The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, vol. 06, No. 01, January 1900: The Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States.Hamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
General
The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, vol. 06, No. 01, January 1900: The Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States.
Hamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
Architecture -- Periodicals; Architecture -- United States; Buildings -- United States
Of the ten buildings in the "1885" list but three appear in the "First"
list, and two in the "Second"; so that only five of the ten buildings
adjudged in 1885 to be the most beautiful in the United States are
included in the _twenty_ given the leading rank in 1899 by the BROCHURE
readers. Of these twenty, six in the "First" list and five in the
"Second" have been built since the 1885 vote. Of the remaining four in
the "First" list, three, as we have seen, figure in that of "1885"; the
fourth--the New York City Hall--was not in 1885 considered worthy of
a place among the ten--a significant suggestion as to changing tastes
since that date.
[Illustration: TRINITY CHURCH, TOWER BOSTON]
The first and most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the above
statistics is that American architects, so far as they are represented
in the BROCHURE vote, have no hide-bound traditions or ingrained
prejudices as to style. There is in the list selected by them a
preponderance, it is true, of buildings in the various styles of the
Renaissance and Classic Revival--seven out of ten. But the third in
the list, with 96 per cent of unanimity in its favor, is a Romanesque
building, Trinity Church, Boston. Two others, standing sixth and
eighth, are Gothic,--Trinity and St. Patrick's Churches in New York.
The remaining seven, although they may all be included under a broad
extension of the term "Renaissance," exhibit wide divergencies of
style. The Capitol at Washington and the Columbia Library represent
two different phases of the Classic Revival, nearly a century apart
in date; the New York City Hall, a version of the style of Louis XVI.
The Boston Public Library was avowedly inspired from the "nèo-Grec"
Bibliothèque St. Genéviève of Labrouste, as far as its façades are
concerned, and yet differs from that building more than it resembles
it; and although, in the foregoing tables, both this and the Biltmore
mansion are classified as in the French Renaissance style, they are
really much farther apart than the classic Capitol and the Louis Seize
City Hall. The Congressional Library follows Italian rather than
French precedents, and the Madison Square Garden suggests both Italian
and Spanish prototypes. Evidently our architects are not bound by
allegiance to any one style or kind of beauty, but are ready to find
subjects for admiration in buildings of the most diverse character, and
to recognize beauty alike in pointed and round arches, in domes and in
spires, in acanthus leaves and crockets, in new buildings and in old.
This catholicity of taste is interesting, and on the whole hopeful, for
it suggests the ability and readiness to appreciate realities instead
of names, style rather than any particular historic dress, essentials
rather than externals;--an eclecticism which recognizes beauty,
quality, excellence, wherever they can be found, and adopts what is
best without regard to names or categories. And if we consider the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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