The despoiler of beautiful landmarks, however, is
NOT EVERY ARCHITECT IS ABLE TO GIVE YOU THIS ATMOSPHERE.
MONEY WILL NOT BUY THE COTTON SMITH HOUSE.
rarely idle. He knocks first at one door, and then at the next. New houses or old, it makes no difference so long as the design be good, and worth spoiling. The Cotton Smith mansion is one bright particular exception that goes to prove the rule, for, ordinarily, commercialism suffers no rebuke, and especially is this true of New York City. Here, whatever commercialism wants it takes without more ado. A “sky-scraper” would pay the owners of the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street much better than the admirable and famous twin mansions ([Plate XI]), that until lately occupied the site, so this good architecture was promptly sacrificed to an object which is sordid and mean.
But into what absurdities will the all-worshipful rate per cent. theory, which is conducive of such splendid quantity and such meagre quality, not eventually lead us? Already, we have a “flat-iron building” which I have seen measured by art standards in a contemporary review. I mean to say that such a thing was, in all good faith, attempted. We find the opinion expressed that the “flat-iron building” was a necessity, and as a necessity we should endeavor to make art harmonize with it somehow. In all the hardness of our hearts we accept the greedy commercial theory, as the people of Moses accepted the divorce bill, that “sky-scrapers” are a necessity; but they are not. We should be unquestionably better off without them. They are only the lame device of the epoch in which we live to facilitate business until such time as we shall interfere with our neighbor’s daylight beyond all endurance, and here we must perforce desist. Well, one may toady to commercialism himself, if he likes—if he conceives that such a course is really going to be to his advantage; but he cannot make art do it.
To the contrary, art is itself a very jealous god, and does not permit the serving of two masters, at least, two such antithetical masters as itself and commercialism. Art demands that there shall be, first, a sinking fund absolutely within its own control, irrevocable, and forever charged off the commercial ledger. Commercialism has no adequate sum of money that is available for the purpose. Because we define art as dexterity and as cunning, we have been determined to make it fit the exigencies of commercialism; but we