Page:Architectural Record 1920-08 Vol 48 Iss 2.djvu/77

 shows an easy mastery of his materials, so tractably plastic that, while lending itself to the facile employment of the grammar of the art as developed from the technique of stonemasonry, it legitimately permits itself to transcend the limitations in design imposed thereby and to express itself on occasion with a wider freedom. Yet there is no running to eccentricity because of this. On the contrary, the work is remarkably restrained in its task of giving, without constraint, expression to the organic character of the structure. Hence we have the primarily monolithic quality of the material well sensed in the unitary character of broad, restful surfaces that make effective settings for the light openness of grouped perforations in windows and doorways.

How attractively these simple elements may be composed is shown in the long, low building of the four-room school with its arcaded porch and overhanging roof of red tile, built for the municipality of Salinas for the Central Aguirre, the second largest sugar-producing plant in Porto Rico, the children of the employes there finding instruction. The little one-room rural school built for the same municipality indicates how fortunate a town may be when it has its treasury enriched by the taxes derived from a great industry. These rural schoolhouses, the equivalent of the “little red schoolhouse’ of old time rustic New England, standing along the highways all through the island, are for the greater part cheap, wooden affairs, hardly above the grade of shacks. But, as in New England and various other sections of the States today, where the children of the countryside in many sections enjoy schooling opportunities that in former days would have been as impracticable as they were undreamed of, by concentrating their rural school populations in excellently equipped modern schoolhouses at central points, taking the pupils to and fro in motor buses, so in various sections of Porto Rico a like advance has been made. An admirable example is the five-room schoolhouse built by the municipality of Arecibo—in population the fourth city of the island—for its outlying barrio of Santana. In Spain and very generally throughout Spanish America a municipality is not merely a city, but something similar to a wide-extending township in New England—like Plymouth, Massachusetts, or Barnstable, on Cape Cod comprising a central town or city with perhaps several outlying districts or barrios, usually rural in character, and occasionally having sizeable concentrated populations in villages, the municipality bearing the name of the central urban portion and all under one local government. The Arecibo consolidated rural school at the Barrio Santana offers in its design an excellent illustration of how well concrete construction lends itself to the employment of Egyptian motives—in this example, the liberal space devoted to window openings conveying an effect of cheerfulness that bars any suggestion of the mausoleum-like character so commonly associated with Egyptian architecture. Another instance of such school consolidation is the handsome two-room rural school with library and domestic science department, a gift to the municipality of Luquillo, in the eastern part of the island, by the public-spirited citizen, Dr. Santiago Veve.

A notable example of another class of civic architecture is Mr. Finlayson’s dignified and handsome city hall, or Alcaldia Municipal, for the municipality of Salinas. Here, on the first floor, such diverse uses as a public library, internal revenue office, court-room and prison are accommodated; while on the second floor, the executive, legislative and administrative functions and offices of the local government are provided for, together with the quarters of the justice of the peace.

The plan and illustration of the Municipal Hospital at Fajardo show an admirable example of the increased attention given since the American occupation to such activities in Porto Rico. The plans and illustrations of the municipal market buildings at Rio Piedras and Bayamon depict two of the best examples of an institution common to practically all the larger municipalities of the island.