American renaissance; a review of domestic architectureDow, Joy Wheeler
History
American renaissance; a review of domestic architecture
Dow, Joy Wheeler
Architecture -- United States; Architecture, Domestic
Certainly, nobody copies a building of an earlier epoch that is
susceptible of reincarnation to-day. I explained this point very
clearly, I imagined, in an article I wrote for the _House Beautiful_ in
May, 1901, entitled “How to Make a Successful House,” which magazine
holds the copyright thereof, so that I cannot use the particular
reference here I should like to use. The economy of the age would not
let an architect reproduce Lambton Castle, for instance (see Plate
LXXI), fascinating proposition though it be, and the architect wanted to
do so, and could afford the expense of making the necessary minute
examination, the necessary drawings and measurements, which I can assure
you would be a work onerous and tedious almost beyond endurance for the
impatient temperament of an American. Centuries have elapsed, and the
province of the architect now is to make the castle perform its whole
process of evolution noiselessly in his brain, and come down to date so
as to meet the problem of a twentieth century home without disturbing
the illusion of its history, a process entailing concerted tension of
heart and brain to which the conditions imposed by mere abstract
architectural design are puerile.
I have selected a Tudor castle because the field is practically
untouched in American Renaissance and modern architecture generally. If
there be fashion in adaptation, the fashion has been for Elizabethan and
Jacobean adaptations rather than Tudor; but the real reason why we have
no creditable offspring of that delightful old rambler--Haddon Hall (see
Plate LXXII), in America is to be found in the fact that no American
architect capable of exploiting the thing has thought about it or else
he has lacked the opportunity, more probably the latter. I have often
contemplated that ancient and wonderful staircase on the castle terrace
while thrilling romances architectural have filled my
PLATE LXXI.
[Illustration: LAMBTON CASTLE.]
PLATE LXXII.
[Illustration: HADDON HALL.]
PLATE LXXIII.
[Illustration: CHARLECOTE HALL.]
head, though no appreciative client materialized to employ me.
Charlecote Hall (Plate LXXIII) dwells in a unique borderland of the
Elizabethan style. What a gracious subject this beautiful edifice
supplies for adaptation to date. Any progressive American architect
should be able to do it--in fact, he should be expected to improve
somewhat upon the original with all the modern science there is at his
command. It is true that metal window frames and sashes are not
manufactured ordinarily in this country, but it is high time they were,
and their appearance in the catalogues of what they would call in
England our “ironmongers” cannot be delayed for long, if indications
count for anything.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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