A Text-Book of the History of Architecture Part 26

CHAPTER XXVI.

RECENT ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Chateau, Fergusson. Also Barqui, _L'Architecture moderne en France_.--_Berlin und seine Bauten_ (and a series of similar works on the modern buildings of other German cities). Daly, _Architecture privee du XIXe siecle_.

Garnier, _Le nouvel Opera_. Gourlier, _Choix d'edifices publics_.

Licht, _Architektur Deutschlands_. Lubke, _Denkmaler der Kunst_.

Lutzow und Tischler, _Wiener Neubauten_. Narjoux, _Monuments eleves par la ville de Paris, 1850-1880_. Ruckwardt, _Facaden und Details modernen Bauten_.--_Sammelmappe hervorragenden Concurrenz-Entwurfen._ Sedille, _L'Architecture moderne_.

Selfridge, _Modern French Architecture_. Statham, _Modern Architecture_. Villars, _England, Scotland, and Ireland_ (tr.

Henry Frith). Consult also _Transactions of the Royal Inst.i.tute of British Architects_, and the leading architectural journals of recent years.

+MODERN CONDITIONS.+ The nineteenth century has been pre-eminently an age of industrial progress. Its most striking advances have been along mechanical, scientific, and commercial lines. As a result of this material progress the general conditions of mankind in civilized countries have undoubtedly been greatly bettered. Popular education and the printing-press have also raised the intellectual level of society, making learning the privilege of even the poorest. Intellectual, scientific, and commercial pursuits have thus largely absorbed those energies which in other ages found exercise in the creation of artistic forms and objects. The critical and sceptical spirit, the spirit of utilitarianism and realism, has checked the free and general development of the creative imagination, at least in the plastic arts. While in poetry and music there have been great and n.o.ble achievements, the plastic arts, including architecture, have only of late years attained a position at all worthy of the intellectual advancement of the times.

Nevertheless the artistic spirit has never been wholly crushed out by the untoward pressure of realism and commercialism. Unfortunately it has repeatedly been directed in wrong channels. Modern archaeology and the publication of the forms of historic art by books and photographs have too exclusively fastened attention upon the details of extinct styles as a source of inspiration in design. The whole range of historic art is brought within our survey, and while this has on the one hand tended toward the confusion and multiplication of styles in modern work, it has on the other led to a slavish adherence to historic precedent or a literal copying of historic forms. Modern architecture has thus oscillated between the extremes of archaeological servitude and of an unreasoning eclecticism. In the hands of men of inferior training the results have been deplorable travesties of all styles, or meaningless aggregations of ill-a.s.sorted forms.

An important factor in this demoralization of architectural design has been the development of new constructive methods, especially in the use of iron and steel. It has been impossible for modern designers, in their treatment of style, to keep pace with the rapid changes in the structural use of metal in architecture. The roofs of vast span, largely composed of gla.s.s, which modern methods of trussing have made possible for railway stations, armories, and exhibition buildings; the immense unenc.u.mbered s.p.a.ces which may be covered by them; the introduction and development, especially in the United States, of the post-and-girder system of construction for high buildings, in which the external walls are a mere screen or filling-in; these have revolutionized architecture so rapidly and completely that architects are still struggling and groping to find the solution of many of the problems of style, scale, and composition which they have brought forward.

Within the last thirty years, however, architecture has, despite these new conditions, made notable advances. The artistic emulation of repeated international exhibitions, the multiplication of museums and schools of art, the general advance in intelligence and enlightenment, have all contributed to this artistic progress. There appears to be more of the artistic and intellectual quality in the average architecture of the present time, on both sides of the Atlantic, than at any previous period in this century. The futility of the archaeological revival of extinct styles is generally recognized. New conditions are gradually procuring the solution of the very problems they raise. Historic precedent sits more lightly on the architect than formerly, and the essential unity of principle underlying all good design is coming to be better understood.[26]

[Footnote 26: See Appendix D.]

