural column. Schuyler sees an improvement in the revelation of a major and minor element in the alternating rhythm of the verticals of the Union Trust. See also Morrison, Sullivan, pp. I52f. 22 t Guaranty (now Prudential) Building, S W cor. Church and Pearl Sts., Buffalo, N . Y . (1894-1895; extant). 23 This role of Sullivan's ornament as making visible the "function of the surface treated" and especially the "function of what is behind it" has been explored by Vincent Scully, "Louis Sullivan's Architectural Ornament," Perspecta 5, pp. 73-80.

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only continuous horizontal line above the strong moulded and enriched string course that divides the basement from the superstructure. Effective as the cornice is in itself, with its bold projection and the emphatic arcade forming the lunettes of the round openings, the failure to bound the attic underneath entails an incertitude and confusion that render the broad and definite belt at the summit of the Wainwright a more eligible termination. In this respect, however, of an appropriate and effective finial for a very lofty building, the treatment of a projected work on the site of the old Burnet House, in Cincinnati, 24 is more successful than any of the executed works we have been considering. This mode of crowning such an edifice will be recognized as that of the "roof garden," whether or not the terminal story is devoted to that purpose. Such an expansion is as evidently logical in a structure of metal as in one of timber, whether in either case it is managed by the projection of brackets, or by the mere prolongation of the floor beams, and it gives to the building to which it is applied a capital that may be made a suitable counterpart to the richest base. The treatment of it here is very admirable, both in the design of the crowning feature itself and in its adjustment to what is beneath it. The terminal arches of the Buffalo building are here reproduced, but on a larger and more effective scale, being turned not between every pair, but between alternate pairs of piers, the intermediate piers being subordinated to mere mullions so slight that they may be stopped above the base without incongruity. The system gives scope for a larger treatment, insomuch that the unit of the design may properly be called a bay, and it gives scope also for the introduction in the window heads of a rudimentary but very effective tracery. The shaft is also noteworthy for the modelling of the piers. While the angle piers are left plain and get the benefit of their dimensions, the intermediate piers that are connected above by arches are contrasted by modelling, and the piers be24 This major, unbuilt project by Sullivan is unmentioned in Morrison, Sullivan. We have seen Sullivan's perspective for it, however, thanks to the courtesy of Richard Nickel, w h o will publish it in his The Complete Architecture of Louis Sullivan, to appear c. 1962. It is a double tower utilizing precisely the same wall treatment as Sullivan's later Bayard Building, even to the cornice, with a lower block between topped by the open loggia which Schuyler mentions. Perspective c. 1894, the building to have been located on the N W cor. of 3rd and V i n e Sts., with a portion of the Burnet House remaining. Burnet House (1848-1850; altered 1880; demolished 1926) by Isaiah Rogers; see Denys P. Myers, "Isaiah Rogers in Cincinnati. Architect for the Burnet House," Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, g (Apr. 1951), 121-132. 111. in Schuyler's article o n Rogers ( 1 9 1 0 - K ) .

Fig. 105. Louis Sullivan. Guaranty Building, Buffalo, Ν. Υ . , ι 8 9 4 - ι 8 9 5 ·

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tween these w h i c h perform the office only of mullions are reduced each to a single moulding. T h i s treatment promises to be very effective, and equally expressive, since the form assumed b y the brickwork w r a p p i n g very strikingly suggests a flanged c o l u m n of metal. T h e basement in masonry, again of a g r o u n d floor and an entresol, is signalized b y the modelling of the angle pier into a g r o u p of columns, forming a feature of w h i c h it doth not yet appear w h a t it shall be, and of w h i c h the effect will be apprehensible only in execution, and of a portal of w h i c h the actual entrance is a R o m a n e s q u e a r c h w a y , while a b o v e it is a canopied a r c h w a y of a form derived from the Italian Renaissance. T h i s latter is also e m p l o y e d at the entrance of the Buffalo building. It is of a rather disagreeable recent association, as h a v i n g been so frequently e m p l o y e d perched u p o n two columns and standing free. M r . Sullivan's sense of construction is altogether too keen to admit of his building an arch without any visible abutment, and in the entrance at Buffalo there is no difficulty w i t h the feature on this score, nor indeed on any other. But in the C i n c i n n a t i building the superposition of it u p o n an arch of so different dimensions, proportions and treatment threatens a troublesome complication of forms. But even if this be not averted, it is a detail that does not compromise the architectural success of the building as a whole, as one of the most interesting and perhaps the most organically complete and most satisfactory of its author's contributions to the most urgent of the architectural problems of the present in this country. But, after all, the observer as well as the designer of sky-scrapers m a y be excused for fatigue after a series of sky-scrapers, even of the most interesting, a n d desire some variety in his projects. N o t that M r . Sulliv a n ' s w o r k bears evidence of this feeling in the least degree, but that after a course of sky-scrapers a seven-story building must be a refreshment and a three-story building a delight. Paullo minora canamus.25 T h e St. Nicholas Hotel in St. Louis

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w o u l d h a v e passed for a tall building

ten years ago. It is in fact of the same n u m b e r of stories as the original elevator buildings of twenty years ago, of w h i c h the t w o additional stories were found b y th& designers so intractable. N o w a seven-story building presents, in its general composition, no difficulties at all. E v e r y educated designer w o u l d adopt, w i t h o u t question, in the absence of 25 A parody on the opening lines of Vergil's Eclogue. Schuyler has altered " L e t us sing a somewhat greater song" into " L e t us sing a somewhat slighter song." 26 t St. Nicholas (now New St. Nicholas) Hotel, 8th and Locust Sts., St. Louis, Mo. (1892-1893; extant but much remodeled).

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some special motive supplied by special requirements, the same general scheme, a basement of one or two stories, a superstructure of four or five, treated with a virtual identity, and an enriched attic of a single story. Such is the treatment of the St. Nicholas, but here the special requirement of a large dining-room, large enough to become a banquet hall, at the top of the house offered a motive for the treatment of the upper member of which the designer promptly and very effectively availed himself. The stone basement is well adjusted in proportion to the superstructure, the contrast is effective between its large arched openings and the small rectangular windows of the central part, while the extreme plainness of both tends to emphasize the moderate richness of the cornice and of the unpierced parapet of the balcony. The building, however, owes very little to ornament, which is confined to the features just noted and to the terra cotta panels of the oriels, from which, indeed, it would, as we have intimated, been almost slovenly to omit ornament. The unquestionable success of the building is purely "architectonic." A great part of it depends upon the individuality of treatment suggested by the banquet hall at the top, of which the ridge of the steep slated roof marks the axis, and of which the great gable window is treated with unusual simplicity as well as unusual success. The effectiveness of the composition is much enhanced by the differences in material, the stonework of the basement, the buff brick and buff terra cotta of the superstructural, and the red slate of the roof, without which differentiation there would have been danger of monotony. The individuality of the building comes from the treatment of the upper member. As we have seen, this is not capricious and is only in a small degree arbitrary, but strictly expressive, and the success of it comes from the fidelity and skill with which the designer has followed the indications supplied by the facts of the case. The disposition is not unusual, but the success is. The only other modern work I know which is equally successful in the same kind is the Endell street school in London, 27 one of the most interesting products of the Gothic revival, and the resemblance in general effect is all the more interesting for the likelihood that the architect of the hotel has never seen the earlier building. With the Transportation building at the World's Fair, we get still 27 According to Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Schuyler presumably here refers to St. Giles' National Schools (i860) by Ε. M. Barry, although the building faces on Shaftesbury Ave. and High Holborn.

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further away from the sky-scraper. This edifice was quite as emphatic an announcement of the individuality of the designer as the Auditorium had previously been, and an announcement even more public and more emphatic, but the work was by no means equally popular. 28 [At this point, Schuyler quotes verbatim from his description of the Transportation Building in "Last Words About the Fair." See below, pp.564^] It remains to be added that while a good many American architects allowed what seemed to them the incongruity of this building with those by which it was surrounded to lead them to overlook the designer's aim and the fact that it was much more serious than the production of a scenic effect, and to blind them also to the high merit of the detail, the French visitors took the designer's point of view. They both recognized what he was trying to do in general, and they recognized in a substantial way the brilliant success that he had attained in detail, for it was the detail of the Transportation Building that obtained for its author the medal of the Societe des Arts Decoratifs. The general scheme of the Transportation Building, that is to say a roof of low pitch with projecting and umbrageous eaves, sheltering an expanse of wall little broken or relieved, had been adopted by Mr. Sullivan in a number of buildings erected since, which have a family resemblance in spite of their differences of detail. One of these is the Hotel Victoria, of brick and timber, in a suburb of Chicago, in which the projection is suspended at the centre of the principal front, in order to admit a tower also covered with a low, spreading and umbrageous roof. Another is the Opera House, at Pueblo, in Colorado, of solid masonry, which is not only a theatre but also a "business block," albeit but of four stories. A third is the passenger station of the Illinois Central, at New Orleans, 29 of red brick and unpainted wood, in which the principal feature is the very simple colonnade that sustains the roof of the platform, with the powerful but equally simple arched porches at the ends. There is in the general scheme something of Oriental and something of tropical, the latter being irresistibly suggested by the umbrageousness which is an integral part of the plan—the former by the emphasis given 28 An interesting qualification to the usual statement that the Transportation Building was an immense success. 29 f Hotel Victoria, Chicago Heights, 111. (1892-1893; extant), f Opera House, Pueblo, Colo. (1890; destroyed by fire 1922). Illinois Central Station, 1001 S. R a m p a r t St., New Orleans, La. (1892; demolished 1954).

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to the horizontal lines and the consequent expansiveness, as well as by the surface decoration with which in some instances the expanses of wall are relieved. The Colorado building and the New Orleans building commend themselves at once as appropriate and charged with local color, while if one did not know the destination of the design for the hotel he would conceive of this as meant for a Southern and winter resort, as much as the architect's own cottage on the Gulf of Mexico. 30 Perhaps, however, the emphasis of horizontality, the spreading effect of all this group, may be in part the expression of the designer's relief from a course of sky-scrapers. As it is the most solid and monumental, the Pueblo building is also perhaps the most successful in design. The simple and powerful arcades of the base with their ample abutments are very effectively counterparted by the simple and slender colonnades of the upper story, while the erections emerging from the roof and demanded by the practical requirements become parts of the architectural composition which is effectively crowned by the open and low-roofed tower. The material, brownstone for the walls and Spanish tile for the roof, adds to the total impression of simplicity and quiet, which is not disturbed by the sparing introduction of ornament. Of a class by itself is the Synagogue in Chicago. 31 The peculiarity of the scheme of this is the emergence at the centre of the substructure of a clerestory covered with a four-hipped roof, and supported, not by a range of columns but by girders that leave the whole interior unobstructed. It is an interesting scheme but it cannot be said to have been fairly carried out in the exterior, which not only fails to convey any ecclesiastical impression, but which appears rather as a sketch than as a completed design. In the interior the unusual arrangement is explained and developed to an interesting and a reasonably successful result, not so completely successful, however, but that the spectator must wish that the designer might be empowered to undertake it again upon a larger scale, under a less strict limitation and also with a greater deliberation than seem in this essay to have been at his command. In domestic architecture Mr. Sullivan has had less to do than in other departments of his art. But there is one very noteworthy dwelling 30 t Sullivan's Cottage, Ocean Springs, Miss. (1890; extant but extensively remodeled). For the significance of this cottage in Sullivan's life, see Willard Connely, Louis Sullivan As He Lived (New York, 1960), passim. 31 t Kehilath Ma'ariv Synagogue (now Pilgrim Baptist Church), S E cor. 33rd St. and Indiana Ave. (1892; extant but remodeled).

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of his design upon the North Side in Chicago, which is an admirable example of the value of simplification. 32 The house, it will be perceived, stands upon a wall which is continued beyond the house and forms a stylobate, almost a terrace for it, the superstructure being in the same plane, and separated only by a delicate moulding, but very sharply distinguished by the change of material from whitish stone to darkish yellow-brick. The wings, unusually solid, with only one opening in each story at the centre of each, are also absolutely plain, broken only by the single course of stone that sets off the attic. This disposition gives great value and detachment to the single "feature" of the front, the centre, where the basement wall is carried up so as to frame the doorway and its flanking windows, and where in the second story a colonnaded balcony is projected, and still further detached by the recession of the wall above and behind it. Even this single feature is of a high severity, the character of the whole design, with no direct suggestion from the antique except the colonnade, being eminently what we agree to call "classic." It should be added that the illustration does not do justice to the building, the contrast of color being more violent in it than in fact; but it may also be added that the building does not do justice to the design, and for the same reason, the tint that would give the precise force of contrast required to carry out the design apparently not having been procurable. Simplification is equally the process that has produced the three tombs that are so characteristic of their author, although, of course, simplicity is much easier to attain here than to educe from the complicated requirements of a dwelling. I should suppose that the Getty tomb was the earliest of the three, as it is the least successful, but in fact it is the second. 33 As such things go, it is very successful, but its author is entitled to be held to a higher than the current standard. Practically it is a cube divided into halves by the springing line of the openings, quite plain below this line and richly diapered above. The equal division is injurious to the sense of unity which we have a special right to exact in a building so small and so simple, and a harmony cannot be established by the addition to the proportion of a third member no more important than is here the crowning feature, a level parapet on one face above the 32 t Louis Sullivan house, 4575 Lake Ave. (1892; extant). It is more properly the Albert Sullivan House, although Louis lived for a number of years in it; see Connely, Sullivan, passim. 33 t Getty Tomb, Graceland Cemetery (1890; extant).

