CHAPTER XVII. Review of American Architecture, Past and Present. The SUR synopsis of the Art-Idea would be in complete without referring to the condi tion of architecture in America. Strictly speaking, we have no architecture. If, as has happened to the Egyptians, Ninevites, Etruscans, Pelasgians, Aztecs, and Central American races, our buildings alone should be left, by some cataclysm of nations, to tell of our existence, what would they directly express of us? Absolutely nothing! Each civilized race, ancient or modern, has incarnated its own æsthetic life and character in definite forms of architecture, which show with great clearness their indigenous ideas and general conditions. A similar result will doubtless in time occur here. Meanwhile we must look at facts as they now exist. And the one intense, barren fact which stares us fixedly in the face is, that, were we annihilated to-morrow, nothing could be learned of us, as a distinctive race, from our architecture. It is simply substantial building, with ornamentation, orders, styles, or forms, borrowed or stolen from European races, an incongruous medley as a whole, de BASTARD ARCHITECTURE. 287 veloping no system or harmonious principle of adaptation, but chaotic, incomplete, and arbitrary, declaring plagiarism and superficiality, and proving beyond all question the absolute poverty of our imaginative faculties, and general absence of right feeling and correct taste. Whether we like it or not, this is the undeniable fact of 1864. And not merely this: an explorer of our ruins would often be at a loss to guess the uses or purposes of many of our public edifices. He could detect bastard Grecian temples in scores, but would never dream they were built for banks, colleges, or custom-houses. How could he account for ignoble and impoverished Gothic chapels, converted into libraries, of which there is so bad an example at Cambridge, Massachusetts, or indeed for any of the architectural anomalies which disfigure our soil and impeach our common sense, intensified as they frequently are by a total disregard of that fundamental law of art which demands the harmonious relation of things, condemning the use of stern granite or adamantine rock in styles where only beautiful marbles can be employed with æsthetic propriety, or of cold stones in lieu of brick, or the warmer and yet more plastic materials belonging of right to the variety and freedom of Gothic forms? If the mechanical features of our civilization were left to tell the national story, our ocean-clippers, river-steamers, and industrial machines would show a different aspect. They bespeak an enterprise, invention, and development of the practical arts that proclaim the Americans to be a remark 288 NAVAL ARCHITECTURE. able people. If, therefore, success attend them in whatever they give their hearts and hands to, it is but reasonable to infer that cultivation need but be stimulated in the direction of architecture to produce results commensurate with the advance in mechanical and industrial arts. If one doubt this, let him investigate the progress in shipbuilding from the point of view of beauty alone, and he will discover a success as complete in its way as was that of the builders of Gothic cathedrals and Grecian temples. And why? Simply, that American merchants took pride in naval architecture. Their hearts were in their work; their purses opened without stint; and they built the fastest and handsomest ships. To excel in architecture we must warm up the blood to the work. The owner, officer, and sailor of a gallant ship love her with sympathy as of a human affinity. A ship is not it, but she and her, one of the family; the marvel of strength and beauty; a thing of life, to be tenderly and lovingly cared for and proudly spoken of. All the romance of the trader's heart in the West, the steamboat holds a corresponding position in the taste and affections of the publicgoes out bountifully towards the symmetrical, stately, graceful object of his adventurous skill and toil. Ocean-clippers and river-steamers are fast making way for locomotive and propeller, about which human affections scarce can cluster, and which art has yet to learn how to dignify and adorn. But the vital principle, love of the work, still lives, that gave to the sailing-vessel new PILGRIM ARCHITECTURE. 289 grace and beauty, combining them with the highest qualities of utility and strength into a happy unity of form. As soon as an equal love is turned towards architecture, we may expect as rapid a development of beauty of material form on land as on the ocean. Our forefathers built simply for protection and adaptation. Their style of dwelling-houses was suited to the climate, materials at hand, and social exigencies. Hence it was true and natural. They could not deal in artifice or plagiarism, because they had no tricks of beauty to display and nothing to copy. Over their simple truth of expression time has thrown the veil of rustic enchantment, so that the farm-houses still standing of the period of the Indian wars are a much more pleasurable feature of the landscape than their pretentious villa-successors of the nineteenth century. The public buildings of our colonial period are interesting solely from association. Anything of architectural pretence, more destitute of beauty, it would be difficult to originate; and yet, as meagre a legacy as they are of the native styles of ancestral England and Holland at that date, they avoid the worst faults of ornamentation and plagiarism of later work. Any of them might have been sent over the seas to order, like a dress-coat, and placed wherever needed, without other thought than to get a substantial building for as little money as possible. Yet there is about them, as well as the aristocratic mansions of colonial times, a certain quiet dignity of construct 290 COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE. ural expression which bespeaks conscious rank and gentlemanly breeding. It is true, they have misplaced pilasters, pillars, and other incongruous thefts of classical architecture, in mathematical rank-and-file order upon wall-surfaces, with which they have nothing in common in feature or spirit, but, notwithstanding the pettinesses of the pettiest of the imitators of Wren or Jones, they are not overborne and crushed by them, but wear them with as self-possessed an air as their owners did foreign orders and titles, rejoicing in possessing conventional distinctions of rank not had by their neighbors. Fergusson says, "There was not a building erected in the United States before A. D. 1814, worthy of being mentioned as an example of architectural art." This sweeping assertion may disturb the serenity of those who look upon the City Hall of New York, the State House at Boston, and buildings of their time and class as very wonderful. We agree entirely with the judgment of Fergusson from his stand-point of criticism. But there are details and features in many of the earlier buildings that are pleasurable and in good taste, while the edifices, as a whole, are not displeasing. The Boston State House is a symmetrical, well-proportioned building, simple and quiet in its application of classical details, with an overgrown lantern on a diminutive dome, but, as an entirety, effective and imposing. Its good taste is more in its negative than positive qualities, and happy adaptation of foreign styles to our wants, which at this early period almost |