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
temperament again will not let him. He is perfectly aware that there is
not half enough in the world to go round, and that he must divert the
earnings of other people somewhat into his own coffers if he is to be
entirely comfortable; but he had rather that circumstances divert these
earnings than his own cupidity. He hopes that God will, after a little,
see how hard He has made it for the people individually, and order a new
dispensation. It may be a forlorn hope, but it is none the less a hope
divinely implanted in every true artist and in every other charitable
nature. What else is it that applauds the dramatic note whenever and
wherever it is struck, even though it be the Laura Jean Libby kind from
the melodrama and the threadbare theme of the indigent heroine who
arraigns the conventional villain thus--
“I’d rather be the poor working-girl that I am than all your cruel gold
can make me!”
These are the sentiments which reflect those of every true artist. The
profession of architecture even more than that of the ministry should be
entered without hope of much financial gain. For the sake of goodness
don’t believe any such Munchhausen stuff about it as you, perhaps, read
in a popular magazine lately. The preacher’s service to God is direct,
something which He must take into consideration at least every Sunday;
while the service of the architect is indirect--so subtle indeed as to
create the natural fear in a student’s mind lest God forget about him
entirely, even to the barest livelihood. Professor Ware of the school of
architecture at Columbia College once told me that if he paused for one
moment to consider how very few of the new class of pupils which every
year assembled to be instructed could succeed by reason of the
inexorable laws of supply and demand alone, he could not teach them.
“But,” he added with a twinkle of satisfaction in his eye for having
placed his finger squarely on a grim but unerring philosophy--“I had
much rather starve to death in a profession that I loved than in a
business that I hated, since success in everything is achieved only by
the same meagre percentage.”
I am not forgetting that the profession of architecture is frequently
turned into a business enterprise, run
PLATE XCI.
[Illustration: PRINCESSGATE (MODERN) DEVELOPED FROM DUTCH AND ENGLISH
FARM-HOUSE MOTIVES.]
[Illustration: Try to Have the Rear of Your House as Attractive as the
Front.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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