Houses for town or country

Contents

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I. American Architecture of To-Day . 3

II. T HE Typical Town House .... 39

Chapter I

The United States has of late years passed through a period of significant activity in house-building. Beginning with 1899, Americans began to realise that their stock of buildings of all kinds was inadequate or superannuated. Increased volume of business, improved standards of living, higher aesthetic ideals all demanded more buildings, in some cases larger buildings, and buildings of a different type. Railroads found their stations cramped and illplanned, their bridges too light to carry the heavier rolling stock they were using. Inn-keepers discovered that their patrons wanted larger and more sumptous hotels, and at the same time they wished to take advantage themselves of recent improvements in the mechanics of hotel arrangement and outfit. The growth of cities and the increase in the wealth of their capitalists and banks encouraged as never before in so short a period the erection of huge office buildings; factories and warehouses of greater dimensions and superior equipment were demanded in even larger numbers; western and southern cities as well as New York found apartment houses paying speculative enterprises; and finally, all over the country rich and moderately well-to-do people were stimulated either to build new and larger dwellings, or to remodel and redecorate, with the guidance of the best contemporary standards of design and embellishment, the dwellings which they already had. A complete set of new architectural mechanism and scenery was required; and it is not too much to say that in constructing it the American people accomplished in a few years an amount of building quite unprecedented in the history of the world.

What dominant tendencies are traceable in this miscellaneous mass of new construction? Which of these tendencies are new? Which significant? Which wholesome? What vitality have these wholesome tendencies?

The tendency best worth remarking is the increasing influence of a few general types of design. American architecture is still heterogeneous and indiscriminate enough; but not nearly so much so as it used to be. Certain solutions of special problems have been worked out, and largely adopted; and it is even more encouraging to note that these special ways of treatment and types of design, while open to many serious objections, have all some measure of propriety. Architecture in America, in other words, is becoming nationalised in very much the same way, if not to very much the same extent, as in modern England or France.

The more complete nationalising of American architecture in this limited sense may not seem to be a very important or desirable achievement; but from the point of view of the history of American architecture, it is both. There can be no doubt that the process in question is one of improvement, and

A TUDOR FRONT promises, by giving some coherence and definiteness to a collection of designs formerly much more incoherent and dubious, to make the long and devious path of American architectural experimentation end in some genuine local architectural types.

It is a singular fact that American architectural practice was most uniform at the time when American social life was most completely divided by local and provincial traditions and customs. Notwithstanding differences arising from the contrast between the manner of life of a New England merchant and a Virginian planter, the larger Colonial building was surprisingly the same in all parts of the country, just as it was also surprisingly similar to its prototype in Georgian England. In the same way the architectural pseudo-classicism of the early days of the Republic, as soon as it was sufficiently introduced and properly familiarised, was used almost universally in buildings intended to possess any considerable architectural quality. ■ In both these cases Americans were content to imitate a habit of design which originated abroad and was authorised by the respectable critical opinion of the day. They were frankly Colonial in their practice, untroubled by any aspirations after originality, diversity or picturesqueness.

As American life became more thoroughly nationalised, American architecture lost its early innocence of imitation, and consequently its early uniformity. It abandoned all touch with the respectable critical opinion of other countries; and it was quite without any definite critical opinions, respect-

‘ HARLAKDEN HALL.” HOUSE OF WINSTON CHURCHILL, ESQ., CORNISH, able or otherwise, of its own. In fact it had no leading strings, except certain blind but significant

NEW YORK HOUSE FRONTS instincts. The practice of imitation was deeprooted; but it was the practice of imitating foreign models exclusively. There was never any thought of working over, or of really appropriating the forms already nationalised in this country. The period of American architecture meant merely the

RENAISSANCE FACADES

substitution of indiscriminate habits of imitation, for the selective imitation which had up to that time prevailed. The idea apparently was that the United States had inherited, architecturally, all the styles of the present and of the past, of the East and the West; and that the best way to use this heritage was to transplant to American soil as many samples as possible of these various types of building So, during the twenty years preceding the war, American architecture showed how disinterested and impartial it was by becoming responsible for a surprising collection of Greek and Egyptian temple-residences, Italian villas, French chateaux. Oriental padogas and Gothic cottages. If there was any style of building which the American architect of that period missed, its omission was assuredly due to ignorance rather than to intention. Of course, this ignorant and riotous copying was to be found chiefly in the design of private dwellings. The official architecture of the whole of this period tended to be very conservative; and while New York did not avoid the anomaly of an “ Egyptian” prison, Washington was spared the misfortune of any precisely analogous absurdity.

