One other trait is common enough among such of the dwellings of Chicago as have architectural pretensions to
A HOUSE OF BOWLDERS.
Burnham & Root, Architects.
be remarked, and that is the prevalence of Byzantine carving. This is not really a Chicagoan characteristic. If it is especially noticeable here, it is because Chicago is so new, and it is in the newer quarters of older towns that it is to be seen. It is quite as general on the “West side” of New York. Its prevalence is again in great part due to the influence of Richardson, and one is inclined to welcome it as at least tending to provide a common and understood way of working for architectural carvers, and the badge of something like a common style for buildings that have little else in common. The facility with which its spiky leafage can be used for surface decoration tempts designers to provide surfaces for its decoration, in such structural features as capitals and corbels, at the cost of the modelling which is so much more expressive and so much more troublesome, when a mere cushion will do better as a basis for Byzantine ornament.
A BYZANTINE CORBEL.
Henry Ives Cobb, Architect.