+FRANCE.+ It is in France, Germany (including Austria), and England that the architectural progress of this period in Europe has been most marked. We have already noticed the results of the cla.s.sic revivals in these three countries. Speaking broadly, it may be said that in France the influence of the _ecole des Beaux-Arts_, while it has tended to give greater unity and consistency to the national architecture, and has exerted a powerful influence in behalf of refinement of taste and correctness of style, has also stood in the way of a free development of new ideas. French architecture has throughout adhered to the principles of the Renaissance, though the style has during this century been modified by various influences. The first of these was the Neo-Grec movement, alluded to in the last chapter, which broke the grip of Roman tradition in matters of detail and gave greater elasticity to the national style. Next should be mentioned the Gothic movement represented by Viollet-le-Duc, La.s.sus, Ballu, and their followers. Beginning about 1845, it produced comparatively few notable buildings, but gave a great impulse to the study of mediaeval archaeology and the restoration of mediaeval monuments. The churches of Ste. Clothilde and of St. Jean de Belleville, at Paris, and the reconstruction of the Chateau de Pierrefonds, were among its direct results. Indirectly it led to a freer and more rational treatment of constructive forms and materials than had prevailed with the academic designers. The church of +St. Augustin+, by _Baltard_, at Paris, ill.u.s.trates this in its use of iron and brick for the dome and vaulting, and the +College Chaptal+, by _E. Train_, in its decorative treatment of brick and tile externally. The general adoption of iron for roof-trusses and for the construction of markets and similar buildings tended further in the same direction, the +Halles Centrales+ at Paris, by _Baltard_, being a notable example.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 208.--PLAN OF LOUVRE AND TUILERIES, PARIS.

A, A, _the Old Louvre, so called_; B, B, _the New Louvre._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 209.--PAVILION OF RICHELIEU, LOUVRE.]

+THE SECOND EMPIRE.+ The reign of Napoleon III. (1852-70) was a period of exceptional activity, especially in Paris. The greatest monument of his reign was the completion of the +Louvre+ and +Tuileries+, under _Visconti_ and _Lefuel_, including the remodelling of the pavilions de Flore and de Marsan. The new portions const.i.tute the most notable example of modern French architecture, and the manner in which the two palaces were united deserves high praise. In spite of certain defects, this work is marked by a combination of dignity, richness, and refinement, such as are rarely found in palace architecture (Figs. 208, 209). The +New Opera+ (1863-75), by _Garnier_ (d. 1898), stands next to the Louvre in importance as a national monument. It is by far the most sumptuous building for amus.e.m.e.nt in existence, but in purity of detail and in the balance and restraint of its design it is inferior to the work of Visconti and Lefuel (Fig. 210). To this reign belong the Palais de l'Industrie, by _Viel_, built for the exhibition of 1855, and several great railway stations (Gare du Nord, by Hitorff, Gare de l'Est, Gare d'Orleans, etc.), in which the modern French version of the Renaissance was applied with considerable skill to buildings largely constructed of iron and gla.s.s. Town halls and theatres were erected in great numbers, and in decorative works like fountains and monuments the French were particularly successful. The fountains of +St. Michel+, Cuvier, and Moliere, at Paris, and of +Longchamps+, at Ma.r.s.eilles (Fig. 211), ill.u.s.trate the fertility of resource and elegance of detailed treatment of the French in this department. Mention should also here be made of the extensive enterprises carried out by Napoleon III., in rectifying and embellishing the street-plan of Paris by new avenues and squares on a vast scale, adding greatly to the monumental splendor of the city.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 210.--GRAND STAIRCASE OF THE OPERA, PARIS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 211.--FOUNTAIN OF LONGCHAMPS, Ma.r.s.eILLES.]