A R C H I T E C T U R E IN CHICAGO: A D L E R & S U L L I V A N

401

boldly projecting cornice, and on the other a serrated line that seems to indicate the method of roofing. The diaper-work of the upper wall serves mainly to vary the texture of the surface, but the detail of the openings and of the cornice is a real enrichment and very successful, both in design and in scale. Mr. Sullivan, as he has so often shown, has no occasion to borrow either schemes of decoration or detail of decoration from anybody. He has in various works derived valuable suggestions from the works of Richardson, which he has carried out in his own way and stamped with his own individuality. In this doorway he seems to have adopted a suggestion more literally. T o give great depth to voussoirs, and then to subdivide them by ornaments so as to simulate an arch of three orders in an arch of one order, seems a procedure not only irrational but wasteful, since it fritters away the effect of the unusual depth without really attaining that of the concentric arches. Mr. Richardson did this in the porch of Austin Hall, at Cambridge, 34 and Mr. Sullivan has followed the precedent thus set, even to the introduction of the same bead-and-reel as one of the ornaments by which the voussoirs are cut and the arch subdivided. The arrangement is distinctly less eligible either than Mr. Richardson's usual method of leaving the voussoirs quite plain, with a roll moulding at the intrados and a label moulding at the extrados, or than Mr. Sullivan's usual method of successive recessions of withdrawal, leaving the arrises unmoulded. All of which does not prevent either this arch or its prototype from being a very interesting and effective piece of design. The Ryerson tomb attempts less and accomplishes more; 3 5 small and simple as it is, it is an architectural composition in the form and the treatment of which the prime purpose of a tomb, that of duration, is thoroughly expressed. The prolongation of the centre above the wings and the massive pyramidal roof promote this expression, while a very happy refinement was that of carrying down the face of this central compartment in a single slope, while the wings have a concave curve. The extreme plainness of the design in contrast with the former is a deference to the material, which is here dark Quincy granite polished against blue Bedford limestone. The Wainwright memorial, 36 again is evidently of a facile material, 34 35 36

Austin Hall, Harvard University (1881-1883; extant). f Ryerson Tomb, Graceland Cemetery (1889; extant). f Wainwright Tomb, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis, Mo. (1892; extant).

402

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in fact of buff limestone. As it is far more elaborate and ambitious than either of its predecessors, it is in an equal degree more successful, and is indeed one of the noteworthy successes of its author. Here the lower division of the substructure is distinctly subordinated to the upper, while the third member of the composition, the low dome, is also the third term in the proportion and gives unity and completeness to the work. The detail by which the effect of the composition is enhanced and enriched is perfectly adjusted in place and in scale, while there is no worthier example than this detail in its fertility, vitality and grace, of Mr. Sullivan's power of decorative design. The suggestion of an Oriental origin that is made by or in many of Mr. Sullivan's works is unmistakable in this most characteristic work. Here, indeed, it is made by the general form as well as in the exuberance and the felicity of the detail. The level lines, the low cupola, have something Asiatic as well as the "fine arrangement of fantastic line," more of it than the emphasis and punctuation given by skilful modelling and projection to the geometrical involutions of the Asiatic decoration. But the suggestion is equally conveyed by works of which the general composition has nothing of Eastern, and in which the decoration is Oriental by affinity and not by imitation; and in these the explanation of it is not so obvious. I have already protested against the narrowness of the appreciation which finds in Mr. Sullivan only the first of our decorators, though that he so clearly is. This limitation ignores the structural instinct, or the reasoned engineering knowledge of mechanical relations, whichever you please, which presides over the placing, the magnitude and the forms of his masses. I should be at a loss to name any other American architect whose perception of these things is more unerring. And surely it is this perception of the importance of the masses, this appreciation of the essential facts of structure that makes the architect in contradistinction to the architectural decorator. No other buildings are more effectively blocked out on the one hand, none so admirably decorated on the other, and, as has been said already, the placing and adjustment, if not also the design, of ornament itself, requires the faculty of the designer who is first of all a builder. Thus at each end of the scale Mr. Sullivan's work stands the strictest test. This is much, it is enough to deserve glad and grateful recognition, but it is not quite all. Between the general composition and the ultimate adornment of the structure there is an intermediate process, the functional modelling of parts to express more

Fig. 106. Louis Sullivan. Carson, Pirie, Scott (originally Schlesinger, Mayer) Department Store, Chicago, 1899-1904.

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forcibly and more minutely the structural relations. It is in this that Mr. Sullivan seems to me to have been upon the whole less successful than in the disposition of his masses at the beginning of his work or in the adjustment and the design of his ornament at the end. Now it is precisely this in which the Asiatic builders have been less successful than the European builders, so that of the two diverging currents of building that flowed from a common source after the fall of the Roman Empire, that which we specifically call the Romanesque has been more important to the history of architecture than that which we call the Byzantine; that Amiens and Cologne are worthier of study and of admiration than the Mosque of Cordova or the Taje Mehal. It is this difference, I think, much more than any specific resemblance of form that gives so much of Mr. Sullivan's work its Oriental air. It is true that he never shows that lack of sense of the mechanical basis of architecture that is so often met with in Saracenic building. It is true also that his decoration has architectural significance, which is so often lacking to the Saracenic decoration whether in Asia, Africa or Europe. But in stopping short of a complete architectural development modes of building so widely different in time and place and purpose find a point of resemblance. We must not, however, take leave of Mr. Sullivan's work with a negation. The work is too positive and too vital for that. It would be unthoughtful to seem to ignore how much he has done in laying excessive stress upon what he might have done,—upon what, indeed, he may yet do. For I think nobody who really pays attention to his work, even as it is herewith shown, can imagine that he has said his last word, or has had tasks to draw out his utmost powers. It is not difficult to imagine problems more interesting than an unvaried series of those propounded in the ordinary course of architectural practice in Chicago. But in the solution of these problems he has shown a power of design that makes his one of the most striking and interesting individualities among living architects.

D. Η. Burnham & Co.37

Daniel Hudson Burnham was born in Henderson, Jefferson County, Ν. Y . , September 4, 1846. His father, a country merchant in that place, removed to Chicago in 1855 and became a leading citizen and president of the Merchants' Exchange. A t the outbreak of the war young Burnham and a cousin of his had a company of seventy boys, uniformed and drilled by the young Burnhams, who in their turns had been drilled by Elmer E. Ellsworth, 38 the captain of the then famous Chicago Zouaves, who, as Colonel Ellsworth, was killed at Alexandria in the attempt to haul down a Confederate flag. Y o u n g Burnham was educated at the Chicago High School and spent three years studying with private tutors, one of them the celebrated Tilly H. Hayward, 3 9 at Waltham and Bridgewater, Mass. It was at this time that he derived his earliest interest in architecture from W. P. P. Longfellow, 40 who came often to a house then maintained by the elder Burnham. His professional apprenticeship, however, began in Chicago in the offices successively of Loring & Jenney, John V a n Osdel, L. ζ). Laureau, and finally of Carter, Drake & Wight. 41 This last was in 1872, Mr. Wight having removed from New York to Chicago just after the fire. It was in this office that he 37 A separate m o n o g r a p h as N o . 2, Part I I in the " G r e a t A m e r i c a n Architects Series" b y Architectural Record (Feb. 1896), p p . 4 9 - 6 9 . E x c e r p t e d . 38 E l m e r H . Ellsworth ( 1 8 3 7 - 1 8 6 1 ) , w h o s e " U . S . Z o u a v e C a d e t s " m a d e national tours in drill exhibitions before the C i v i l W a r . Ellsworth w a s one of the first celebrities killed d u r i n g the w a r , a n d hence his d e a t h received extensive newspaper c o v e r a g e . 39 A short b i o g r a p h i c a l a c c o u n t of the R e v e r e n d T i l l y B r o w n H a y w a r d appears in C h a r l e s M o o r e , Daniel H. Burnham (Boston & N e w Y o r k , 1921), /, 15η. S c h u y l e r mistakenly gives H a y w a r d ' s m i d d l e initial as " H . " 40 See a b o v e , p. 227η. 4 1 A l l architects a n d firms previously identified to the extent of available information, save for (Asher) C a r t e r ( 1 8 0 5 - 1 8 7 7 ) , ( W i l l i a m H . ) D r a k e & (Peter B.) W i g h t . O n W i g h t , see above, p p . 4 - 7 .

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met J o h n Wellborn Root, and the next year was formed the fruitful partnership of Burnham & Root, which lasted until it was dissolved by the death of the junior partner, J a n u a r y 15, 1891. After establishing a very flourishing and extensive practice Burnham & Root were appointed, in September, 1890, consulting architects of the World's Fair. The next month Mr. Burnham was chosen chief of construction, and after his partner's death became architect-in-chief of the Fair. Nothing beyond a rude sketch-plan had been done. The chief of construction persuaded the directors to empower him to choose the architects and apportion the work, and the ten architects were appointed and their work assigned accordingly. The chief engineer, Gottlieb, 42 resigning soon afterwards, his functions devolved upon the chief of construction, who was afterwards made director of works, and was from that time the executive officer of the Fair, which was not only designed and constructed but conducted under his direct supervision. He organized and controlled not only the building operations and the artistic activities dependent upon them, or upon which they were dependent, but the guard and the services of fire, water, drainage, electricity, power and transportation. Except the exhibits and the selling privileges he maintained this control to the end. In recognition of his work he received the degree of Master of Arts from Harvard and Yale, and that of Doctor of Science from the Northwestern University. He was first president of the Western Association of Architects and is now president of the American Institute of Architects. 43 His private practice was necessarily in a great degree suspended during his absorption in the conduct of the Fair, but since he has resumed its direction, under the firm name of D. H. Burnham & Co., it has become larger than ever and is scattered over the United States. In the correspondence concerning the Government architecture which, as president of the American Institute, Mr. Burnham conducted with the Treasury Department, he took occasion to say that the duties of the Supervising Architect were not so mysterious and difficult as that official tried to make out and that they could be efficiently dis42 A b r a m Gottlieb, Chief Engineer of the World's Columbian Exposition until he relinquished his post in the summer of 1 8 9 1 . 43 Both Harvard and Y a l e awarded Burnham an honorary Master's in J u n e 1 8 9 3 , Northwestern University an honorary Doctor of Science in J u n e 1 8 9 5 . T h e Western Association of Architects was founded in November 1884. Burnham became President of the American Institute of Architects in 1 8 9 3 .

D. Η . B U R N H A M

&

CO.

407

charged by " a n y good business man with a knowledge of buildingi" 4 4 T h a t may be taken as an expression, reduced to its lowest terms, of Mr. Burnham's own faculty. In the remarks introductory to this consideration of the work of the leading architects of Chicago, I have preferred to call it the faculty of administration in pointing out that it was the one faculty that was absolutely indispensable to the success of a practitioner of architecture in Chicago. It is the faculty which there must be in "the office," whether or not it be possessed, as it is not apt to be in a very high degree, by the actual designer. A n d certainly nobody will dispute that Mr. Burnham has shown himself a great administrator. T h e business of the World's Fair, in construction at least, was precisely the business to which the chief of construction had served a long apprenticeship as the head of the firm of Burnham & Root. Although he did not appear in the architectural display of the Columbian Exposition as a designer at all, it did not need more than a brief inquiry into the manner in which that display came about to satisfy the inquirer that the one indispensable factor in the artistic success of the display was the architect who did not appear as a designer. He had exercised in preparing it the same powers of selection and coordination and supervision which had been required in his private business and which were now called into requisition on an ampler field and a larger scale. It is not at all wonderful that they should have been found equally efficacious in the services of administration which have nothing to do with architecture, but in which the same method is available that is necessary to administer a large architectural business. Such an administrator need not, it is evident, design at all nor employ any other than the critical faculty in the work of design. In the partnership of Burnham & Root, the junior partner was commonly esteemed to be the designer of the firm, and the estimate was in a general way correct, the services in this regard of the senior being for the most part consultative and critical rather than creative, but none the less valuable and indispensable. A n d indeed in the buildings of Burnham & Root, the administrative faculty is not less conspicuous than the power of design. T h e Rookery, 45 for example, is not artistically so successful, 44 B u r n h a m ' s letter, w r i t t e n sometime in M a r c h 1894 to the Secretary of the U n i t e d States T r e a s u r y D e p a r t m e n t , with respect to the qualifications of the Supervising A r c h i t e c t appears i n M o o r e , Burnham, 1, 102. 45 t See a b o v e , p. 270η.

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either in mass or in detail, as some other buildings of the firm, but at the time it was built it was, perhaps, the most impressive of all by dint of the R o m a n largeness of its plan and of the thoroughness with which this was carried out to the last detail, as a matter not alone or mainly of artistic elaboration, but of practical administration. If it is not so uniquely impressive now, it is because such a project, when it has once been successfully executed, becomes common property, and may be reproduced and varied until, much more than in purely artistic successes, the spectator is apt to forget the original inventor, and the fact that the arrangement he takes for granted was not always a commonplace but was originally an individual invention. In one of the latest of Mr. Burnham's works, the Endicott building in Buffalo, 46 the gist of the scheme of the Rookery, the ample court, glazed above the second story, and supplying a dominant central feature to an interior otherwise deprived by the necessity of its cellular division of the possibility of such a feature, has been reproduced on a much more extensive scale. In either case the construction is a simple and straightforward piece of engineering in metal, and one cannot help seeing that the quality of the decorative detail, which in the Rookery is very good, has very little to do with the impressiveness of the interior, which is impressive as so many R o m a n interiors are of which the detail has either disappeared or is an incongruous application. It is impressive, that is to say, by the faculty of planning that it displays, by the practical satisfaction of the practical requirements, by the administrative faculty. T h e same impression is made in a high degree by the interior of the Masonic Temple. 4 7 T h e court, which is here open and visible from top to bottom, gives us a singularly interesting insight into the internal economy of the huge pile, although neither in its- composition nor in its detail can this building be ranked high among the strictly architectural successes of its designers, not nearly so high as the Woman's Temple, for example. 48 In this the court is unenclosed, and the massing of the building around it and the design of the central portal and of the 46 Ellicott S q u a r e B u i l d i n g , 295 M a i n St., Buffalo, N . Y . (erected 1 8 9 5 - 1 8 9 6 ; extant w i t h interior renovations in 1957)· W i t h over six million c u b i c feet of space, it was f a m o u s for some time as the " w o r l d ' s largest office b u i l d i n g . " Nevertheless S c h u y l e r mistakenly calls it " t h e Endicott building." 47 f M a s o n i c T e m p l e B u i l d i n g , N E cor. N . State a n d E. R a n d o l p h Sts. ( 1 8 9 1 ; demolished 1926). F o r ills, of this a n d other B u r n h a m & R o o t buildings in C h i c a g o , see C o n d i t , Rise of the Skyscraper. 48 W o m a n ' s T e m p l e , S W cor. S. L a S a l l e a n d W . M o n r o e Sts. ( 1 8 9 1 ; demolished 1939).

