Chapter XXIII: Act 1898: the official principal of the archbishop is required to (12)

Alfred Waterhouse began his remarkable career as an adherent of the Gothic revival, and merits separate mention inasmuch as he was the only one of the Gothic revivalists who from the first set himself to adapt Gothic to secular uses and to make out of it a modern Gothic manner of his own. His first success was made with the Manchester law courts, a design more purely Gothic than his later works, and an admirably planned building (the only good point in the national law courts plan, the access to the public galleries, is taken from it); his special style was more developed in the Manchester town hall, a building typical both of the defects and merits of his secular Gothic style. This style of his received the compliment, for a good many years, of an immense amount of imitation; in fact, during that earlier period of his work it may be said to have influenced every secular building that was erected in the medieval style all over England. His Gothic detail was, however, not very refined, and he has been subject to the same kind of retrospective injustice which has fallen on Scott, critics in both instances forgetting that what they do not like _now_ was what every one liked _then_, and could not have enough of. Waterhouse was a master of plan, and a man of immense business and administrative ability, without which he could not have carried out the number of great building schemes which fell into his hands, and he had much more of the qualities of a great architect than are to be found in the works of some of his latter-day critics. His later works, one or two of which will be referred to, do not come under the head of the Gothic revival.

France.

In France, the Gothic revival, which so strongly affected the whole school of English architecture for thirty or forty years, took little hold. Its most remarkable monument is the church of Ste Clotilde at Paris, built about the middle of the century from the designs of Ballu. In size it equals a second-class cathedral, and is a fine monument, though it does not show that complete knowledge of medieval Gothic which we find in the churches of Scott, Street, Pearson and G.F. Bodley. But as with the Classic, so with the Gothic revival--the leading French architects of the period had too much personal architectural feeling to be carried along in the wake of a "movement." Two very important Paris churches, built just after the middle of the century, illustrate well this independence of spirit. The one is the domed church of St Augustin in the Boulevard Malesherbes (Plate XII., fig. 122), designed by Victor Baltard (1805-1874). It may be called a Classic church treated in a quasi-Byzantine manner. A remarkable point about it is that, standing between the divergence of two streets at an acute angle, the outer walls of the nave follow the line of the two streets, the church thus expanding towards the centre; internally the colonnades are parallel, the chapels outside of them increasing in depth from the entrance of the nave towards the centre--a very clever device for reconciling exterior and interior effect. The other church referred to, built about the same time, is La Trinite (Plate XII., fig. 123) by Theodore Ballu (1817-1885)--a church which is Renaissance in detail and yet distinctly Gothic in its general effect and in the multiplicity of its detail, somewhat recalling in this sense Barry's Halifax tower before referred to. The sense in which there has really been a general movement in church architecture in France has been in the direction of a kind of modernized Byzantine, of which one of the earliest and best examples is the church of St Pierre de Montrouge, by Joseph Auguste E. Vaudremer (Plate XII., fig. 124). A later and more important example is the cathedral of Marseilles, by Leon Vaudoyer (1803-1872) and Henry Esperandieu (1829-1874), a mingling of Romanesque and Byzantine, and in many respects a fine building (Plate XIII., fig. 126). This modern feeling in favour of a Byzantine type of church architecture culminated in the great church of the Sacre Coeur on Montmartre, at Paris, begun in the early 'eighties from the designs of Paul Abadie (1812-1884). This grand building stands on a most effective site, and is of a monumental solidity seldom met with in modern architecture; it is more pure and consistent in style than many of the smaller churches of the same school of architecture. These latter are not for the most part very attractive; they represent in general a kind of Frenchified Byzantine detail which exhibits neither Byzantine spirit nor French grace and finish; and on the whole it may be said that church architecture is the field in which the French architects of the 19th century were least successful.

As regards secular buildings, on the other hand, the Paris of the middle portion of the 19th century can show some of the most unquestionable architectural successes of the period. The modern portions of the Palais de Justice by Louis Joseph Duc (1802-1879)--not Viollet-le-Duc, as is often mistakenly asserted in guide-books--and of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, by Jacques Felix Duban (1797-1870), are among the best examples of the application of classic forms of architecture to modern buildings; and the Bibliotheque Ste Genevieve (Plate XIII., fig. 128), by Henri Labrouste (1801-1875), was in its day (about 1850) a new creation in applied classic architecture; a building in which the exterior design was entirely subservient to and expressive of the requirements of a library, a large portion of the wall being left unpierced for the storage of books, windows being only inserted where they did not interfere with this object; and the manner in which these walls are treated so as to produce a decorative architectural effect without having recourse to sham colonnades and sham window openings, was entirely new at the time in modern work. It is instructive to compare this design with that of the Bank of England, as examples of the right and the wrong way of treating buildings in which much blank wall space was required. The new buildings of the Louvre (Plate XIV., fig. 129), built under Napoleon III. from the designs of Louis Tullius Joachim Visconti (1791-1853), are not to be passed over, though they have too much of the showy and flaunting character which belonged to both the society and the art of the Second Empire; a fault which also destroys some of the value of the Grand Opera house, a remarkable work by a remarkable architect (Jean Louis Charles Garnier), and typical, more than any other structure, of the epoch in which it was built. Some of its effect it owes to the admirable painting and sculpture with which it is decorated, but the grand staircase is a fine architectural conception (see GARNIER).

