On the other hand, there is the obvious objection, too obvious by the way to be accepted as conclusive, that the past has so grown into the present, the inheritance has become so integral a part of present understanding and feeling, that one cannot eliminate it from one’s consciousness by taking thought, as one can strip one’s body of clothes. Meanwhile, although this argument seems plausible the fact remains that in painting, at any rate, many artists, ignoring argument in favour of actual doing, are clothing their ideas in new forms that are coming to seem reasonable to an increasing number of people.
“Free Classic” Movement.—However, many architects, accepting the inheritance of the past and yet themselves in revolt against the scholastic reproduction of the styles, initiated a movement in favour of what they called “Free Classic.” Their endeavour was to discover the elementals in a given style and to use them with flexible understanding and feeling and with free play, especially of decorative accessories. The first to give practical evidence of this idea was R. Norman Shaw, R. A., in the New Zealand Chambers, in Leadenhall Street, London, which were erected as far back as 1873.
It was an artist’s essay in personal liberation; the work of a man who, while he did not love the Classics less, loved life and his own participation in it more, who claimed for himself the artist’s birthright of personal expression and creativeness. Fortunately his adventure aroused considerable interest in the intelligent public, while other architects saw in it a promise of their own artistic deliverance. The result has been for Great Britain a genuine rebirth of architecture as a living and personal art. In no other country have the variety and versatility of our modern life been more freely expressed in its buildings. Not always happily, no doubt. The purist may point to some as “awful examples,” and thus seek to justify his belief in safe mediocrity rather than what he considers dangerous latitude. But the purist is not an individualist and Great Britain is individualistic, even to a fault. Therefore, what her architects are doing is racy of the country’s temperament—a thing commendable in itself. Meanwhile, there is an abundance of recent buildings in which reasonableness and adventure are happily united and a sound regard for the utilities and for structural logic are wedded to originality and taste.
In the past twenty-five years London, for example, has been transformed into one of the most architecturally impressive cities of Europe. And not in the way of aping in more or less perfunctory fashion the splendours of imperial Rome; but in a spirit of artistic individual enterprise, and with that courage even to make mistakes, provided the end be liberty, that befits the Metropolis of self-governing Dominions.
MODERN MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
Since the middle of the nineteenth century the United States has experienced an extraordinary activity in building. An unprecedented demand was created by the opening up of the West and the rapid increase of population and wealth, as well as by the destruction wrought by the great fires in Chicago and Boston. On the other hand, circumstances led to the development of a new method of construction—that of the “steel cage.” Meanwhile the new period discovered two architects—Richard Morris Hunt (1828-1895) and Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886)—whose influence had a marked effect upon the architectural development.
Hunt and Richardson.—The former, younger brother of W. M. Hunt, the painter, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, in 1828; while Richardson, ten years his junior, was a native of Louisiana. Both received their training in the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and by their influence established the vogue for that celebrated school which has so strongly affected architectural progress in America. When they returned home—Hunt in 1855 and Richardson in 1865—they brought back a thoroughly scientific training, already reinforced by practical experience in Paris. And the genius of the one complemented that of the other; for while both had a personal force that commanded attention and compelled respect, Hunt’s special faculty was executive and organising, while Richardson’s was more specifically that of the artist. Thus between them they established in the public mind the understanding of architecture as, not merely a process of building, but one of the Fine Arts, and also set the profession of architecture on a sound basis. For in 1885 Hunt took a prominent part in founding the American Institute of Architects, of which he was the first president.
Among his most important works are the Theological Library and Marquand Chapel at Princeton University; the Divinity College and Scroll and Key House at Yale; the Lenox Library, New York, since removed; the New York residences of W. K. Vanderbilt and Henry G. Marquand; George W. Vanderbilt’s country house at Biltmore and some of the palatial “cottages” at Newport, including “Marble House” and “The Breakers.” He also exhibited his genius for planning in the laying out of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York.
Richardson took as his model the Romanesque of Southern France, but used it with so much freedom and adaptability that, it has been said, he came very near creating a style of his own. It is seen to best advantage in those examples in which he was unhindered by outside interference, especially in the County Buildings in Pittsburgh and Trinity Church, Boston. Both of these are distinguished by structural significance; dignity of mass, fine correlation of parts to the whole and by a decorative distinction that avoided alike the flamboyance of some of his earlier embellishment and the baldness of simplicity that characterised the work of some of his imitators. Other notable instances of his art are: Sever Hall and Austin Hall, Harvard; the City Halls of Albany and Springfield; the Public Libraries of Woburn, North Easton, Quincy, Maiden and Burlington and the Chamber of Commerce, Cincinnati.
While Richardson’s artistic seriousness and refined taste left a lasting impression, his selection of the Romanesque style, although it obtained some following, was abandoned in favour of the Roman and the Renaissance; the change being due to the way in which the subsequent American students of the Ecole des Beaux Arts reacted to its teaching.