+THE REPUBLIC.+ Since the disasters of 1870 a number of important structures have been erected, and French architecture has shown a remarkable vitality and flexibility under new conditions. Its productions have in general been marked by a refined taste and a conspicuous absence of eccentricity and excess; but it has for the most part trodden in well-worn paths. The most notable recent monuments are, in church architecture, the +Sacre-Cur+, at Montmartre, by _Abadie_, a votive church inspired from the Franco-Byzantine style of Aquitania; in civil architecture the new +Hotel de Ville+, at Paris, by _Ballu_ and _Deperthes_, recalling the original structure destroyed by the Commune, but in reality an original creation of great merit; in scholastic architecture the new ecole de Medecine, and the new +Sorbonne+, by _Nenot_, and in other branches of the art the metal-and-gla.s.s exhibition buildings of 1878, 1889, and 1900. In the last of these the striving for originality and the effort to discard traditional forms reached the extreme, although accompanied by much very clever detail and a masterly use of color-decoration. To these should be added many noteworthy theatres, town-halls, court-houses, and _prefectures_ in provincial cities, and commemorative columns and monuments almost without number.

In street architecture there is now much more variety and originality than formerly, especially in private houses, and the reaction against the orders and against traditional methods of design has of late been growing stronger. The chief excellence of modern French architecture lies in its rational planning, monumental spirit, and refinement of detail (Fig. 212).

+GERMANY AND AUSTRIA.+ German architecture has been more affected during the past fifty years by the archaeological spirit than has the French.

A p.r.o.nounced mediaeval revival partly accompanied, partly followed the Greek revival in Germany, and produced a number of churches and a few secular buildings in the basilican, Romanesque, and Gothic styles.These are less interesting than those in the Greek style, because mediaeval forms are even more foreign to modern needs than the cla.s.sic, being compatible only with systems of design and construction which are no longer practicable. At Munich the Auekirche, by _Ohlmuller_, in an attenuated Gothic style; the Byzantine Ludwigskirche, and _Ziebland's_ Basilica following Early Christian models; the Basilica by _Hubsch _, at Bulach, and the Votive Church at Vienna (1856) by H. Von Ferstel (1828-1883) are notable neo-mediaeval monuments. The last-named church may be cla.s.sed with Ste. Clothilde at Paris (see p. 371), and St.

Patrick's Cathedral at New York, all three being of approximately the same size and general style, recalling St. Ouen at Rouen. They are correct and elaborate, but more or less cold and artificial.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 212.--MUSeE GALLIeRA, PARIS.]

More successful are many of the German theatres and concert halls, in which Renaissance and cla.s.sic forms have been freely used. In several of these the attempt has been made to express by the external form the curvilinear plan of the auditorium, as in the +Dresden Theatre+, by _Semper_ (1841; Fig. 213), the theatre at Carlsruhe, by Hubsch, and the double winter-summer +Victoria Theatre+, at Berlin, by _t.i.tz_. But the practical and aesthetic difficulties involved in this treatment have caused its general abandonment. The +Opera House+ at Vienna, by _Siccardsburg_ and _Van der Null_ (1861-69), is rectangular in its ma.s.ses, and but for a certain triviality of detail would rank among the most successful buildings of its kind. The new +Burgtheater+ in the same city is a more elaborately ornate structure in Renaissance style, somewhat florid and overdone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 213.--THEATRE AT DRESDEN.]

Modern German architecture is at its best in academic and residential buildings. The +Bauschule+, at Berlin, by Sc.h.i.n.kel, in which brick is used in a rational and dignified design without the orders; the Polytechnic School, at Zurich, by Semper; university buildings, and especially buildings for technical instruction, at Carlsruhe, Stuttgart, Strasburg, Vienna, and other cities, show a monumental treatment of the exterior and of the general distribution, combined with a careful study of practical requirements. In administrative buildings the Germans have hardly been as successful; and the new +Parliament House+, at Berlin, by _Wallot_, in spite of its splendor and costliness, is heavy and unsatisfactory in detail. The larger cities, especially Berlin, contain many excellent examples of house architecture, mostly in the Renaissance style, sufficiently monumental in design, though usually, like most German work, inclined to heaviness of detail. The too free use of stucco in imitation of stone is also open to criticism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 214.--BLOCK OF DWELLINGS (MARIE-THERESIENHOF), VIENNA.]