Recent English architecture.

"Queen Anne."

In England and in the United States, the last quarter of the 19th century was a period of unusual interest and activity in architectural development. While other nations have been content to carry on their architecture, for the most part, on the old scholastic lines which had been prevalent since the Renaissance, in the two countries named there has been manifest a spirit of unrest, of critical inquiry into the basis and objects of architecture; an aspiration to make new and original creations in or applications of the art, without example in any other period in the modern history of architecture. In England, the "note"--heard with increasing shrillness of _crescendo_ towards the very last year of the century--was the cry for originality, for throwing off the trammels of the past, for rendering architecture more truly a direct expression of the conditions of practical requirement and of structure. This was no doubt to some extent the effect of a reaction. During the greater part of the century architectural strength, as has been already shown, had been spent in revivals of past styles. Churches indeed, up to the close of the century, continued to be built, for the most part, in revived Gothic; but this was owing to special clerical influence, which saw in Gothic a style specially consecrated to church architecture, and would be satisfied, as a rule, with nothing else. Efforts have been made by architects to modify the medieval church plan into something more practically suited to modern congregational worship, by a system of reducing the side aisles to mere narrow passages for access to the seats, thus retaining the architectural effect of the arcade, while keeping it out of the way of the seated congregation; and there have been occasional reversions to the ancient Christian basilica type of plan, or sometimes, as in the church in Davies Street, London, attempts to treat a church in a manner entirely independent of architectural precedent; but in the main, Gothic has continued to rule for churches. Apart from this special class of building, however, revived Gothic began to droop during the 'seventies. All had been copied that could be copied, and the result, to the architectural mind, was not satisfaction but satiety. Gothic began to be regarded as "played out." The immediate result, however, was not an organized attempt to think for ourselves, and make our own style, but a recourse to another class of precedent, represented in the type of early 18th-century building which became known as "Queen Anne," and which, like Gothic before it, was now to be recommended as "essentially English," as in fact it is. It can hardly, however, be called an architectural style; it would have no right to figure in any work illustrating the great architectural styles of the world. It was, in fact, the last dying phase of the English Renaissance; the architecture of the classic order reduced to a threadbare condition, treated very simply and in plain materials, in many cases shorn of its columnar features, and reflecting faithfully enough the prim rationalistic taste in literature and art of the England of the 18th century. Though not to be dignified as a _style_, it was, however, a recognizable and consistent _manner_ in building; it made extensive use of brick, a material inexpensive and at the same time very well suited to the English climate and atmosphere; and it was generally carried out in very solid proportions, and with very good workmanship. To a generation tired of imitating a great style at second hand, this unpretending and simple model was a welcome relief, and led to the erection of a considerable number of modern buildings, dwelling-houses especially, the obvious aim of which was to look as like 18th-century buildings as possible. A typical example is the large London house by Norman Shaw, at the corner of Queen's Gate and Imperial Institute Road The Chelsea town hall (fig. 94), by J.M. Brydon (1840-1901), is a good example of a public building in the revived Queen Anne style.

FIG. 120.--NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON. (WATERHOUSE.)

_Photo, Valentine & Sons, Dundee._

FIG. 121.--LAW COURTS, BRUSSELS. (POELAERT.)

_Photo, M. Gerbeault._]

FIG. 122.--CHURCH OF ST AUGUSTIN, PARIS.(BALTARD.)

_Photo, Neurdein._

FIG. 123.--CHURCH OF LA TRINITE, PARIS. (BALLU.)

_Photo, Neurdein._

FIG. 124.--CHURCH OF ST PIERRE DE MONTROUGE, PARIS. (VAUDREMER.)

_Photo, A. Levy._

FIG. 125.--CHURCH OF ST VINCENT DE PAUL, PARIS. (HITTORFF.)

_Photo, Neurdein._]

"Free classic."