Without going into the details of our architectural history, it is sufficient for present purposes to say that design in this country has retained ever since to a greater or less extent this habit of indiscriminate imitation. Its occasional attempts at originality have been limited either to mere exaggerated distortions of conventional types, or to the incongruous mixture of several different types in one building. There has, however, been a constant improvement in the quality of the imitation, owing to the improvement in the training and equipment of the American architect, and a number of special architectural movements have at different times had a great deal of influence. During the seventies, for instance, the attempted reform of the methods of interior decoration, which originated with Charles Eastlake, had considerable popularity. Next the powerful personality of Richardson printed the Romanesque Revival upon many of the most important buildings erected during the eighties. Since then the current has been running toward several different dilutions of the Italian or the French Renaissance styles. All of these architectural tendencies are embodied in a greater or smaller number of buildings; but the point is that the particular tendencies now prevailing are embodied in a greater number of buildings than ever before. The Eastlakian reform and the Romanesque revival affected different parts of the country very unevenly. The tendencies now at work are more evenly and generally effective; and if the larger of the new buildings could all be grouped together they would show both fewer architectural types and a wider geographical distribution of them.

Take, for instance, the designing of tall officebuildings. When steel construction began to have its effect upon the height and the looks of officebuildings, two tendencies were traceable in their design. In New York there was no attempt, as there should be in any kind of building, to make their appearance express their structure. A convention of treating them as columns with a decorated capital, a long plain central shaft, and a heavier base, was early adopted; and within the limits of this general

II

A PHILADELPHIA HOUSE FRONT idea, the regular architectural, structural and decorative forms were used regardless of their ordinary structural functions and associations. In Chicago, on the other hand, while many buildings were designed along the same lines as New York, there was a tendency towards a franker expression in the design of these buildings of the plain facts of their steel structure. Such is no longer the case. The new sky-scrapers, which have been, and are being, erected in large numbers in Chicago and Pittsburgh, as well as New York, almost all conform to the conventional treatment, long since adopted in the metropolis— and this in spite of comparatively good-looking attempts to solve the problem within the limitations imposed by the structure. Whether or not the American architect has, in this instance, chosen the wrong alternative, he has at any rate, for the time being, adopted a comparatively uniform type for the design of the sky-scrapers.”

Very much the same inference can be drawn from the manner in which the later hotels have been designed. Until recently the larger hotels of the United States did not in their appearance embody the remotest approach to a convention. Except in one or two instances they were ugly and incongruous hodge-podges of worthless architectural motives. Apparently nobody cared very much how a hotel looked or what atmosphere it exhaled. The early big American inns, such as the Astor and Palmer houses, were morose and heavy but grandiose buildings, embodying, one might infer, the idea that hotels were a kind of public penal institution, from which guests must be denied escape. Even the Auditorium in Chicago belongs in this respect to the earlier type of American hotels. Although architecturally of the highest interest, its fagade possesses none the less a grim and forbidding aspect, which is out of keeping with the uses to which the building is put. It was the Waldorf-Astoria which changed all this and started hotel fagades off on new lines. By reason of its magnitude, its conspicuousness, its success, and even, with all its faults, of a certain propriety in the design, its architect has really established a fashion in hotel fronts. Since its erection both architects and proprietors of these buildings have come to realise that one means of attracting the custom of rich and “smart” people is to put up a “smart” appearance on the outside as well as on the inside of their hotels; and ever since some such attempt has been made. The big new hotels, both in New York and the other leading cities, are revised versions of the Waldorf-Astoria or the Manhattan or both. Specifically French characteristics have in most cases been intensified; but the parentage is unmistakable, and is traceable in the Hotel St. Regis, the Hotel Astor, the Knickerbocker, in the larger apartment hotels of New York, in the New Stratford in Philadelphia, the New Willard in Washington, the Belvidere in Baltimore, and even the Lafayette in Buffalo. While one may or may not like this sort of thing, one must admit that it has an appropriately festive appearance, and that it affords an excellent illustration of the increased prevalence of certain specific types in American architecture.

