Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885

by Various

Of all the recognized styles of domestic architecture the position of modern Queen Anne, or so-called Free Classic, is perhaps the most difficult to determine. The nomenclature will assist us but little in investigating its art-history and constructive laws,—the term Queen Anne being as much too narrow as Free Classic is too broad. If we ask the professors of architecture and the more learned practitioners of the art for information on the subject, we shall get vague and unsatisfactory replies. Many of the younger and more enthusiastic architects, and the devotees of spinning-wheels, blue India teapots, and green crown glass will, on the contrary, unhesitatingly tell us that Queen Anne, is "high art;" forgetting that art had reached its lowest ebb in England when William and Mary ascended the throne left vacant by the Stuarts.

With such diversity of sentiment and reasoning, how shall we elucidate the truth? When did Queen Anne architecture originate, who were its great masters, under what influence did it spring up, what causes led to its decline, and to what source may we trace its sudden and aggressive renaissance? To the student who looks beneath the surface of fashionable art-culture the Queen Anne and Georgian periods seem almost like a mirage, where he sees dimly reflected vistas of city streets lined with tall houses built of red brick, with tiled roofs, long and narrow sash-windows painted white, and outside shutters painted green. If he goes to the academies for information, he will be told that early Queen Anne was a feeble application of Palladian rules designed for palatial works in marble to smaller edifices built of brick, and that late Queen Anne is simply a craze that must run its course and then sink into obscurity, as did its prototype.

This lack of historical data is the more remarkable when we consider that the style now known as that of Queen Anne is but of yesterday. We can follow the gradual development of styles and systems of construction and their transitions into other and later styles, from the Egyptian, Syrian, Grecian, Roman, and Byzantine, and the wondrous science of the Middle Ages, to the wealth of Continental Renaissance, but of the style of Queen Anne we can find little more than the name. England gradually remodelled her feudal castles into the noble and picturesque manor-houses of the Tudor kings, and her architects during the reign of Elizabeth carried this somewhat fanciful, but at the same time dignified, system of construction to its utmost development. All this will be clearly and logically explained by the professors of the academies. They will further add that after the accession of the Stuarts the building art gradually declined, with only a few flashes of brilliant light in the works of Inigo Jones and Wren. The Commonwealth was prudish in art as in manners, and the Restoration was a reign of revel and wild license. The social worlds of William and Mary and of Queen Anne, stiff, starched, and formal, left their impress upon the buildings of their day, which were mostly of a domestic character. The Free Classic of the Georgian reigns followed,—more refined in sentiment, delicate but severe in outline, aristocratic, but lacking strength and boldness in composition. With the advent of the Victorian Gothicists the worn-out and debased Free Classic passed into obscurity, there to remain until the passage by Parliament of the Elementary Education Act in 1870 brought it once more into prominence.

So much for the teachings of the academies, hampered by conservatism and constructive traditions. They see little that is good in architecture which cannot be traced through a long line of precedents, gradually developing, as did the Gothic from the slender lancets and bold buttressing of the earlier examples to the delicate tracery and wondrous carving of Lincoln and of York. But, for all this, Queen Anne has a history, architectural as well as political. Her short reign witnessed the erection of a class of manor-houses and city dwellings which, gradually improved under the two succeeding monarchs, have formed the basis for a revival of a remarkable character. The sudden renaissance of Queen Anne or Free Classic architecture is the growth of but fourteen years, and yet all classes of society have been alike filled with aspirations for Queen An-tic houses, and for domestic appliances, and even dresses and garniture, associated with that period. The extremely low art of the last decade of the seventeenth century has become the "high art" of to-day, and bids fair, after outgrowing the eccentricities of plan and detail with which many designers have loaded it down, to develop into an honest, home-like, and thoroughly domestic style, in consonance with the requirements of nineteenth-century culture and refinement. England and America alike have felt the pulse-beat of the reformers, ready and longing for a change that will be radical and honest in its workings. Let us, then, attempt to define the position of Queen Anne architecture, historically, constructively, and æsthetically. Let us endeavor to penetrate beyond the superficial investigations of the "high-art" amateur and see what may be the real value of the Queen Anne revival as a basis for the architecture of to-day, and wherein lies the germ which may be utilized as a stepping-stone to greater excellence.