A change of front from copying a great style like the medieval to copying what is at best a bastard one, if a style at all, might not seem to promise very much for the emancipation of modern architecture; yet there turned out to be one element of progress in it, resting on the fact that the comparatively simple detail of the 18th-century buildings formed a kind of vernacular of building workmanship, which could be comprehended and carried out by good artisans as a recognized tradition. Now to reduce architecture to good sound building and good workmanship seemed to promise at any rate a better basis to work upon than the mere imitation of classic or medieval detail; it might conceivably furnish a new starting-point. This was the element of life in the Queen Anne revival, and it had, as we shall see, an influence beyond the circle of the special revivers of the style. But almost concurrently with, or following hard upon, the "Queen Anne" movement arose the idea of a modern architecture, founded on a free and unfettered treatment of the materials of our earlier Renaissance architecture, as illustrated in buildings of the Stuart period. This new ideal was styled "free classic," and it gave the prevailing tone to English architecture for the last fifteen years of the century, though it had its commencement in certain characteristic buildings a good many years earlier than that. In 1873, for instance, there arose a comparatively small front in Leadenhall Street, under the name of "New Zealand Chambers" (fig. 95), designed by Norman Shaw, which excited more attention, and had more influence on contemporary architecture than many a building of far greater size and importance. This represented the playful and picturesque possibilities of "free classic." Its more restrained and refined achievements were early exemplified in G.F. Bodley's design for the front of the London School Board offices on the Thames Embankment,[6] a comparatively small building which also exercised a considerable influence. There were no details here, however, but what could be found in Stuart (or, as it is more often called, Jacobean) architecture, but the building, and the prominence of its architect's name, helped to draw attention to the possibilities of the style, and it has been discovered that free classic is susceptible of a great deal of original treatment based on Renaissance elements. As an example we may cite a street front built some twenty years later by another academician-architect, viz. the offices of the Chartered Accountants in the City, by J. Belcher. More dignified and more monumental than New Zealand Chambers, more original than the School Board offices, this front contains some details and a general treatment which may be said to be absolutely new; it affords another example of a piece of street architecture which attracted a great deal of attention, and has had an effect quite disproportionate to its size and importance as a building; and it gives a general measure of the progress of the "free classic" idea. During the last decade of the century "free classic" was almost the recognized style in English architecture, and has been illustrated in many town halls and other large and important buildings, among which the Imperial Institute is a prominent example (fig. 96).

The allied arts.

Concurrently with this tendency towards a free classic style there has arisen another movement which has had a considerable influence on English architecture, viz. an increased perception of the importance of decorative arts--sculpture, painting, mosaic, etc.--in alliance with architecture, and of the architect and the decorative artist working together and in harmony. This is no more than what has long been understood and acted on in France, but it has been a new light to modern English architecture, in which, until a comparatively recent period, decorative painting was hardly thought of, and decorative sculpture, where it was introduced, was too often, or indeed generally, the mere work of some trading firm of masons But of late years sculpture has taken a far more prominent place in connexion with architecture; it has become a habit with the best architects to rely largely on the introduction of appropriate and symbolic sculpture to add to the interest of their buildings, and to associate with them eminent sculptors, who, instead of regarding their work only in the light of isolated statues or groups for the exhibition room and the art gallery, are willing to give their best efforts to produce high-class sculpture for the decoration of an architectural design which forms the framework to it.

The craftmanship ideal.

Notice should be taken, however, of another movement in English architecture during the closing years of the 19th century. Reference has already been made to one idea which prompted the culture of the "Queen Anne" type of architecture: that it presented a simple vernacular of construction and detail, in which solid workmanship a more prominent element than elaboration of what is known as architectural style. To a small group of clever and enthusiastic architects of the younger generation it appeared that this idea of reducing architecture to the common-sense of construction might be carried still further; that as all the revivals of styles since the Renaissance had failed to give permanent satisfaction and had tended to reduce architecture to a learned imitation of the work of former epochs, the real chance for giving life to architecture as a modern art was to throw aside all the conventionally accepted insignia of architectural style--columns, pilasters, cornices, buttresses, etc.--and to begin over again with mere workmanship--wall-building and carpentry--and trust that in process of time a new decorative detail would be evolved, indebted to no precedent. The building artisans, in fact, were collectively to take the place of the architect and the form of the building to be evolved by a natural process of growth. This was a favourite idea also with William Morris, who insisted that medieval art--the only art which he recognized as of any value (Greek, Roman and Renaissance being alike contemptible in his eyes)--was essentially an art of the people, and that in fact it was the modern architects who stood in the way of our having a genuine architecture of the 19th century. Considering how much of merely formal, conventional and soulless architecture has been produced in our time under the guidance of the professional architect, it is impossible to deny that there is an element of truth in this reasoning; at all events, that there have been a good many modern architects who have done more harm than good to architecture. But when we come to follow out this reasoning to its logical results, it is obvious that there are serious flaws in it. Morris's idea that medieval architecture alone was worthy the name, we may, of course, dismiss at once; it was the prejudice of a man of genius whose sympathies, both in matters social and artistic, were narrow. Nor can we regard the medieval cathedrals as artisan's architecture. The name of "architect" may have been unknown, but that the personage was present in some guise, the very individuality and variety of our English cathedrals attest. Peterborough front was no mere mason's conception. And when we come to consider modern conditions of building, it is perfectly obvious that with the complicated practical requirements of modern building, in regard to planning, heating, ventilation, etc., the planning of the whole in a complete set of drawings, before the building is begun, is an absolute necessity. We are no longer in medieval times; modern conditions require the modern architect. The real cause of failure, as far as modern architecture is a failure, lies partly in the fact that it is practised too much as a profession or business, too little as an art; partly in the deadening effect of public indifference to art in Britain. If the public really desired great and impressive works of architecture they would have them; but neither the British public nor its mouthpiece the government, care anything about it. Their highest ambition is to get convenient and economical buildings. And as to the theory of the new school, that we should throw overboard all precedent in architectural detail, that is intellectually impossible. We are not made so that we can invent everything _de novo_, or escape the effect on our minds of what has preceded us; the attempt can only lead to baldness or eccentricity. Every great style of architecture of the past has, in fact, been evolved from the detail of preceding styles; and some of the ablest and most earnest architects of the present day are, indeed, urging the desirability of clinging to traditional forms in regard to detail, as a means of maintaining the continuity of the art. This does not by any means imply the absence of original architecture; there is scope for endless origination in the plan and the general design of a building. The Houses of Parliament is a prominent example. The detail is a reproduction of Tudor detail, but the plan and the general conception are absolutely original, and resemble those of no other pre-existing building in the world.