The two foregoing instances suggest that perhaps the secret of this increased prevalence of specific

AN ELIZABETHAN COUNTRY HOUSE types is the growing assumption by New York of an actual metropolitan function in the social economy of the country. From this point of view American architecture would be obtaining certain definite general characteristics, because the smaller cities were looking to New York for leadership in matters of taste. There is undoubtedly some truth in this interpretation of the facts. New York is more the leader in matters of taste than it ever has been before. It does a great deal, and is constantly doing more to fix the standards, such as they are, of the rest of the country. But the extent to which other cities look to New York for their architectural conventions has some obvious an4 significant limitations. New York in its relation to the rest of the country has two distinguishing characteristics: It is the city, on the one hand, of the rich man, the national corporations, and the big buildings. On the other hand it is the port of entry of the latest foreign artistic injection. It so happens at the present time that these two different characteristics of New York have a very unequal effect upon the rest of the country. In all showy and costly structures, such as office buildings, hotels, and “ palatial residences,” the general standards and conventions are for the most part derived from New York; and this current of imitation of some part of the latest foreign architectural injection, gives an impetus to a kind of Beaux-Arts movement over the South and the West. For the most part, however, the Beaux-Arts influence is confined to New York. It has had practically no effect upon any but the biggest residences and apartment

i6

APPLEGARTH, RESIDENCE OF C. W. WETMORE, ESQ., OYSTER BAY,

A TYPE OF INEXPENSIVE DWELLING

houses. The smaller dwellings in the other cities owe little to New York, while in the western cities an interesting and in some respects excellent local type of apartment house is being developed.

The comparative lack of influence of New York over the design of middle-class residences and apartment houses is partly due to the peculiarly local conditions which determine such designs in the metropolis. New York is cramped for space and will remain so until subways, bridges and tunnels abolish the impediments to free communication resulting from its insular situation. Western cities, on

i8 the other hand, can expand in almost any direction with the utmost freedom, and a comparatively poor resident of one of them can afford to buy as much land in an eligible location as a very rich man may in New York. In consequence the detached residence still prevails in the West and even in certain parts of the East, whereas the block residence, whether private or multiple, prevails and will continue to prevail in New York. New York has, of course, its suburbs; but its suburban residences, except in a few choice locations, belong to an inferior type. Its typical dwelling is that erected on a lot measuring from twenty-five to fifty by one hundred, and covering as large a portion of that lot as the law allows; and the successful solution of the architectural problem offered by such a fagade contains little that is useful to the designer of the detached residence of the West.

The influence of New York consequently on residential design does not cover either a very considerable area or very many instances. Some large seven and eight-story apartment houses have recently been erected in Washington; and these buildings, deplorably out of keeping with the general atmosphere and appearance of the city, might very well have been situated in those parts of the West Side of New York most dominated by the speculative builder of flats. Outside of Washington, however, apartment houses of this type are a rare and insignificant excrescence. In the same way the millionaires’ residences of the West are frequently nothing more than vulgarised imitations of some of the “stunning”

dwellings designed by New York architects for rich New York clients, which instead of being “stunning ” are more often stupefying. The resemblance, such as it is, is much more a matter of the interior than of the exterior. Their detachment so completely alters the conditions under which they are designed that there is a corresponding alteration in their appearance.

The suburban apartment house of the West is a type of residence almost unknown either in New York or its vicinity. The New York apartment house has none of the characteristics of good domestic architecture. At its best it tends to become a copy of the corresponding French type, and obtains some of the same effect of festive publicity; but the speculative builder very seldom allows it to appear at its best. It is a kind of residence which no man of taste would choose unless he were obliged to do so. The better suburban apartment house of the West, on the contrary, is obliged to make itself attractive. People of moderately respectable means are not forced to live in a flat. If they choose to do so, it is not because they could not afford a house; it is merely because they find, a flat for some reason more suitable to their particular needs. Flats and dwellings, that is, are more nearly on the same economic level, and compete freely with each other; and as an incident to this competition, the builders of low-priced flats try harder to retain some of the advantages of private residences without surrendering the advantages of all multiple residences. Consequently the suburban apartment house of the

A GOOD EXAMPLE OF CITY ARCHITECTURE

HOUSE AT NEWPORT

West is frequently built free from neighbouring buildings, is surrounded by open spaces made attractive with shrubbery and flowers; is generally designed in a distantly Georgian and Jacobean manner, and so presents the appearance of a domestic building; and each apartment is often supplied with a pleasant roomy piazza for the exclusive use of its occupants. It is also easier under such conditions to plan the flats so that the rooms are larger, better lighted, and more effectively distributed. It is evident that residential buildings of this type will become still more important in the future, and are destined to be more numerous than they now are in the New York suburbs.

In the design of private dwellings, New York has no more general influence upon the South and West than it does in the design of apartment houses. In this respect the West is adopting a tradition which has been better preserved in Boston and Philadelphia than in New York, the tradition of the good brick styles. The advantage which it derives from possessing an abundance of comparatively cheap and accessible land cannot be overestimated. The private dwelling which forms a part of the block and tends to become taller and deeper constitutes a mutilated and discouraging architectural problem; and it is particularly discouraging in cities, such as those of England and the United States, wherein architectural ignorance and caprice have not been regulated by convention or law. We believe that the better contemporary New York dwelling is a great improvement upon the corresponding grade of

HOUSE OF MR. JAMES W. PAUL, JR., RADNOR, PA.

