How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

The earliest examples of domestic buildings are the lake-dwellings which have been discovered at the bottom of some of the Swiss lakes, as well as in other countries both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres. They consist of huts, rudely constructed of timber, erected on piles, sometimes in such numbers as to form a fair-sized village. Their purpose was apparently to afford security against sudden attacks of enemies, the danger of wild beasts and snakes and the malaria and fever of the swampy shores, while bringing the inhabitants nearer to their food supply and offering a crude but ready means of sanitation. The system still survives among the natives of many tropical countries and has its analogy in the boat-houses that throng the Canton River in China.

More important, however, archæologically as well as in relation to the subsequent story of building, as it gradually developed into the art of architecture are: the single huge stone, known as a Menhir; the Galgal or Cairn of stones piled in a heap; the Tumulus or Barrow, composed of a mound of earth and the Cromlech.

The single stone seems to have been regarded as an object of veneration and a fetish to ward off evil spirits. It may have been the primitive origin of the Egyptian obelisk, the Greek stele and the modern tombstone. From the galgal and barrow may have been developed the pyramids of Egypt and the truncated pyramid which we shall find to be the foundation platforms of temples in various parts of the world while the cromlech is the prototype of temples.

Two stones were set upright and a third was placed upon the top of them. This represents in rudimentary form the so-called “post and beam” principle of temple construction. Sometimes two or four uprights were surmounted by a large flat stone. It had the appearance of a gigantic table and is called a Dolmen. It is conjectured that this was a form of sepulchral-chamber, in which the corpse was laid, being thus protected from the earth that was heaped around the stones into a mound. If so, the Dolmen is the origin of the sepulchral chamber that was embedded in the Egyptian pyramid.

Meanwhile, an intermediary stage between the highly developed pyramids and the primitive dolmen is represented in the Altun-Obu Sepulchre, near Kertsch in the Crimea. Here the mound is faced with layers of shaped stones, with which also the chamber and the passage leading to it are lined. The ceilings of both are constructed of courses of stone, each of which projects a little beyond the one beneath it, until the diminishing space is capped by a single stone. In the angle of masonry thus formed is discoverable the rudimentary beginning of the arch.

It is also convenient here to note, though it anticipates our story, the more elaborate example of this principle of roofing which is shown in the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ in Greece. In this instance, moreover, there is a farther approximation toward the arch, since the projections of the stones have been cut so as to present a continuous line. And these contour lines are slightly concave and meet at the top in a point, for which reason this class of tomb is known as bee-hive.

Another form of this method of angular roofing is seen in an Arch at Delos, which is part of a system of masonry that is known as Cyclopean, after the name of the one-eyed giant whom Ulysses and his followers encountered in Sicily, during their return from Troy. For the masonry is composed of large blocks of unshaped stone, the interstices of which are filled in with smaller stones. Here, too, the actual arch is composed of a repetition of huge, upright monoliths, supporting a series of single blocks, set up one against the other at an angle.

While, however, these primitive forms of roof construction prefigure the later development of the true arch, the student is warned in advance that they represent rather a feeling of the need of some such method of construction than any approach to a solution of the problem. For the latter, as we shall find later, consisted in discovering how to counteract the thrust of the arch; its tendency, that is, to press outward and collapse; whereas in the primitive construction this danger was evaded by embedding the roof in a mass of masonry or earth that made lateral strains impossible. The system, in fact, was more like that employed in shoring up the excavations in modern tunnelling and mining.

Meanwhile, this rude method of spanning an opening with more than one piece of stone was the primitive germ of the later development of arch, vault, and dome construction, just as the placing of a single horizontal stone on two upright ones is the prototype of columns and entablature. Thus the instinct of man, in earliest times, reached out toward the two fundamental principles of architectural construction.

The most interesting examples of primitive structure are the so-called Cromlechs, of which that of Stonehenge, in England, is the best preserved. The unit of this and like remains is the “post and beam” formation, composed of a block of stone, supported on two uprights. In the case of Stonehenge this formation was repeated so as to form a continuous circle one hundred feet in diameter. Within this was a concentric circle, composed of smaller slabs, which enclosed a series of five separate post and beam structures on a horse-shoe plan. The latter is repeated by another series of slabs and in the centre stands the flat altar stone. Seventeen stones of the outer circle, varying from sixteen to eighteen feet in height, are still standing and in part connected by their beam slabs.