HISTORY.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the different phases of Free Classic will be to group the reigns of William and Anne in one period of a quarter of a century, half in the seventeenth and half in the eighteenth, following the Stuart, or Jacobean, and preceding the Georgian. At first sight there appears to be little promise of finding any genuine art in English works of this period. The Mediæval Ecclesiastical style had died out nearly two hundred years before, and during the interval the revival of classic architecture had steadily advanced from small and rude beginnings to a respectable position, with an academic system, so to speak, which, although it never attained in England the appreciation which led to its luxurious development on the Continent, found expression in many works of dignity and excellence. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. a domestic style for manor-houses had sprung up, based upon Gothic traditions of the Tudor type, with an admixture of the Renaissance of that day. This transitional manner struggled through the Commonwealth comparatively undisturbed, losing by degrees all traces of its mediæval origin. It maintained, however, partly perhaps by the intention of its designers, but chiefly through accident, a character of picturesqueness and homeliness.
The great fire of 1666 desolated two-thirds of London, destroying thirteen thousand two hundred houses and eighty-nine churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral. Down to this time the architecture of London had been mostly of the timber, brick, and plaster type of the Tudors. The houses were crowded closely together, covering every available piece of ground, and overhanging story above story until in many cases the daylight was almost excluded from the narrow courts and crooked alleys. Many of these houses were built of slight materials, covered on the exterior with painted planks and on the interior with plaster. During the reign of James I. it was enacted that the fronts of city houses should be of brick or stone. In many cases, however, a compromise was made in favor of heavy timber fronts, which were often richly carved and moulded, the panels filled with bricks and plastered, the sides away from the street being still built of wood. In these houses we find numerous instances of the picturesque oriels and windows adopted by the designers of the modern Queen Anne school.
The fire wrought a complete change in building-construction and in the health of the city. The plague, until then a constant visitor, disappeared. The streets and courts were widened and much improved, and an entirely new class of buildings arose above the ruins of ancient London. Immediately after the fire a proclamation was issued by the king, giving instructions for certain reforms in building-construction. This may be called the birth of the movement which later on developed into the Queen Anne or Free Classic style of the early eighteenth century. In this proclamation the king commands as follows: "In the first place, the woful experience in this late heavy visitation hath sufficiently convinced all men of the pernicious consequences which have attended the building with timber, and even with stone itself, and the notable benefit of brick, which in so many places hath resisted and even extinguished the fire; and we do hereby declare that no man whatsoever shall presume to erect any house or building, great or small, but of brick or stone; and if any man shall do the contrary, the next magistrate shall forthwith cause it to be pulled down and such further course taken for his punishment as he deserves; and we suppose that the notable benefit many men have received from those cellars which have been well and strongly arched will persuade most men who build good houses to practise that good husbandry by arching all convenient places." By an act of the Common Council, passed on the 29th of April, 1667, in furtherance of the king's proclamation, it is ordered, among other details, that the purveyors "do encourage and give directions to all builders, for ornament sake, that the ornaments and projections of the front of buildings be of rubbed bricks, and that all the naked parts of the walls be done of rough bricks neatly wrought, or all rubbed, at the discretion of the builder." Permission was at the same time given to enrich buildings by variety in the forms of roofs, balconies, etc.
The urgent demand for new edifices to replace those destroyed by fire, and the necessity for observing strict economy in their erection, precluded picturesque grouping and well-studied designs. The quaint but dangerous architecture of 1666 was rapidly replaced by rows of plain, monotonous brick buildings, devoid of artistic merit. In Cheapside and some of the more important thoroughfares the houses erected during this period were of a somewhat better character, taller, and more elegant in design.
While improvement in the character of domestic architecture was thus hampered by economic considerations and an intricate system of land-tenures, public and ecclesiastical architecture was greatly improved. The rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral and fifty city churches by Sir Christopher Wren marks an epoch in the history of the English Church which should not be overlooked. For the first time since the Reformation the planning and general features of church edifices were made to conform to the exigencies of the Protestant faith and a simplified ritual. Rarely has such an opportunity for distinction been vouchsafed to any architect as that which fell to the lot of Wren; and he proved himself equal to the task. Fergusson is my authority for the statement that during the last forty years of the seventeenth century no building of importance was erected of which he was not the architect. Had his design for a complete rebuilding of the burnt district been carried out, London would have risen from its ashes one of the most convenient and beautiful cities in the world. The edifices erected by Wren are models of their kind. A thorough constructor, he was not less an artist in his feelings, and boldly adapted the systems of the Renaissance to the requirements of the times, modifying his details to meet the exigencies which arose. The "Free Classic" of Wren was certainly very different in conception and execution from the stiff and formal expression which we note in the works of his immediate successors, several of whom were, however, men of marked ability. It was, moreover, immeasurably superior to the classic attempts of the architects of the middle Georgian period, who, carried away by the enthusiasm awakened by the perusal of the newly-published "Antiquities" of Stuart and Revett, attempted to adapt Doric porticos, hexastyle, octostyle, etc., to modern domestic architecture.
