COLUMBIA COLLEGE.
In the series of articles in which we have undertaken to give an idea of the scope of the courses of architectural study offered by the various schools of the country, we can hardly do better, in referring to Columbia College, than quote from a paper in which Professor William R. Ware describes the methods used for the teaching of the history of architecture at Columbia. Our extracts are made from a portion of the paper printed in The American Architect for November 30, 1895.
These four exercises, the Lectures on History and Ornament, with the study of English, French, and German text-books, the Historical Research, the Historical Drawing, and the Historical Design, occupy a chief part of the student's time during the first three years of the course. At the end of the third year the stated instruction by recitations and the lectures is virtually finished, the fourth year being, by an arrangement which is perhaps a novelty in places of learning, quite free from lectures or recitations. The men give their whole time by day to problems in design, to what may be called "atelier work," without interruption. Their evenings, throughout the whole year, are devoted to historical study. As the college library, including the Avery library, as well as the books and photographs belonging to the Department of Architecture, is accessible every evening until eleven o'clock, and the Metropolitan Museum is open twice a week until ten, every facility is afforded for the prosecution of this work. In order to make the most of these appliances, every student of the Fourth-year class and all the special students (who are of similar grade, being received only in advanced standing) prepares once a month, under the name of Advanced Architectural History, an original paper. This he illustrates by drawings and reads to the class. All this affords an almost unexampled opportunity for serious work.
We exhibit to the students the architecture of the past as a series of problems just as it appeared to the builders of its own day, and we hope thus not only to give them a clearer insight into the real spirit and character of the masterpieces that have come down to us, by bringing to view the ideas and considerations which really influenced their designers, but at the same time to exercise our own young men in the practical application of those same ideas. We hope thus to develop in them the same good sense and good taste, the same readiness of invention and happy ingenuity, to which these masterpieces are due.
LXXXIII.
Manoir at Archelles, Normandy.
The exercises themselves may be described as a species of design by description or by dictation. The attempt is made, by indicating the conditions under which a given piece of work was executed, to present to the student the same problem that the workman of old was called upon to solve. The student can then compare his own solution of it with the one that has come down to him, thus receiving correction and guidance in his work from the hand of the master. It is plain that the special excellencies of the original monument are likely to reveal themselves with fresh distinctness, and to find special sympathy and appreciation in the mind of one who has striven, however unsuccessfully, to solve the same problem.
An example or two taken from widely different fields will suffice to illustrate this. In studying vaulting, we once got so far as to understand how oblong vaults were thrown across a nave, while square vaults covered the aisles. A class of fifteen or twenty students were then asked to find out how a semi-circular or polygonal apse could be added to a choir roofed on this system. In the course of a couple of hours' figuring I found that they had worked out among them all the five solutions of this problem, which in the Middle Ages it took one or two hundred years to develop. This was very encouraging. At another time they were given a somewhat minute description of four pilaster capitals from Blois or Chambord, and they made thumb-nail sketches on the spot, according to their interpretation of the description. The next day photographs and drawings of a dozen or twenty other such capitals were given them, so that they might understand the fashion of the time, and they were told to draw out their sketches on a larger scale. The result was fifteen or twenty sets of capitals, all showing the same four motives, but differing in a most interesting way, according to the personal differences of taste and skill on the part of the designers.
On another occasion the First-year class, after their studies in Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, made a dozen or twenty restorations of Solomon's Temple, according to the description in the Book of Kings. The drawings they produced showed considerable fertility of invention, especially in the designs for Jachin and Boaz, and the whole series together seemed to be quite as creditable and as reasonable as most of those which have from time to time been put forth by the learned.
This practice in historical design we believe to be founded on sound theoretical principles. To regard a work of art as far as possible from the point-of-view of the artist is, indeed, the first principle of fair and intelligent criticism. To foster the individuality and personal initiative of a pupil by bringing authority to bear upon him in a way of correction at the end of his task, and guidance and suggestion at the beginning, rather than control during the course of the work, is the first principle of intelligent teaching. Moreover, the results, so far as we have gone, have justified the method. We have, indeed, employed it hitherto mainly as a matter of experiment when favorable circumstances have suggested it. But every year we use it to a greater and greater extent, and it is gradually acquiring a recognized place as an integral portion of our work.