AMERICA AND ARCHITECTURE.*

ALL good architects, and such others as love right building ana common-sense, owe thanks to Mr. Matlock Price for his Practical Book of Architecture. For, though the Temple of Karnak figeres in the first picture, the book really is practical—i.e., ti propos of present needs and conditions—and the last of its two hundred plates illustratT an electric-power house, no less, in the Nee-Grecian manner. Between the two lie Europe and the centuries, widely though somewhat capriciously traversed, also America ; but chiefly America. The European examples, be they Italian, Spanish, French, or English, are mostly paraded to show whence American architects 'have drawn their inspiration—their " notions "—foi the Transatlantic buildings that are shown alongside. Germany and the Lbw Countries appear to have had curiously little direct influence, whilst modern English domestic architecture is somewhat woefully mis- represented by a sorry collection of lisping suburbanalities. The book is, however, stuffed with robust common-sense, despite its rather dia. couraging and misleading frontispiece. This is a " prettyesque " water-colour of a notoriously picturesque Surrey manor—half- timbered, sundialed, creeper-clad, with the best mellow sunset glow turned full on from the O.P. Lime. The whole thing reeks-of straw- berries-and-cream, and turtledoves, and snowy-haired Prebendaries, and blue-eyed heroines ; whilst the sticky sweetness of " Home, Sweet Home " seems positively to ooze from the opened. lattices and to drip with an audible " plop " into the inevitable bed of lavender. And this—this light-opera back-cloth—is held up for admiration and emulation in that great country which can (and does) boast of such achievements as the Woolworth Building—that soaring fif ty- storied pile of sheer genius—the exquisitely refined. Morgan library, the cliff-like fortress-college at West Point, and the classically majestic Pennsylvania Railroad terminus, New York City. Hard and humiliating is our lot to have our native architecture thus commended merely for its haphazardness and accidents—its

ingle- nooks, its creepers, its earwigs !

It has been weighed in the balance and found—" Quaint." Pos- sibly it is just. Let us at any rate execute or segregate all our Royal Academicians forthwith and petition for an immediate posthumous knighthood for the designer of Ring's Cross Station. Clearly we arb. in danger, else, of being petted and patronized as a nation of artistic' confectioners. Some protest is needed, preferably by deeds. We have little, in truth, to show in the way of modern buildings of any heroic scale or Doric austerity, such as might be fondly thought symbolic of our modern England ; but we have modem buildings that are at least honest, scholarly, and humane, and it is this reason- able, comely architecture of ours that we would fain have under- stood and appreciated, rather than the mere popular picturesqueness of moth-eaten ramshackledom.

Mr. Price gives a great deal of extremely sound instruction and advice, and that with convincing point and clarity. Admirable theories or principles are eloquently argued or presented ; but the unworthy, and even second-rate, examples with which lie some- time] seeks to illustrate them, tend rather to damp one's latent enthusiasm and to check one's conversion. His English " typical] " are for the moat-part peculiarly ill chosen and unfortunate, and there is scarcely a single example of contemporary British work that rises above the level of competent mediocrity. There is a certain con- fusion of names and dates and other internal evidence suggesting that the author is not very intimate with our English-architect:me or its history, and that he was constrained to use just such-photo- graphs as found their way to him through the post. Still, like a good Ally, he makes ties most of such virtue as he can find in es, and'is • 2'he Practical Book of Architecture. By G. C. Matlock Price. London: J. B. lasahrwat. Conasss. Rte. nets

even generdus enough to declare that" if we consistently adhered to our honest personal desires, and consulted rather than coerced our architects, we might look forward to the attainment of a country house comparable in aesthetic and picturesque value with the works of the English architects." A number of charming early American country houses are shown, pre-eminent amongst which is the stately little Palladian Palace of that great American nobleman, Thomas Jefferson—built from his own scholarly designs. Under the photo- graph appears the following fitting comment: " The architectural ability of Jefferson reflects the time in which a scholarly appreciation of architecture, even as an amateur, was regarded as part of the liberal education of a gentleman." Those indeed were good days for architecture and architects.