United States.

It is necessary to take account of all these movements of opinion and principle in English architecture to appreciate properly its position and prospects at the time with which we are here dealing. Turning now from England to the United States, which, as already observed, is the only other important country in which there has been a general new movement in architecture, we find, singular to say, that the course of development has in America been almost the reverse of what has taken place in England. The rapidity of architectural development in America, it may be observed, since about 1875, has been something astonishing; there is no parallel to it anywhere else. Before then the currently accepted architecture of the American Republic was little more than a bad repetition of the English Gothic and Classic types of revived architecture. At the present day no nation, except perhaps France, takes so keen an interest in architecture and produces so many noteworthy buildings; and it may be observed that in the United States the public and the official authorities seem really to have some enthusiasm on the subject, and to desire fine buildings. But the stirring of the dry bones began in America where it ended in England. The first symptoms of an original spirit operating in American architecture showed themselves in domestic architecture, in town and country houses, the latter especially; and the form which the movement took was a desire to escape conventional architectural detail and to return to the simplest form of mere _building_; rock-faced masonry, sometimes of materials picked up on the site; chimneys which were plain shafts of masonry or brickwork; woodwork simply hewn and squared, but the whole arranged with a view to picturesque effect (figs. 97 and 98). This form of American house became an incident in the course of modern architecture; it even had a recognizable influence on English architects. About the same time an impetus of a more special nature was given to American architecture by a man of genius, H.H. Richardson, who, falling back on Romanesque and Byzantine types of architecture as a somewhat unworked field, evolved from them a type of architectural treatment so distinctly his own (though its _origines_ were of course quite traceable) that he came very near the credit of having personally invented a style; at all events he invented a manner, which was so largely admired and imitated that for some ten or fifteen years American architecture showed a distinct tendency to become "Richardsonesque" (see also Plate XVI., fig. 137). As with all architectural fashions, however, people got tired of this, and the influence of another very able American architect, Richard M. Hunt, coupled perhaps with the proverbial philo-Gallic tendencies of the modern American, led to the American architects, during the last decade of the 19th century, throwing themselves almost entirely into the arms, as it were, of France; seeking their education as far as possible in Paris, and adopting the theory and practice of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts so completely that it is often impossible to distinguish their designs, and even their methods of drawing, from those of French architects brought up in the strictest regime of the "Ecole." By this French movement the Americans have, on the one hand, shared the advantages and the influence of what is undoubtedly the most complete school of architectural training in the world; but, on the other hand, they have foregone the opportunity which might have been afforded them of developing a school or style of their own, influenced by the circumstances of their own requirements, climate and materials. Figs. 133 and 134, Plate XV., show examples of recent American architecture of the European classic type. Thus, in the two countries which in this period have shown the most activity and restlessness in their architectural aspirations, and given the most original thought to the subject, England has constantly tended towards throwing off the yoke of precedent and escaping from the limits of a scholastic style; while America, commencing her era of architectural emancipation with an attempt at first principles and simple but picturesque building, has ended by a pretty general adoption of the highly-developed scholastic system of another country. The contrast is certainly a curious one. Only one original contribution to the art has been made by America in recent days --one arising directly out of practical conditions, viz. the "high buildings" in cities; a form of architecture which may be said to have originated in the fact that New York is built on a peninsula, and extension of the city is only possible vertically and not horizontally. The tower-like buildings (see Plate XV., fig. 131, and STEEL CONSTRUCTION, Plate II., figs. 3 and 4), served internally by lifts, to which this condition of things has given rise, form a really new contribution to architecture, and have been handled by some of the American architects in a very effective manner; though, unfortunately, the rage for rapid building in the cities of the United States has led to the adoption of the false architectural system of running up such structures in the form of a steel framing, cased with a mere skin of masonry or terra-cotta, for appearance' sake, which in reality depends for its stability on the steel framing. It must be admitted, however, to be a new contribution to architecture, and renders New York, as seen from the harbour, a "towered city" in a sense not realized by the poet.

English progress.

