CHAPTER 21 - Notes
[433]. The use of aluminium in architecture became widespread only some forty years later, it should be noted, although it had supplied the cap of the pyramid with which T. L. Casey finally completed the Washington Monument as early as 1884—its first use in architecture. In the nineties Thomas Harris already foresaw its great importance in building; see his Three Periods of English Architecture, London, 1894.
[434]. See ‘Ornament und Verbrechen’ in Loos, A., Trotzdem: Gesammelte Aufsätze 1900-1930, Innsbruck, 1931, first published in the Neue Freie Presse in January 1908. A French translation of the article appeared in L’Esprit nouveau, I (1920), 159-68.
[435]. Considering that Wright’s open planning had by no means matured while Loos was in Chicago, American influence (if any) came probably from the houses of the Shingle Style. Because of his close rapport with England, however, one may assume that the influence of Baillie Scott’s plans was more important; while the treatment of interior trim comes closest to Voysey, as has been noted.
[436]. The recurrent suggestions of Richardsonian influence in Europe in the nineties are not yet adequately explained. Townsend in England knew of Richardson’s work from American and English publications, and there was in England one house by Richardson, Lululund at Bushey, Herts, now largely destroyed except for the entrance. This was designed shortly before Richardson’s death for Sir Hubert von Herkomer, who had painted his portrait, and executed without supervision. Boberg had been for a short while in Chicago and Bruno Schmitz (1858-1916) in Indianapolis; but there are others whose work also seems somewhat Richardsonian, such as Theodor Fischer, who certainly had not. Berlage did not visit America until 1911, when it was Wright’s work that most impressed him. He and Fischer might, of course, have known Richardson’s buildings from publications. For foreign publications of Richardson’s work before 1900, see pp. 333-5 in the 1961 edition of my Richardson book.
[437]. See Berlage, H. P., Gedanken über den Stil in der Baukunst, Leipzig, 1905; Grundlagen und Entwicklung der Architektur, Amsterdam, 1908; German ed., Berlin, 1908; and Studies over Bouwkunst, Rotterdam, 1910.
[438]. The work of K. P. C. de Bazel (1869-1923), a pupil of Cuijpers who represents a rather different stream in Dutch architecture of the early twentieth century, is especially close to that of the contemporary German leaders but hardly at all related to Expressionism. His massive office building for the Nederlandsche Handel Maatschappij in Amsterdam of 1917-23 is quite similar to Behrens’s nearly contemporary office blocks in Hanover and Düsseldorf, but much more intricate and inventive in its brick-and-stone detail.
[439]. Although it is unlikely that de Klerk actually owed anything to the sets that Bakst, Benois, and others were designing for the Ballet Russe, the visual investiture of the Diaghilev productions certainly had a loosening effect on Western European taste in these years just before the First World War. For the first time Russia impinged visually on European art, but that impingement had only an oblique effect on architecture, for the art that was exported was not, of course, very architectural.
[440]. See American Architect, CXXVIII (5 October 1925).
[441]. See ‘The American Radiator Company Building, New York’, American Architect, CXXVI (1924), 467-84.
[442]. It is this that makes it so difficult to decide which architects should be discussed in Chapters [18]-[21] and which in Chapter [24]. No two critics will agree, but most now recognize that the boundary line is not a sharp one. For this reason in Modern Architecture, published thirty years ago, I labelled the work of this generation ‘The New Tradition’ and did not then reject the work of the Scandinavians as too ‘traditional’ to be classed, broadly at least, with that of Wright, Perret, Behrens, Wagner, and Loos, as I have done here.