Sticks and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization

by Lewis Mumford

I

Since 1910 the momentum of the Imperial Age seems to have slackened a little: at any rate, in architecture it has lost much of the original energy which had been given to it by the success of the Chicago Exposition. It may be, as Henry Adams hinted, that the rate of change in the modern world has altered, so that processes which required centuries for their consummation before the coming of the dynamo have been accelerated into decades.

With events and buildings so close to us, it is almost impossible to rate their relative importance; all that I can do in the present chapter is to single out one or two of the more important threads which, it seems to me, are bound to give the predominant color to the fabric of our architecture. It is fairly easy to see, however, why the imperial order has not stamped every aspect of our building: for one thing, eclecticism has not merely persisted, but the new familiarity that the American architect has gained with authentic European and Asiatic work outside the province of the classic has increased the range of eclecticism. So the baroque architecture of Spain, which flourished so well in Mexico, and the ecclesiastical architecture of Byzantium and Syria, have added a new charm to our motlied wardrobe: from the first came new lessons in ornament and color, applied with great success by Mr. Bertram Goodhue in the Panama-Pacific Exposition, and now budding lustily in southern villas and gardens; and from the second the architect is learning the importance of mass and outline—the essentials in monolithic construction.

Apart from this, however, the imperial regime has been stalled by its own weight. The cost of cutting through new streets, widening grand avenues, and in general putting on a monumental front has put the pure architect at a disadvantage: there is the same disparity between his plans and the actual aims of the commercial community as there is, quite often, between the prospectus and the actual organization of an industry. Within the precincts of the modern city, the engineer, whose utilitarian eye has never blinked at the necessity for profitable enterprise, and whose interest in human beings as loads, weights, stresses, or units pays no attention to their qualitative demands as human beings—within these precincts, I say, the engineer has recovered his supremacy.

Here, in fact, is the paradox of American architecture. In our suburban houses we have frequently achieved the excellence of Forest Hills and Bronxville; in our public buildings we tend more easily to approach the strength and originality of Mr. Goodhue’s State Capitol for Nebraska; in fact, never before have the individual achievements of American architects been so rich, so varied, and so promising. In that part of architecture which lies outside the purlieus of our commercial system—I mean the prosperous country homes and college buildings and churches and municipal institutions—a tradition of good building and tactful design has been established. At this point, unfortunately, the scope of the architect has become narrowed: the forces that create the great majority of our buildings lie quite outside the cultivated field in which he works. Through the mechanical reorganization of the entire milieu, the place of architecture has become restricted; and even when architecture takes root in some unnoticed crevice, it blooms only to be cut down at the first “business opportunity.”

The processes which are inimical to architecture are, perhaps, seen at their worst in the business district of the metropolis; but more and more they tend to spread throughout the rest of the community. Mr. Charles McKim, for example, was enthusiastic over Mr. Burnham’s design for the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank in Chicago, and predicted that it would long be a monument to his genius. “But unfortunately,” as Mr. Burnham’s biographer says, “unfortunately for Mr. McKim’s reputation as a prophet, he was unappreciative of the rapid growth of Chicago, the consequent appreciation in the value of real estate in the Loop district, and the expansive force of a great bank. This beautiful building is doomed to be replaced by one which will tower into the air to the permissible height of structures in the business section of Chicago.” The alternative to this destruction is an even more ignominious state of preservation; such a state as the Knickerbocker Trust Company building achieved in New York, or the old Customs House in Boston, both of which have been smothered under irrelevant skyscrapers. Even where economic necessity plays no distinct part, the forms of business take precedence over the forms of humanism—as in the Shipping Board’s York Village, where as soon as the direction of the community planner was removed a hideous and illiterate row of shop-fronts was erected, instead of that provided by the architect, in spite of the fact that the difference in cost was negligible.

Unfortunately for architecture, every district of the modern city tends to become a business district, in the sense that its development takes place less in response to direct human needs than to the chances and exigencies of sale. It is not merely business buildings that are affected by the inherent instability of enterprises to which profit and rent have become Ideal Ends: the same thing is happening to the great mass of houses and apartments which are designed for sale. Scarcely any element in our architecture and city planning is free from the encroachment, direct or indirect, of business enterprise. The old Boulevard in New York, for example, which was laid out by the Tweed ring long before the land on either side was used for anything but squatters’ farms, was almost totally disrupted by the building of the first subways, and it has taken twenty years to effect even a partial recovery. The widening of part of Park Avenue by slicing off its central grass plot has just been accomplished, in order to relieve traffic congestion; and it needs only a little time before underground and overground traffic will cause the gradual reduction of our other parkways—even those which now seem secure.

The task of noting the manifold ways in which our economic system has affected architecture would require an essay by itself: it will be more pertinent here, perhaps, to pay attention to the processes through which our economic system has worked; and in particular to gauge the results of introducing mechanical methods of production, and mechanical forms into provinces which were once wholly occupied by handicraft. The chief influence in eliminating the architect from the great bulk of our building is the machine itself: in blotting out the elements of personality and individual choice it has blotted out the architect, who inherited these qualities from the carpenter-builder. Mr. H. G. Wells, in The New Macchiavelli, described Altiora and Oscar Bailey as having the temperament that would cut down trees and put sanitary glass lamp-shades in their stead; and this animus has gone pretty far in both building and city planning, for the reason that lamp-shades may be manufactured quickly for sale, and trees cannot. It is time, perhaps, that we isolated the machine and examined its workings. What is the basis of our machine-ritual, and what place has it in relation to the good life?