Critical writers, in reviewing architectural publications, have frequently remarked that the authors of such works, particularly those which profess to deal with the æsthetical side of the profession, while severely censuring the prevailing taste for what they term "debased art," and denouncing all methods adopted since the birth of the Renaissance, rarely offer us any formulas by following which we may advance the tone and sentiment of architecture. When they do offer any advice, it is too often in vague terms, scarcely to be understood by the general reader. Thus, one tells us that to follow taste alone is a delusion, and that architecture, to be worthy of its name, should be a logical development of the constructive sciences based upon man's necessities and the requirements of social life. In short, instead of offering a grammar of architecture suited to the wants of the general and unprofessional reader, these authors offer theoretical reasoning of an advanced order; instead of art-instruction, severe censures upon existing forms. The system by which architectural students are educated and prepared for the duties of professional life has much to do with their lack of readiness in formulating in after-years practical theories for the improvement of their art.
But the establishment of architectural schools at the Boston Institute of Technology, at Columbia College, and at Champagne, Illinois, with well-trained and enthusiastic professors at the head of each, and carefully-selected corps of assistants, is already doing much toward an improvement in students themselves, and in raising the standard of American architecture as a profession in the eyes of society. This student-system must in time create a body of men, well educated, enthusiastic, and bound together by an esprit de corps hitherto almost unknown among the great body of practising architects. The dictum passed by such a body upon the art and science of building will be received with respect by the laymen who employ them, and American architecture, in its better phases, will receive an impetus and a nervous strength in construction and composition which at present we find exemplified only in the scattered works of a few highly-trained practitioners. So far we have had in this country no fixed standard by which the educated architect may be tried and his professional position established. Unlike the practice of law and medicine, the field is free to all, and previous training is not required. In France, where the educational probation is long and severe and the rewards of success certain, the graduates of the schools are few in number compared with the lists of new names constantly appearing in the columns of our city directories with the designation of "architect." In America, young men, ambitious and anxious to succeed, after a few months spent in study and in copying drawings in some prominent office, set up for themselves. They naturally drift into the ranks of the Queen Anne designers, for the reason that their art is "free," and they can jumble together
A patchwork of Japan,
And queer bits of Queen Anne,
All mixed upon the plan
Of as you like or as you can.
One of the most zealous of the English Queen Anne revivalists has made the candid confession of the real weakness under the apparent strength of the movement, in stating that "it is a bad style for students to cut their teeth upon." If it is a bad foundation for the education of students, certainly it must be bad for the stability and beauty of their future works.
Nothing that I have seen so cleverly portrays the young and "high art" architectural aspirant as the delineation of a character in a novel published in England under the title of "The Ambassador Extraordinary," and said to have been written by an eminent architect. With unsparing pen the author sketches a character, Georgius Oldhausen by name, F.S.A., professor of architecture of a very advanced order. The work is well executed, and we can almost see before us the architect who, disdaining such insignificant matters as good planning, stability of construction, and convenient disposition of parts, claims to be an artist pure and simple, and, leaving practical matters entirely out of the question, goes in heavily for the picturesque and pure mediæval, Queen Anne, or Jacobean, as the case may be. Let us follow him as he conducts a friend over a church and conventual establishment in course of construction.
"Your rooms," says Monsignore, "seem to me to be made almost as uncomfortable as they possibly can be."
"Why, of course!" exclaims the astonished artist, fixing his glass somewhat indignantly in his eye. "What you call uncomfortable I call quaint."
"Very possibly I should call it the same; but, my dear sir, cui bono?"
"Cui bono!" answers the architect contemptuously. "That's what all modern people say; that's the horrible mistake of the whole modern world. We shall never recover the tone of the old men till we get rid of such jargon. Now, just for an instant, imagine the fathers of this abbey of ours going in for wash-hand-basins!"
He drops his eye-glass in sheer dismay at such an idea. They next visit the refectory. Master Georgius here excels himself. "I'm going in for doing it inside in red brick, and vaulting it in red brick too, with black diaper-patterns all over, you know."