Some sketch of the state of recent architectural thought or endeavour in England seemed essential to the subject, since it is there that what may be called the philosophy of architecture has been most debated, and that thought has had the most obvious and most direct effect on architectural style and movement. That this has been the case has no doubt been largely due to the influence of Ruskin, who, though his architectural judgment was on many points faulty and absurd in the extreme, had at any rate the effect of setting people thinking--not without result. In other countries architecture continued to pursue, up to the close of the century, the scholastic ideal impressed upon it by the Renaissance, without exciting doubt or controversy unless in a very occasional and partial manner, and without any changes save those minor ones arising from changing habits of execution and use of material. In Germany there appears to be a certain tendency to a greater freedom in the use of the materials of classic architecture, a certain relaxation of the bonds of scholasticism; but it has hardly assumed such proportions as to be ranked as a new movement in architecture.

English churches.

The last years of the 19th century witnessed the progress to an advanced stage of the most remarkable piece of English church architecture of the period, the Roman Catholic cathedral at Westminster, by J.H. Bentley (1839-1902), a building which is not a Gothic revival, but goes back to earlier (Byzantine) precedents; not, however, without a considerable element of novelty and originality in the design, especially in some of the exterior detail. The interior was intended for decoration in applied marble and mosaic, yet even as a shell of brickwork, with its solid domes and the immense masses of the piers, it is one of the most impressive and monumental interiors of modern date.

In ordinary church architecture, though there is still a good deal of mere imitation medieval work carried out, England has not been without examples of a new and original application of Gothic materials. The interior of the church of St Clare, Liverpool, by Mr Leonard Stokes (fig. 100), is a good example of the modified treatment of the three-aisled medieval plan already referred to, the side aisles being reduced to passages; and also of the tendency in recent years to simplify the treatment of Gothic, in contrast to the florid and over-carved churches of the Gothic revival. The churches of James Brooks, as already noted, have shown many examples of a solid plain treatment of Gothic, yet with a great deal of character; and J.D. Sedding (1838-1891) built some showing great originality, among which the interior of his church of the Holy Redeemer, Clerkenwell, affords also an interesting example of the modern free treatment of forms derived from classic architecture.

The event of most importance in English church architecture at the beginning of the 20th century was the commencement of a modern cathedral at Liverpool. In the early 'eighties the proposal for a cathedral had led to an important competition between three sets of invited architects, Sir William Emerson, Messrs Bodley and Garner and James Brooks. Nothing, however, resulted, except the production of three very fine sets of drawings. Subsequently the subject was taken up again with more energy, and a sketch competition invited for a cathedral on a new site (the one originally intended being no longer available); from among the sketch competitors five were invited to join in a final competition, viz. Messrs Austin and Paley, C.A. Nicholson, Gilbert Scott (grandson of Sir Gilbert Scott), Malcolm Stark and W.J. Tapper. Mr Scott's design was selected (May 1903) and the building of it commenced not long after. It is a design in revived Gothic, of the orthodox type as to detail, though containing some points of decided originality in the general treatment. The condition proposed in the first instance by the committee, that the designs sent in must be in the Gothic style, gave rise to a strong protest, in the architectural journals and elsewhere, on the ground that the revival of ancient styles was a mistaken and exploded fallacy; and in deference to this expression of opinion the committee officially withdrew the limitation as to style. That, in view of their obvious bias, they would confine their selection to designs in the Gothic style, was, however, a foregone conclusion. It is much to be regretted that the opportunity was not taken to evolve a modern and Protestant type of cathedral, with a central area and a dome as its principal feature.

English public buildings.

In the architecture of public buildings one of the earliest incidents in this latest period was the completion of the Albert Hall, which, though the work of an engineer, and commonplace in detail, is in the main a fine and novel architectural conception, and a practical success (considering its abnormal size) as a building for musical performances. Had its constructor been bold enough to roof it with a solid masonry dome, with an "eye" in the centre (as in the Pantheon) instead of a huge dish-cover of glass and iron, there would have been little to find fault with in its general conception. It was also the first modern English building of importance to be decorated externally with symbolical figure composition, in the shape of the large frieze in coarse mosaic of terra-cotta, which is carried round the upper portion of the exterior, and which, if not very interesting in detail, at all events fulfils very well its purpose as a piece of decorative effect. The subject of the government offices in London forms in itself an important chapter in recent architectural history. The home and foreign office block was finished in 1874; a sumptuous, but weak and ill-planned building designed by Scott, _invita Minerva_, in a style alien to his own predilections. In 1884 took place the great competition for the war and admiralty offices conjointly, won by a commonplace but admirably drawn design, presenting some good points in planning. The building was to stand between Whitehall and St James's Park, with a front both ways. The competition came to nothing, and the successful architects were eventually employed to build the new admiralty as it now stands, a mean and commonplace building with no street frontage, in which economy was the main consideration, and totally discreditable to the greatest naval power in the world. In 1898-1899 it was at last resolved to a war office and other government offices much needed, and an irregular site opposite the Horse Guards was selected for the war office and one in Great George Street for the others. In this case there was no competition, but the government selected two architects after inquiry as to their works ("classic" architecture being a _sine qua non_); W. Young (d. 1900) for the war office, and J.M. Brydon for the Great George Street block. The war office site is inadequate and totally unsymmetrical, the boundary of the building being settled by the boundary of the street curb, and the inner courtyards are of very mean proportions compared with the great courtyard of the home and foreign office. Both architects produced grandiose designs, but in regard to the war office at least the government threw away a great opportunity.

