Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/431

 SLOAN'S ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW AND BUILDERS' JOURNAL AN ILLUSTEATED MONTHLY. CONDUCTED BY SAMUEL SLOAN, ARCHITECT: ASSISTED BY CHARLES J. LUKENS. Vol. I. — Entered aecoWlina: to Act of Congress, in the year 1S6S, by Samnel Sloan, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. MONTHLY REVIEW. OUR ARCHITECTURE REVIEWED. THE cities all over the country are more or less embellished with the architectural improvements of the times. Buildings that were honored time-marks have disappeared ; and even modern structures have been removed to make way for the rising style, which fashion has decided on, as the next in order. For Fashion does rule in Building, as in dress. Still, although not at all as changeable, it is yet quite as distinct in its features, when it does assume a new appearance. The fashion in architecture, like that of the beau monde, is apt to repeat itself, as though the inventive power could not go beyond a certain boundary line. Thus, we see our sisters, wives and daughters to-day wearing many of the fashions of their great grandmothers. So, in Building, we easily recognize in those fresh-looking elevations a resur- rection of the architectural emanations of what, in our student days, we were taught to look upon as those barbarous piles of the Dark Ages, when design ran riot, and construction unbridled by rule or reason, laid every diversity of form under contribution, to produce a highly wrought conglomerate. Yet, out of evil cometh good ; and from the debris of this very chaos of architecture we have drawn some choice relics, that, in the hands of a true artist, are made to redeem many of the sins against taste, which their originators were so lamentably guilty of. In times past, which, in this young country of ours we are apt to look upon as ages, the Grecian and Roman styles were the models adopted for public and private buildings. And fearfully were those models treated. In fact, so great was the liberty taken with them, that we very narrowly escaped the misfortune of this being taken by the world for an indigenous style. Not but that there were some fine specimens of what might truly be called classic art, in those times, some of which remain to this day. But we particularly allude to that mode of Grecian in which the arch, the dome, and even the spire, were all pressed into the service, and made to do duty in the construction of a gross absurdity. This conglomerate was to be met with, all over the country ; and may even still be seen, where the pressure of improve- ment has not urged its deserved de- struction. There is scarcely a single one of the architectic worthies and un worthies of (353)