How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

Frenchman, Mangin. The design is Renaissance, influenced by the manner of the Louis XVI period, and is particularly choice in the refinement of its proportions and details.

Meanwhile, the Sub-Treasury and the Old Custom House in New York were built in the Classical style; as also were the Custom House in Boston, the Mint in Philadelphia, Girard College for Orphans in the same city; Thomas Jefferson’s design for his new foundation, the University of Virginia, and most of the National and State Buildings that were erected before the Civil War.

GOTHIC REVIVAL

The Gothic Revival of the nineteenth century was chiefly confined to England where it grew out of a revival of spiritual energy in the Church itself. This spiritual Renaissance had begun in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as a protest against the rationalistic temper of the age, its tendency to disregard the claims of faith and dogmatic authority in favour of what appealed to reason.

Religious Revivals.—The Evangelical revival which ensued was an earnest attempt to awaken the Church from the supine indifference into which it had sunk, to kindle in the clergy a higher sense of their responsibilities and generally to promote a spiritual regeneration. The movement was reinforced both within the Church and on the part of the State by the excesses of the French Revolution, which seemed to menace all forms of authority. The revival grew apace during the early years of the nineteenth century and in time was supplemented by another which is known as the Oxford Movement.

For it originated in the University of Oxford with a group of men, including Keble, Newman, and Pusey, who felt that the Church was in danger of becoming merely a humanitarian institution. Accordingly they held that the Church of England was a branch of the Catholic Church and that its priesthood was in direct succession from Apostolic times; and in accordance with this urged a return to the ritual and the rubrical observances, enjoined in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. This movement, known also as the Tractarian movement, from the tracts issued by its advocates, or Puseyite, from the name of its chief exponent, was assailed by the parties in the Church, distinguished as Broad and Low in opposition to the new party which came to be known as High.

The point of the controversy, as it concerns our study, is that the religious revival on the one hand led to a general restoration of the cathedrals and churches which had fallen into a condition of shameful neglect and, on the other, laid stress upon mediæval church architecture as the form which had been inspired by the fervour of the Catholic faith and was alone suited to a Catholic ritual. Hence arose the study and the revived use of Gothic architecture.

Pugin.—Early in the century John Britton and Thomas Rickman had published an illustrated work on “Cathedral Antiquities and the Gothic Style,” which went through many editions. They prepared the way for the influence of Augustus W. N. Pugin (1812-1852), who stood forth as a veritable apostle of the Gothic. For he supplied passion to the movement, so that it represented no shallow fad but, for the time being, a conviction that the characteristic tradition of the English must be the mediæval style. And to the realisation of it he brought a knowledge of detail and ornament, gained from many years spent in measurements and drawings of Gothic buildings; while for the purpose of reproducing the spirit of the originals he established and trained a school of craftsmen. He was, in fact, the pioneer of the later Arts and Crafts Movement. He became a convert to Roman Catholicism and his most important ecclesiastical work was expended on Roman Catholic churches and monasteries.

Houses of Parliament.—When the commission for the New Houses of Parliament was given to Sir Charles Barry with the proviso that the style must be Gothic, Pugin was associated with him as chief designer of the exterior details and interior decorative work.

The style selected by the authorities, under the unfortunate impression that it should correspond with the adjacent Henry VII’s Chapel, was the Tudor Gothic, or late Perpendicular Style, so that the façades in their lineal repetition present a certain stiffness and monotony. This effect, however, is offset by the grandiose scale of the vast building and the picturesque sky-line of towers and spires and turrets. Of these the two dominating features are the lantern over the octagonal central hall, the richly decorated Victoria Tower marking the ceremonial entrance of the sovereign to the House of Lords, and the Clock Tower, which stands at the Commons’ end, proclaiming its simple purpose as a clock tower and, when the summit-light is burning, the fact that the House is sitting.

But the grandest feature of Barry’s conception is the plan, accommodated to the site of the still-existing Westminster Hall. Notwithstanding the cell-like complexity of its innumerable units, the whole presents an organic completeness of comparative simplicity, so adapted to the functions demanded, that it has served more or less closely as a model for many other buildings, notably for the Parliament House in Budapest.

