How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

Beaux Arts Training.—The “Beaux Arts” training is based upon the study of Greek, Roman, and Renaissance Styles. The Greek, within a limited range of building types, exhibits the most perfected relation of plan to elevation, of form to function; the most harmonious combination of mind and feeling. The Roman represents a genius of constructive logic and practical inventiveness in applying principles to a wide variety of problems. The Renaissance replaced constructive logic by a logic of taste and rehandled Roman details with a finesse of skill that was as subtle as the Greek. Moreover, the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance are (to use a modern word) standardised styles; in which proportions have been calculated and the principles reduced to certain recognised relations of harmonious agreement. Thus they lend themselves to a more exactly determined kind of study than is possible with the Gothic, which more nearly corresponds to the free growths of nature, involving all the principles of structure and the elements of beauty, but with a freedom of application that makes formulation difficult.

Now the effects of this Beaux Arts training by no means always corresponds with its aim. The aim of the School, responding to the French aptitude for logical processes, is to teach the student to reason, to cultivate the habit of applying to every problem an independent and individual process of logic. He is taught to get down to the bone of any problem and discover its cleanest and simplest solution. The historic styles are treated not as models for imitation but rather as a grammar of principles and applications, by means of which the student may fit himself for original composition. The system, in a word, encourages originality and not imitation.

Effect of Beaux Arts Training.—Meanwhile, among the many architects in America whose names are associated with the “Beaux Arts,” only a minority is composed of actual graduates of the school. The remainder have availed themselves more or less of the courtesies that the school extends to foreign students; but have not enjoyed the exhaustive training in the direction of independent reasoning that it is the school’s purpose to impart. The result is that many of them acquired the habit, not of approaching the solution of each problem independently, but of becoming more or less intelligent and tactful adapters of Roman and Renaissance characteristics. In consequence of thus misrepresenting the aim of the Beaux Arts, the latter has incurred in this country the unjust charge of promoting imitation—the precise antithesis of what the school actually stands for. Accordingly, there has arisen a reaction against what is supposed to be the “Beaux Arts” influence.

In this reaction there is a possibility of less than justice being done to some of these quasi-Beaux-Arts architects. Many of them have been men of exceptionally fine taste. They raised the standard of taste in the community, accustomed the public to consider beauty as well as utility, and added greatly to the dignity and beauty of the externals of life. They played not only an excellent part but a necessary one in the evolution of architecture in America. They will be looked back to as the men of the transition, who established the recognition of architecture as an art, fostered higher standards of taste and compelled a public that was chiefly interested in commercial expansion to begin to regard art as an indispensable element in progress.

Influence of Chicago Exposition.—The opportunity of propagating these ideas on a large scale was furnished by the International Exposition at Chicago in 1892-93. Already the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876 had awakened manufacturers to a need of artistic design, if their products were to compete successfully with those of the older countries. Moreover, innumerable persons had found their imaginations stimulated by the varied display of the Department of Fine Arts. The ground was thus prepared for the organised effort in the direction of an object lesson in beauty, such as that of “The White City” at Chicago.

Here the Directors virtually gave free hand to the Committee of Architects, in the lay-out of the grounds and the disposition of all the buildings. The result was an ensemble on a scale, not only more magnificent than ever had been attempted before for such a purpose, but complete in its union of variety and harmony. It represented, on the one hand, what could be accomplished by the co-operation of the allied arts of landscape and garden design, architecture, sculpture, and painting, and, on the other, an extraordinary lesson in the desirability of beauty as a practical asset. The impression that it made was nation-wide. Everywhere the dry bones of indifference to beauty began to quicken into a living interest in beauty as the fit and natural expression of the nation’s progress in civilisation. It has found abundant activity during the past twenty-five years in Federal, State, Municipal, and commercial buildings, in the development of parks and boulevards and, more recently, in the increased attention given to the scientific and artistic planning of cities.

And this movement, which has transformed the character of public buildings, has worked as freely in the case of domestic buildings, and, on the whole, with more originality. For the principle of the movement has been eclecticism; the more or less intelligent adaptation of old styles to new needs; the styles especially followed being the Roman and the Italian Renaissance. The axiom of the body of men which had controlled the movement has been that it is safer and better to follow good models than to try to be original. And for the time being very possibly they were right. But this has always been the plea of eclectics, whenever and wherever they have occurred in the history of all the arts; and such eclecticism has always marked a transition period, leading up to a fresh outburst of original creativeness.

Weakness of Imitation-Tendency.—The immediate and great advantage to the architects of thus following old models has been, to establish, through the Roman, a familiarity with large problems of construction and, through the Italian Renaissance, a refinement of taste in the handling of details. Meanwhile, the disadvantage has been a tendency to take an excess of interest in merely stylistic considerations. The architect has often seemed more intent upon reproducing with taste an old style than upon adapting it to the practical needs of the living present.

It would be possible to point to libraries, for example, that have been designed with a view to beautiful exteriors rather than to that of storing and distributing books. The design has not grown out of the practical needs but has been more or less arbitrarily adopted for its own sake. The architectural principle of fitness has been violated. Furthermore, this preoccupation with the faithful reproduction of an old style has made a fetish of consistency. Everything in and out of the building must be “in the style.” The architect, being an imitator, compels all his co-operating artists to imitation. The painter must imitate such and such a style of mural decoration; the sculptor, such and such a style of sculptural embellishment. Sculptors and painters alike have been trained to forget that they might be interpreters of the life of the present and to work and feel in the manner of the past. The manner—not the spirit—for the spirit of the old decorators was keenly alive to the life of their own times. Hence these architects of the transition have done much to find employment for painters and sculptors, but practically nothing to promote the development of creative artists. Indeed, their influence in this respect has been quite the other way—retrogressive rather than progressive.

Possibly an even more flagrant illustration of this tendency is to be found in the palatial residences, erected during this period in town and country. So slavish was the insistence upon conformity, that the furniture and fittings had to be either antiques or imitations of antiques. The occupants of such houses were trained to be blind to the beauty of anything that was not in the style of their surroundings; and were forced to try to feel at home in surroundings of the past. Typical, possibly, is the story of the millionaire, who fled from his stylistic apartments to one of the attic bedrooms, provided for the servants, and fitted it up to suit his own ideas of comfort.