A COTTAGE AT EAST ORANGE, N. J.
Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.
DOORWAY, BRISTOL, R. I.
CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING STYLE
The result of the best adaptation is the gradual formation of a national style of architecture. The closest adaptation that has been exploited in America both in recent and what we call our ancient work, compared with its separable prototypes, who shall say is not unmistakably modern and American? Style is never evolved by the empirical architecture of irrepressible inventors. Invention belongs to science. Happily, in the field of art, everything was planted, arranged and cultivated for us ages ago, so that we have only to wander as children, in an enchanted garden that our days are not half long enough to encompass. We observe, but wait for the planchette to move—to guide.