With the accession of William and Mary, England and the Continent became more closely united. French, Spanish, and Florentine styles of dress became the fashion, and furniture designed in the Flemish and Dutch workshops succeeded to the heavier examples of the preceding reigns. The opening of the China trade and the importation of Delft porcelain exerted a marked influence upon the tastes of society. An affected admiration for Dutch topiary also became a fashion. It flourished for a time, and reached its utmost limit of quaint absurdity in the reign of Queen Anne.
Architecture also felt the influence of the Dutch school: brick was by law and custom the vernacular building-material of London, as it was of the Netherlands, and high-stepped gables with wavy lines became frequent. Broken pediments with volute terminals were placed over doors and windows; while a slight admixture of wrought and moulded bricks was often added to give some degree of elegance and richness to the façades. This use of moulded brick had played a prominent part in the old Tudor works; but Parliament had placed heavy and almost prohibitory taxes upon its manufacture and that of glass, thus vitiating the taste of the designer by the necessity for studying strict economy in construction. The manor-houses erected during the reigns of William and Anne are of a different type: they are bold and massive, picturesque in outline, and semi-classic in detail.
Through the Georgian reigns and that of William IV. the taste for Free Classic continued, gradually becoming more debased, with a few feeble attempts at a revival of mediæval work, as shown by Walpole at Strawberry Hill; while in the cities the schools of Nash and Wyatt were stuccoing the honest brick-work of their street-fronts into bad imitations of Roman palaces. This called forth such epigrams as,—
Augustus of old was for building renowned,—
For of marble he left what of brick he had found;
But is not our Nash a still greater master?
He found London brick, and will leave it plaster.
The earlier years of Victoria's reign were marked by aspirations for a better state of things, and discussions between the rival schools of Classicists and Mediævalists. The latter carried the day, and, after an heroic struggle and many failures, England awoke from her long lethargy, to find herself the possessor of a noble architecture, a true exponent of ecclesiastical art and tradition, although confessedly far from perfect when applied to domestic buildings. For these latter edifices the old manor-houses, with their many mullioned windows and Tudor arcuation, formed the basis for design, and machicoli, turrets, and open timber roofs became the fashion for country-houses; but the city dwellings were erected in a style that was a compromise between the Georgian and the semi-Gothic, the most difficult problem being to reconcile the double hung sash with the pointed arches of mediæval precedent.
English architecture was in this uncertain and transitory state when, in 1870, Parliament passed the Elementary Education Act. This was an opportunity long waited for, and the architects seized upon it with avidity. The natural desire was to give to the school-buildings a character distinctively their own, simple in plan and construction, with but little architectural display, and built of the vernacular constructive material of English cities,—red brick. Moulded brick could now be procured in abundance, the tax having been removed by Parliament in 1850. Such was the beginning of modern Queen Anne architecture. From small beginnings it has developed into an harmonious and well-defined system of domestic building, very different in its better phases from the stiff and starched appearance of its prototypes, being marked by breadth and freedom of treatment, and in many cases by great richness of detail.
The architects of the United States soon caught the enthusiasm of their English brethren, and the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 served to intensify the feeling of patriotism. If Queen Anne architecture is dear to Englishmen, it should be doubly so to us. In England the history of building may be traced back for centuries, style following style in regular sequence, one growing out of and interwoven with another. With us the case is different. The early colonists landed in America when Jacobean architecture was at its best, but they could give little thought to style or detail. Protection from the elements and savage foes was their first requirement. Later, when they could give more attention to architecture as an art, Queen Anne ruled the popular taste, and our colonial mansions were built and decorated under the influence which surrounded the thought and literature of the time. Queen Anne or early Georgian is, therefore, our starting-point in architectural history. It is well to revive a taste for its quaint and home-like character, not merely for its own sake, but as a stepping-stone to something better and more enduring in the future.
Let us now briefly glance at the various constructive systems embraced in what is to-day known as Queen Anne architecture.