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A FAMOVS EXAMPLE or INCONGRUOUS
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An example, of colokim. ar.chitbc.tvre so true to the sttle of!
_SV^ROUNP'N<. Bviv.t>INC,»,,|T is OFTEN MISTAKEN FOR vERy olO BvilDinO
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A COST ^ BUilDiHC, OF THE. FREflC-H 5TYlt.W»T« EXTRAVAGANT
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■ ml 1 lage nas ue»un eitner to "spruce up or to
I vl 'all? about doing it, having come of a sudden to the conclusion that perhaps
£ ^ after all it isn't exactly beautiful, the question has arisen: “What can we do
about it?’’
This question is coming into the offices of architects and officials of various sorts
these days from all parts of the country. And something is being done about it, in
fact, a very great deal indeed. Before we of the present generation are all comfortably
in our graves we will see vast changes—just as astonishing changes as we have seen
since we were children, and one of the most striking will be the great metamorphosis
fitmi ugliness to practical, helpful beauty in our sur
roundings.
Our big cities, which have the hardest problems of
unloveliness and inconvenience (which usually go hand
la hand) are employing commissions of learned experts
to tell them what they should and can do. The smaller
cities are following suit with local art commissions and
sometimes they send for an expert. The towns and vil
lages have local improvement associations and art cul
ture clubs and they are all working in the same direc
tion.
“What's all this fuss about our town being not good
enough?” asks the hard-headed business man, who prides
himself on his scorn for all this art fol-de-rol. “It was
good enough for my folks before me and it’s good enough
for me. I'm making money. Ain’t we all pretty pros
perous?”
“Yes, but,” answers the culture club, "look at our
rival down the line. It’s got a new postoffice that's a
beauty. It's on a square with trees around it and the new
town hall opposite and a fine new hotel and three new
stores are coming in on the square. The farmers are
saying that we haven’t any attractions over here and
they are going over there to do their buying.”
“I wondered why that man Jenkins hadn’t been in
with an order for three weeks,” growls the hard-headed
business man, and scratches his head to aid in the perco
lation of the new idea.
And so a new convert is made to the belief that good
looks pay, whether it is the good looks of the stock or
of the package and label or -of the seller or the store,
the building, the street or the town. A pleasant view
gives pleasure just as surely as does a pleasant face,
whether the view be of canned goods or dress goods or
factories or mountains.
And the fact must be admitted that with the American
people as a whole looks have been considered less in the
past than almost anything else. So true is this that we
even forgot what we did once know about beauty, about
building farmhouses that were pleasant and attractive
and public buildings that were dignified and really hand
some. We may have thought we did but now we are
being taught how little we really understood.
Our forefathers knew, though, and they set us an ex
ample, the excellence of which we are just beginning to
appreciate.
The founders of the republic, the men of Washington's
time, brought with them from the old world fine tradi
tion of the beautiful and an inherited instinct for the
value of simplicity. They built courthouses still stand
ing in many little towns in the old south and of New
England that later generations despised but which to
day have become the models for much of our best new
architecture. These old courthouses, set in the midst of
fine old trees, are genuinely beautiful, but it has taken
us a hundred years to find it out and profit by it be
cause v/e lost the traditions of the forefathers and didn’t
have time lo go back to the old world for a new stock.
So, we built queer, ungainly things that didn’t fit and
■ now we are finding out what is the matter with us that
foreigners should laugh at our buildings and go home
and call us barbarians.
The same is true of the homes. All through the south
uud New Engliqd the traveler finds charming old resi
old Colonial architecture, the one style that is really
American. We may agree that they are pleasing. We
don t, perhaps, know why, but we think it is just be
cause they are old. it has never occurred to us that
they were not far inferior to our modern, turreted and
otherwise highly embellished residences with the corners
all sliced off and bay windows bulging from every van
tage point. Perhaps we liked to look at the old house
best as it shone white and stately through the trees, but
we supposed it was just a little remnant of sentiment,
and as such, of course, not to be encouraged.
But the fact remains that it has taken the American
people nearly a hundred years to grow up to the point
where they could intelligently appreciate the architec
tural worth of their own inheritance. The awakening is
not yet complete, but we are learning very fast, in
deed.
An interesting example of how we are returning to the
standard our forefathers set and are doing what we can
to preserve the fine traditions that were theirs is the
Annapolis postofiiee. Annapolis, where the United States
naval academy is, is an old Colonial town. Almost every
building is in that style. Two or three years ago con
gress made an appropriation for a new postoffice there.
1 he matter was referred to the office of the supervising
architect of the treasury, which designs and builds all
Uncle Sam's mail depots.
Now the supervising architect, Mr. John Knox Taylor,
happens io be a man of discernment, culture and good
taste. He soon saw that the only kind of a postoffice that
would be harmonious, pleasing and creditable among all
those Colonial houses would be one of the Colonial
style. At first Annapolis was inclined to be disappointed.
“We are tired of Colonial,” they said. “Why can't you
give us something up-to-date in Queen Anne?”
So Mr. Taylor explained and discussed and went on
with his Colonial plans and built the charming post
office, a photograph of which is shown on this page.
Quite recently a government official w’ho was interest
ed in the work of the supervising architect’s office and
heard that there was a new postoffice in Annapolis, re
turned to Washington from a visit there. He at once
hunted up Mr. Taylor and in a grieved tone remarked:
“Say, Taylor, I thought you had just put up a new
postoffice in Annapolis. I couldn’t find it.”