D. Η. B U R N H A M

&

CO.

flanking piles produce a very impressive result of which the impressiveness is strictly architectural, strictly the result of artistic design, added, of course, to the effect of mere magnitude, which is, however, considerably less in this case than in the other. The commercial buildings of Burnham & Root were in the main, though very loosely and generally, Romanesque in origin and suggestion. The designer was inspired by the successes of Richardson, which, indeed, from 1876 onward affected almost every architect in the United States who was not too old to learn. But generally the effect of Richardson's "impetuous and overbearing" talent had been to induce the admirers of it to become its indiscriminating imitators, and to reproduce especially the excesses and the errors in it which were most easily reproducible. A very few designers subjected the effectiveness of it to intelligent analysis and maintained their own individuality in works which nevertheless would clearly not have existed in their present form but for this admiring study of Richardson's work on the part of their designers. One of these, as I have already had occasion to say, is Mr. Sullivan. Another was John Root. A very typical and a very brilliant example of his essays in an enriched Romanesque is the entrance to the Phoenix building [Fig. 55], 49 of which it is equally plain that it could not have been designed except for Richardson, and that it could not have been designed by Richardson. It is Richardson chastened and restrained. Whatever else it is, it remains, after a decade, one of the most noteworthy examples in this country of the art of architecture, admirable alike in composition and in detail. Alas, it remains also, like so many other things, a monument to our inconstancy, and another proof that no sooner do we approach a common way of working and begin to attain some skill in it than the promise of a style is broken by the capricious introduction of a new fashion. Of the group of commercial buildings in which this entrance is the most artistic and memorable feature, I remember saying in print that it showed the individuality of commercial architecture in Chicago to be rather personal than local, 50 whereas I have just now said that it was rather local than personal. The contradiction is rather apparent than real. The business buildings of Burnham & Root were the first tall buildings in which the conditions both of commercial architecture in general and of elevator architecture in particular were recognized 49

See above, pp. 270-274.

50

See above, p. 269.

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and expressed. As soon, however, as the expression was attained it was recognized both by owners and by other architects as the appropriate architectural fulfilment of the new requirement: Most can raise the flowers now, For all have got the seed;— 51 and so it comes about that what was at first characteristic of an individual designer has become characteristic of a city. For in no other American city has commercial architecture become so exclusively utilitarian as in Chicago, deserved so exactly the praise that Mr. Bourget bestowed upon it, relied so exclusively upon "the simple force of need" as " a principle of beauty." 52 There is one building in Chicago in which the renunciation is carried so much further than in any other that it bears the same relation to the commercial architecture of the town that the commercial architecture of the town bears to commercial architecture elsewhere; and it happens that this extreme example is the individual design of Mr. Burnham. Of course I mean the Monadnock [Fig. HI]. 5 3 Here is a sixteen-story building without an ornament, with one form of opening repeated from top to bottom and from end to end, with no relief to the expanse of blank wall and equal opening except what is furnished by the wide and shallow oriels, equally spaced, five on the long side and two on the short, which run through thirteen stories with only a string course to mark off the plinth and with not even a string course to mark off" the cornice, or a single moulding to relieve or to emphasize its outward curve. Nay, the entrance itself, in which some enrichment is allowed even in the severest buildings, is here only a rectangular hole in the wall like the rest. Add that the whole, excepting the granite lintels of the basement, is in a monochrome of dark brick and terra cotta. In 51

52 Tennyson, " T h e F l o w e r . " See above, p. 3 8 0 η . f Monadnock Building, block bounded by Jackson, Dearborn, V a n Buren Sts. and Custom House PI. ( 1 8 8 9 - 1 8 9 1 ; extant). Burnham m a y be responsible for the over-all severity of the conception of this building through his client's intervention in seeking to pare the cost of an ornamented version. According to legend, Root had been working on a highly ornamented building. When he briefly left town, the client appeared to protest and Burnham bowed to the complaints. Greatly angered on his return, Root gradually caught fire at the prospect of designing a very severe building. See Harriet Monroe, John Wellborn Root (Boston and N e w York, 1896), p. 1 4 1 . Surely the subtleties of design on which the fame of the Monadnock depends are Root's rather than Burnham's. It might be added that the chamfered corners and curvatures at base and cornice almost ruined the contractor who built them; see Tallmadge, Architecture of Old Chicago, p. 1 5 2 . 53

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the description all this is of no more architectural interest than a box, or rather a honeycomb, and would be dismissed as a mere factory. In fact, although it by no means impresses all beholders alike, it impresses many, including the present writer, as precisely the most effective and successful of the commercial structures to which the elevator has literally "given rise." This, one cannot help seeing, is the thing itself. It may seem easy enough to leave off all ornament from a tall building, and to employ in it but one form and almost one size of opening, and so indeed it is. That is a common scheme in factories which are not works of architecture at all. The point is to produce, by means of or in spite of this extreme austerity, an architectural work which shall be as impressive as it clearly is expressive. This is the rare success that seems to me to have been attained in the Monadnock. Whoever assumes that it must be very easy to do and that it requires no more than merely the omission of architecture makes a great mistake. O n the contrary, the success of it comes from a series of subtle refinements and nuances that bring out the latent expressiveness of what without them would in truth be as bald as a factory. A n object-lesson to this effect is most strikingly inculcated in the extension to the same building in which the general disposition is followed and the forms repeated,54 but which it is quite impossible to admire or to regard as a work of art. The square openings are repeated, and the shallow oriels. Only the base is "improved," with the view of giving it more height, of making it more proportionate to the building, and the cornice by giving it more projection. All this seems reasonable enough, but the result of all this is the production of a perfectly commonplace structure in place of a very impressive structure. It is only fair to point out that the original building is not and that the extension is an example of the developed Chicago construction, which has yet to find its developed architectural expression. In the most successful examples of it the designers have felt forced to assume a wall at least as a stylobate, whereas in fact there is no more a continuous wall at the base than there is anywhere else. The original Monadnock has the great advantage over the addition that the walls are real walls that carry themselves, and that may properly be thickened at the base. But this thickening at the base, or rather this thinning of the wall as it rises is not only very subtly and 54 T h e addition was made in 1893 by (William) Holabird (1854-1923) & (Martin) Roche (1855-1927). See Condit, Rise of the Skyscraper, pp. ijii, for a detailed comparison.

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skilfully done in the Monadnock, but it is only one of many refinements. Above the massive plinth of a single story a whole story becomes virtually a base moulding curving outward with a long and easy sweep that seems to guarantee the stability of what is above, while at the angle begins a chamfer, widening very gradually as it rises, that gives the effect of a batter of the whole wall that it bounds and confirms this sense of stability. Every angle in the openings is slightly and subtly rounded, while at the summit the cornice is the counterpart of the base. With great artistic sensibility, the oriels, as they are begun a clear story above the base are stopped a clear story below the Egyptian cornice, and the intervening story is punctuated with openings, perfectly disposed with reference to the distribution of voids and solids beneath, that give the effect of machicolation. So far from being crude, as the absence of ornament might lead a hasty observer to conclude, the design of the Monadnock, as is revealed by the study of good photographs, or much better of the building itself, is of an extreme refinement, and the impressiveness of it due to the subtlety of the devices that have been employed to mitigate the asperities and bring out the possibilities of expression in a brick box of sixteen stories. As I have intimated, it is probably well for the architecture of the Monadnock that it was built before the Chicago construction was developed. In the buildings in which that construction is really followed, and the wall omitted, even at the base, the highest success that has thus far been attained amounts rather to a statement of the problem than to a solution of it. Wherever the steel cage is confessed throughout, the effect is not different in kind, nor very much in degree, from the effect of the skeleton itself, which nobody can succeed in admiring, although it is true that the articulation of the skeleton has never been regarded as an architectural but only as a mechanical problem, aesthetic consideration having been devoted only to its envelope. Of the essays in which the skeleton is undraped, and no attempt is made to "do something" with it, the Reliance building in Chicago, from the office of D. H . Burnham & Co., and from the designs of Mr. Charles B. Atwood,. is one of the most typical [Fig. io7]. 55 The lamentable death of the designer has occurred while these pages are passing through the 55

Charles B. Atwood ( 1 8 4 9 - 1 8 9 5 ) , who succeeded Root as Burnham's chief designer until his own premature death. Schuyler's attribution of the Reliance Building to Atwood requires qualification. Plans were made for a sixteen-story building by Root in 1890. Since leases in the upper stories of the old five-storied building ran until 1894, these were propped

Fig. 107. Burnham & Root, with later extension and redesign by Charles B. At· wood for D. H. Burnham & Co. Reliance Building, Chicago, 1890-1895.

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A M E R I C A N

press. M r . A t w o o d ,

A R C H I T E C T U R E

before he removed

to C h i c a g o , h a d b e c o m e

k n o w n t o m e m b e r s o f his p r o f e s s i o n i n N e w skilful designer, b o t h in the

York

well

as a s c h o l a r l y

e m p l o y of Messrs. Herter, a n d

and

especially

i n h i s o w n n a m e as t h e s u c c e s s f u l c o m p e t i t o r , w i t h a d e s i g n o f

much

interest, for the erection o f a n e w C i t y H a l l for N e w Y o r k in c o n n e c t i o n with the old building, the retention of w h i c h was one of the conditions prescribed.56 H e

became

far more widely

known

as t h e s u c c e s s o r

of

M r . R o o t as c o n s u l t i n g a r c h i t e c t o f t h e W o r l d ' s F a i r , a n d as t h e d e s i g n e r in

that

capacity

of the A r t

building,57

the

peristyle,

and

the

acces-

s o r y b u i l d i n g s o f t h e f a i r . S i n c e its c l o s e h e h a s b e e n a s s o c i a t e d Mr.

Burnham.

The

with

R e l i a n c e has b e e n fully described b y M r . Jenkins

in T H E ARCHITECTURAL RECORD

(Vol.

IV.,

No.

3). Its m o s t

obvious

p e c u l i a r i t y is t h a t t h e p r o t e c t i n g e n v e l o p e is o f g l a z e d w h i t e t e r r a c o t t a . o n stilts while R o o t ' s design for the ground floor in red Scotch granite was inserted underneath, and foundations for the eventual skyscraper (not four stories as stated b y C o n d i t , Rise of the Skyscraper, p. 148, a n d repeated in American Building Art, p. 60). T h e degree to w h i c h R o o t designed the complete b u i l d i n g a n d the nature of his design are u n k n o w n . I n any event, w h e n the contemplated building could be finally realized ( 1 8 9 4 - 1 8 9 5 ) , A t w o o d designed (or redesigned) it, but for fourteen stories, using a n off-white terra-cotta sheathing embossed with " G o t h i c " tracery patterns. T h i s design represented the first important use in C h i c a g o of terra cotta for other than o r n a m e n t a l detail. T h e off-white color a n d the Gothicism were incipiently B e a u x Arts. See Charles A . Jenkins, " A White E n a m e l e d B u i l d i n g , " Architectural Record, 4 ( J a n . - M a r . 1895), 299-306. I n a letter, A . W . S k e m p t o n has confirmed Jenkins article, maintaining that in effect the R e l i a n c e must be considered a b u i l d i n g of 1894-1895. 56 O n the Herter firm, see below, p. 457η. T h e A t w o o d design for such a conspicuous commission is curiously allusive. His design must have been m a d e a r o u n d 1888, since the Proceedings of the New York City Sinking Fund Commissioners for the meeting of D e c . 19, 1888, shows a discussion of A t w o o d ' s request for permission to exhibit his project. F i n a l p a y m e n t o n the $3000 p r e m i u m was m a d e in 1890 a c c o r d i n g to the Journal of the Proceedings of the New York City Estimate and Apportionment Board for the meeting of F e b . 1 1 , 1 8 9 0 . N o reproduction of A t w o o d ' s design has turned up. B y the mid-nineties another fruitless competition for a city hall apparently took place; see ills, in American Architect and Building News, 52 (Apr. 18 a n d M a y 9, 1896). N o t h i n g was built until M c K i m , M e a d & White's M u n i c i p a l Building (completed 1908). 57 T h e A r t Building was the only semi-permanent m o n u m e n t a l structure of the World's C o l u m b i a n Exposition of 1893. It survives t o d a y as the M u s e u m of Science a n d Industry in J a c k s o n Park. O r i g i n a l l y built of brick with interior supports of cast iron, the exterior was of plaster, most of the Erechtheum-inspired ornament being plaster over w o o d . A l t h o u g h dilapidated at the conclusion of the fair, as were all the other buildings, the core was solid, while the design was a m o n g the most admired at the Exposition. Public sentiment favored a nominal restoration of the exterior, a n d the Field M u s e u m of N a t u r a l History occupied the building until the completion of its present structure in G r a n t Park in 1920. I n 1926 the M u s e u m of Science a n d Industry was chartered, a n d A t w o o d ' s b u i l d i n g permanently resurfaced a n d recarved in limestone following the original design. G r a h a m , Anderson, Probst & White, successors to the B u r n h a m organization, were in charge of the exterior restoration, while S h a w , Naess & M u r p h y designed a new interior. T h e M u s e u m of Science a n d Industry m o v e d into its b u i l d i n g b y stages as sections of it were completed between 1933 a n d 1940.

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Practically this is a very eligible material in the atmosphere of Chicago, but the employment of it throughout seems almost like the frank abandonment of architecture, as much as the omission of an attempt to " d o something" with the cage. A monument that "will wash" is already pretty nearly a contradiction in terms. The frankness of the treatment is complete. The covering is confessedly a covering and does not in the least simulate a structure nor dissemble the real structure. The designer has not allowed himself a base, though he has indulged himself in a pretty and becoming attic. 58 If he says, as he seems to say, that this is the actual sky-scraper, the thing itself, and that any attempt to do more than he has done is to deny the essential conditions of the problem, it must be owned that he has a good deal to say for himself. Especially when, as in this case, the designer's other works make it clear that his decision does not proceed from aesthetic insensibility. But on the other hand, it must be owned that if this is the most and best that can be done with the sky-scraper, the sky-scraper is architecturally intractable; and that is a confession one is loth to make about any system of construction that is mechanically sound. Certainly a comparison between the Reliance and the Monadnock is overwhelmingly in favor of the older building. In another work Mr. Atwood has attempted much more with the extreme Chicago construction, and to a result that we cannot fail to find interesting, even though we cannot allow it to be really successful. This is the "Field A n n e x " 59 in granite, brick and terra cotta, in which the construction is, as far as practically may be, dissembled, and which does simulate a structure of masonry and is meant to be judged as such. In composition it is very effective, and in detail rich and ingenious. It is but of nine stories, and so the apportionment of the main divisions becomes much less perplexing than in the extremely tall buildings. It has been managed here by a division into three stages of three stories each— a division which is accentuated by the change of material and color, the first three being in granite, the second three in a monochrome of 58 Now destroyed by a heavy-handed brick parapet, added to meet municipal ordinances on building safety. Together with the almost inevitable renovation of the ground floor, the parapet has seriously scarred this prophetic building. 59 t Annex to the Marshall Field Store, SW cor. N. Wabash Ave. and E. Washington St., (1892-1893; extant) designed by Charles B. Atwood for D. H. Burnham & Co. This "Annex," inspired by Renaissance palace prototypes, has been absorbed into the main store; the building presently designated as the " A n n e x " was built in 1914. Randall, History of Building Construction in Chicago, confuses the two buildings.

