ARCHITECTURAL NOTES.
THE- PROBLEM OF THE OFFICE BLOCK.
ONE of the most difficult problems which faces the modern architect is the designing of - a high office-block. He gets no help from the past and little from contemporary opinion, for this is profoundly and irreconcilably divided. Is he boldly to pile up a great uncompromising block with storey on storey of identical -design and face the people who will say that it looks like a prison or a warehouse ? Or is he to exercise his ingenuity by varying the treatment of each floor and, by giving a graceful diversity to his elevations, satisfy the innate romantic leanings of all humanity--par- ticularly English humanity. Up till now the second of these two tendencies has gained the day: Office-blocks are described by house agents with an accidental lapse into strictest truth as " palatial." It is the right word, for they have more of the palace thari of the office-block in them.
Two buildings of capital importance are at the present time nearing completion in the City of London. They are both office-blocks and it would be impossible to have better instances of the _ two solutions of the problem. They arc designed by the two men who would almost unanimously be described as the two leading British architects. One building is Adelaide House, at the northern end of London Bridge, opposite Fishmongers' Hall, by Sir John Burnet ; and the other Britannic House, in Finsbury Circus and Moorgatc, designed by Sir E. Lutyens for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The former is an office-block of the most uncompromising description, and the latter out-palaces most of the royal residences of Europe.
Adelaide House occupies a magnificent site and replaces a former Adelaide House called after a homely and amiable Queen. One wonders what she would think of the present structure, which is surely the most ruthless in London. The ground floor and the floors below the street level going down to the river are faced with granite. Above them rise seven identical storeys. The building is astylar, but the cornice is reminiscent of Egyptian forms. The ranges of windows in these storeys crowned by their cornice are set against a flat wall round which the cornice does not return; and the silhouette is consequently unbroken. The only ornament on this vast wall surface are the air intakes between . each range of windows, and these are given the form of stars. Above the Egyptian cornice is another storey. The roof is fiat. The building envelops on two sides Wren's beautiful tower of the church of St. Magnus the Martyr which was formerly so well seen from London Bridge ; and, as if to show how little it minds about that, the wall adjoining the church is of plain yellow stock brick and the narrow crack between the tower and this wall is filled with the inner side of the courtyard, which is faced with white glazed brick.
Britannic House, with facades on Finsbury Circus and Moorgate, also occupies a commanding position and is roughly speaking the same size as Adelaide House, Two buildings . devoted to the same purpose and of about the same dimensions could hardly be more different. The Knglo-Persian Oil •
Company's building shows 'eight rows of windows on -each of
its elevations; though there are probably more hi the court= yards. Each of these floors is differently treated.'
over, the windows on each floor vary one from another. Between the fourth and fifth storeys runs a cornice and balustrade, which cuts the building horizontally into two. halves. Above, the wall sets back a foot or two—a feature which must have presented a considerable constructional the remaining four storeys resemble an orangery or Beiedere with one vast arched window passing through two storeys, alternating with two small ones. Three- quarter columns of the Corinthian order with a full entabla- ture over them decorate this part of the façade and above rises a steep roof of green slates. The whole is profusely decorated with carved ornament, chiefly foliage and masks, the former of quite astonishing beauty and the latter hardly up to the same standard.
Even these bald and summary descriptions are enough to show the profound gulf which yawns between the artistic aims of our two greatest architects. It is probably a tempera- mental gulf, which will also divide the lay public and the critics. Adelaide House clearly expresses its purpose and shows without apology that it contains floor upon floor of offices of equal importance, each office with rows of windows of identical size. It is immediately obvious that this is not a residence with high State Apartments on one storey, with bedrooms on the next and smaller bedrooms above that. No attempt is made to mitigate its height which is, indeed, rather emphasized. And yet even those who most dislike every- thing that such a building represents—ruthless commercial efficiency, unrelieved by any of the lighter graces of life, hard and unhumorous—must feel how superb is the result, how strong and how typical of a great imperial city.
The admirers of Sir E. Lutyens's Britannic House will reply, that mere utilitarianism is not efficiency, that a commercial traveller, no matter how honest and energetic, is not efficient if he has a repellent manner, that it does not matter in the least that one floor of offices should be different from the one above or that one table should be better lit than its neighbour. Why should not a block of offices look like a palace ? What matters is that it should look beautiful, and this Sir E. Lutyeas'a design certainly does. Among the modern buildings of the City of London there is nothing which has the poetic quality and inspiration of these airy arches towering above the trees of Finsbury Circus and of these columns which, like Mulciber's, " gleam in far piazzian line " down the common-place vista of Moorgate.
But, deep down there is all the time an uncomfortable feeling, suppressed but recurrent, that a losing battle is being waged and that lovely things like 'Corinthian capitals and swags of fruit, still luscious in their petrifaction, are gradually sinking below the rising tide of modern commercial pressure as the marble villas have been engulfed beneath the waters of
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