Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect.
contemporary of your own. And no architectural student should want to imitate the style of his master or employer, for it is heresy. It is mockery.
If you have not sense enough to listen to your own muse, to study the history of art for yourself, to speak the language of architecture as all your honored predecessors have spoken it, following religiously the splendid historical chart that is ever at your service for reference while leaving your style to take care of itself—I am sorry for you.
In my own very limited scope of usefulness, I am quite willing to confess that I have never bothered about style, and do not consider that I have any worth mentioning; although, I suppose, an occasional architect is annoyed past endurance by somebody who comes with an illustration of a particular piece of my work which has appeared in the magazines, requesting that my style be copied. Of course, it is not my style that is desired, but the expression of Anglo-Saxon home feeling as opposed to whatever is advectitious—out of place there—however correct academically, and according to the rules of harmony, good form or anything else you choose to call it. All tendency in myself toward mannerism, prejudice, partisanship and eclectic theory I have endeavored to repress, for I found that good style needed no suggestions from me.
Good style means the historical note which measures the success of an architectural design. It is the distinct theme we must be able to recognize throughout, no matter how elaborate or original the accompaniment. To exemplify which point I have selected the Searles cottage, erected in 1889, at Block Island ([see Plate LXXXVI]), not because it was erected without regard to expense or financial returns, for there is much domestic architecture in America erected quite as independently of either consideration which would ruin my argument were I to use it; but because the Searles cottage is one of the most original designs in American Renaissance, without in the least compromising good style, that I know of in contemporary work. It is said to have been designed by a decorator, but in that case merely adds another instance of the truism that there are decorators who should be architects and architects who should be decorators. The illustration shows the
PRINCESSGATE.