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terra cotta and the upper three of brick and terra cotta effectively combined and contrasted. Moreover, although the divisions are equal in number of stories, they are not equal in effect, but the central one distinctly predominates. It may not be actually taller than the first, but that is subdivided, the upper story serving as an effective basis for the superstructure, and the third is divided also by a strong demarcation, setting off the cornice story, which is yet not strong enough to compromise the union of the three as an integral part of the composition. T h e central division, on the other hand, is unbroken, and its flanking piers untraversed. Its unity is emphasized by making the triple arcade at the centre of each front continuous, while the flanking openings are of but one story each, and the effect of abutment of the central arches is thus gained, as is also done very effectively in the Imperial Hotel in New York. 60 T h e central division of the Chicago building has, moreover, the added emphasis of its dark monochrome between the light monochrome below, and the diversified tinting above. All this is admirably and very discreetly managed, and the Renaissance detail is rich and careful. T h e effect, both of the disposition and of the detail, is excellent. T h e disposition has been repeated, on a larger scale, and, to judge from the drawings, with great promise, in the design for the Endicott building in Buffalo. 61 Above the basement the warehouse now under consideration is a very satisfactory building of masonry, barring the tenuity of the pier at the inner corner, which is very explicable upon the supposition that it is provisional, and that it is expected to extend the building. It is true that the author begs the whole question of his actual construction, and when we consider what his actual construction comes to in the Reliance, it is hard not to grant what the building begs. But I said "above the basement," for in the basement another question arises that cannot be begged, and that was raised some time ago by Mr. Twose, in a thoughtful and suggestive paper in The Brickbuilder on the architectural development of the Chicago construction. 62 T h e basement is obviously impossible in masonry, and the ostensible construction is evidently not the actual construction. 60 Imperial H o t e l , B r o a d w a y at 32nd St., (1890; additions 1893 and 1903; completely renovated 1 9 1 7 - 1 9 1 8 ; demolished 1947), the original b u i l d i n g by M c K i m , M e a d & White a n d famous for White's " M i r r o r R o o m . " 61 See a b o v e p. 408η. 62 G e o r g e M . R . T w o s e , " S t e e l a n d T e r r a - C o t t a Buildings in C h i c a g o , " Brickbuilder, 5 (Jan. 1894), 1 - 5 . T w o s e c o m m e n t s o n the g r o w i n g use of terra cotta in C h i c a g o from 1889, w h e n B u r n h a m & R o o t i n a u g u r a t e d its use in C h i c a g o as a sheathing material in the R a n d

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Even the powerful transom that marks the floor line of the entresol does not reassure the eye of the stability of these spreading arches and these tenuous piers. True, the transom does all a transom can to supply the place of abutment, and true, the piers are thickened to the verge of commercial practicability, indeed beyond what would be commercially practicable if this were an office building instead of a warehouse. But it will not do. T h e building still relies upon means of support that are not visible. A n d so, whereas the Reliance building, interesting as it is by its straightforward and unconventional treatment, is not a solution of the problem, but only a statement of it, so the Field building, interesting as it is by the architectural scholarship it evinces, is not a solution of the problem but an evasion of it. A French critic has said that "Paradise Lost" was vitiated " b y the conjoint necessity and impossibility of taking its contents literally." 63 Even so the Field annex is vitiated by "the conjoint necessity and impossibility" of the required assumption that it is a structure of masonry. But as the one conjunction does not hinder "Paradise Lost" from being a great poem, the other does not prevent the Field annex from being an enjoyable piece of architecture. These two tall buildings are highly typical in their several kinds. As has already been intimated, however, the practice of an artistic architect which should be confined to tall buildings would not be altogether enviable. T h e requirements and the conditions are so similar that when the solution of the problem is reached, it is to be apprehended that it will be in the nature of a scientific as much as of an artistic solution; that is to say, that it will approach so nearly to a formula or a recipe as to hamper if not to exclude individuality. In the case we have just been considering see how much of the designer's liberty, and consequently of the interest of his work, has come from the apparently slight variety in his problem that it was a warehouse and not an office building. But it is to be noted, in the first place, that the solution has not yet been reached, and that when it is we shall know more about its effect than we know now; and, in the second place, that individuality McNally Building. He observes that terra cotta clings "round the column and the beam as the flesh covers the body." The major problem posed by the use of the new material is the treatment of the ground floor, where a straightforward design prohibits the visual mass which Twose believes every building must possess at its base. Thereupon he inconclusively examines the manner in which various Chicago buildings exhibit the dilemma. 63 The critic is Edmond Scherer. See Matthew Arnold, " A French Critic on Milton," in Mixed Essays.

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is not an easy thing to suppress. A developed Gothic cathedral was the solution of a structural problem, and some skeptic of the thirteenth century might have said, when the first one appeared, that it was all up with architecture. There it is, item one nave, item one choir, item two transepts and so forth, he might have said; you cannot do it differently. And yet there is a considerable variety in cathedrals, and the wandering architect or the mere picturesque tourist does not find that when he has seen one of them he has seen all. [The essay concludes with a discussion of buildings of minimal interest—two churches, the Armory for the First Illinois Regiment, some minor office buildings—and finally with brief remarks on the domestic work of the firm.]

The Evolution of the Skyscraper64

The occasion of these ensuing remarks is the demolition,—no doubt, when they come to publication, accomplished or plainly impending, already, even while they are making, irrevocably determined,— of "the earliest example of the skeleton construction, in which the entire weight of the walls and floors is borne, and transmitted to the foundations, by a framework of metallic post and beams." Such is the proclamation which the doomed front of the "Tower Building" at No. 50 Broadway has for some years made, from a bronze tablet, to the passerby.65 [Fig. 108.] Whereas in " 1 8 8 8 - 9 , " to repeat the date of the inscription, an altitude of eleven stories to a latitude of twenty-one feet and six inches was plainly out of the question, except through the mediation of some unfamiliar and unprecedented mode of construction, twenty years later it is found that the ground of lower Broadway has grown too valuable for so humble an erection. The erection which is projected to occupy the site is of thirty-eight stories. And this later altitude is by no means a "record." Is there any parallel, in the history of human building, to the rapid and revolutionary process which has raised the building of American towns, within the memory of men who need not be so very old, from a 64 Scribner's Magazine, 46 (Sept. 1909), 257-271. Reproduced in full, with the original drawings, except for the substitution of a clearer perspective of the Ames Building and the omission of a skeletal diagram of the Tower Building. 65 Tower Building, 50 Broadway, (1888-1889) by Bradford Gilbert ( 1 8 5 3 - 1 9 1 1 ) , the first New York example of the total support of the building on a metal skeleton. The bronze tablet on the building (except for quibbling detail perhaps) is too extravagant; see above, p. 379η. Cöndit, American Building Art, succinctly describes the complex structure of the Tower Building (pp. 47Q and summarizes the Chicago lead over New York in the development of skeletal framing (pp. 31-62).

Fig. 108. Bradford Lee Gilbert. Tower Building, New York City, 1888-1889.

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" n o r m " of five stories to an uncertain and unpredictable height; so high that forty stories are already realized, and fifty are projected by a "conservative" corporation, not as a monument as of Babel, but as a "practical business proposition"? Probably none. Certainly none. No parallel, but a striking prototype. T h e prototype is to be found in the building of northern France in the early part of the thirteenth century. A Frenchman born in 1175 and surviving in 1250 might have boasted that he had "rocked the cradle" of Gothic architecture, if not quite that he had "followed its hearse." 66 For he had at least lived to see it radically differentiated from the Romanesque which had preceded it, and, in one or another of its phases, had held sway for near a thousand years. Such a Frenchman might have seen "the Gothic principle" both virtually germinate and variously effloresce, in the great cathedrals of Paris, Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens. If of a critical turn, he might have noted that this wonderful and fruitful development had all come from the application of a single mechanical expedient. " I t is this necessity for a stone roof," says Fergusson, "that was the problem to be solved by the architects, and to accomplish which the style took almost all those forms which are so much admired in it." 67 If of a hypercritical turn, our supposititious mediaeval friend might even have noted that the development, wonderful as it was, after all failed really to attain this object. T h e inwardly ostensible "stone roof" continued to be covered with an outwardly ostensible wooden roof. Only such sporadic and unfruitful experiments as the roofs of Seville Cathedral and Roslyn Chapel remain to show that the necessity for a stone roof was felt, as well as the necessity for a stone "ceiling," which was what the historian of architecture really "wished to say." T h e even more rapid and bewildering development, under his own eyes, of the even more insistent and conspicuous "sky-scraper" may well strike an elderly American who has turned the first corner of the twentieth century, as the earlier development might have struck the Frenchman who had turned the first corner of the thirteenth. Not at all that the sky-scraper has given evidence of architectural achievements comparable, in their probable interest for posterity, with those of the builders of the mighty minsters. But the beginnings of the later development are no humbler and no less respectable than the beginnings of the earlier. 66 67

See above, p. 136η. Reference unlocated.

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T o superpose stories so as to make two tiers of tenants " g r o w " where one only grew before is as respectable and dignified a motive for architecture as to cover a church with a stone ceiling which, after all, is not a roof.68 The American observer, if at all of a cynical turn, might say that the ultimate motive of the modern structure was as symptomatic of the period as that of the mediaeval, that these "skeletons" of our building, after the veneer of masonry had fallen from them, and they were left to assert themselves in their original crudity and starkness, before returning altogether to oxide of iron, might still be, in the majestic Ruskinian phrase, "the only witnesses that remained to us of the faith and fear of nations," the faith in the dollar toward which they so plainly aspired, the fear of "the hell of not making money." 69 "Commodity," in the crowded centres of great cities, is as strikingly subserved by these towering structures as comity is defied. And the wonder why they were not devised and built before only grows on study. Paxton's Crystal Palace of 1851, only fill some of its panels with baked clay instead of glass, was already an example of the "skeleton construction." The Tour Eiffel of 1889 70 only close it in with opaque panelling and increase its provision of "ascenseurs," would be a negotiable "skyscraper," and even the Saul among the actual, though not among the projected, sky-scrapers. At least, there existed at the date of its erection no structure which so completely fulfilled the current American definition. Nay, there stood in " T h e Swamp," on Manhattan Island, from 1856 to 1907, a "shot-tower" which was essentially an example of the skeleton construction, 71 that is to say, a building of many stages in which a structural skeleton of metal sustained panels of brickwork which concealed and sheltered its inmates and their operations. Be that as it may, it is certain that the earliest and the most indispensable of the factors which have enabled the construction of these mighty monsters was the "passenger elevator," and that this was brought into 68

Reference to the fact that the stone vaulting is protected by a gable roof. Reference unlocated. 70 Crystal Palace designed for the London Exposition of 1851 by Sir Joseph Paxton ( 1 8 0 3 - 1 8 6 5 ) . Eiffel Tower for the Paris Exposition of 1889 by Gustave Eiffel ( 1 8 3 2 - 1 9 2 3 ) . See Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, 3rd ed., pp. 2 4 7 - 2 5 3 , 275-288, and Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture, 1, chap. 16. 71 Shot tower of T a t h a m & Brothers, behind 82 Bleecker St. (1856; demolished 1907). T h e 217-foot, octagonal tower was built of iron columns, fluted where they were exposed on the exterior. This metal framework was infilled with brick. T h e tower rose perpendicularly for nine stories before tapering toward the top. It remained a familiar landmark in lower Manhattan for half a century. See Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan, j , 1865. 69

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I^IW'lIsi

Fig. 109. R i c h a r d Morris Hunt. Tribune Building after remodelling by additional stories, N e w Y o r k City, 1 8 7 3 1876. O n the left: George B . Post's World Building, completed 1890.

use during the sixties, its first appearance in New York being in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, just lately demolished after a life of close upon half a century.72 It was at about the same time introduced into the Astor House,73 then already a generation old. So obvious was the utility of this device that the wonder again is that it had not been brought into practice long before. "Hoists" are, of course, as old as the Dutch warehouses, of which the picturesqueness is enhanced by the projecting cranes that worked the hoists, doubtless as old as Archimedes. But 72 Fifth Avenue Hotel, Broadway bet. 23rd a n d 24th Sts. (1856-1858; demolished 1908) by William Washburn (1808-1890), a Boston architect who specialized in hotels. 73 Astor House, 225 Broadway (opened 1836, demolished piecemeal in 1 9 1 3 a n d 1926) by William Washburn. 111. a n d discussion in Jefferson Williamson, The American Hotel (New York, 1930), pp. 29-37 and passim.