The merit both of the plan and of the façades is emphasised by contrast with the New Law Courts, designed by G. E. Street (1824-1881). Here the zeal for archæological revival ran ahead of reasonable adaptation. So the exterior presents a congeries of mediæval details that have little or no relation to the internal necessities, with the admitted result that the interior is inconvenient, while its one fine feature, the great vaulted Hall, is rendered useless by not being on the same floor as the Courts.

Street was a pupil of Sir Gilbert Scott (1810-1877), under whose influence the Gothic revival reached its full flood. He, too was an archæological enthusiast, with a preference for the Early Decorated style, and his numerous churches are frankly reproductions, as near as possible, of Mediæval architecture.

On the other hand, a freer adaptation of the Gothic to modern needs and feeling appears in William Butterfield (1814-1900); for example, in the design of Keble College, Oxford, All Saints, Margaret Street, London, and his little church at Babbacombe in Devonshire. Other independent Gothicists were J. L. Pearson, architect of Truro Cathedral and eight London churches; James Brooks, who successfully employed brick in ecclesiastical design, and Alfred Waterhouse. The last has proved himself a master of plan in adapting the Gothic to secular buildings, two of his most important designs being the Law Courts and Town Hall, Manchester.

FRANCE

A characteristically French independence distinguishes the few churches in which the influence of the Gothic revival may be traced. The most essentially Gothic church of the period is S. Clotilde, Paris, designed by Theodore Ballin, who, however, in his later work, La Trinité, exhibits a remarkably interesting blend of Renaissance details with Gothic feeling. But the tendency in French ecclesiastical architecture was rather toward Byzantine, a movement which culminated in the great church of Sacré Cœur on Montmartre, erected by Paul Abadia (1774-1812).

UNITED STATES

In the United States the Gothic Revival made its appearance as early as 1839-40, in the work of two English architects, Richard M. Upjohn and James Renwick. The former was entrusted with the rebuilding of Trinity Church, New York and later erected the State Capitol of Connecticut, while Renwick is responsible for Grace Church and S. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.

With the advent, to be noted later, of architects trained in the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the Gothic vogue declined. But in the past ten years it has taken on a new life of remarkable achievement, under the leadership of the New York and Boston firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, which recently has been dissolved, the late partners now working independently. The vitality which they have succeeded in giving to their work in the number of examples distributed over the country may be traced to two causes.

The first is revealed in a little book, “The Gothic Quest,” written by Ralph Adams Cram. It breathes the passion of a Pugin; it is inspired with such religious faith and devotion as the builders of the old cathedrals and churches must have possessed. Hence its author’s conviction that the architectural forms, evolved as an expression of that faith and in accordance with the needs of the worship it inspired, are the only fit embodiments for the continuance of that faith and worship. To Mr. Cram, in fact, the Gothic does not represent merely a style to be professionally employed; but a living concrete expression of the soul. Furthermore, the thorough mastery of Gothic forms has been directed, not as in the beginning of the Gothic Revival, to a reproduction of old models, but to an application of the old principles of Gothic design to the changed conditions of modern times. There is, accordingly, in the designs of these architects no evidence of the “dead hand.” They belong to and serve the present, while preserving a link of tradition with the past. By few, indeed, if any, has the Gothic been revived with so much material and spiritual vitality.

CHAPTER II

THE MODERN SITUATION

Following the trend of modern civilisation, architecture to-day, in so far as it is not continuing to imitate the past, is becoming, on the one hand, more cosmopolitan and, on the other, more individualistic. The free-trade in ideas, encouraged by travel and through the interchange of architectural magazines, is obliterating the distinctions of nationality. Moreover, the immense variety and the newness of problems that now confront the architect are tending toward a personal solution of them. They demand invention on his part and stimulate him to individual expression.

The Student’s Attitude.—Hitherto in this book we have studied the historic styles of architecture, in their origins and revivals; but, if it has served its purpose of awakening interest in the art, we shall for the future think less of styles and acquire the habit of studying a building very much as we study an individual. We do not estimate an individual, in the first analysis, at any rate, by comparing him with some worthy of history, but by his fitness to the present—the front he presents to society at large and his value in the specific part that he plays in the common life. Has he, for example, dignity and some other charm of character? Are his motives sincere? Does he possess the qualities that make his work not only well-intentioned but practically efficient, and so forth?

Similarly, we shall estimate a building not as a thing