HOUSE OF THOMAS NELSON PAGE, ESQ., WASHINGTON, D.

London dwellings, as well as upon the better New York dwelling of ten years or more ago; but it has little interest from the present point of view, because it has not as yet succeeded in reaching the respectable routine that would be its best merit, which is the line of development we are now seeking to trace in American design.

The West, however, is emancipated from these disadvantageous conditions. Its new urban dwellings, costing from $40,000 to $200,000, are designed under very favorable circumstances. The avenues and boulevards upon which its handsome houses are situated are broad and well-shaded and admirably adapted to the use of automobiles — a conveyance which will be extremely effective in confirming the use of this type of dwelling. Each house is a unit, and is generally surrounded by sufficient land to enable the architect to enhance his design by appropriate landscape arrangements. It is possible under such conditions to give a personal and domestic atmosphere to the individual house; which is just what is happening in the West — particularly in the large Middle Western cities.

The design of these buildings is beginning to show certain definite characteristics. The use of brick is very general except in a few of the most expensive houses, and in many cases even these expensive houses are no exception to this rule. Wherever brick is used, it is generally well used. The historic domestic styles appropriate to brick construction are, of course, the Georgian and Jacobean, so that when it is asserted that the great majority of these

AMERICAN COUNTRY HOUSES

PORTICO OF APPLECARTH

RESIDENCE ON FERRY STREET, BUFFALO

houses are modifications either of the Georgian or Jacobean types of dwelling, they have been placed in an excellent stylistic tradition. Of the two the Georgian predominates, both because of its American associations, and because it is better adapted to the comparatively modest dimensions of the great majority of these houses. The Georgian is also treated with better effect because its forms are less difficult to handle than those of a transitional style like the Jacobean. The only other historical domestic form found in a sufficient number of examples to demand notice, is the Elizabethan timbered gabled dwelling. This type is very popular, perhaps more popular than the Jacobean, because it also is adapted to houses of comparatively small cost; and the architects who use it show much more skill than formerly in avoiding the mere looseness of design for which these irregular styles offer opportunity.

The examples given above sufficiently illustrate the truth of my preliminary statement that American architects are adopting more than ever certain stereotyped kinds of design. I have traced the presence of these types in office buildings, in the larger hotels, in apartment houses and private dwellings. Examples might include the best kind of factory buildings and warehouses, and a large number of one-story bank buildings. It is unnecessary, however, to describe in any further detail the existence of this tendency towards increased definition, and it only remains to pass a proper judgment upon its significance and value.

There can be no doubt that the increasing authority of certain special types of design constitutes the line of progress for American architecture. The’ architect more than any other artist is dependent upon precedent. The material of his work is not derived from nature or life, but from the work of his predecessors. His individual genius counts for less than in the other arts; the general social and the particular technical standards count for more. This was particularly true in the great periods of Greek and Gothic architecture, whose noblest monuments were almost literally the work of communities and certain particular, although flexible, forms were absolutely imposed upon the architects. With the Renaissance began a period of more conscious imitation of forms that had already been developed to the highest degree of perfection. It gave the individual architect a greater freedom of choice than he had ever had before, and increased correspondingly his opportunity for merely individual work. But it did not emancipate him from precedent; it only gave him a larger number of precedents from which to choose. Undoubtedly this very freedom of choice, which only reached its height during the last one hundred years, is the chief cause of the degeneracy of architecture during the nineteenth century. It has been most meritorious in those cases in which certain conventions have been established, as in France. It has been less so when the architect owed no allegiance to any authoritative forms. The architect can never regain the comparative unconsciousness and single-mindedness of his Greek and Gothic predecessors; but with the help of a sound national culture, he can impose upon himself conventions that will reduce the area of arbitrary choice and enable him to devote himself more to the adaptation and improvement than to the selection of types of design.