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Fig. n o . George B. Post. Western Union Building after remodelling by additional stories, New York City, 1873.

hotels, even when the Fifth Avenue was built, were conditioned in altitude as were all other buildings not exclusively monumental, by the powers of ascension of the unassisted human leg. Five stories was the maximum for commercial buildings, except that an attical sixth might be added for the discommodation of the janitor, whose name was Hobson, and who had to go where he was sent, which, naturally, was where no "paying guest" could be induced to go. He and his may have taken their outlook on life from slits or bulls'-eyes just under the roof. In the cases of hotels, the sixth story was assigned to servants and storerooms. Tenants or inmates could not be induced to climb more than four flights of stairs, and grumbled grievously, in the case of inmates of hotels, and accused the hotel clerk of perfidy, when they had to climb so many. A device which would make all the floors, even of a five-story hotel, equally accessible, and so equally desirable, was a device very sure of immediate adoption, so sure that the only wonder was that the supply of it should so have lagged behind the demand. T h e beginnings of the elevator were, it is quite true, the beginnings also of what, in their earlier stages, were known as the "elevator buildings." But this development was hidden alike from the owners and keepers of hotels, from their architects, and from the mechanics who set themselves to supply the obvious and clamant demand. It was not expedition, but only relief, that the hotel guests, relegated to the fifth floor, demanded, and that the progress of invention supplied. And, "because of their importunity," the hotel keeper and his visible vicegerent, the

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hotel clerk, entertained the proposals of the mechanic who undertook to make the fifth story as desirable as the second. The transit of the "plunger" elevator which met the prayer was by no means rapid. Ascending on a slow artesian screw, the thread of which fitted a groove embedded in the car, the aged or infirm or fatigued, or even only lazy occupants of the cage were easily distanced by the circumambient athletes who continued to prefer the enclosing staircase. The present reminiscent remembers the pace of his ascent in his first ascenseur, that of the Revere House in Boston, in the early seventies.74 As Stevenson says about the progress of his donkey in the Cevennes, "What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to describe." But the artesian, aspiring, spiralizing thing was at least safe, being painfully hoisted by means of a solid metallic post which sank underground as far as the car ascended above. How singular to learn that the "plunger type" is not only still in use, but, in some of the latest sky-scrapers where "time is of the essence," has been chosen in place of the arrangement of ropes and pulleys which seem to promise so much more speed at the price of so much more danger! T o equalize the desirableness of rooms on the fifth floor with that of rooms on the second remained the humble office of the elevator for nearly or quite a decade. Such a creature of habit is man, and perhaps particularly mechanical man, that, throughout that decade, it did not occur to anybody that the new appliance might enable the construction of taller buildings. The first building in which this discovery was utilized in design was the Equitable Building on Broadway, 75 since remodelled, it is true, and now threatened with demolition in favor of a more aspiring successor, but even in its first estate, as projected in 1869, attaining seven stories of offices for rental instead of the theretofore Procrustean five. The addition of two stories now seems timid and tentative enough; then doubtless it seemed audaciously venturesome. The controlling spirit of the corporation, Henry B. Hyde, was not the man to be deterred from what to him promised profit by lack of precedent. From the first he foresaw the prospects of the higher vertical extension 74 Revere House, Bowdoin Sq. a n d Bulfinch St., Boston, Mass. (opened 1847, listed in Boston Directory t h r o u g h 1919). 111. a n d discussion in Williamson, American Hotel, p. 42; also M a r y C. Crawford, Romantic Days in Old Boston (Boston, 1922), opp. p. 350. T h e literary allusion below: Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey. 75 Weisman, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 12, 15, discusses the Equitable a n d H e n r y B. H y d e , as well as the T r i b u n e a n d Western U n i o n Buildings mentioned below. See above, pp. 63 a n d 512η.

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of his building. Mr. George B. Post, though not the designer of the original as he was of the reconstructed Equitable, yet sustained some consultative relation to its construction. Before it was completed he made, for one of the suites in the additional stories, an offer based on and equalling the highest rents then paid on Broadway for the like accommodations. Mr. Hyde tranquilly doubled the amount of the offer, and the tenant acquiesced, retaining the offices until he sold out his lease for a substantial advance even upon the unprecedented rental he had agreed to pay. Of course, such an object-lesson as this in the advantages of elevator buildings was not thrown away upon the commercial community. Before the Equitable was completed, the Tribune Building and the Western Union Building were projected and under way; much more visibly than the Equitable the products of the elevator [Figs. 109, 1 1 0 ] . For, in the older building, the stories were so grouped in pairs as to increase the "scale" and to diminish their apparent number, whereas in each of the later two its nine or ten stories stood confessed. Each, by the way, has since been reconstructed by vertical extension; the Tribune Building by a superstructure merely repeating the substructure; the Western Union by a superaddition paying scant respect to the beginnings. Yet it was in their original estate, and with the altitude since so far outgrown, that Professor Huxley found them the most conspicuous objects on Manhattan Island, as he neared it in 1875, 76 and congratulated his hosts that these monuments of mere utility should be thus distinguished, instead of the castle or the cathedral which he would have been apt to find dominating a European town. A certain timidity accompanied these tentatives, bold as they looked to the wayfaring man, who saw the commercial sky-line suddenly lifted to nearly twice its previous and normal height. The real-estate speculator who puts his speculations into practice is slow to push his "premises" to their logical conclusions. When all the cells of the new honeycomb were found to be tenantable and rentable, the successors 76 Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley (New York, 1900), 1 , 494. A London correspondent for the New York Tribune, who was a fellow passenger of Huxley when he arrived in New Y o r k in 1876 on his American lecture tour, reported that as the English scientist sailed into the harbor, he asked about two tall towers on the skyline. Informed by the reporter that they were the Tribune and Western Union Telegraph Buildings, the agnostic Huxley replied, " A h , that is interesting; that is America. In the Old World the first things you see as you approach a great city are steeples; here you see, first, centres of intelligence."

Fig. i i 2 . Ernest Flagg. Singer Tower, New York City, 19061908.

Fig. I i i . Burnham & Root, Monadnock Building, Chicago. 1889-1891.

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naturally bettered the instruction of the pioneer, and "built to the limit." The limit, the limit of altitude, was none the less fixed, though the level of the fixity was still subject to some dispute, and was admitted to vary with circumstances. " I t is looked out for," says the German proverb, "that the trees shall not grow into the sky." It was looked out for that the tall buildings of the seventies and the early eighties should not scrape the sky. The restraining condition, before the introduction of the passenger elevator, had been, as we have pointed out, the powers of ascension of the human leg. Five stories had been found to be the maximum beyond which no tenant would pay rent, and even to which no "paying guest" would ascend without grumblings and reluctations. After the introduction of the passenger elevator the restraining condition was as real, though not, perhaps, so definite. It was the necessity of thickening the walls as they arose, and of occupying more of the total area with the points of support. With the points of support, and with the increasing spaces that must, with an increase of altitude, be reserved for the elevators themselves. But the necessity of thickening the walls and the partitions was the main limiting condition. And also, it is to be borne in mind, while the interior horizontal divisions, the floors, might be of brick arches, turned between beams of rolled iron, yet it was assumed that, for the vertical divisions, the partitions, actual masonry was required. The necessity of making these new and towering structures more securely fireproof was, of course, recognized as an indispensable condition. And the chief lesson of the great fires of Chicago, in 1 8 7 1 , and of Boston, in 1872, was held to be that exposed metal uprights were not to be trusted in great conflagration. 77 You see how the thickening of outer and inner walls made necessary by this enormous burden of interior construction operated as an automatic restriction upon altitude, how it provided that the sky-scrapers should not grow into the sky. For more than a decade Necessity directed the efforts of her offspring, Invention, to lightening the load. The rolled iron beams continued to be the framing of the floors. But the brick arches that had been turned between them were replaced by hollow blocks of terra cotta. Already, in that pioneer, the Tribune Building, "terra-cotta arches" were specified, 78 and constituted one of 77 78

See above, p. 248η. Reference to low arches in terra cotta (beginning to replace brick in the early seventies)

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the novelties of the construction. But even from these it was a long stride to the present accepted construction of arches of hollow tile, with horizontal surfaces above for the reception of the floors, and below for the reception of the ceilings. Other inventors were meanwhile laboring diligently at "fireproofing" the iron columns with envelopes of baked clay, so that their lesser bulk and weight might be substituted for the cumbrous, costly, and slowly constructible piers in brickwork. The result of these labors was that the limit of practicable altitude in commercial buildings rose, within a decade, from nine stories of the Tribune Building, of which one or two, by the way, were added during the construction, and the ten and a half of the Western Union, of which, however, the upper three were contained in the sharply diminishing wedge roof which originally crowned the edifice—to twelve stories, to thirteen, to fourteen, in such cases as that of the Monadnock, in Chicago, to sixteen [Fig. HI]; from once and a half the level of the ancient sky-line of lower New York to more than twice, to almost three times, that height. But, in the matter of sky-scrapers, it was not the first but the last step that cost. It is this last step which has brought with it the most perplexing civic problems to which the new building has given rise. Looking back, it seems only strange, not that the step should have been taken, but that it should so long have been delayed. The gestation of Necessity seems to have been singularly protracted. For, logically, if you can protect an interior framework of metal against the elements—the elements being in this case Air, in the form of wind, and Fire—so can you the outer framework. There is no more compulsion to build a real wall of costly, and still more of space-consuming, masonry in the one case than in the other. Yet our constructors were quite a decade in taking that final and obvious step. It was at last the legitimate offspring of Necessity. Early in the eighties, to be sure, Mr. Post, in the interior court of the Produce Exchange, had produced an example not only of the "cage" construction, but of the "skeleton" construction,79 which is w h i c h utilize the

flanges

of t h e I - b e a m m e t a l floor joists as s h e l v i n g for their s p r i n g i n g . I n

the earliest c o n s t r u c t i o n of this sort the a r c h e d u p p e r surfaces w e r e l e v e l e d w i t h

cement

for t h e floor a b o v e , w h i l e the c e i l i n g b e l o w r e m a i n e d g e n t l y s c a l l o p e d . I n the late seventies, terra c o t t a m a n u f a c t u r e r s b e g a n t o p r o d u c e v a r i o u s p a t e n t e d d e v i c e s w h e r e

the

arched

c o n s t r u c t i o n w a s b u i l t into a s y s t e m of b l o c k s in s u c h a w a y as to create a flat surface for flooring

a b o v e a n d plastered c e i l i n g b e l o w — s o - c a l l e d " f l a t a r c h " c o n s t r u c t i o n . T h e d e v e l o p -

m e n t of this t e c h n o l o g y is n i c e l y illustrated in J o s e p h K . ( N e w Y o r k , 1 8 9 5 ) , c h a p . 4.

79

See a b o v e , p . 6 5 η .

F r e i t a g , Architectural

Engineering

THE EVOLUTION

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429

Fig. 1 1 3 . L e Brun & Sons. Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, New York City, 1890-1894—tower and wings 1905-1909.

not quite the same thing, though the terms are often used interchangeably by architects and engineers. In the cage construction the walls still carry themselves, though they carry nothing else, a metallic frame alongside of them, or embedded in them, taking from them the burden of the interior construction. It is this latter construction, a core of metal embedded in the masonry of the outer piers, which was first fully exemplified in Mr. Jenney's design for the Home Fire Insurance Company, erected in Chicago in 1884, 80 while in the earlier court of 80

See above, p. 379η.

Fig. 114. Louis Sullivan. Bayard Building New York City, 1897-1898.

Fig. 115. Ernest Flagg. Small Singer Building, 561 Broadway, New York City, 1902-1904.

T H E E V O L U T I O N OF T H E

SKYSCRAPER

the Produce Exchange, considered as a separate building, the "skeleton" construction had already arrived. Not long after the Chicago example, if, indeed, not rather before, Mr. Buffington, of Minneapolis, had produced a "project" which startled the members of his profession, for a building of twenty-eight stories, under a patent of his own for an "Iron Building Construction," which "consists of a continuous skeleton of iron, commencing on the iron footings and continuing of iron and steel to the full height." 81 This project, however, remains on paper. But there never was a more legitimate birth of Necessity than the Tower Building, now doomed. The architect, Mr. Bradford L. Gilbert, found himself confronted with the imperious necessity, in 1888, of erecting a building as high as would be constructible and rentable, on a Broadway frontage of twenty-one feet and a half, by a depth of over a hundred feet, giving access to a considerably wider building at the rear. According to the regulations of the Building Department, such a building, erected with self-sustaining outer walls of masonry, even if the whole weight of floors and partitions had been assigned to an auxiliary construction of metal, would have been narrowed to a mere corridor and unavailable for rental. It was a Gordian knot that simply had to be cut, and the cutting was the proposal to abolish the walls altogether. Naturally, so drastic a solution was looked upon askance by the authorities, but the permit was at last issued. Columbus had shown how the egg could be stood on end. Of course the Columbuli rushed in at that demonstration conspicuously made in the outer front of a building on Broadway. It ought to be explained that the demonstration nearly coincided with a still further lightening of the interior construction by reason of the popularization of the Bessemer process. It was, in truth, this change in the interior fireproof construction, rather a cheapening than a lightening. The most recent form of floor, with flat arches of hollow tile turned between steel beams, has, it seems, no very marked advantage in weight over the older brick arch turned between beams of wrought iron. Its advantages are that it "dries out" far quicker, that it presents a flat under surface to the plasterer, and particularly that it is far cheaper. The steel beams can now be furnished cheaper than in the early days iron could be had cast, not to say wrought. Already, in the Home Life Building in 81

See above, p. 386η. On the Tower Building mentioned immediately following, see above, p. 419η.

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Fig. 116. C y r u s L . W . New

York

Times

N e w York City,

Eidlitz. Building,

1902-1904.

Chicago, there was an additional record to that of the scheme of construction, being the incorporation into the structure, by Mr. Carnegie's concern, of a specimen steel beam or two, though rather as a trophy of what had been accomplished than as a "practical business proposition." 82 But it was not long before the proposition became grimly practical. The new and cheapened alembication of iron saved a considerable fraction of the cost of fireproof building. Put that saving into 82 Steel beams w e n t into the nine-story H o m e Insurance B u i l d i n g a b o v e the sixth floor. T h i s , the first use of steel in a skeletal building, w a s perhaps rather more than a mere " t r o p h y " of C a r n e g i e ' s achievement as S c h u y l e r suggests. Steel h a d been used for fifteen years previously in bridges. See C o n d i t , American Building Art, pp. 53, 286f.

