"Cheapness and convenience will, of course, be the first principles in our building, beauty and picturesqueness will be secondary. The point is to combine these without much compromising either. At present our cities are the unhandsomest in the world. The street architecture is monotonous and heavy. The houses, compared with those of other capitals, are low, but they are not light. Paris and the Italian cities have always a festal air. Vienna is brilliant. Even grim old Rome seems waiting to be gay. You do not immediately see the reason of this. The houses are high, the streets narrow, shutting out the sky, and the swarms of passengers do not explain the charm. But if you look narrowly you will see that the difference of effect produced, arises, not so much from any essential architectural superiority; because the mass of building in any city is of about the same general character—but that it is due to the "broken and various lines which every where meet the eye, relieving the heavy gravity of the smooth fronts which with us are entirely unrelieved. Sometimes, indeed, a street is built with regard to its architectural beauty, as the Rue de Rivoli, in Paris, of which the harmony is uniformity and not monotony. One side of this street is the garden of the Tuileries, and the other is like a prolonged palace front. The northern side of the Boulevards des Italiens is truly picturesque, but for directly the contrary reason—the infinite variety of line presented.
BOWEN & McNAMME'S SILK HOUSE.
"It is to these lines of gallery and balcony which break and lighten the mass of building, that we must look for a hint of very feasible improvement. If any city reader wishes an illustration of this fact, let him observe how the iron verandah upon the Collamore House redeems the otherwise bald, dead weight of that building. Then let him cast his eye up Broadway to the long front of Niblo's Hotel—unrelieved and blank—and consider the cheerful effect of a continuous gallery along each story, or separate balconies at every window, as on the beautiful Chiaja at Naples. On the other hand let him ask his Metropolitan pride how it would like a street of such edifices as the City Assembly Rooms on the site of Tattersalls? So, also, in dwelling-houses, the balcony which is now confined to the parlor floor might occasionally be carried up through the other stories, and this, in narrow streets, with a peculiarly happy effect, as is seen in such streets of foreign cities, where the style, if elaborated in lattices and bay-windows, becomes romantic and poetic.
"Greater variety in the mouldings of doors and windows, and in the designs of porticoes, might easily be obtained, with an infinite gain of grace to the city. The Broadway Theatre illustrates this, for it is certainly one of the most impressive buildings upon that street. The question, it must be remembered, is not one of art, so much as of picturesqueness and effect. The galleries and balconies, &c., are only a subterfuge. If an edifice is intrinsically beautiful and well-proportioned, it claims no such accessories, as Stewart's building, which, although a simple square mass, yet from the admirable proportion, rather than the material, is as stately and imposing as many a foreign palace. But where there is no regard—as is the usual case—to the dignity or propriety of form, there we must take advantage of an alleviation, and obtain lightness, gayety, and variety as we best can.
"There is, however, one point peculiar to American, or more properly to New-York building, which calls for the determined and constant censure of every man who values human life. We mean the flimsy style of building arising from the frenzied haste with which we do every thing. This has long been our reproach. Scarcely a year passes that we do not record some disaster of this kind, often involving a melancholy waste of life. 'Is it strong?' is a question constantly asked of a new building, and a question which, in any civilized community, it should be as unnecessary to ask, as whether the public wells are poisoned.
"We know many who will not pass under buildings now going up or recently erected. A friend walked down Broadway one morning, while a building was in course of erection on the site of the present Waverly House, and returning in the afternoon found that it had all tumbled down. Our readers have not forgotten the frightful fall of a block in Twenty-first street last spring. One is curious to know if nothing is ever to be done—if the city means to take no security for the lives of the citizens in this matter. It would be very easy to prevent this flimsy building, and even were it very difficult it should be effectually done. This, too, is a matter in which every citizen is interested.
"Stores and Warehouses have their own proprieties. Warehouses properly avoid even the appearance of lightness. They are devoted to heavy storage. No life, save of bales and boxes,—and not of the contents of bales and boxes—is associated with them. Security is the first and only thing we demand of them, provided the structures are not painfully disproportioned. So with Prisons. In fact, in architecture, the ornament must depend upon the use, must be developed from the use. For the same reason that balconies become a dwelling-house they disfigure a warehouse. Stores again should partake, in their appearance, of the intrinsic character and associations of shops. When shop-keeping becomes royal, it should be royally housed, as in Stewart's building.
"The theme unravels itself endlessly. It is one of those common interests of constantly recurring importance which it is always worth while to talk about. Because there is no American architecture, there is no occasion for making our buildings mere piles of brick and mortar, punctured here and there for light—and because we are a commonsense, go-ahead people, there is no need that our houses should offend the eye; but—for that reason—great need that they should please it.
"Lorenzo of Florence was the magnificent, not because he was rich, but because he knew the use of riches."