FRANCO-AMERICAN ROOF, TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
“Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical.”
purpose and method is always repugnant. Hence, if we eliminate the matter of fashion, I cannot see wherein newly invented architecture has any material advantage over that less recently invented except that, in some ways, we have in the former a much simpler design. The Jacobin house is over-decorated; but we must give it odds as in a handicap to make up for the progress in matters of taste the nation is supposed to have made in thirty-five years. Strip it of its meretricious ornament, if you please, and I prefer the lighter grace of the Jacobin exemplar.
Still, granted for the moment that these two antithetical schools of design, both palpable products of the modern brain enfranchised from all considerations of precedent, are equal measured by the laws of harmony and logic alone, it does seem almost beyond belief that the newly invented architecture of this epoch, for which such fine promises are made in all good faith by representative architects, is destined to acquire quite the discreditable reputation of the Reign of Terror, and by the inconstancy of fashion. Yet, is it not inevitable?
The only attribute that perpetuates a style of architecture in the resistless march of events is the historic atmosphere the said style may be made to embody. For this and nothing else has posterity the slightest use. Clever as were the architects of the Jacobin houses—and I consider some of them to have been very clever—clever as are the inventors of our newest type of building expression, there are no inherent qualities in the work of either school of design that will serve historical succession. Invented architecture has no more atmosphere than exists upon the surface of the moon. It may divert popular fancy for a time. We may discuss the subtleties of mass and moulding to satiety. To the human heart by which we live, dependent upon personal associations, these abstract discussions mean just about as much as love means in tennis. Harmonious lines have merely a negative value, they do not grate upon the nerves, they do not offend the eye; but unless the personal reminiscence—the history of one’s antecedents—is discernable through the academic integument, the lines, themselves, cannot long satisfy the mind reaching out for companionship in all its concerns.
“I never was so glad to get home, in my life.”
Were it not for these psychological needs of ours, one might do much worse, even now, than build himself a not too grotesque Scaramouch house. Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical ([see Plate LX]), and in plan that it was eminently sensible cannot be denied. The rooms were square, commodious and airy, amplified by numerous bay-windows, besides being so arranged as to open en suite with either folding or sliding doors. The windows were tall, generally extending from floor to ceiling, affording the best of light and ventilation. The second story enjoyed the relative advantages of the first, while every cubic inch of the third story was available for bedrooms owing to the economy there is in the Mansart roof. Then, piazza space was generous to a fault, a porte-cochère went without the saying, and I must add that in all this there was a gracious note. Indeed, there is no good reason that I can see why we should not exploit Jacobin architecture to-day, save one, and it is just that:—“Man cannot live by bread alone.”