“We have,” said Mr. Taylor, and it is-” (naming the
locality).
“Nonsense!” answered the official. “I searched that
neighborhood Ihoroughly for one whole hour and I’ll
take my oath there is not a building in it less than 75
years old.”
Did you notice that?’ said the architect, pointing to a
photograph on the wall of his office.
Certainly, that was one of them,” was the answer.
Mr. Taylor laughed.
That is the highest compliment I have received in
the ten years I have been in this office,” he said.
And now Annapolis, which, by the way, has become
more than reconciled to its Colonial postoffice since it
has heard the enthusiastic comments of its many promi
nent visitors, is to have an
example of the other thing.
Recently congress appro
priated $14,000,000 for a new
liuvdi academy. With this, under the government’s un
sj stematic and ridiculous way of looking after its build
ing operations, the supervising architect had nothing to
do. It was therefore perhaps natural that the winning
designs, passed on by laymen evidently lacking in either
discernment or taste, should be for buildings altogether
un-American in style and entirely incongruous with
either the purpose for which they are intended, (he char
acter of the town and location or the traditions of the
country. The new naval academy is in the French style,
very fine of its kind, and done by an architect of note
(and French training), but it has' the one fatal fault of
being wholly unsuitable. And suitability is the first
principle of good architecture just as it is the first prin
ciple of a successful career or almost anything else in
life.
This case of the Annapolis naval academy is being
much cited these days as a typical and flagrant example
of what President Itoosevelt sought to prevent when he
appointed the much-discussed council of fine arts and
gave it power over all executive building and park opera
tions recently. He incurred the wrath of congress by
doing it, for congress is as jealous as a spoiled child
in the matter of its petty powers, but he also voiced
the sentiment of a vast majority of the people. For it is
very evident that there has been a great popular awaken
ing to the value of the art side of life and to the pressing
need for federal reform and the establishment of stand
ards and methods that will help the individual commu
nities to help themselves. So great, in fact, is the senti
ment that both the house and senate are being forced
to consider bills intended to do by law what the president
did by executive order; turn the supervising architect’s of
lice of the treasury into a bureau of fine arts with super
vision over the buildings and parks of all departments
and add an advisory council composed of leading archi
tects. painters and sculptors.
It is even possible that congress will be forced by the
public demand to pass such a measure, though there
is little doubt that they will avoid doing so if they can,
at least until after President Itoosevelt goes out of
office, which means till the next session.
Instances of the need of such a bureau are especially
numerous at the seat of the national government, in
Washington, and here again the wisdom of our fore
fathers is apparent. Those buildings that were built in
the early part of the last century are in the main dig
nified monuments to the sincerity, the intelligence and
the good taste of that time. More than that, they were
placed according to a definite and all embracing group
plan, that of Maj. I’Enfanf, which has not been improved
upon to this day. In later years not only was this great
and noble plan lost sight of entirely but such architec
tural and monumental monstrosities were produced for
the uses of the government or the honor of national
heroes as will be one of the great American jokes for
generations to coma.
There is reason to fear that the danger of further such
blunders is not past, for congress is not inclined to 1»«
dictated to. it swallowed the “Burton Idea” measure
making expert advice on contemplated rivers and har
bors improvements compulsory, but it did so with a
wry face.
However, the president’s council of fine arts is an
accomplished fact and for several years we have been
getting beautiful postoffices at the rate of a hundred nr
more a year. The new department buildings are dso
so far ahead of what has gone before, and with all this
growing sentiment and the widespread educational move
ment working towards more beautiful surroundings li
the next generation hope begins that we will not :y
have beautiful architecture but architecture disti- My
American.
In this regard a study of the new postoffices, the *'
department buildings at Washington and most of the -r
new monumental buildings in the larger cities, sh
that architects have gone back for their models to tins
original source of the Colonial—to what is known a^
classic style, in old Greece and Rome are found the]
simplest and most majestic monumental buildings ever
erected. They are the purest source of architectural in
spiration that man has. Their spirit, too. is in a la -''
measure the spirit of our democracy—dignity and
strength with simplicity—and it seems to have been some
such idea as this that created the Colonial style.
Without forgetting the beauty and inspiration of "iir.
Colonial architecture, we have at last found time to g
back to the old world to renew our nearly lost traditions
The result is a widespread revival of the classic sty 1*‘.,
modified to suit changed conditions and a new and dis
tinct nationality, but so fundamentally true to the An; •
lean spirit that we may feel at least that we are on the
road to an expression of ourselves that will picture us
truly to posterity.
Sure Cure For Pirates
"A picture recently published in Munich shows that th>
peculiar vanity which manifests itself in a desire t 1"
photographed often kills the sense of decency, say - ■'
writer in a Berlin paper. “The picture shows five uni
formed men standing on the smoking ruins of a builditi
In front of them, propped up against the debris, art
eight mutilated corpses. Under the picture is this
genii: ‘The Indian coast lias been infested for hundred
of years by Malaga pirates. Recently a body of Eu
peans, conducted by natives, pursued and captured "n:
of these robber bands, whom they bound and cast iu!lj
a pagoda, which they then blew up with dynamite.’ 1
men who posed for a picture, in which they seemed !
gloat over the deed, the fruit of which forms the IF
some foreground, were all Europeans.”
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