Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: v. 10, no. 250: December 28, 1872

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AND BUILDERS* GUIDE. Vol. X. NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 18^2. No. 250. Publi-ihed Weeklu bv T][E REAL ESTATE RBCOllD ASSOCIATION. TEEMS. One year, in ad v.ince.............."........ 56 00 All communications should be addressed to •7 AND 9 WARllBN STRKET. No receipt for money due tlie Eeatj Estate Eecop.d will be aclaioivledged unless signed by one of our re,s;nlar collectors. HuNTiv D. Smith or Trio.MAS F. Cummi.ngs. All bills for collection will be sent from the office on a regu¬ larly printed form. CTSTOM AHB INYE!«TI01I I^ AECHITEC- TUSE. TtiEEE are two antagonistic classes of thinlc- ers in architecture, as. in every other field of the Fine Arts, which for want of better terms might be called the Orthodox and the Heterodox. The first of these believe in ancient examples as the alpha and omega of all art. They are content to copy them with childish dependence, and to slavishly follow the traditions of the past, without any regard to progress and devel¬ opment. To them the invention of any new style appears a perfect impossibility, a mere myth, and they sneer at such a thing as inven¬ tive talent, believing that all which is necessary to success is faithful copyism of .good models. They take a column from the Parthenon, if of the G-reek persuasion, and detail its proportions to the minutest fractions; or if of the Gothic school, select the mouldings from rare old exam¬ ples and lay them dovm with mathematical pre¬ cision. The student who shall dare to deviate by the breadth of a hair from the exact dimen¬ sions and proportions of that Greek column, or who shall venture to make the undercutting of that Gothic moulding a little deeper or a little shallower than the original, is a dangerous member of the community, who deserves to be ignominiously expelled from the realms of art. Such men believe that architecture gradually grew to perfection in past ages, and that to touch its decrees is almost sacrilegious. They have no faith in individual genius, and think that architects are made, not born, that any good draughtsman, if he will only sinlc his own individuality and honestly copy what the past has laid before him, will fully accomplish all the requirements of art. The other class of thinkers take the very opposite ground. They deny that the past had any exclusive patent for the good and beautiful in art, and claim that the present is as open to all the triumphs of inventive faculty. So far from excessive learning being any aid to imagi¬ nation, they assert that it of tenet proves a draw¬ back. Lord Macauiay says somewhere, that the rudest nations,' the unlearned vocabulary of uncultivated society, have been most produc¬ tive of practical genius Blair, in his " E ssay on Rhetoric," sustains this opinion, and says that there is imagery enough in the short speech of a wild Indian chief to supply half a dozen epic poems. The reason for this is obvious. From the very paucity of knowledge, the agents iu both these cases have to fall back upon Nature, the fountain of all thought, for their similes. Nations, like individuals, are first poetical, then philosophical, and though the vivid impressions of youth may lose themselves in the maturer faculty and age of reason and generalization, it is clear that no mere reference to past exam¬ ples can compensate for thought. Backed by such reasoning these thinkers disclaim all obe¬ dience to past authority, and assert that our architects would effect more by cultivating the spirit of origiuality within them, than they can glean from all the art of ancient or mediasval times. The fact of the matter is that both these ideas, if properly regulated, are good, but car¬ ried to excess are only productive of evil. There is no genius, however great, that can afford to discard the lessons to be gained from the accumulated wisdom of past ages; whUe, on the other hand, no amount of archseological lore can compensate for the loss of original thinking on the part of a designer. Architec¬ ture in the present day, and nowhere more prominently than in this country, is unfortti- nately suffering from the abuse rather than the use of both these ideas; although the heterodox party seem to have considerably the advantage. While there is no reason whatever why we should slavishly follow the models of the past, there is equally no reason why we should take what has been stamped as excellent by the accumulated thought and wisdom of whole generations, and paraphrase them by unmeaning applications which never entered the imagina¬ tions of the iuventors. Styles have grown by gradually grafting perfections upon what ori¬ ginally started in the actual necessities of man. The Grecian style, the eastern or tent-like form, the high-steeped gables of the Gothic age, had all their varied origin in human necessity, niUch as the outward garb of the Esquimaux or the dweller in the tropics to-day. To miS: and confound these different styles, each one full of its own intrinsic beauties, is therefore an unwarrantable and senseless anachronism that betrays no inventive faculty, bnt the very lack of it. Such incongruities are so opposed to everything rational, that the most uneducated eye is offended when it meets them, without being able to trace the source of the displeas¬ ure. A Grecian pediment, for instance, flanked by Gothic buttresses and pinnacles, produces an admixture that the most untutored would recognize as absurb, the reason why it is so being only known to th'ose who have made a study of the subject. And yet, looking over the architecture of our city, how many of these monstrous specimens of "novelty" and "in¬ ventive faculty " do we meet with ?—cases in which styles of every description are mixed up without the remotest reference to th^ir mean¬ ing or adaptation. This is the worst of all phases in which ignorance of art can be mani¬ fested. If some imperious law could be pro¬ mulgated upon the subject, we should say let the man of genius, taking the noble models of the past for his guide, catch the spirit which animated those producti(ms while evolving hia own originality ; but let the brainless man be content to follow the examples of his betters where he is manifestly incompetent to lead. In short, in the present condition of architec¬ ture here—where each man thinks himself as capable as another, with or without the neces¬ sary education—a little more orthodoxy would do us no harm, if it would only induce our architectural students to imbibe a little more of the good which has gone before them, be¬ fore considering themselves qualified to take independent flights in the regions of inven¬ tion. TIIE NEW MEMORIAL PEESBYTEKIAN CHURCH. This new place of worship, just completed at the comer of Madison avenue and Fifty-third street, was. opened on Sunday last for divine service. It is one of those costly and conspicu¬ ous, ecclesiastical buildings, professedly Gothic, which are going up with such rapidity in the city, especially in the much improved neigh¬ borhood in which it is located, and consequently calls for more than a mere passing notice. The Rev. Dr. P. H, Tyng, Jr,, in his address on the occasion of the opening, said emphatically : "I have a settled conviction that the Gospel can never live in a Gothic church—one of them must go dovm." Considering that the reverend gentleman was at the time speaking in a church which, if it aims at any style at all, certainly attempts to class itself as Gothic, the expres¬ sion reads very much like a covert satire upon the design. Allowing him to be right in his opinion, there is nothing whatever to prevent the Gospel from living in the New Memorial Presbyterian Church; for, whatever its aspira¬ tions may be. it certainly cannot pretend to be strictly called a Gothic church. In Gothic forms it abounds; Gothic tracery to the windows Gothic arches, buttresses, mouldings, etc., but these are so intermixed with other forms of totally distinct styles that it puzzles any one to invent a nomenclature for it. The faults of this buildiag—externally at least—are more in matters of detail than pro¬ portions, which latter are usually very good.