American Architecture: Studies

by Montgomery Schuyler

not excessive string courses which traverse it and mark the division of the stories. It is questionable whether this massiveness is not carried too far, but everybody will admit that an excessive weight of wall is a “good fault” in the street architecture of New York, and that of the two, a dwelling is more dignified which approaches the solidity proper to a prison than one that emulates the precarious lightness proper to a greenhouse. The depth of the porch and of the recessed balcony over it in the central division of the avenue front assists this expression of solidity, and helps the building to wear its burden of decoration “lightly, like a flower.” The richness, as we have said, is almost unexampled in New York. Of strictly architectural decoration—that is, of members and details which are usually designed by the architect of a building—there is a copiousness which is only saved by the means just indicated from becoming an embarrassment of riches. All this work is exquisite in execution. In design it is generally interesting and scholarly, though there is common to all of it the defect of being too small to be thoroughly well seen and thoroughly effective. The uniformity of this defect of scale seems to prove that the architect erred in estimating the effect of his design in the colorless material employed. The decoration of the recess of the balcony, too, loses effect by being entirely unrelated to the construction, and the stone trellis with which the turret at the angle is overlaid is equally irrelevant to the object to which it is applied. Architectural decoration ceases to be such when it ceases to be a development of the structure; and these exceptions, by their comparative ineffectiveness, confirm the wisdom of the rule by which elsewhere throughout the building the ornament is used to emphasize the structure, and thereby gains greatly in impressiveness and in charm.

The sculptural decoration, in contradistinction to that strictly architectural, equally abounds. By sculptural decoration is meant that designed as well as executed by the sculptor, and in regard to which the only care of the architect is to provide places for it, and so to frame it that, if it does not help, it may not injure, the architecture to which it is attached. It is not too much to say of this that it is much the most important and interesting work in decorative sculpture which is to be seen out-of-doors in New York. The most noteworthy piece of it, perhaps, is the procession of cherubic musicians girdling the frieze-like band of the corbel which carries the oriel of the southern front.[D] The execution elsewhere, in the panels under and between the windows, and in the pilasters of the bay, is equally good, but the design is nowhere else so effective. One need not be a purist, indeed, to find fault with the introduction of these pilasters at the angles of the bay and on the curve of the oriel, which are so clearly not structural members, actual or symbolic, and which are so clearly introduced for the sake of the ornament they bear, although he may condone the fault for the prettiness of the ornament generally in design, and its unfailing care and delicacy of execution. The only criticism possible, indeed, upon the execution of this work is, that it is too exquisite, and reduces the texture of carved stone too nearly to the more facile surface of moulded clay.

One’s admiration of Mr. Hunt’s spirited and scholarly design does not indeed cease with the walls of the house; but it must be owned that it undergoes some modification above the cornice. It cannot be said that the sky-line is so effective as might have been expected from what is beneath it. There is an undeniable piquancy about the statued gable which terminates the roof of the principal mass, and the relation between this roof and the steep hood of the turret is picturesque, taken alone. Unfortunately, it cannot be taken alone, and the effect of the whole series of roofs is not a harmonious grouping, but—there is no other word for it—a “huddle.” It is in the roof, too, that the shortcomings of the architect in the solution of what may be called his academic problem are most apparent. The style of his work is the transitional style of France, the modification of mediæval architecture under the influence of the Italian Renaissance, until what was all Gothic at the beginning of the transition had become all classic at its close. This is, in fact, an attempt to summarize in one building the history of a most active and fruitful century in the history of architecture, which included the late Gothic of the fifteenth century and the early Renaissance of the sixteenth, and spanned the distance from the minute and complicated modelling of the Palais de Justice at Rouen and the Hôtel Cluny at Paris, to the romantic classicism of the great châteaux of the Loire. Certainly the attempt does not lack boldness. Here we have in one building the superimposed bases and interpenetrating mouldings of the latest French Gothic and the fish-bladder tracery of the Renaissance, and in the dormers the stride from the ogee canopies of Rouen to the prim pilasters and pediment of Orleans. Mr. Hunt’s skill has not sufficed to introduce together these features, the outcomes of different modes of thought as well as of different systems of construction, without a visible incongruity; nor are they in all cases successful, taken singly. The large and elaborate dormer over the entrance, especially, instead of being a visible reconciliation of the two styles, is a visible demonstration that they cannot be reconciled. A complete construction of post and lintel, of pilaster and entablature, is supplemented by another construction of flying buttresses which are clearly superfluous and irrelevant, and which, instead of resisting the thrust of an arch, have the appearance of ineffectually “shoring up” a structure which, though complete, is unstable.

One is inclined to ascribe the lack of unity and repose which the disturbed sky-line of the building entails upon it, and which somewhat impairs the dignity of an otherwise dignified and always animated design, to the angle turret of which the architect was evidently enamoured. We may share his liking for it, and admit it to be an extremely pretty thing, without admitting that it belongs to this building. The leading motive of the composition is evidently the “pyramidization,” to borrow Mr. Thomas Hope’s uncouth word, of the whole building towards the apex of the main mass at the angle, from the point of view from which the illustration is taken. It is clearly to assist and emphasize the ascent and convergence of all the lines of the building to this apex, and to enhance the apparent dimensions, that this mass is raised a story, and the extremities of the building allowed to fall away, and it is in order to account for the emphasizing of this mass by a separate roof that the somewhat awkward expedient has been adopted of dropping the cornice on the street side below the eaves. New York readers who are familiar with the aspect of the Dry Dock Savings-Bank in the Bowery will know what is meant by this “pyramidization,” and will remember how it is there attained. Now it happens that it is precisely this intention which in the present instance is obscured and partly defeated by the tormenting of the sky-line, which in turn may be traced to the insistence of the architect upon his extremely pretty but irrelevant

HOUSE OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.

George B. Post, Architect.

turret. It is a good lesson in architecture to find that the effect of a whole may be so much impaired by one of the most successful of the parts, and that even when “the thing” is really rich and rare, we may still be unsatisfied how it “got there.” Happily neither this shortcoming, nor shortcomings much graver, could prevent such a work as this from being an ornament to the city, and an honorable monument to its architect.