Perhaps it is because Mr. Post, the architect of the house of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, has not attempted so much as Mr. Hunt that his work may be called at once more successful and less interesting. In color it has more and in design less of variety. For the monotony of gray wall and black roof it substitutes red brick, with wrought work of the same gray limestone employed in the house we have been talking of, and with a red slated roof broken by great stone dormers. It is much more simple and compact in composition than the other, for the main house is a parallelogram brought together under one great four-hipped roof, and the wing is here a very subordinate appendage. It is thus much simpler, much more within the conventional decorum of a town mansion in its scheme, while it is equally far from having the appearance of having been designed by contract, and is studied with equal thoroughness, although with a very different motive. In the matter of color, it is undeniable that the brick-work has in places a patchy look by reason of the comparatively small quantities in which it is used, the whole front on the avenue being virtually of highly wrought stone, and it seems clear that the building would have gained if the brick had been omitted altogether from this front. On the street front the mode of treatment adopted might very possibly have made the building dull and monotonous if it had been built in monochrome, as assuredly the addition of a strong contrast of color would have made the more varied design of the other painfully restless. In style the two buildings offer a curious resemblance and a curious contrast. This also is a French château, but a French château of the period after the transition, when all detail had been thoroughly classicized, and only a romantic wilfulness and freedom of composition recalled the architecture of the Middle Ages. Here are the shell frieze of Blois and the fish-bladder tracery of Orleans, without the Gothic detail which in the French Renaissance is so often found side by side with them. The carving here, equally well executed for its purpose, does not appeal so much to admiration for its execution, for the reason that it is all strictly architectural, and not directly imitative. In design it is for its purpose equally well studied; in scale, indeed, is much better studied, so that the detail, which is often lost in the ineffectual minuteness of the carving in the former case, here takes its place with emphasis. Perhaps in some instances it takes its place with too much emphasis, as in the modelling of the arches of the first floor; while, on the other hand, there is a clear lack of vigor in the brackets which carry the balcony of the third story, and in the treatment of the spiral shaft upon which rests the corbelled turret at the outer angle. But these defects of design seem to be quite deliberate, and it seems, upon the whole, that the building looks as the architect intended it to look, in a more accurate sense than can be said of its competitor. The leading motive of composition in that was the “pyramidization” at the angle. The leading motive of this may be assigned to the development of the floor lines. The perpendicular lines are entirely subordinated
to these—so far subordinated, indeed, that the axial lines of the openings in the lower stories are disregarded in the upper—and the horizontal lines are wrought by modelling and decoration into emphatic belts, graduated in richness from the simple basement course to the very rich and elaborate cornice. We may say here, too, that our admiration grows fainter above this line; for the exaggerated dormers, excessive as dormers and inadequate as gables, are the least successful features of the building, while in their decoration, alone in the building, constructive propriety is abandoned. But the great and simple roof certainly prevents the building from straggling, as its neighbor tends to do, while the angle turrets at its base not only relieve its outline of monotonous heaviness, but are clever expedients for stopping the lines of its angles. Upon the whole, one may say of Mr. Post’s design that it is a thoroughly workmanlike piece of work, and may even find less fault with it than with the more ambitious work of Mr. Hunt; though, indeed, he may ascribe this to his belief that there is less in it to talk about or to think about.
Between either of these and the brown-stone houses which have been built for Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, after the designs of Messrs. Herter, the decorators, a wide architectural gulf is fixed. We found a leading motive in each of the others; but what leading motive, or, indeed, what subordinate motive, of an architectural kind, can be found here? There is indeed no development of lines or of masses, and no organized relation of parts is aimed at. The openings are not grouped or spaced so as to tell the story of the interior, nor so as to bear any reference to each other, nor are the structural features which every building must possess brought out by modelling; nor is the ornament applied to accentuate the structural features, nor is it designed with reference either to its place or to its function as ornament. The fluted pilasters of the second story seem to be meant, indeed, to re-enforce the angles of the projecting portions of the wall. But this intention is abandoned in the first and in the third stories, in which a belt of carved foliage is run to the angles of the wall, without reference to the lines of the pilasters. This foliage is in workmanship as careful as possible—as careful, indeed, as the carving in either of the architectural works which we have been discussing. Yet its perfection gives no pleasure to the spectator, for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with the building in the walls of which it is cut. Much of the detail is carefully designed, but the absence of a general design makes it ineffective. Except for the refinement of some of this detail, the building would be as vacant of architectural interest as any work of our architectural period of darkness. The Stewart mansion does not interest students of architecture; but the Stewart mansion itself exhibits a nearer approach than these houses to an architectural design, and certainly a coherent design with coarse detail is less depressing, even if it be more irritating, than an entire absence of architectural meaning, with here and there a pretty architectural phrase which in some other context may have meant something. These houses have another misfortune in their very lugubrious color. A vivid piece of painted decoration in the recessed balcony of the nearer is a grateful oasis in the gloomy waste of rubbed sandstone, and some relief to its monotony is also afforded by the gilded railings of the windows at each side of this balcony. But it is to be hoped that courage may be found to let loose a discreet decorator with unlimited goldleaf upon the whole sad fronts. A mode of decoration which has been found so effective in the fogs of London might profitably be employed to animate façades which are in no danger of becoming too joyous. It would not be fair to leave these architectural failures, which are in so unpleasant contrast to the encouraging architectural success achieved in the other Vanderbilt houses, without noting one excellent piece of design in the railings which surround them, in which an original, characteristic, and successful treatment of metal has been attained, and which, as works of art, are really of more value than the houses they protect.
POST AND RAILING, W. H. VANDERBILT’S HOUSE.