THE EVOLUTION

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433

Fig. 117. Ernest Flagg. West Street Building, New York City, completed 1905.

terms of altitude, and you will see what a vertical extension it invited and made possible. With these advances and object-lessons the limit was, in truth, removed. O n e no longer perceives how "es ist dafür gesorgt" that the sky-scrapers should not scrape the sky. What, if any, is the limit of the new commercial Babels? As many architects, engineers, "promoters," as you may consult to-day, "tot sententiae." It is true that, as thirty years ago the proportion of total area to be taken up with your enclosing and subdividing walls seemed to form a limit, so you will now find those who place the limit in the proportion of area necessary to be reserved for the elevators themselves which primarily enable the lofty construction. But those who compare the area and the altitude of the Singer Tower, or the Metropolitan Life Tower, 8 3 those strictly util83 Singer Building, 149 Broadway, (1906-1908; extant) by Ernest Flagg (1857-1947); for bibliography on this building, see below, p. 436η. Metropolitan Life Tower, SE cor. Madison Ave. and 24th St., (1890-1894; tower and wings 1905-1909; extant) by Napoleon

434

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itarian erections which tower so far above all the erections of man that have a monumental purpose, the Eiffel alone excepted, and who consider the "practical" projects that threaten to overtop even that, will hesitate to find any effective limitation in this indefinite ratio [Figs. i i 2 , 113]. The well-meant efforts to fix a limit by legislation to the altitudes which are converting the slits of street between them into Cimmerian and wind-swept ravines have thus far turned out to be either chimerical or futile and ridiculous. They have also the misfortune of being plausibly, however invidiously, regarded as urged in the interest of those who have already "improved" their landholdings in the commercial quarters of the great cities by building sky-scrapers, and whose pretence of being "affected by a public interest" in opposing the building of other sky-scrapers, is ridiculed by those who have not yet "improved," and who desire to substitute competition for monoply. Their attitude has already been likened, in print, to the attitude of the British rector, according to Punch's British agriculturist: "Pa'sson, 'e gets in 'is own hay, then 'e claps on the prayer for rain." Apparently it must be left to that future, not so far off, in which the multiplication and magnification of the sky-scrapers will become plainly incompatible with the well-being of the communities in which individual interest is permitted to override public interest, to devise some effectual limitation or restriction.84 Meanwhile, it is to be noted that, architecturally, the skeleton construction has by no means "found itself." It was not to be expected that a new architectural type should be soon evolved from the exposition of a construction of which, as we have seen, concealment, by means of a "protective envelope," is of the essence. That the sky-scraper is essentially a frame building, not an agglutination of masonry, is, I was about to say, a manifest truth. But it is only during construction that it is manifest. When the building is "closed in," when the panels of masonry that fill up E u g e n e L e B r u n ( 1 8 2 1 - 1 9 0 1 ) & Sons. T h e latter w e r e M i c h a e l (died 1913) a n d Pierre L . L e B r u n ( 1 8 4 6 - 1 9 2 4 ) , both of w h o m w o r k e d on this building. 84 Legislation p r o v i d i n g for the set-back of buildings w a s passed i n N e w Y o r k i n 1916, based on the Report of the H e i g h t s of Buildings Commission ( 1 9 1 3 ) ; see b e l o w p. 447η. This legislation required that b u i l d i n g mass stay w i t h i n a certain angle d r a w n f r o m the center of the f a c i n g street, with vertical towers of uncontrolled height permitted o n a small percentage of the lot area. T h e stepped-back p y r a m i d typical o f the N e w Y o r k b u i l d i n g envelope results f r o m this 1 9 1 6 ordinance. S c h u y l e r discussed the p r o b l e m of light, air, a n d v i e w with respect to the skyscraper especially in " T h e Skyscraper P r o b l e m " ( i g o 3 - D ) , reprinted immediately b e l o w , a n d " T o C u r b the S k y s c r a p e r " ( 1 9 0 8 - D ) ; see also above, pp. 5 g f a n d 386f.

Fig. 118. George Β. Post. Union Trust Building, New York City, 1889-1890.

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the frames of metal are in place, it is manifest no longer. Efforts toward manifesting it have indeed been made, in such hopeful experiments as the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, the Bayard Building in New York, and the Singer Building, 85 by no means to be confounded with that one of the same name and in the same city which wears the "record" tower [Figs. 105, 1 1 4 , 1 1 5 ] . But upon the whole it is not an encouraging reflection how much less the skeleton construction has done toward the establishment of an architectural type, toward the creation of an architectural organism, than was done in the transitional tall buildings, when, of the coefficients that have gone to produce the extreme skyscraper, the passenger elevator was the only one in full force and effect. In those transitional buildings, when walls were still walls, the effect of depth and mass inhered in the thickness of the wall, requiring only artistic modelling and modification to elicit and emphasize its impressiveness. In the later development, the smooth expanse of wall, broken only by shallow openings, with a minimum of what is technically and happily called "reveal," is expressionless, the more that the frame is hidden that would give it the beginning of expressiveness. The architect who would give his wall surface expression comparable to that of his prototypes of real masonry is driven to project his wall for the very purpose of withdrawing it again. True, he may crown it with a factitious and more or less fictitious feature, like the beetling tower of the Times Building, or the pinnacled diadem of the West Street Building, 86 which the uninteresting building beneath lifts into the empyrean to become the cynosure of a justified admiration [Figs. 1 1 6 , 1 1 7 ] . But it were too much to say that he has succeeded in realizing in his skeletons such an impressiveness of expressiveness as belongs to the best of the transitional buildings, to the front of the Union Trust in Broadway, to the corniced tower of the Ames Building in Boston, to the towering pylons of the Monadnock in Chicago [Figs. 38, h i , 118]. 8 7 85 Sullivan's Guaranty Building, see above, p. 3 9 3 η . Bayard (later Condict) Building, 6 5 - 6 9 Bleecker St., ( 1 8 9 7 - 1 8 9 8 ; extant) by Louis Sullivan. Small Singer Building, 5 6 1 - 5 6 3 Broadway, ( 1 9 0 2 - 1 9 0 4 ; extant) by Ernest Flagg. T h e latter building recalls Viollet-le-Duc's project for a metal and masonry store front: see Discourses, 2, lecture 18, pi. 36. See also H . W . Desmond, " A Rational Skyscraper," Architectural Record, 75 (Mar. 1904), 2 7 4 - 2 8 4 , and A l a n Burnham, "Forgotten Pioneering: Singer Building and Singer T o w e r , " Architectural Forum, 106 (Apr. 1 9 5 7 ) , 1 1 6 - 1 2 1 . 86 Cyrus Eidlitz's Times Building, see above, pp. 70 and 1 6 2 η . West Street Building, 21 West St., (completed 1 9 0 5 ; extant) by Cass Gilbert. Schuyler published a critique of the building ( 1 9 0 7 - D ) . 87 See above, p. 66 and note.

The "Skyscraper" Up-To-Date 88

[Schuyler opens this article by discussing the exterior composition of a number of New York skyscrapers. He reaffirms a point of view made in a number of his other essays with respect to the aesthetic of the tall building. T h e "most successful of the sky-scrapers are those in which the shaft is made nothing of, in which the necessary openings occur at the necessary places, are justified by their necessity but draw no attention to themselves." He credits George B. Post's Union Trust Building as the first to popularize the base-shaft-capital analogy, although at another point he gives this distinction to Bruce Price's American Surety Building. Insofar as any building can be said to have popularized the column analogy, Bruce Price's building, rather than Post's, has been generally so acclaimed.] All the buildings thus far mentioned have been designed in general conformity with the convention which enforces not only the Aristotelian triple division, but the more specific analogy of the column. But it should not be forgotten that the assumption o f t h a t analogy, convenient as it is, is, after all, only an assumption, and a more or less arbitrary assumption, since it not only does not facilitate, but may even obstruct, the detailed expression in design of structure and of function. T h a t the Aristotelian maxim itself is an assumption, or that the application of it to architecture is arbitrary, not many designers or critics can be prepared to admit. It is not necessary that they should be psychologists, and able to explain in words why a building triply divided should be more "agreeable to the spirit of m a n " than a building which consists from top to bottom in tiers of similar cells, any more than that they should be able to explain why in fenestration the arithmetical progres88

Architectural Record, 8 ( J a n . - M a r . 1899), 231-257. Excerpted.

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sion 3, 5, and η is agreeable. On either point they can safely take an appeal to universal consciousness. Securus orbis judicabit.89 But it is also true that the sky-scraper is in fact a series of equal cells, and that the only suggestions for a triple division that inhere in the conditions are the facts that the ground floor has a different destination from that of the floors above, and suggest a distinctive treatment of the bottom, and the fact that a visible roof or in default of it the necessity for a protective and projecting cornice, compels a distinctive treatment for the top. Almost without exception, the designers of the tall buildings make a further assumption, which is not only arbitrary but manifestly baseless, and that is that in designing them they are designing buildings of masonry, instead of merely wrapping skeletons of metal in fire-resisting material. That basements should be more solid than superstructures; that arches should have visible abutments; that walls should "reveal" their thickness; these and many more of the traditions of masonry have no relevancy at all to the new construction. If architects make and we allow these assumptions, we ought not to forget that they are baseless assumptions, and that the best work done according to them is not a solution, but an evasion of the problem presented by the modern office building. That is why an aberration, a "deviation from the customary structure or type," is not necessarily condemnable, may, on the contrary, be highly laudable. It all depends upon whether the departure is a mere caprice of the designer, or an attempt to come closer to reason and reality than is possible under the conventional treatment. [Here Schuyler mentions some "aberrations" in the composition of various skyscraper elevations, before concluding with a discussion of Louis Sullivan's Bayard Building.] Very different is the aberration presented by the Bayard Building in Bleecker Street [Fig. 114]. There is nothing capricious in the general treatment of this structure. It is an attempt, and a very serious attempt, to found the architecture of a tall building upon the facts of the case. The actual structure is left or, rather, is helped, to tell its own story. This is the thing itself. Nobody who sees the building can help seeing that. Neither the analogy of the column, nor any other tradition or convention, is allowed to interfere with the task of clothing the steel frame in as expressive forms as may be. There is no attempt to simu89 " T h e verdict of the whole world admits of no dispute." St. Augustine in his treatise against the writings of Parmenian I I I .

THE SKYSCRAPER

UP-TO-DATE

439

late the breadth and massiveness proper to masonry in a frame of metal that is merely wrapped in masonry for its own protection. The flanking piers, instead of being broadened to the commercially allowable maximum, are attenuated to the mechanically allowable minimum. Everywhere the drapery of baked clay is a mere wrapping, which clings so closely to the frame as to reveal it, and even to emphasize it. This is true at least of the uprights, for it seems to me a defect in the general design, from the designer's own point of view, that it does not take enough account of the horizontal members. 90 As anybody may see in a steel cage not yet concealed behind its screens of masonry, these are as important to the structure as the uprights. In the Bayard they are largely ignored, for the panels which mark the different floors are apparently mere insertions, answering no structural purpose, and there is no suggestion of any continuous horizontal members, such as, of course, exist and are even necessary to stability. Mr. Sullivan, some years ago, wrote a very interesting paper on the aesthetics of the tall building, of which the fundamental position was that form must follow function, and that "where function does not vary form does not vary." 91 These are propositions from which nobody who believes that architecture is an art of expression will dissent, and with which the present writer heartily agrees. But in applying them to the case in question, Mr. Sullivan declared that the lower two (or possibly three) stories of a tall office building had a destination so different from that of the superstructure, that a distinguishing treatment for them was not only required but demanded, and that the uppermost story in turn, being in great part devoted to the "circulating system" of the building should also be differentiated. I remember suggesting to him that it was in fact only the ground floor which could be said to differ in function from its successors and that his inclusion of additional stories may have been inspired by an instinctive desire to obtain a base more proportional, according to our inherited notions of proportion, to a lofty superstructure than a single story could furnish. However that may be, in 90 Sullivan's arbitrary emphasis on the vertical piers over the horizontal spandrel panels characterizes all his skeletal buildings until the Schlesinger-Mayer (now Carson, Pirie, Scott) Department Store, see above, p. 68f. 91 Sullivan's classic " T h e Tall Building Esthetically Considered," originally published in LippincotCs, 5 7 (Mar. 1896), 403-409; conveniently reprinted in Documents of Modern Art Series as Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York, 1947), pp. 2 0 2 - 2 1 3 . For an analysis, see Morrison, Sullivan, chap. 5.

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the Bayard it is the ground floor that is treated as the base. Even the second story "counts i n " with the superstructure, to which logically it belongs. In spite of the separate treatment of the ground floor, the continuity of the structure is felt and expressed, even in the design of the capitals, which are plainly not real capitals, spreading to carry a weight of greater area, but mere efflorescences of decoration. It is not a question whether two or three stories would not be more effectively proportional to the superstructure than one. It is a question of fact. T h e result, whatever else one may think of it, is a sense of reality very different from what we get from the sky-scrapers designed on conventional lines. It puts them to the same sort of shame to which the great roof trusses of the Manufacturers Building in Chicago 92 put the imitative architecture with which they were associated. Not that the gauntness and attenuation of the resulting architecture are in this case altogether agreeable to an eye accustomed to the factitious massiveness of the conventional treatment. But, at the worst, this front recalls Rufus Choate's famous toast to the Chief Justice: " W e look upon him as the East Indian upon his wooden idol. We know that he is ugly, but we feel that he is great." 93 We feel that this front is a true and logical exposition of the structure. If we find it ugly notwithstanding, that may be our own fault. If we can find no failure in expressiveness, the architect may retort upon us that it is no uglier than it ought to be. Meanwhile the aesthetic, as distinguished from the scientific, attractiveness of the Bayard Building without doubt resides in the decoration which has been lavished upon it, and which is of a quality that no other designer could have commanded. I am unable to agree with Mr. Sturgis's condemnation of the crowning feature of the building, in a recent number of this magazine, as "most unfortunate." 94 In fact, the upper two stories are internally one story, the upper floor being a gallery surrounding a well extending through both, and lighted from above. Doubtless the arches and the rudimentary tracery are not forms of metallic architecture, but they do not belong to metallic architecture. See b e l o w , p. 532η. R u f u s C h o a t e ( 1 7 9 9 - 1 8 5 9 ) , the f a m o u s Boston l a w y e r , m a d e the r e m a r k a b o u t C h i e f Justice L e m u e l S h a w ( 1 7 8 1 - 1 8 6 1 ) , w h o served for thirty years in the S u p r e m e C o u r t of Massachusetts. Schuyler's rendition is a p a r a p h r a s e of the a c t u a l toast; see S a m u e l G i l m a n B r o w n , The Life of Rufus Choate (Boston, 1879), p. 438. 92 93

94 Russell Sturgis, " G o o d T h i n g s in M o d e r n A r c h i t e c t u r e , " Architectural Record, 8 ( J u l y Sept. 1898), ι o i . Sturgis criticized the arches a n d o r n a m e n t u n d e r the projecting eaves as being false to the frame.

T H E SKYSCRAPER

UP-TO-DATE

The arches are in fact of brickwork, faced with terra cotta, and the thrust of them is visibly, as well as actually, taken up by the tie-rods at the springing. The intermediate uprights, the mullions, cease at this level, while the prolongation of the principal uprights is clearly denoted by the winged figures under the cornice. A designer who has adhered so strictly to the unpromising facts of the steel cage through eleven stories is scarcely to be severely blamed for "treating resolution" to this extent in the twelfth. If the building, apart from its wealth of decoration, recalls the works of contemporaneous engineering rather than of historical architecture, that also is "as it must be." The Bayard Building is the nearest approach yet made, in New York, at least, to solving the problem of the sky-scraper. It furnishes a most promising starting point for designers who may insist upon attacking that problem instead of evading it, and resting in compromises and conventions.