HISTORY.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the different phases of Free Classic will be to group the reigns of William and Anne in one period of a quarter of a century, half in the seventeenth and half in the eighteenth, following the Stuart, or Jacobean, and preceding the Georgian. At first sight there appears to be little promise of finding any genuine art in English works of this period. The Mediæval Ecclesiastical style had died out nearly two hundred years before, and during the interval the revival of classic architecture had steadily advanced from small and rude beginnings to a respectable position, with an academic system, so to speak, which, although it never attained in England the appreciation which led to its luxurious development on the Continent, found expression in many works of dignity and excellence. During the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. a domestic style for manor-houses had sprung up, based upon Gothic traditions of the Tudor type, with an admixture of the Renaissance of that day. This transitional manner struggled through the Commonwealth comparatively undisturbed, losing by degrees all traces of its mediæval origin. It maintained, however, partly perhaps by the intention of its designers, but chiefly through accident, a character of picturesqueness and homeliness.

The great fire of 1666 desolated two-thirds of London, destroying thirteen thousand two hundred houses and eighty-nine churches, including St. Paul's Cathedral. Down to this time the architecture of London had been mostly of the timber, brick, and plaster type of the Tudors. The houses were crowded closely together, covering every available piece of ground, and overhanging story above story until in many cases the daylight was almost excluded from the narrow courts and crooked alleys. Many of these houses were built of slight materials, covered on the exterior with painted planks and on the interior with plaster. During the reign of James I. it was enacted that the fronts of city houses should be of brick or stone. In many cases, however, a compromise was made in favor of heavy timber fronts, which were often richly carved and moulded, the panels filled with bricks and plastered, the sides away from the street being still built of wood. In these houses we find numerous instances of the picturesque oriels and windows adopted by the designers of the modern Queen Anne school.

The fire wrought a complete change in building-construction and in the health of the city. The plague, until then a constant visitor, disappeared. The streets and courts were widened and much improved, and an entirely new class of buildings arose above the ruins of ancient London. Immediately after the fire a proclamation was issued by the king, giving instructions for certain reforms in building-construction. This may be called the birth of the movement which later on developed into the Queen Anne or Free Classic style of the early eighteenth century. In this proclamation the king commands as follows: "In the first place, the woful experience in this late heavy visitation hath sufficiently convinced all men of the pernicious consequences which have attended the building with timber, and even with stone itself, and the notable benefit of brick, which in so many places hath resisted and even extinguished the fire; and we do hereby declare that no man whatsoever shall presume to erect any house or building, great or small, but of brick or stone; and if any man shall do the contrary, the next magistrate shall forthwith cause it to be pulled down and such further course taken for his punishment as he deserves; and we suppose that the notable benefit many men have received from those cellars which have been well and strongly arched will persuade most men who build good houses to practise that good husbandry by arching all convenient places." By an act of the Common Council, passed on the 29th of April, 1667, in furtherance of the king's proclamation, it is ordered, among other details, that the purveyors "do encourage and give directions to all builders, for ornament sake, that the ornaments and projections of the front of buildings be of rubbed bricks, and that all the naked parts of the walls be done of rough bricks neatly wrought, or all rubbed, at the discretion of the builder." Permission was at the same time given to enrich buildings by variety in the forms of roofs, balconies, etc.

The urgent demand for new edifices to replace those destroyed by fire, and the necessity for observing strict economy in their erection, precluded picturesque grouping and well-studied designs. The quaint but dangerous architecture of 1666 was rapidly replaced by rows of plain, monotonous brick buildings, devoid of artistic merit. In Cheapside and some of the more important thoroughfares the houses erected during this period were of a somewhat better character, taller, and more elegant in design.

While improvement in the character of domestic architecture was thus hampered by economic considerations and an intricate system of land-tenures, public and ecclesiastical architecture was greatly improved. The rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral and fifty city churches by Sir Christopher Wren marks an epoch in the history of the English Church which should not be overlooked. For the first time since the Reformation the planning and general features of church edifices were made to conform to the exigencies of the Protestant faith and a simplified ritual. Rarely has such an opportunity for distinction been vouchsafed to any architect as that which fell to the lot of Wren; and he proved himself equal to the task. Fergusson is my authority for the statement that during the last forty years of the seventeenth century no building of importance was erected of which he was not the architect. Had his design for a complete rebuilding of the burnt district been carried out, London would have risen from its ashes one of the most convenient and beautiful cities in the world. The edifices erected by Wren are models of their kind. A thorough constructor, he was not less an artist in his feelings, and boldly adapted the systems of the Renaissance to the requirements of the times, modifying his details to meet the exigencies which arose. The "Free Classic" of Wren was certainly very different in conception and execution from the stiff and formal expression which we note in the works of his immediate successors, several of whom were, however, men of marked ability. It was, moreover, immeasurably superior to the classic attempts of the architects of the middle Georgian period, who, carried away by the enthusiasm awakened by the perusal of the newly-published "Antiquities" of Stuart and Revett, attempted to adapt Doric porticos, hexastyle, octostyle, etc., to modern domestic architecture.