That Mr. Price has a distinct turn for aphorism and the pithy "potting" of his thesis the following fragments will bear witness:— " Few definitions are safe, and the best of them are more clever than accurate. Architecture has been called the art of building beautifully,' which, perhaps, is as valuable as most epigrammatic. definitions. The attempt has been made from the time of Vitra- . ins, and an early English writer, paraphrasing that classic authority, states that Well building bath three conditions : Com- modity, Firmness and Delight.' Perhaps it would be bard to find any terse characterisation so accurately applicable to all architec- ture—that a building should be appropriate to its use, strongly built, and pleasing to look upon."

" The unfortunate thing is that as many people see only buildings, and have never trained themselves to see architecture."

" Nor should allusion be omitted to the citizen who is called upon, as a member of a board, to pass judgment on the design of an important pubis building. It is unfortunate if a private house be bungled--calamitous in the ease of a library or a city hall. In this connection we are impressed by the importance of architectural education as a civic obligation, as a duty to the community. Public money is being spent yearly throughout the country for the erection of important public buildings, yet architecturally the public has never seen the buildings."

" Knowledge raises understanding to the level of intelligent appreciation."

" To see in all architecture a product of evolution, is to possess at once the key to its study."

" Being a work of the hand of man, architecture has always reflected the naiad of man—and in this alone should lie much of its interest."

" No new style was founded without reason, and solely because of a desire for novelty. In no case has any good come of an effort to be original solely for the sake of originality. The ' Art Nouveau ' died because it had no reason ever to have been created, and because, in itself, it was not logical or legitimate."

" Errors in scale are more common than errors of any kind—be the question involved one of architecture, furniture design, or even the selection of a picture frame."

" The three orders,' or types of Greek columns comprised later in the Roman Five Orders,' were symbols of classic architecture, details of a much larger whole. And these ' Orders' are architec- turally fine not because Vignola, or precedent, or the schools say they are fine, but because they were conceived in logic and executed in terms of purity of form."

" No painting was great by technique alone, no literary master- piece by virtue of the words contained in it ; or any architectural monument solely by reason of the accuracy in the material form of its several parts."

" There is a careful stupidity which believes accuracy to be art." " Mention has been made of Mr..Ruskin's unsuccessful attempt to illumine architectural gloom with the ' Seven Lamps of Architec- ture.' The inept monuments of the period still exist, on both aides of the Atlantic, to bear testimony to the unwisdom of any arbitrary attempt to popularise an architectural style."

" No literal copy can be said to possess architectural merit other than as a study in exactitude and accuracy. Nor can a copy possess any architectural significance for the reason that architectural design must, above all else, be expressive—and a copy can express nothing but lack of expression."

" Those strange and incongruous monuments [chapels] called by Mr. Cram, with acid cleverness, Greco-Baptist.' It cannot be mistaken : round topped windows, and a little bit of brick chimney sticking up at the stern, where once, in happier days, stood the little cote that housed the Sanctus Bell.' " " Consistency need not mean monotony, for there are endless and interesting variations to be played upon every architectural theme to which we have fallen heir."

" No local style is so mean or so devoid of possibilities that architectural ingenuity may not develop a thoroughly satisfactory rendering in which that style is the main theme."

" Usually, and in a perfectly natural way, local materials are best adapted to local styles, because they have been a factor in the de- velopment of those styles."

" The man who is his own architect has a fool for a client."

" The client should remember, throughout the course of the work, that he is paying a fixed and standard fee for certain fixed and standard professional services (often receiving more than the architect is called upon in the contract to perform), and that the more wisely he avails himself of these services, the better value he is receiving for his money. The futility and folly should be apparent in those cases (unfortunately frequent) where the client, biassed by some outside ill-advised notion, attempts to set his fantastic imagin- ings above the architect's absolute professional knowledge. Lawyers' clients and doctors' patients, both dealing with men who are no more or no less professional men than the architect, seem to show better judgment and proceed as though they realised that they had sought out men better informed on these special subjects than they,

to advise them and to perform certain professional services for them."

" There. are many architects who would say that they could build a state capitol or a public library with far lees personal harassment and annoyance than they would experience in building an $8,000 cottage for a captious client."

In addition to such shrewd criticism and comment there is much practical and technical advice to those intending to build, and they will do well to read the book through and through, as would also those who may still regard " the scholarly appreciation of architec- ture . . . as part of the liberal education of a gentleman."