The Skyscraper Problem95

T h a t the skyscraper is still fer 307. 33'-344. 333> 337, 34345. 356, 361, 362; Cabin J o h n (Washington Aqueduct) Bridge, Washington, D.C., 332> 355) 356; "caterpillar bridges" (over the Charles), Boston, Mass., 354, 355; Central Railroad Bridge (over the Harlem at 7th Ave.), N.Y.C., 372; Cincinnati, O., Suspension Bridge, 3 3 1 ; Eads Bridge, St. Louis, Mo., 42, 52, 57, 62, 332, 358; George Washington Bridge (over the Hudson), N.Y.C., 352; Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, Cal., 352; Harlem River bridges, N.Y.C., general remarks, 59, 348, 367, 372f; Hell Gate Bridge (over the East River), N.Y.C., 54; High Bridge (Croton) Aqueduct (over the Harlem), N.Y.C., 60, 61, 373; Manhattan Bridge (over the East River), N.Y.C., 53, 54, J J , 56f, 71, 373; Manhattan Valley Viaduct (Riverside Drive over 125th St.), N.Y.C., 3 7 1 ; New York Central Railroad Bridge (main line over the Harlem at Park, or 4th, Ave.), N.Y.C., 62, 367; Niagara, N.Y., railroad cantilever, 358, 362, suspension bridge, 331; Northern Railroad, or Old Putnam Division, Bridge (over the Harlem at 8th Ave.), N.Y.C., 61, 372; North River, or Hudson River, Suspension Bridge (Lindenthal project), N.Y.C., 57, 62, 352, 3Öif, 362, 363; Pennsylvania Railroad Bridge, Louisville, Ky., 565; Poughkeepsie, N.Y., railroad cantilever, 362; Queensborough Bridge (over the East River), N.Y.C., 52, 54, 373; Second Ave. Bridge (for elevated over the Harlem), N.Y.C., 61, 62, 372f, 373·, Sixth St. Bridge, Pittsburgh, Pa., 364, 366; Washington Bridge (over the Harlem), N.Y.C., 52, 57, 61, 62, 332, 356f, 357, 358, 373; Williamsburg Bridge (over the East River), N.Y.C., 52-54, 54, 345, 361, 371

Bridges, European: Bavaria, lenticular bridge over the Isar, 565; Bern (Switzerland), Kirchenfeld Bridge, 357; Budapest, Old Suspension Bridge, 3 3 1 ; Chester (England), Grosvenor Bridge, 332; Firth of Forth Bridge (Scotland), isf, 58, 59, 116, 331, 364; Florence, Ponta della Trinita, 3 7 1 ; Frankfurt on Main, old masonry bridge, 355; Fribourg (Switzerland), Old Suspension Bridge, 331; Hamburg, Old Elbe River Bridge, 358f; London, new London Bridge, 332, 355, old London Bridge, 355, Tower Bridge, 57' 367f, 368; Menai Strait (Wales), Brittania Bridge, 332, 342, 358f, suspension bridge, 331, 358; Paris, Pont Alexandre I I I , 58, 347, 348, Pont Mirabeau (Auteuil), 58, 59, 62, 347, 348, 365, 370; Prague, Karl's Bridge, 355; Trezzo Bridge (Italy), 332; Venice, Ponta Rialto, 371 Brighton Pavilion, 143 Brooklyn, Ν. Y.: Academy of Design, 36, 126, 127, 160, 466; Academy of Music, 128, 159, 167, 168, 769, 196; Beecher Monument, 528; Brooklyn Bridge, see Bridges, American; Church of the Pilgrims, 147; Hamilton Ferry house, 144; Mercantile Library, 36, 128, 7.29, 160; Plymouth Church, 1 5 1 , 152 Brown, Lancelot "Capability," 455 Brown, James Lord, 160 Brownell, William C., 13 Browning, Robert, 108, 323 Brunei, Sir Marc Isambard, 444 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 78 Buck, L. L., 54 Bucknall, Benjamin, 11 Buffalo, N.Y.: Endicott Building, 408, 416; Guaranty Building, 69, 71, 393^ 395, 396, 436, 445; Public Library, 210, 211 Buffington, Leroy S., 294, 30if, 305, 386, 431» 443. 445 Burges, William, I22f, 126 Burke, Sir Edmund, 10, 379 Burnham, Daniel Hudson, 64, 256, 405^ 448, 557f> 567. 571. 573 Burnham, D. H. & Co.: article, 405-418 Burnham & Root, 2, 13, 46, 60, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 254, 255, 256, 26gf, 289, 405-418 passim, 426, 436, 445 Burr, William H., 52 Cady, J . C., 35, 36, 126, 148, 160, 464, 46sf Cady, Berg & See: article, 125-128; 35, 148

INDEX Cambridge, Mass.: H a r v a r d University, Austin Hall, 401, Fogg Museum, 533, Memorial Hall, 11 C a m d e n Society, 13a Cardiff Castle, 122 Carlyle, Thomas, 275, 326 Carrere & Hastings, 54, 55, 229 Carter, Drake & Wight, 405 Cedar Rapids, Iowa: People's Savings Bank, article, 625-633, 627, 631; 84, 85 "Cedric," 444 "Celtic," 445 Central Islip, N.Y.: Asylum, i 8 i f , 183, 184. See also Islip, N.Y. Century Club, 13 Chaley, 331 Chambers, Sir William, 575 C h a p m a n , Otis, 130. See also Barney & Chapman Chicago, 111.: articles, 246-291, 377~3 8 4; American Express Co. Building, 261; Armory, First Illinois Regiment, 418; Art Institute, new building, 256, 378, old building, 254, 255, 256f, 261, 376f; Auditorium, 64, 254, 257, 258, 261, 384^ 387, 389; Board of T r a d e Building, 253; Borden house, 285^ 286, 538; Carson, Pirie, Scott (Schlesinger, Mayer) Department Store, 68, 69, 70, 71, 403; City a n d County Building, 250-255, 251; C h a m b e r of Commerce Building, 64; Dearborn Station, 246, 250; Fraternity Temple, 59, 386f, 388, 445; Getty T o m b , 400f; Glessner house, 19, 44, 86, 283-285, 283·, Home Insurance Building, 64, 65, 379, 429, 43if, 444; houses in, 277-291; Insurance Exchange Building, 46, 64, 270, 271, 272; Kehilath Ma'Ariv Synagogue, 399; MacVeagh house, 44, 86, 280-283, 28I\ McVicker's Theater, 389; Marshall Field Wholesale Store, 20, 38f, 40, 42, 44, 46, 63, 64, 67, 202, 2i6f, 219, 221, 262265, 263, 269; Marshall Field Store Annex, 4 1 5 - 4 1 7 ; Masonic Temple Building, 60, 408; Monadnock Building, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 410-412, 426, 428, 436, 445; Newberry Library, 378; Owings Building, 267^ 268; Palmer House, 262; Phoenix Building, 46, 64, 270, 273f, 273, 274, 275, 390, 40g; Public Library, 378; R a n d McNally Building, 262, 416; Reliance Building, 65^ 68, 69, 70, 4 1 2 - 4 1 5 , 413, 4i6f; Rookery Building, 46, 64, 270, 272, 407f; Ryerson Tomb, 401; Schiller Theater, 388f; Stock Exchange Building,

657

389; Studebaker Building, 234, 265-267, 266; Sullivan house, 400; Tacoma Building, 64; University of Chicago, 378; Victoria Hotel, 398; Women's Temple, 408 Chicago construction, 1 1 3 - 1 1 4 , 261, 379f, 387, 4 1 1 , 412-418, 429, 444. See also Skyscrapers Chicago Fair (World's Columbian Exposition): article, 556-574; 2, 78f, 103, 178, 385^ 397. 398» 406, 407, 414, 558, J59, 576, 584, 615; Art Building, 414, 566; Administration Building, ηηί, 53if, 546, 549» 57°) 574J Agriculture Building, 566, 567, 570; Electricity Building, 566; Fisheries Building, 563, 564; Machinery Hall, 560, 566, 570, 574; Manufactures Building, 440, 559, 560, 567, 569, 570, 574; Mining Building, 567; Transportation Building, 397^ 563, 564^ 615, 633 Chicago, park system of, 256, 276f, Jackson Park, 276, 277, 561, 562, 567, 570, 572, 574 Chicago school, 1, 2, 12, 42, 62, 63, 64, 65, 87 Choate, Rufus, 69, 440 Cincinnati, O . : Burnet Building, project by Süllivan, 394^ Burnet House (hotel), 394; Chamber of Commerce, 205^ 207·, warehouse by J . K . Wilson, 163 Clarke, Adam, 332 Clarke, William Tierney, 332 Cleveland, President Grover, 95 Cleveland, Horace William, 308 Clifford, William Kingdon, 185 Cobb, Henry Ives, 65, 267, 290, 378, 563 Cobb & Frost, 267 Codman, Henry Sargent, 563 Coke, Sir E d m u n d , 447 Colonial revival, 8, 13, 46, 102 Commissioners' Plan, see New York City Congdon, Henry M., 127 Cook, Walter, 315. See also Babb, Cook & Willard Cooper, Edward, 184 Cooper, Theodore, 61, 332, 365, 372f Cork Cathedral, 122 Courbet, Gustav, 254 Cram, Ralph Adams, 601. Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, 13, 29, 47, 84, •49> 229. 598, 601 Crayon, 24, 153 Croes, J o h n J . R., 372 Croly, Herbert, 2

658

INDEX

Cross, J. J. H., 372f Cuvier, Georges, 115 Darier, Samuel, 504 Declaration of Independence, 606 Diaper, Frederick, 136 Dorsheimer, William, 174, 177 Dryden, John, 303 Duban, J. -F., 76, 77 Due, Joseph Louis, 76 Duggin, Charles, 151 Eads, James B., 52, 57, 62, 332 Ecclesiologist movement, 23, 132, 139. See also Anglican tradition ficole des Beaux Arts, influence of: articles, 452-621 passim; 3, 8, 11, 15, 19, 28, 52, 54. 58, 72, 75, 76. 77. 79 43°, 436. 438-44!» 445; bridges, see Bridges, American; Bronson houses, 523; Broadway Chambers, 6 1 1 , 613, 614, 615; Broadway Tabernacle Congregational Church, 148; Brooks Brothers Store, 197, 465; Casino Theater, 98; Central Park, 276, 479, project for gates for Park by H u n t , 509f; " C h u r c h of the Holy Z e b r a " (All Souls Unitarian Church), 152, ιS3, 197; " C h u r c h of the Homely Oilcloth" (Holy Trinity), 10, l68 cit

'45. '49. '5°, '5'> !52, 155»

;

y

Hall, old Mangin and M c C o m b building, 252f, 576; City Hall, project for around 1888, 414, 459; Coal a n d Iron Exchange (Delaware a n d Hudson Canal Co.) Building, 5 1 4 , 515; Columbia University, Old Campus buildings, 36, 37, 74, 160, 476, 478f; Commissioners' Plan of 1807, 449; Continental Bank Building, 67, 159, 163, 164, 165, 196; Cooper Union, i83f; Corn Exchange Bank, 142; Court House, 163, 178, 180, 1 8 1 , 588f; Custom House, 160; Daily News Building, 83; Decker Building, 171; dining room for the Prince of Wales, i82f; Dodge Monument, 528; Dry Dock Savings Bank, 137, 168, /70172, 186,493; Duncan, Sherman Building, 165; Eagle Fire Insurance Building, 465; Leopold Eidlitz house, 144; elevated railroad, 172—174; Emanu-El Synagogue, 10, 23, I55f, 156, 157, 158, 159, 172; Equitable Building, 424f; Fifth Avenue Hotel, 422; General Theological Seminary, 36, 160; German Savings-Bank, 470; Gerry house, 1 7 1 , 538-540, 339; Gilsey Building, 381; Gilsey house, 381; Grace Church, 197, 228; Guernsey Building, 480, 481, 514; Hammerslough Brothers (cast-iron building by Hunt), 51 jit H a u g h wout Building, 518; Hippodrome, 168; Holy Trinity, Church of the, 10, 145, 149. '5°> '5', 152, :55> 168; Holy Trinity, Harlem, 203; houses in, 79 (see also Queen Anne); Imperial Hotel, 416; Jefferson Market Courthouse, 180, 478; Knickerbocker Trust Co. Building, 82, 589-597, 59°> 59' j Lee, Tweedy a n d Co. Building (cast-iron building by H u n t ) , 5/7f; Lenox Library, 8, 76f, 79,523Ϊ·, Madison Avenue Methodist Church, 4 7 1 ; M a n h a t t a n Eye

INDEX a n d E a r Hospital, 470; M a r q u a n d houses, 285, 467, 468, 54of; Metropolitan Life I n surance Building, 83, 429, 433, 609, 6 1 1 ; M e t r o p o l i t a n O p e r a House, 168; Mills Building, 452, 485, 486; M o u n t Sinai Hospital, 470; Municipal Building, 83, 4 1 4 ; M u t u a l Life I n s u r a n c e Building, 162; N a t i o n a l A c a d e m y of Design, 6, 8, 36, 160; Phillips M e m o r i a l Presbyterian C h u r c h , 472; Pilgrim M o n u m e n t , 528; Post Building, 74, 483, 484^ Post Office, 468f, 496, 607; Presbyterian Hospital, 5//, 5 1 2 , 5 1 5 ; Produce E x c h a n g e Building, b y Leopold Eidlitz, 65, 159, 166, 169, 196, by Post, 65, 66, 206, 2 1 8 , 259, 428, 4 3 1 ; Rossiter house, 506Ϊ·, Seventh R e g i m e n t M o n u m e n t , 528; Staats-Zeitung Building, 470; St. Agnes, 203, 227; St. Albans, 143; St. Bartholomew's C h u r c h , 45, 132, 197, 227, 228; St. George's C h u r c h , 136, 127» '38, 139, '4°, Ι 4 Ι - Ϊ 4 2 . 145» ' 7 2 . 186, 196; C a t h e d r a l of St. J o h n the Divine, 140, 203, 22gf, 239, 240; St. Nicholas Collegiate R e f o r m e d D u t c h C h u r c h , 603; St. Patrick's C a t h e d r a l , 228, 598; St. Peter's Westchester C h u r c h , 145, 146; St. T h o m a s ' C h u r c h , old U p j o h n building, 149, 60if, present C r a m , G o o d h u e & Ferguson building, 84, 149, 598-604, 599; St. T h o m a s ' School, 479; Shot Tower, 4 2 1 ; Singer Building, " s m a l l " B r o a d w a y building, 430; Singer Tower, 83, 426, 433, 436, 444, 609; Statue of Liberty, 528f; Stewart house, 500, 588; Stewart U p t o w n Store ( W a n a m a k e r ' s ) , 588, 589; Stock E x c h a n g e Building, 82, 594; Studio Building, 507, 508·, Stuyvesant A p a r t ments, 5 / p f ; S u n Building, 611; T i l d e n house, 477, 4 7 9 - 4 8 1 ; Times Building, 70, 83, 162, 432, 436, 609; T o m p k i n s M a r k e t Building, 144; Tower Building, 66, 4igf, 4 3 1 , 444; T r i b u n e Building, 63, 247, 422, 427 f . 442, 444. 5 ' 2 f . 5>9 f . 6 o 9 f i T r i n i t y Building, 142; T r i n i t y C h u r c h , 2 1 , 25, 100, 139, 1 4 1 , 142, 146, 149, 152, 1 5 5 , 160, 168, 459, 505, 598; T w e e d C o u r t House, 163, 178, 180, 1 8 1 , s88f; U n i o n L e a g u e Club, 145, 469, 4 8 1 ; U n i o n Theological Seminary, 36, 38, 160; U n i o n T r u s t Building, 66, 67, 435, 436, 437, 445, 6 1 1 ; U n i t e d Bank Building, 481, 483; Cornelius V a n d e r b i l t house, 75, 481, 493-499» 494, 496'< W . H . V a n d e r bilt house, 75, 285, 457f, 481, 497, 4g», 4 9 9 - 5 0 1 ; William K . V a n d e r b i l t house,