This is just what the American architect is now doing. He is imposing certain types of design upon himself, and is concerned more in appropriating these types and in developing them to a satisfactory finish than in borrowing or trying to invent new types. In using the phrase “ the American architect ” in the description above, I do not mean all Amerit ■

AN OLDER TYPE

can architects. I do not mean even all the good American architects, but only the better and younger Americans whose work is becoming more conspicuous every day, and to whom belongs the immediate future of American design. The older architects, whose work during the past twenty-five years has been so valuable and who have done so much to raise the technical standards of the profession, were essentially eclectic, and experimented freely with many different types. Their achievements were of

A DIFFERENCE OF LEVELS

the utmost value in making the transition from an ignorant and indiscriminate to an intelligent eclecticism. They served to educate the clients for whom they built, the mechanics who carried the designs out, and the pupils who continued the professional tradition. Most of all they have succeeded in educating themselves, for their work has shown a constantly growing tendency toward the adoption of certain specific types. It is not to be supposed that the eclecticism of the past will disappear during the period of American design now beginning. The process of education is incomplete. The formative influences are still weak and uncertain; a vast accumulation of bad habits, indifference, low and easygoing standards remain to be reduced. Yet undoubtedly the younger men are conscious of the need of giving consistency and effect to their work by the persistent use of certain particular architectural types, and by the persistent attempt to give to those types a value that is both newer and more complete.

I have described the growing popularity of special types of design for special kinds of buildings as the increasing “ nationalisation ” of American architecture, but probably that was going too far. The phrase is intended to express a desirable issue faintly promised rather than particularly achieved. Before we can speak of the “ nationalisation ” of American architecture we must not merely be able to trace the constant use of certain special types of design, but show that without losing their traditional dignity those types are being given an appropriate local expression— that they are living types constantly gathering a complete consistency, a better adaptation to the structure and the service of the building and a finer aesthetic propriety. In this sense of the word “ national ” American architecture can only to a limited extent be described as in the way of nationalisation. The long and difficult task of adapting the traditional styles to the peculiarities of American structural methods and utilitarian requirements is being more frequently ignored and evaded than resolutely faced.

The structure of our buildings and their design are so far almost completely at cross-purposes; and any one who defines good architecture in terms of congruity will find few signs of improvement in recent buildings. But while we may not look for any advance in this very important respect, our architects are nevertheless succeeding in giving their buildings an ever-increasing propriety and consistency of appearance. When they design a hotel they use a style that harmonises with the way we feel when we are living for a few days away from home, freed from routine and responsibilities. When they design a private dwelling they seek to give the building a style that is homely, domestic and refined. Furthermore these styles are carefully studied and are treated generally with an eye to strictly architectural effects. The persistent attempt is to get a building in which the mass, the proportion, and the detail each has its proper value, and this is a considerable gain over the past when architects sought merely picturesque effects by almost ignoring proportions, and conceived their building as a collection of detail on a large scale.

In another respect, also, American architecture, particularly in the case of dwellings, may be said to have grown more idiom>atic. If structure and design remain very much at cross purposes, plan and design are becoming friendlier. The plan of the modern American dwelling differs in some important respects from that of any historical type of residence. These variations frequently lead to interesting modifications in the designs, and consequently to desirable departures from mere stylistic purity. The piazza, for instance, which is so necessary in the

AN AMERICAN PIAZZA

American summer climate and which has been an architectural excrescence on the majority of country houses, is now frequently treated as an outdoor room, in strict subordination to the main design. Sometimes it appears as a narrow gallery on the face of the house, more often a place is found for it at one or both ends, its lines being used either to continue those of the house or to vary them in an interesting way. This is only one illustration out of many which might be used, but it is typical of the more conscientious manner in which the architect attempts to render in appropriate architectural terms the novel and local conditions given in the plans of his buildings.

It should be added that the adoption of certain definite and appropriate types of design by the better American architects should help not only to raise the standard of American architecture, but increase its popularity. In the past our architects have apparently sought to make their work impressive chiefly by making it striking; but if the impression is to be widespread as well as deep, it is rather the familiar than the “stunning” thing that counts. The “ people ” are merely confused by an art and architecture to which they are unaccustomed. They may be “ stunned ” for the moment, but next moment they forget all about it. On the other hand they are pleased and convinced by a kind of art that finds its way to their apprehension by means of their memories. In the representative arts, the subjectmatter represented must appeal to their common experience. In the more formal and decorative arts form must have the confirmation of association. The difficulty with modern American architecture is that it started with nothing but vicious associations, and the good architects have been confronted by the enormously difficult task of substituting the comparatively good for the comparatively bad associations of the past. In so doing they have depended too much on obtaining an interesting variety of effect, and too little upon the value of repetition as an advertisement. Architectural repetition is in bad odor in this country, because in the past it has been applied chiefly to such dead and dreary material as brownstone fronts. Nevertheless the one sensible course for the future — the one course which will provide both for a better quality of design and for a completer understanding between architect and client— is to make out of repetition a conviction and ideal. If the opportunities for repetition are studied with sufficient care the necessary variety and novelty of effect will take care of themselves.