Part 11

Upon the whole, the domestic architecture of the town has few local characteristics, besides those already mentioned, which are due to local conditions rather than to local preferences. The range of building material is wide, and includes a red sandstone from Lake Superior that has not yet made its way into the Eastern cities, of a more positive tint than any in general use there. On the other hand, the whole continent has been laid under tribute for Chicago. The green “Chester serpentine” which one encounters so often in Philadelphia--and generally with regret, though in combination it may become very attractive--quite unknown in New York as it is, is not uncommon in the residential quarters of Chicago. Another material much commoner here than elsewhere is the unhewn bowlder that Mr. Richardson employed in the fantastic lodge at North Easton, which was one of his happiest performances. In a long and low structure like that the defects of the material are much less manifest than when it is attempted to employ it in a design of several stories. One of the most interesting of these attempts is illustrated herewith. The architect has wisely simplified his design to the utmost to conform to the intractability of his material, and with equal wisdom has marked with strong belts the division of his stories. But in spite of its ruggedness the wall looks weak, since it is plain that there is no bonding, and that it is not properly a piece of masonry, but a layer of highly magnified concrete, which owes its stability only to the cohesion of the cement, and to give the assurance of being a trustworthy wall needs to be framed in a conspicuous quoining of unquestionable masonry.

One other trait is common enough among such of the dwellings of Chicago as have architectural pretensions to

be remarked, and that is the prevalence of Byzantine carving. This is not really a Chicagoan characteristic. If it is especially noticeable here, it is because Chicago is so new, and it is in the newer quarters of older towns that it is to be seen. It is quite as general on the “West side” of New York. Its prevalence is again in great part due to the influence of Richardson, and one is inclined to welcome it as at least tending to provide a common and understood way of working for architectural carvers, and the badge of something like a common style for buildings that have little else in common. The facility with which its spiky leafage can be used for surface decoration tempts designers to provide surfaces for its decoration, in such structural features as capitals and corbels, at the cost of the modelling which is so much more expressive and so much more troublesome, when a mere cushion will do better as a basis for Byzantine ornament.

For the rest, the clever and ingenious features which one often comes upon in the residential streets of Chicago, and the thoroughly studied fronts that one comes upon so much more seldom, would excite neither more nor less surprise if they were encountered in the streets of any older American town. But from what has been said it will be seen that in every department of building, except only the ecclesiastical, Chicago has already examples to show that should be of great value to its future growth in stimulating its architects to produce and in teaching its public to appreciate.

Another work, this time completely executed, by the designers of the City Hall, the Public Library of Minneapolis, betrays also the influence of Richardson. The motive of the principal front, an arcade bounded by round towers and surmounted by a story of blank wall, was pretty evidently suggested by his unexecuted

design for a similar building at Buffalo. The precedent here is perhaps not so directly in point, seeing that the effectiveness of an arcade increases with its length, and in a much greater ratio, and that the arcade here is not only much shorter than in the projected building, but is still further shortened to the eye by being heightened and carried through two stories. The towers, too, would have been more effective had it been practicable to give greater solidity to their lower stages. Nevertheless, the building is distinctly successful, and its most successful feature, the gabled centre that includes the entrance, is one which illustrates the inventiveness of the designers, as well as their power of judicious selection and modification.

As was remarked in the paper on Chicago, the architectural activity of the West is not largely ecclesiastical, and the churches are for the most part as near to traditional models as their designers have the knowledge to bring them. In the Eastern States a great many interesting essays have been made towards solving the modern problem of a church in which the pulpit and not the altar is the central point of design, while yet retaining an ecclesiastical expression. There is an edifice in St. Paul called “the People’s Church,” in which the designer seems purposely to have avoided an ecclesiastical expression, and to have undertaken to typify in brick and stone the wild, free theology of the West. He has so far succeeded that nobody could possibly take the result of his labors for a church in the usual acceptation of the term, but this negative attainment does not yet constitute a positive architectural success. It may be that Western ideas in theology are thus far somewhat too sketchy to form a basis for the establishment of an architectural type, since mere negation is insusceptible of architectural expression. The People’s Church does not lack, however, many of the qualities that should belong to every building as a building, apart from its destination. In spite of such unhappy freaks as that by which the stone basement merges into the brick superstructure with no architectural mark of the transition, and cuts the openings quite at random, or as that by which the brick wall, for a considerable but indefinite extent, is quite promiscuously aspersed with irregular bits of stone, it shows a considerable skill in the placing and detailing of features, and the disposition of the openings gives the principal front a grateful sense of stability and repose. The ample entrances designate it as a place of popular assembly, and possibly its religious purpose may be taken to be confessed, though somewhat shamefacedly, in the wheel-window at the centre of one front, and the tall traceried opening at the centre of the other, which are the only relics of ecclesiastical architecture that are suffered to appear. It is evident that it is a “People’s” something, and possibly this is as near to a specification of its purpose as the neo-theologians have attained. In this case, as it is notoriously difficult for a man to give expression to an idea of which he is not possessed, the architectural ambiguity is assuredly not to be imputed to the architect.

A Unitarian church in Minneapolis is also an unconventional specimen of church architecture, though it could not be taken for anything but a church, and it is undeniably a vigorous performance, consisting of massive, well-divided, and “well-punched” walls in a monochrome of dark-red sandstone. The novelty and the unconventionally, however, seem, both in composition and in detail, to have been sought rather than