+VIENNA.+ During the last thirty years Vienna has undergone a transformation which has made it the rival of Paris as a stately capital. The remodelling of the central portion, the creation of a series of magnificent boulevards and squares, and the grouping of the chief state and munic.i.p.al buildings about these upon a monumental scheme of arrangement, have given the city an unusual aspect of splendor. Among the most important monuments in this group are the +Parliament House+, by Hansen (see p. 360), and the +Town Hall+, by _Schmidt_. This latter is a Neo-Gothic edifice of great size and pretentiousness, but strangely thin and meagre in detail, and quite out of harmony with its surroundings. The university and museums are ma.s.sive piles in Renaissance style; and it is the Renaissance rather than the cla.s.sic or Gothic revival which prevails throughout the new city. The great blocks of residences and apartments (Fig. 214) which line its streets are highly ornate in their architecture, but for the most part done in stucco, which fails after all to give the aspect of solidity and durability which it seeks to counterfeit.

The city of +Buda-Pesth+ has also in recent years undergone a phenomenal transformation of a similar nature to that effected in Vienna, but it possesses fewer monuments of conspicuous architectural interest. The +Synagogue+ is the most noted of these, a rich and pleasing edifice of brick in a modified Hispano-Moresque style.

+GREAT BRITAIN.+ During the closing years of the Anglo-Greek style a coterie of enthusiastic students of British mediaeval monuments--archaeologists rather than architects--initiated a movement for the revival of the national Gothic architecture. The first fruits of this movement, led by Pugin, Brandon, Rickman, and others (about 1830-40), were seen in countless pseudo-Gothic structures in which the pointed arches, b.u.t.tresses, and cl.u.s.tered shafts of mediaeval architecture were imitated or parodied according to the designer's ability, with frequent misapprehension of their proper use or significance. This unintelligent misapplication of Gothic forms was, however, confined to the earlier stages of the movement. With increasing light and experience came a more correct and consistent use of the mediaeval styles, dominated by the same spirit of archaeological correctness which had produced the _cla.s.sicismo_ of the Late Renaissance in Italy. This spirit, stimulated by extensive enterprises in the restoration of the great mediaeval monuments of the United Kingdom, was fatal to any free and original development of the style along new lines.

But it rescued church architecture from the utter meanness and debas.e.m.e.nt into which it had fallen, and established a standard of taste which reacted on all other branches of design.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 215.--HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, WESTMINSTER, LONDON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 216.--a.s.sIZE COURTS, MANCHESTER. DETAIL.]

+THE VICTORIAN GOTHIC.+ Between 1850 and 1870 the striving after archaeological correctness gave place to the more rational effort to adapt Gothic principles to modern requirements, instead of merely copying extinct styles. This effort, prosecuted by a number of architects of great intelligence, culture, and earnestness (Sir Gilbert Scott, George Edmund Street, William Burges, and others), resulted in a number of extremely interesting buildings. Chief among these in size and cost stand the +Parliament Houses+ at Westminster, by _Sir Charles Barry_ (begun 1839), in the Perpendicular style. This immense structure (Fig. 215), imposing in its simple ma.s.ses and refined in its carefully studied detail, is the most successful monument of the Victorian Gothic style. It suffers, however, from the want of proper relation of scale between its decorative elements and the vast proportions of the edifice, which belittle its component elements. It cannot, on the whole, be claimed as a successful vindication of the claims of the promoters of the style as to the adaptability of Gothic forms to structures planned and built after the modern fashion. The +a.s.size Courts+ at Manchester (Fig. 216), the +New Museum+ at Oxford, the gorgeous +Albert Memorial+ at London, by _Scott_, and the +New Law Courts+ at London, by _Street_, are all conspicuous ill.u.s.trations of the same truth. They are conscientious, carefully studied designs in good taste, and yet wholly unsuited in style to their purpose. They are like labored and scholarly verse in a foreign tongue, correct in form and language, but lacking the naturalness and charm of true and unfettered inspiration. A later essay of the same sort in a slightly different field is the +Natural History Museum+ at South Kensington, by _Waterhouse_ (1879), an imposing building in a modified Romanesque style (Fig. 217).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 217.--NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON.]

