Apart from this, however, the imperial regime has been stalled by its own weight. The cost of cutting through new streets, widening grand avenues, and in general putting on a monumental front has put the pure architect at a disadvantage: there is the same disparity between his plans and the actual aims of the commercial community as there is, quite often, between the prospectus and the actual organization of an industry. Within the precincts of the modern city, the engineer, whose utilitarian eye has never blinked at the necessity for profitable enterprise, and whose interest in human beings as loads, weights, stresses, or units pays no attention to their qualitative demands as human beings--within these precincts, I say, the engineer has recovered his supremacy. Here, in fact, is the paradox of American architecture. In our suburban houses we have frequently achieved the excellence of Forest Hills and Bronxville; in our public buildings we tend more easily to approach the strength and originality of Mr. Goodhue’s State Capitol for Nebraska; in fact, never before have the individual achievements of American architects been so rich, so varied, and so promising. In that part of architecture which lies outside the purlieus of our commercial system--I mean the prosperous country homes and college buildings and churches and municipal institutions--a tradition of good building and tactful design has been established. At this point, unfortunately, the scope of the architect has become narrowed: the forces that create the great majority of our buildings lie quite outside the cultivated field in which he works. Through the mechanical reorganization of the entire milieu, the place of architecture has become restricted; and even when architecture takes root in some unnoticed crevice, it blooms only to be cut down at the first “business opportunity.”