THE ART INSTITUTE.
Burnham & Root, Architects.
of Trade. His work is of no style, a proposition that is not invalidated by the probability that he himself would call it “American eclectic Gothic.” We all know what the untutored and aboriginal architect stretches that term to cover. There is no doubt about its being characteristically modern and American; one might say characteristically Western, if he did not recall equally free and untrammelled exuberances in the Atlantic States. But it is impossible to ascribe to it any architectural merit, unless a complete disregard for precedent is to be imputed for righteousness, whether it proceed from ignorance or from contempt. And, indeed, there are not many other structures in the United States, of equal cost and pretension, which equally with this combine the dignity of a commercial traveller with the bland repose of St. Vitus. It is difficult to contemplate its bustling and uneasy façade without feeling a certain sympathy with the mob of anarchists that “demonstrated” under its windows on the night of its opening. If they were really anarchists, it was very ungrateful of them, for one would go far to find a more perfect expression of anarchy in architecture, and it is conceivable that they were instigated by an outraged architectural critic in disguise. If that ringleader had been caught and arraigned, he could have maintained, with much better reason, the plea that Gustave Courbet made for his share in the destruction of the column of the Place Vendôme, that his opposition to the monument was not political, but æsthetic.
Fortunately there is no other among the public or quasi-public buildings of Chicago of which the architecture is so hopeless and so irresponsible—no other that would so baffle the palæontological Paley who should seek in it evidences of design, and that does not exhibit, at least, an architectural purpose, carried out with more or less of consistency and success. At the very centre of the commercial water front there was wisely reserved from traffic in the rebuilding of the town the “Lake Park,” a mile in extent, and some hundreds of feet in depth, which not only serves the purpose of affording a view of the lake from the business quarter, but also secures an effective foreground for the buildings that line its landward edge. One of the oldest of these, young as all of them are, is the “Art Institute,” designed by Messrs. Burnham & Root. This is of a moderate altitude, and suffers somewhat from being dwarfed by the elevator buildings erected
ENTRANCE TO THE ART INSTITUTE.
since, being but of three stories and a roof; but no neighbor could make it other than a vigorous and effective work, as dignified as the Board of Trade is uneasy, and as quiet as that is noisy. It is extremely simple in composition, as will be seen, and it bears very little ornament, this being for the most part concentrated upon the ample and deeply moulded archway of the entrance. It owes its effectiveness to the clearness of its division into the three main parts of base and superstructure and roof, to the harmonious relation between them, and to the differences in the treatment of them that enhance this harmony. The Aristotelian precept that a work of art must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, is nowhere more conspicuously valid than in architecture, and nowhere does the neglect of it entail more unfortunate consequences. The severity of the basement, with its plain rectangular openings, is an effective introduction to the somewhat lighter and more open fenestration of the second and third stories, which are grouped to form the second term in the proportion, and this in turn to the range of openings in the gable of the shorter front, and to the row of peaked dormers in the longer that animate the sky-line and complete the composition. The impressiveness of the fronts is very greatly deepened by the vigorous framing of massive angle piers in which they are enclosed, the vigor of which is enhanced by the solid pinnacled turrets, corbelled out above the second story, that help to weight them, and that visibly abut the outward thrust of the arcades. It may be significant, with reference to the tendency of Western architecture, that this admirable building, admirable in the sobriety and moderation that are facilitated by its moderate size, is precisely what one would not expect to find in Chicago, so little is there evident in it of an intention to “collar the eye,” or to challenge the attention it so very well repays.