THE LATE MR. THOMAS HASTINGS.
In the death of Mr. Thomas Hastings America has lost one of the greatest architects she has produced. Hastings. who had practised in New York since 1885, was a leader in the revival of architecture which has been an outstanding development in the United States during the past forty or fifty years. He was never an enthusiast for the skyscraper, although, oddly enough, one of the most admired of all of them was the work of his firm. Frequently he protested against municipal authorities who, as he said, could not "see the good sense and economic justice of limiting within reason the height of buildings." Such considerations always entered into his own work, in which he sought with conspicuous success to combine utility and beauty in a scholarly regard for tradition and a lively responsiveness to modern needs and the environment in which his work was to stand. The New York Public Library, the Senate House and office buildings in Washington, the Ponce De Leon and Aleazar Hotels at St. Augustine, Florida, and the Arlington Memorial Amphitheatre are among many notable examples of his art.
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