had been inaugurated. Despite these departures from architectural and archæological orthodoxy, however, McIntire’s work is replete with exquisite charm and is justified by applying to it the touchstone of good taste.
Latrobe, McComb, in his later work, L’Enfant, Hoban, Dr. Thornton, Thomas Jefferson, Strickland and other noted architects of the last years of the eighteenth century and the fore part of the nineteenth followed classic precedent somewhat more closely in the practice of their profession and may, therefore, be considered the most faithful and typical exponents of Classic Revival principles. Much of their work is noble in conception and peculiarly suited to the monumental character of the buildings they designed.
The influence of the Classic Revival was to be noted earliest in public edifices such as the Boston State House on Beacon Hill, the New Theatre or the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia or, most of all, in the Capitol at Washington in the design, erection and restoration or rebuilding of which so many of the most eminent architects of the day had a share. There the classic orders were reproduced with faithful accuracy in combinations that displayed their chaste beauty and noble proportions in the most dignified and impressive manner. Capitals of impeccable exactitude and fidelity to their prototypes, pediments and entablatures of due proportion, triglyphs, mutules, modillion brackets, acanthus leaves, egg and dart mouldings, dentils, anthemia and all the other structural and ornamental features characteristic of either Greek or Roman architecture became familiar objects to the public gaze and exercised their subtle but powerful agency in the education of a disciplined and elegant sense of architectural propriety.
The architecture of the Classic Revival was undoubtedly at its best in public edifices or in large and imposing mansions which afforded sufficient opportunity to display its ample characteristics. Such structures, moreover, did not require any great stretch of ingenuity in making adaptations. While columns might have to be lengthened out or features foreign to classic conception added, the task of accommodation rarely offered serious difficulties to be overcome. In the hands of such men as Bulfinch or McIntire, at the outset, or of Latrobe, Hoban, Strickland and their various able contemporaries, the Classic Revival gave us many truly admirable structures instinct with dignity and grace. In the hands of the too confident and insufficiently educated mechanic who ventured to try his hand at designing, it was a very different thing indeed and its remaining examples of this inferior type can scarcely be viewed with pleasure.
If one may trace an analogy between the Adam mode and the best manifestations of the Classic Revival with its stately structures full of breadth, dignity and repose, so may one also trace with ease an analogy between the carpenter-designed-and-built houses of the end of the Georgian period and much of the insignificant domestic work of the Classic Revival. In other words, the elegant Adam creations bore virtually the same relation to the contemporary carpenter-designed houses as did the larger and serenely chaste compositions of the Classic Revival to the small and inexpensive attempts on the part of ambitious builders to apply the same style to little, cramped structures for which it was manifestly unfit. There was this difference, however. The carpenter-architects of the end of the Georgian period were far superior in discrimination and taste to their successors, who tried to make up for their lack of knowledge by ill-judged essays that succeeded only in being ridiculous. Their tiny, temple-fronted houses were not domestic and were as unreal and architecturally unsatisfying as stage settings viewed from the rear. They were bombastic and pompous—one feels almost like saying “pompious”—and displayed no real merit or refinement to back up their preposterous pretensions to a dignity and state not at all in keeping with their true purpose. The so-called “carpenters’ classic” mode, which was really a chastened and restrained form of the debased Classic Revival style, was infinitely preferable because it was simple and did not pretend to be something it was not.
Among the thoroughly striking and important buildings erected in this era that ought to be mentioned, besides those already referred to, are the Sub-Treasury in New York, Girard College in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Custom House, and the Cathedral in Baltimore. These are typical buildings and, for that reason, worthy of being kept in mind, but the list of creditable examples might be added to almost indefinitely.
As a direct result of the Classic Revival influence there was a certain amount of modest and agreeable adaptation which created a pleasant domestic episode in the annals of American architecture. Examples of this modified classic school are unpretentious and, for the reason that they mark no ambitious flights, commendable in their own field. For want of a better name we have been accustomed to call this architectural species “Carpenters’ Classic.” Whatever its shortcomings—and not much can be expected of it for it makes no pretence—it was infinitely better than much that followed it.
In contemplating the story of the Classic Revival one can find much to be thankful for.