75» 2 8 5» 468, 4 8 1 , 488-493, 489, 491, 536, 538, 5 4 1 ; Victoria Hotel (Stevens House), 5 1 5» 5 1 7> 520; W a r d ' s Island Asylum, 181 f; West Street Building, 433, 436, 6 1 1 , 6 1 5 , 6 i 6 f ; Western U n i o n T e l e g r a p h Building, 63, 247, 4*3, 425, 428, 442f, 444, 5 1 9 , 610; Woolworth Building, article, 6 0 5 - 6 2 1 , 607, 1 3 , 29, 7 1 , 83, 84; World Building, 422 New York Sketch-Book of Architecture, 7, 8, 9 N o r t h Easton, Mass.: Ames G a t e Lodge, 288; Public Library, 208 Northwestern Architect, 322 N u r e m b e r g , ( G e r m a n y ) : Nassauerhaus, 137 O a k Park, 111.: Heurtley house, 638 O c e a n Springs, Miss.: Sullivan's cottage, 399 O ' C o n n o r , A n d r e w , 133 Olmsted, Frederick Law, 174, 177, 187, 448, 509, 563 O w a t o n n a , M i n n . : N a t i o n a l Farmers' Bank, 627, 628, 629 O x f o r d ( E n g l a n d ) : All Saints, 454; Queens College, 454; Radcliffe Library, 454 Paley, William, 256 P a l m e r & Hornbostel, 54 Paris: C a t h e d r a l of N o t r e D a m e , 236, 241 f, 242, 338f; Ecole des Beaux Arts, 77; Ste. fitienne d u M o n t , 320; Eiffel Tower, 50, 57, 4 2 1 , 434, 6 1 1 ; Faculte de Medecine, 19th-century additions to, 592, 594; Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve, 223; O p e r a , 547; Pavillon d e la Bibliotheque, 504; Sainte Chapelle, 237; V e n d ö m e C o l u m n , 254 P a x t o n , Sir J o s e p h , 30, 421 P e a b o d y & Stearns, 209, 469, 48if, 483 Pelz, P a u l J . , 5 1 , 368. See also Symons a n d Pelz Philadelphia, P a . : British Pavilion a t the Centennial Exposition, 73; M u t u a l I n surance Co. Building, 470 Philbrick, Allen E., 632 Pittsburgh, P a . : Allegheny C o u n t y C o u r t House a n d J a i l , 9, 43, 205, 297; Masonic Building, 218, 219, 2 2 1 ; Shadyside Presbyterian C h u r c h , 203, 204; Sixth Ave. Bridge, see Bridges, A m e r i c a n Politian, 109 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 185 Polychrome architecture, 152—159 Pope, Alexander, 343, 461, 549 Post, George B., 63, 65, 66, 67, 74, 75, 82, 162, 259, 422, 425, 428, 435, 436, 437,

662

INDEX

442. 444» 445. 481» 483-484f, 486, 493499, 552. 595. 610 Potter, Bishop Henry Codman, 230 Potter, William C., 36, 38, 160, 203, 464 Prague: Pulverthum, 137 Pre-Raphaelite movement, 4 - 7 Price, Bruce, 437, 467, 468, 611, 613 Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University, Marquand Chapel, 533 Probst & Röthlisberger, 357 Promise of American Life, The, 2 Pueblo, Colo.: Opera House, 3g8f Pugin, Augustus W. N., 453 Pulitzer, Joseph, 159 Queen Anne style: article, 452-487; 72-75, 102, 201, 261. See also Colonial revival Quincy, Mass.: Crane Memorial Library, 208, 209 Rennie, George, son of John, 332 Rennie, John, 332, 355 Rennie, Sir John, Jr., son of John, 332 Renwick, James, 45, 187, 197, 227, 598 Renwick & Sands, 133, 143 Resal, Louis Jean, 58, 62, 347, 348 Revett, Nicholas, 455, 575 Richardson, Henry Hobson, 2, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 18, igf, 21, 22, 25, 34, 36-47, 48, 63, 64, 67, 68, 76, 82, 85, 86, 87, 89, 100, 104, 143, 163, 174, ' 7 5 . ' 7 6 , 177. 178, 187, 198, 20if, 205f, 208, 210, 226, 229, 234-244, 261, 262f, 269, 278-286, 287, 288, 297, 303, 32if, 401. 409. 533. 53 6 . 577. 624, 626, 633 Richardsonian Romanesque: articles, 190— 327; 8, 9, 32, 34-47, 64, 65, 66, 71, 626 Ritch, John W., 381 Robertson, R . H., 35, 460, 466, 468, 46gf, 4 7 ' . 472 Roche, Martin, 41. See also Holabird & Roche Roebling, John, 48, 49, 53, 154, 331 Roebling, Washington, son of John, 48, 53 Rogers, Isaiah, 160, 394 Romanesque, 191-199; influence of German, 141, 163, 164, 169, 196 Root, John Wellborn, 45f, 64, 67, 98, 256, 26gf, 308, 313, 406, 407^ 409, 564. See also Burnham & Root Rundbogenstil, 141 Ruskin, John, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 16, iyi, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 29, 30, 31, 34, 46, 48, 51, 68, 71, 121, 125, 126, 134, 161, 164, 183,

230, 262, 265, 268, 321, 335, 369, 421, 604, 605, 606 Saeltzer, Alexander, 164, 165 St. Augustine, 438 St. Gilles, church, 45, 133 St. Louis, Mo.: Christ Church Cathedral, 146, 148; Eads Bridge, see Bridges, American; Lionberger Warehouse, 2 1 6 218, 21J, 221; St. Nicholas Hotel, 396f; Union Trust Co. Building, 391—393; Wainwright Building, 68, 69, 3gof, 391, 392, 393. 3945 Wainwright T o m b , 40if St. Paul, Minn.: article, 292-328; Bank of Minnesota, 314, 315; Chamber of Commerce Building, 296; City Hall and Court House, 2g7; Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church, 303, 304; Endicott Arcade, 318; houses of, 320-322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 328; New York Life Insurance Building, 315-318,316, 31g; People's Church, 300, 301 f; Pioneer Press Building, 312, 313-315; Hotel R y a n , 304. See also Minneapolis, Minn. Salamanca Cathedral, tower employed in Trinity Church, Boston, ig8, 202, 205, 295 San Diego, Cal.: project for an art museum, 2I2f Sands, Joseph, 143. See also Renwick & Sands Schneider, Charles C . , 358 Schuyler, T h e V e r y Reverend Montgomery, 148 Schuyler, Montgomery, career, 3 - 1 3 ; criticism of Emanu-El, 155, 159 Schuyler, Montgomery, criticism: articles, 94-118; academicism, 72-84, 101, 104, iog, 328, 504, 575-587, 592, 633; "Aristotelian" (column) analogy for skyscraper composition, 388, 437f, 443, 610, 611, 613; education for architects and engineers, 99-118, 346-349, 369-371, 575-578; eclecticism, 36f, 39-43, 74f, 95-96, 105, 115, 118, 134, 155, 222-224, 328, 574, 636, 640; engineer's esthetic, union of architecture and engineering, 56-62, 95-98, 117, 135, 249, 334f, 346-349, 351-373, 380-381; modeling of mass and part, 43-46, 48-52, 345, 356f, 402, 41 if, 639f; organicism, 85, 87f, 1 1 5 - 1 1 7 , 343f, 437, 462, 606, 617, 627f, 633, 635, 637^ picturesque, 21 if, 250, 575f; plan, lack of interest in, 26; reality, 94-98, 108, 114, " 8 , 225, 574; "thing itself," 28, 29, 61. See also Chicago construction, ficole

INDEX des Beaux Arts, Neo-Grec, Queen Anne style, Richardsonian Romanesque, Saracenic style, Skyscrapers, Victorian Gothic Schuyler, Robert Livingston, son of Montgomery, 34 Scott, Sir Gilbert, 25, 1 3 1 , 303 Scully, Vincent, 8, 87 Serrell, Gen. Edward W., 172 Shakespeare, William, 61, 125, 358, 373, 472, 482, 555, 635 Shaw, Norman, 19, 73, 454, 455, 457, 463, 478 Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, 66, 67, 203, 206, 216, 219, 256, 378, 436 Shingle style, 87, 89 "Sirius," 444 Skyscrapers, 59, 63, 65^ 68f, 1 1 3 , 419-449; zoning for, 446-449. See also Chicago construction, Elevators, Steel construction Smith, W. W., 603 Snook, Jonathan B., 154 Spalato (Italy): Palace of Diocletian, I93f Springfield, Mass.: Church of the Unity, 303; Court House, 198; North Congregational Church, 198 Statham, Η. H., 367, 609, 616 Steel construction, 432f, 444. See also Chicago construction, Iron, Skyscrapers Steevens, George W., 446 Stem, Allen H. 321, 326 Stephenson, Robert, 332, 342, 358 Stevens, John W., 30οί Stevenson, J . J . , 73 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 232, 424, 581 Stewart, Alexander T., 588 Stick style, 87 Stickley, Gustave, 640 Street, George Edmund, 5, 19, 1 2 1 , 126, 193» 232f Stuart, James, 455, 575 Sturgis, Russell, 2, 4, 5, 7, 12, 14, 19, 163, 359, 440 Suburban architecture, Schuyler on, 18 Sullivan, Louis: articles, 377-404, 625-632; i, 2, 12, 14, 15, 59, 67, 68, 69, 70, 7 1 , 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 257, 291, 385^ 393, 409. 43°. 436, 438-44 1 . 445. 615, 617. See also Adler & Sullivan Sun, New York, 13 Sweeny, Peter B., I72f Sweet Singer of Michigan, 475 Swinburne, Algernon, 566 Swiss chalet, 144

663

Symons, Captain T. W., 5 1 , 368 Symons and Pelz, 5 1 , 53, 57, 368 Tarrytown, N.Y.: Hoe Mortuary Chapel, 526 Taylor, James Knox, 303 Telford, Thomas, 3 3 1 , 358 Tennyson, Alfred, 105, 377, 410, 449, 490, 606, 617, 626, 637 Terra cotta, 30, 381, 42 7f, 439, 444, 6igf Tilden, Governor Samuel J . , 174, 477, 479 Times, The Mew York, 12, 13 Townesend, William, 454 Trollope, Anthony, 292-294, 303, 321 Trowbridge, S. B. Parkman, 609 Trowbridge & Livingston, 609, 6 1 1 Trubshaw, James, 332 Tubby, William B., 148 Turner, Joseph M. W., 561, 571 Twose, George M. R . , 4i6f Tyng, Rev. Stephen H., 141 Tyng, Rev. Stephen H., J r . , 149 Upjohn, Richard, 2 i f , 25, 100, 136, 142, 147, 149, 459, 464, 505, 598

139,

Vaughan, Henry, 229 Vaux, Calvert, 477, 479 V a n Brunt, Henry, 1 1 , 349, 360, 365, 368, 552 Van Osdel, John, 250, 251, 405 V a n Rensselaer, Mariana (Mrs. Schuyler), 21 Venice: Doge's Palace, 6; St. Marks', 199, campanile o f , ' 6 n , 6 1 3 Vergil, 446 Victorian Gothic, 3, 8, 10, 22, 23, 32, 35f, 62, 71, 73, 77, 8 3 , I Q 2, 120-187, 222, 223, 26if, 303f, 327, 397, 453f, 578 Viollet-le-Duc, Eugene, 1 1 , 12, 16, 24, 28, 32-34, 48, 50, 62, 73, 74, 104, 1 1 2 , 1 1 7 , 122, 1 3 1 , 134, 160, 1 6 1 , 192, 201, 236, 436, 454, 592, 637 Vitruvius, 1 1 2 , 195, 454, 596 Ward, Artemus, 588 Ward, J . Q.. Α., \ηη, 528, 530 Ware, William, 1 1 , 552 Warren, Samuel P., 145 Wartburg, 169, 196 Washburn, William, 422 Washington, D.C.: bridges, see Bridges, American; Capitol, 570, 573; Garfield Monument, 528; L'Enfant Plan for, 448;

66 4

INDEX

Library of Congress, 178, 368; Macmillan Plan for, 448; Smithsonian Institute, 51 Wasmuth publications of Wright's work, 84, 634 Waterhouse, Sir Alfred, 454 Webb, Philip, 5, J 9 Weir, John Ferguson, 6 Wells, J . C., 151 Western Architect, 624 West Point, N.Y.: United States Military Academy, 130, 533, Cullum Hall, 82, 592f, 595, 596 Westward the Course of Empire, by Schuyler, 13 Whipple, Squire, 352 White, Stanford, 45, 133, 227, 416, 601. See also McKim, Mead & White Whitman, Walt, 353, 46of, 637 Wight, Peter B., 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 36, 160, 405, 464. See also Carter, Drake & Wight

Wilcox & Johnston, 314, 3 1 5 , 324, 325 Williamson, F. Stuart, 371 Wills, Frank, 147 Wilson, James K . , 163 Winkler, Franz K . , pseudonym of Montgomery Schuyler, 12 Wisedall, Thomas, 98 Withers, Frederick C., 180, 464, 478 Woburn, Mass.: Public Library, 206 Wordsworth, William, 234 World, New York, 4, 7, :o, 12, 155, 159 Wren, Sir Christopher, 198, 295, 454, 575 Wright, Frank Lloyd: article, 634-640; i, 2, 3» 12. 14. !8, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 625, 626; Heurtley house, 638 Wright, John Lloyd, son of Frank, 12 Wyatt & Sperry, 216 Yorktown, Va.: Yorktown Monument, 53of

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