Of the ten buildings in the "1885" list but three appear in the "First" list, and two in the "Second"; so that only five of the ten buildings adjudged in 1885 to be the most beautiful in the United States are included in the twenty given the leading rank in 1899 by the Brochure readers. Of these twenty, six in the "First" list and five in the "Second" have been built since the 1885 vote. Of the remaining four in the "First" list, three, as we have seen, figure in that of "1885"; the fourth—the New York City Hall—was not in 1885 considered worthy of a place among the ten—a significant suggestion as to changing tastes since that date.
TRINITY CHURCH, TOWER
BOSTON
The first and most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the above statistics is that American architects, so far as they are represented in the Brochure vote, have no hide-bound traditions or ingrained prejudices as to style. There is in the list selected by them a preponderance, it is true, of buildings in the various styles of the Renaissance and Classic Revival—seven out of ten. But the third in the list, with 96 per cent of unanimity in its favor, is a Romanesque building, Trinity Church, Boston. Two others, standing sixth and eighth, are Gothic,—Trinity and St. Patrick's Churches in New York. The remaining seven, although they may all be included under a broad extension of the term "Renaissance," exhibit wide divergencies of style. The Capitol at Washington and the Columbia Library represent two different phases of the Classic Revival, nearly a century apart in date; the New York City Hall, a version of the style of Louis XVI. The Boston Public Library was avowedly inspired from the "nèo-Grec" Bibliothèque St. Genéviève of Labrouste, as far as its façades are concerned, and yet differs from that building more than it resembles it; and although, in the foregoing tables, both this and the Biltmore mansion are classified as in the French Renaissance style, they are really much farther apart than the classic Capitol and the Louis Seize City Hall. The Congressional Library follows Italian rather than French precedents, and the Madison Square Garden suggests both Italian and Spanish prototypes. Evidently our architects are not bound by allegiance to any one style or kind of beauty, but are ready to find subjects for admiration in buildings of the most diverse character, and to recognize beauty alike in pointed and round arches, in domes and in spires, in acanthus leaves and crockets, in new buildings and in old. This catholicity of taste is interesting, and on the whole hopeful, for it suggests the ability and readiness to appreciate realities instead of names, style rather than any particular historic dress, essentials rather than externals;—an eclecticism which recognizes beauty, quality, excellence, wherever they can be found, and adopts what is best without regard to names or categories. And if we consider the buildings themselves, instead of the motives of the voters, the same statistics indicate, as we might expect, a like catholicity of taste in the designs of recent American buildings, and—what is more to the point—a conspicuous measure of success in fusing together and adapting to modern American needs the multifarious suggestions of the "historic styles," so that the results are neither copies nor patchwork, but consistent, intelligent and harmonious units.