FIG. 126.--CATHEDRAL, MARSEILLES. (VAUDOYER AND ESPERANDIEU.)

_Photo, Neurdein._

FIG. 127.--MAIRIE, Xth ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS. (ROUYER.)

_Photo, Neurdein._

FIG. 128.--BIBLIOTHEQUE STE GENEVIEVE, PARIS. (LABROUSTE.)

_Photo, A. Levy._]

FIG. 129.--PAVILLON RICHELIEU, THE LOUVRE, PARIS. (VISCONTI.)

_Photo, L.L. Paris._

FIG. 130.--PETIT PALAIS, PARIS. (GIRAULT.)

_Photo, Neurdin._]

There can only be further enumerated a few of the more important buildings erected in England during the later years of the 19th century, and mention made of the general course which architecture has taken in regard to special classes of buildings. The Natural History Museum (Plate XI., fig. 120), completed in 1881 by Alfred Waterhouse, may stand as a type of the taste for the employment of terra-cotta, with all its dangerous facilities in ornamental detail, of which that architect specially set the example. Detail is certainly overdone here, but the building is strikingly original; a point not to be overlooked in these days of architectural copying. The Imperial Institute, the result of a competition among six selected architects, represents also a type of architecture which its architect, T.E. Collcutt, maybe said to have matured for himself, and which has been extensively imitated; a refined variety of free classic, always quiet and delicate in detail, though perhaps rather wanting in architectonic force. The next great architectural competition was that for the completion of the South Kensington Museum, the bare brick exterior of which, waiting for architectural completion, had long been a national disgrace. The competition produced some fine and striking designs, some of them perhaps more so than the selected one by Sir Aston Webb, whose fine plan, however, justified the selection. Another competition which excited general interest was that in 1894, for the rebuilding on a country site of Christ's Hospital schools, also gained by Aston Webb (in collaboration with Ingress Bell), by a design which, in its arrangement of schoolhouses in detached blocks (fig. 101), but in a symmetrical grouping, opened up a new idea in public-school planning, and struck a blow at the picturesque but insanitary quadrangle system. Among notable public buildings of the period ought to be mentioned Norman Shaw's New Scotland Yard, built in a style neither classic nor Gothic, but partaking of the elements of both (Plate X., fig. 119). A competition in 1908 for the design of the new county hall for the London County Council, to be "English Renaissance" in style, was won by a young architect, till then unknown, Mr Ralph Knott.

In recent years there has been a great movement for building town halls; towns rather vying with each other in this way. Of late nearly all of these have been carried out in some variety of free classic. Among the more important in point of scale is that of Sheffield, by E.W. Mountford (1856-1908) (fig. 102); among smaller ones, those of Oxford, by H.T. Hare (fig. 103); and Colchester, by John Belcher, are particularly good examples of recent architecture of this class, the former distinguished also by an exceptionally good plan. The merit of excellent planning also belongs to Aston Webb and Ingress Bell's Birmingham law courts, one of the modern terra-cotta buildings of somewhat too florid detail, though picturesque as a whole. Among public halls the M'Ewan Hall at Edinburgh, completed in 1898 from the designs of Sir Rowand Anderson, deserves mention as one of the most original and most carefully designed of recent buildings in Great Britain.

The various new buildings erected in connexion with the university of Oxford, those by T.G. Jackson (b. 1835) especially, form an important incident in modern English architecture. Mr Jackson succeeded to a remarkable degree in designing new buildings which are in harmony with the old architecture of the university city; sometimes perhaps a little too imitative of it, but at any rate he has the credit of having added rather extensively to Oxford without spoiling it; while his school buildings in different parts of the country have a refinement and domesticity of feeling which is the true note of school architecture. Among buildings of an educational class, the move in technical education has led to the erection of a good many large polytechnic and similar institutions, which in many cases have been well treated architecturally; the Northampton Institute at Clerkenwell (fig. 104), by Mountford, being perhaps one of the boldest and most effective of recent public buildings. In the building of hospitals and asylums much has been done, and great progress made in the direction of hygienic and practical planning and construction, but the tendency has been (perhaps rightly) towards making this practical efficiency the main consideration and reducing architectural treatment to the simplest character. St Thomas's hospital at Lambeth exemplifies the treatment of hospital architecture at the commencement of the last quarter of the 19th century; the separate pavilion system had been already adopted on practical grounds, but the building is treated in a sumptuous architectural style, as if representing so many detached mansions--a treatment which would now be deprecated as an expenditure foreign to the main purpose of the building. One recent hospital, however, that at Birmingham, by W. Henman, combining architectural effect with the latest hygienic improvements, was the first large hospital in Great Britain in which the system of mechanical ventilation was completely and consistently carried out.

In theatre building there has been an immense improvement in regard to planning, ventilation and fireproof construction, but little to note in an architectural sense, since theatres in England are never designed by eminent architects, the financial and practical aspects being alone considered.

English domestic and street architecture.

