A book of bridges

by Walter Shaw Sparrow

5. “Manuel Théorique et Pratique du Constructeur en Ciment Armé.” Par MM. N. de Tédesco et V. Forestier. One volume, 242 illustrations; 20 francs.

6. “Études sur les Ponts en Pierre remarquables par leur Décoration.” Par F. De Dartein, Inspecteur-Général des Ponts et Chaussées en Retraite, etc. Vol. I, “Ponts Français antérieurs au Dix-Huitième Siècle”; not yet published. “Vol. II, Ponts Français du Dix-Huitième Siècle—Centre”; published. Vol. III, “Ponts Français du Dix-Huitième Siècle—Languedoc”; published. Vol. IV, Bourgogne; published. Vol. V, “Ponts Étrangers antérieurs au XIX siècle—Italiens, Espagnols et Anglais”; not yet published. Price, 25 francs the volume.

For this work M. De Dartein has made exact measured drawings from sixty-eight bridges, and each example has a great historic interest. The author has taken a line of his own, dwelling on the ornament of bridges, their decoration; several of his volumes are long overdue, but in his earnest study of the eighteenth century we see what he admires in French design. M. De Dartein is thoughtful and thorough, but I wish some photographs had been added to the illustrations, because measured drawings give only the dry bones of architecture.

How to decorate a bridge is a question beset with so many problems, some practical, and others æsthetic, that it ought to be debated at an international congress of engineers and architects and artists. There are persons who think that M. De Dartein will say the last word on his important theme; but it is enough for me to believe that his material and his personal taste will be invaluable, presenting facts and provoking discussion. He lingers too often over details of trivial ornament, which increase the cost of production without doing any good at all to the architecture. In other words, M. De Dartein speaks too often as an engineer.

The qualities of a great bridge should make their appeal in stern lines, in ample proportions, in a scale that befits not the site alone but the site and its history; for all fine architecture dwells with the fugitive generations as a lasting citizen; it is an epitome of racial character alembicated by genius. Bridges cannot be fine when they are dwarfed by their environments, or when they are too big to be in harmony with the externals of their setting. This, no doubt, is a staring truism, yet it is unseen by most modern engineers, whose metal monsters are often as wrongly placed in a gentle landscape as a giant from Brobdingnag would be at Lilliput. On the other hand, can you explain why the Roman bridge at Alcántara is tremendous art? Is it not because he is in scale with the rocky gorge of the Tagus? This virile bridge completes a grand site, and finds in the site his own completion.

THE PONT NEUF AT PARIS, BUILT IN 1604; IT HAS BEEN MUCH ALTERED SINCE THE RENAISSANCE

Still, it cannot be said that Roman bridges were always free from redundant ornament. There were times when pomp exerted a bad influence; and later ages borrowed oddments of Roman decoration that weakened in many countries the aspect of bridges. It is from such Roman work as the Pont du Gard, where no detail was called for, and where the architect’s aim was to be unpretentious, that we learn never to worry a bridge with embellishments. To construct ornament is very often an easy accomplishment of bad taste, while to ornament construction is a very difficult problem of self-restraint in art, because judgment tells us that a great design carried out in simple and thorough masonry is in itself ornamental, if not complete. Applied decoration is almost certain to harm it, just as a human face is disfigured by sticking-plaster.

For example, turn to Frank Brangwyn’s drawing of the Pont Neuf at Paris, and note under the parapet the well-spaced brackets. Each bracket is decorated with a mask. Why? Simpler and shorter brackets would have been more in keeping with the architecture, as these long ones overlap the keystones—a serious blunder. Partly to hide a ring of voussoirs is to blur the whole structural beauty of an arch. It is like covering the eyes with blue spectacles. And there are other mistakes of scale in the Pont Neuf. No fewer than six piers are crowded into the Seine, as if inundations were amusements to be liked very much. But the spirit of Renaissance art was overapt to be finikin. In a fine bridge at Chatsworth, for instance, a charming effect is troubled by a too expensive parapet; and statues are lodged on pedestals above the cutwaters. Why? Is the cutwater of a bridge a convenient spot for the display of sculpture? As many persons fear in talk a sudden silence made by thought, so many architects in their revisions fear the plain spaces left in their designs by a creative inspiration. Then in a hurry they add some “ornament” such as we find at Chatsworth, or in Gauthey’s Pont de Navilly on the Doubs. In this bridge narrow spandrils are choked with an overturned vase surrounded by an ornament of bulrushes, and over each cutwater there is a huge stone shaped like an egg and garlanded. I decline to speak in technical terms because the folly of using superfluous “ornament” is hidden by words that look erudite. Was it an admiration for Moses that caused Gauthey to put bulrushes on a bridge? And did he suppose that they suggested water and adventure? As for those huge eggs of stone, if they came from some bird five or six times as big as an ostrich, I should like to see them in a museum of natural history, but without their ornamental wreaths.