+OTHER WORKS.+ The Victorian Gothic style responded to no deep and general movement of the popular taste, and, like the Anglo-Greek style, was doomed to failure from the inherent incongruity between modern needs and mediaeval forms. Within the last twenty years there has been a quite general return to Renaissance principles, and the result is seen in a large number of town-halls, exchanges, museums, and colleges, in which Renaissance forms, with and without the orders, have been treated with increasing freedom and skilful adaptation to the materials and special requirements of each case. The Albert Memorial Hall (1863, by General Scott) may be taken as an early instance of this movement, and the +Imperial Inst.i.tute+ (Colonial offices), by Collcutt, and Oxford Town Hall, by Aston Webb, as among its latest manifestations. In domestic architecture the so-called Queen Anne style has been much in vogue, as practised by Norman Shaw, Ernest George, and others. It is really a modern style, originating in the imitation of the modified Palladian style as used in the brick architecture of Queen Anne's time, but freely and often artistically altered to meet modern tastes and needs.

In its emanc.i.p.ation from the mistaken principles of archaeological revivals, and in its evidences of improved taste and awakened originality, contemporary British architecture shows promise of good things to come. It is still inferior to the French in the monumental quality, in technical resource and refinement of decorative detail.

+ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE.+ In other European countries recent architecture shows in general increasing freedom and improved good taste, but both its opportunities and its performance have been nowhere else as conspicuous as in France, Germany, and England. The costly Bourse and the vast but overloaded Palais de Justice at Brussels, by _Polaert_, are neither of them conspicuous for refined and cultivated taste. A few buildings of note in Switzerland, Russia, and Greece might find mention in a more extended review of architecture, but cannot here even be enumerated. In Italy, especially at Rome, Milan, Naples, and Turin, there has been a great activity in building since 1870, but with the exception of the +Monument to Victor Emmanuel+ and the National Museum at Rome, monumental arcades and pa.s.sages at Milan and Naples, and _Campi Santi_ or monumental cemeteries at Bologna, Genoa, and one or two other places, there has been almost nothing of real importance built in Italy of late years.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson, Statham. Also, Chandler, _The Colonial Architecture of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia_. Cleaveland and Campbell, _American Landmarks_. Corner and Soderholz, _Colonial Architecture in New England_. Crane and Soderholz, _Examples of Colonial Architecture in Charleston and Savannah_. Drake, _Historic Fields and Mansions of Middles.e.x_.

Everett, _Historic Churches of America_. King, _Handbook of Boston_; _Handbook of New York_. Little, _Early New England Interiors_. Schuyler, _American Architecture_. Van Rensselaer, _H.

H. Richardson and His Works_. Wallis, _Old Colonial Architecture and Furniture_.

+GENERAL REMARKS.+ The colonial architecture of modern times presents a peculiar phenomenon. The colonizing nation, carrying into its new _habitat_ the tastes and practices of a long-established civilization, modifies these only with the utmost reluctance, under the absolute compulsion of new conditions. When the new home is virgin soil, dest.i.tute of cultivation, government, or civilized inhabitants, the accompaniments and activities of civilization introduced by the colonists manifest themselves at first in curious contrast to the primitive surroundings. The struggle between organized life and chaos, the laborious subjugation of nature to the requirements of our complex modern life, for a considerable period absorb the energies of the colonists. The amenities of culture, the higher intellectual life, the refinements of art can, during this period, receive little attention.

Meanwhile a new national character is being formed; the people are undergoing the moral training upon which their subsequent achievements must depend. With the conquest of brute nature, however, and the gradual emergence of a more cultivated cla.s.s, with the growth of commerce and wealth and the consequent increase of leisure, the humanities find more place in the colonial life. The fine arts appear in scattered centres determined by peculiarly favorable conditions. For a long time they retain the impress, and seek to reproduce the forms, of the art of the mother country. But new conditions impose a new development. Maturing commerce with other lands brings in foreign influences, to which the still unformed colonial art is peculiarly susceptible. Only with political and commercial independence, fully developed internal resources, and a high national culture do the arts finally attain, as it were, their majority, and enter upon a truly national growth.