So the new departure is still but a departure, and it seems time that such of the victims of it as are artists who take serious views of their art should ask themselves why they continue to work in a style which has never produced a monument, and in which it is impossible to discern any element of progress. In doing Queen Anne, have they done anything but follow a fashion set, as fashions in millinery and tailoring are set, by mere caprice? A professional journal has indeed declared that “architecture is very much a matter of fashion,” and architects who take this view of their calling will of course build in the fashion, as they dress in the fashion, in spite of their own knowledge that the fashion is absurd. But it is impossible to regard an architect who takes this view as other than a tradesman, or to discuss his works except by telling what are the latest modes, in the manner of the fashion magazines. It seems impossible for architects who take this view of their art to take their art seriously—anything like so seriously, for example, as they take their incomes. But for architects who love their art and believe in it, the point of “departure” is much less important than the point of arrival, and by such architects the historical styles of architecture will be rated according to the help they give in solving the architectural problems of our time. We have seen that an architect who starts from Renaissance architecture and an architect who starts from Gothic architecture, if they faithfully scrutinize their precedents, and faithfully discard such as are inapplicable, in arriving at free architecture will arrive, so far as style is concerned, at much the same result. If this process of analysis were to be carried on for a generation, it would be as difficult, and as purely a matter of speculative curiosity, to trace the sources of English and American architecture as the sources of the composite and living English language, which is adequate to every expression. We have been blaming the architects for accepting the forms of past architecture without analyzing them. But, indeed, if architects had been analysts, they would generations ago have recognized in their work that we do live in times unknown to the ancients, whether of Athens in the fifth century before our era, or of Western Europe in the thirteenth century of our era; that within the limits set by fact and reason there is ample room for the exercise of all accomplished talents, and verge enough for the expression of all sane temperaments, while without these limits nothing can be done that will stand the test of fact and reason, which is the test of time; that “effects” cannot precede causes, and that the rudest art which is sincere is living and in the way to be refined, while the most refined art that has lost its meaning can never be made alive. The recognition of these things would have prevented a vagary like the frivolities and affectations of the new departure from attaining any vogue, but it would also have prevented the establishment of any technical styles in modern building, and instead of reproducing “examples” of one historical style and then of another, and then of a mixture of two, architects would be producing and writers would be discussing works of the great art of architecture.
THE VANDERBILT HOUSES
AS an architectural work, the house of Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt is perhaps the most noteworthy of the four large and costly mansions herewith illustrated. In this a design intrinsically interesting has been carried out with an amplitude of means of all kinds which yet nowhere degenerates into profusion or mere ostentation. The dimensions are generous for a town house, and they have been made the most of by a breadth of treatment and an emphasis of structure, in the walls at least, which enable the building to carry with grace a wealth of ornament under which many buildings of equal size would disappear. The material is a soft gray limestone, which leaves much to be desired in color, though in texture it is equally adapted to the simple and massive treatment of the walls and to the minute delicacy of the decoration, both architectural and sculptural. It is very much to the credit of the designer that in spite of a richness without many examples in our domestic architecture, except in the other dwellings of this same series, the first impression of his work, and the most abiding, is that of power and massiveness. This is secured mainly by the unbroken breadth of the flank of wall between the porch and the angle on the Fifth Avenue front of the building—unbroken except by the simple and square-headed openings with which it is pierced, and the crisp and emphatic though
HOUSE OF W. K. VANDERBILT.
R. M. Hunt, Architect.