In domestic architecture the tendency has been to quit picturesque irregularity for a more formal and more dignified treatment. Such a house as Norman Shaw's "Cragside," built in the earlier part of our period (fig. 105), however its picturesque treatment may still be admired, would hardly be built now on a large scale; its architect himself has of late years shown a preference for a symmetrical and regular treatment of house architecture sometimes to the extent of making the mansion look too like a barrack. In street architecture, however, the tendency has been towards a more characteristic and more picturesque treatment; nor is there any class of building in which the improvement in English architecture has been more marked and more unquestionable. Many of the new residential streets in the west end of London present a really picturesque _ensemble_, and many shops and other commercial street buildings have been erected with admirable fronts from the designs of some of the best architects of the day. Norman Shaw's building at the corner of St James's Street and Pall Mall was one of the first, and is still one of the best examples of modern street architecture, though surpassed by the same architect's more recent building opposite, at the south-west angle of St James's Street--one of the finest and most monumental examples of street architecture in London. Among other examples may be cited T.E. Collcutt's London City & Midland Bank in Ludgate Hill (fig. 106) and R. Blomfield's narrow house-front in Buckingham Gate (fig. 107). The introduction of sculpture in street fronts is also beginning to receive attention; and a simple house-front recently erected in Margaret Street, London, from the design of Beresford Pite (fig. 108), is an excellent example of the use of sculpture in connexion with ordinary street architecture. It is significant of the increased attention accorded to street architecture, that the most important architectural event in England at the very close of the 19th century, was the outlay of L2000 by the London County Council, in fees to eight architects for designs for the front of the proposed new streets of Kingsway and Aldwych. The idea was to treat these streets as comprehensive architectural designs with a certain unity of effect. Unfortunately this idea was abandoned for merely commercial reasons, it being feared that there would be a difficulty in letting the sites if tenants were required to conform their frontages to a general design. In the case of Aldwych, which is a crescent street, this decision was fatal. A crescent loses all its effect unless treated as a complete and symmetrical architectural design.

The competition for the Queen Victoria Memorial, consisting of a processional road from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace, culminating in a sculptural trophy in front of the palace, attracted a great deal of attention in 1901. Of the five invited competitors--Sir Aston Webb (b. 1849), T.G. Jackson, Ernest George (b. 1839), Sir Thomas Drew (b. 1838), and Sir Rowand Anderson (b. 1834) the two latter representing Ireland and Scotland respectively,--Sir Aston Webb's design was selected, and unquestionably showed the best and most effective manner of laying out the road, as well as a very pleasing architectural treatment of the semicircular forecourt in front of the palace, with pavilions and fountain-basins symmetrically spaced; but some of this was subsequently sacrificed on grounds of economy. The building, a triumphal arch flanked by pavilions, forming the entry to the processional road from Whitehall, is a dignified design.

Recent French architecture.

In France, still the leading artistic nation of the world, the art of architecture has been in a most flourishing and most active state in the most recent period. It is true that there is not the same variety as in modern English architecture, nor have there been the same discussions and experiments in regard to the true aim and course of architecture which have excited so much interest in England; because the French architects, unlike the English, know exactly what they want. They have a "school" of architecture; they adhere to the scholastic or academic theory of architecture as an art founded on the study of classic models; and on this basis their architects receive the most thorough training of any in the world. This predominance of the academic theory deprives their architecture, no doubt, of a good deal of the element of variety and picturesqueness; a French architect _pur sang_, in fact, never attempts the picturesque, unless in a country residence, and then the results are such that one wishes the attempt had not been made. But, on the other hand, modern French architecture at its best has a dignity and style about it which no other nation at present reaches, and which goes far to atone for a certain degree of sameness and repetition in its motives; and living under a government which recognizes the importance of national architecture, and is willing to spend public money liberally on it (with the full approbation of its public), the French architects have opportunities which English ones but seldom enjoy--the predominant aim with a British government being to see how little they can spend on a public building. The two great Paris exhibitions of 1889 and 1900 may be regarded as important events in connexion with architecture, for even the temporary buildings erected for them showed an amount of architectural interest and originality which could be met with nowhere else, and which in each case left its mark behind it, though with a difference; for while in the 1889 exhibition the main object was to treat temporary structures--iron and concrete and terra-cotta--in an undisguised but artistic manner, in those of the 1900 exhibition the effort was to create an architectural _coup d'oeil_ of apparently monumental structures of which the actual construction was disguised. In spite of some eccentricities the amount of invention and originality shown in these temporary buildings was most remarkable; but fortunately the exhibition left something more permanent behind it in the shape of the two art-palaces and the new bridge over the Seine. The two palaces are triumphs of modern classic architecture; the larger one (by MM. Thomas, Louvet and Deglane) is to some extent spoiled by the apparently unavoidable glass roof, the smaller one, by M. Girault, escapes this drawback, and, still more refined than its greater opposite, is one of the most beautiful buildings of modern times; the central portion is shown in Plate XIV., fig. 130. The architectural pylons, with their accompanying sculpture, which flank the entries to the bridge, are worthy of the best period of French Renaissance. Thus much, at least, has the 1900 exhibition done for architecture.

A, Salle des Fetes.
B, Salle a manger.
C, Salons de Reception.
D, Council Chamber.
E, Grand Staircase.
F, Salle des Cariatides.
G, General Secretary.
H, Prefect.
K, Committee Rooms.
L, Public Works.
M, Corridor.
N, President of Council.
O, Library.
P, Refreshment Room.]

At the beginning of the last quarter of the 19th century stands one of the most important of modern French buildings, the Paris hotel de ville, commenced shortly after the war, from the designs of MM. Ballu and Deperthes, planned on an immense scale, and on the stateliest and most monumental lines: the plan is given in fig. 109. The central block is, externally, a restoration of the old hotel de ville, the remainder carried out in an analogous but somewhat more modern style. The interior has been the scene of sumptuous pictorial decoration, in which all the first artists of the day were employed--unfortunately in too scattered a manner and on no predominant or consistent scheme. One of the most characteristic architectural efforts of the French has consisted in the erection of the various smaller hotels-de-ville or mairies, in the city and suburban districts of the capital; as at Pantin, Lilas, Suresnes and in various arrondissements within the city proper (Plate XIII., fig. 127). Nothing shows the quality of modern French architecture better, or perhaps more favourably, than this series of district town halls; all have a distinctly municipal character and a certain family resemblance of style amid their diversity of details; all are refined specimens of pre-eminently civilized architecture. Among the greater architectural efforts of France is the immense block of the new Sorbonne, by M. Nenot, a building sufficient in itself for an architectural reputation. Among smaller French buildings of peculiar merit may be mentioned the Musee Galliera, in the Trocadero quarter of Paris, designed by M. Ginain--a work of pure art in architecture such as we should nowadays look for in vain out of France; the Ecole de Medecine, by the same refined architect (fig. 110); and the chapel in rue Jean Goujon (Guilbert), erected as a memorial to the victims of the bazaar fire, again a notable instance of a work of pure thought in architecture--a new conception out of old materials. The new Opera Comique (Bernier) should also be mentioned, the rather disappointing result of a competition which excited great interest at the time. Street architecture has been carried out of late in Paris in a sumptuous style, with great stone fronts and a profusion of carved ornament, such as we know nothing of in England; and though there is a rather monotonous repetition of the same style and character throughout the new or newly built streets, it is impossible to deny the effect of palatial dignity they impart to the city. In the matter of country houses the French architect is less fortunate; when he attempts what he regards as the rural picturesque, his good taste seems entirely to desert him, and the _maison de campagne_ is generally a mere riot of gimcrack bargeboards and finials. In Paris, the taste for the contortions of what is called _art nouveau_ has led to the erection, here and there, of ugly and eccentric fronts with preposterous ornamental details; but the invasion of this element is only partial and will probably not prove other than a passing phase.

Germany.

The great military success of Germany in 1870, and the founding of the German empire, gave, as is usual in such crises, a decided impetus to public architecture, of which the central and most important visible sign is the German Houses of Parliament (Plate IX., fig. 117), by Paul Wallot (b. 1841), whose design was selected in a competition. There is something essentially German in the quality of this national building; classic architecture minus its refinement. The detail is coarse; the finish of the end pavilions of the principal front absolutely unmeaning--mere architectural rodomontade; the central cupola of glass and iron, on a square plan, probably the ugliest central feature on any great building in Europe; and yet there is undeniable power about the whole thing; it is the characteristic product of a conquering nation not reticent in its triumph. The new cathedral at Berlin, by Julius Raschdorff (b. 1823), is the other most important German work of the period (fig. 111); a building very striking and unusual in plan, but absolutely commonplace in its architectural detail; school classic of the most ordinary type, without even any of those elements of originality which are to be found in the Houses of Parliament. A curious feature in the plan (fig. 112) is that the building, alone of any cathedral we can recall, has its principal general entrance at the side, the end entrance being reserved for a special imperial cortege on special occasions, the cathedral also serving the second purpose of an imperial mausoleum. Theatre building has been carried on very largely in Germany, and among its productions the Lessing theatre at Berlin (fig. 113) (Hermann von der Hude and Julius Hennicke, d. 1892) is a favourable example of German classic at its best, besides being, like most modern German theatres, very well planned (fig. 114). Hamburg has had its new municipal buildings (Grotjan), a florid Renaissance building with a central tower, showing in its general effect and grouping a good deal of Gothic feeling Mention may also be made of the Imperial law courts (Reichsgerichtsgebaude) at Leipzig, designed by Ludwig Hoffmann (b. 1852) and finished in 1895, a building with no more charm about it, externally, than the Berlin Parliament Houses, but with some good interior effects. The new post offices in Germany have been an important undertaking, and are, at all events, buildings of more mark than those in England. There has also been a great deal of new development in street architecture, which shows an immense variety, and a constantly evident determination to do something striking, but we find in it neither the dignity of Parisian street architecture nor the refinement of modern London work; there is an element of the bombastic about it.

Other countries.