Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/939

 1869.J Store Front Architecture. 763 STORE FRONT ARCHITECTURE. THERE is no one department of the profession of Design which so tries the ability of an architect as that of Store Fronts. In the vast majority of mercantile pursuits, light and display are the requi- sites next in importance to space. To afford all possible accommodation in two such imperious necessities and at the same time to struggle against limit, often serious limit of frontage, is the supreme difficulty and one that must be overcome or the design cannot, in the business view of the matter, be at all satisfactoiy. It is in vain for the archi- tect to attempt any defence of his ideas, backed though they may be >y all the known authorities in his profession, the merchant sees the thing in his own peculiar light and will not see it in any other. Why should he? His business is display, and if that display can be procured through the medium of taste and without violating any of the rules of propriety in architecture, so much the better. But if, on the contrary, such cannot be effected, the consequence falls, unfortunately, on the side of taste, and the architect has to forego his innate feeling and yield to the demand of necessity. The general public will possibly ad- mire the very failure he deplores, but there is ever a scrutinizing eye that scans design with a view to fault-find- ing, and it is that evil eye alone whose piercing, unrelenting test the architect stands more in dread of than of the per- petually recurring observation of the passing multitude. How then are we to judge these store designs ? Can we place our hand below our eyes and shut out the store, seeing only the superstructure from the bres- summer line up? It is a difficult task indeed, for the idea of heavy piers of masonry, however proportionate to that superstructure, being sustained between earth and heaven by fairy like columns of attenuated iron (and mayhap but four of these) the thing seems quite too preposterous for the mind to bear with anything like ease. There is a dread, an uncomfortable realizing of the pre- cariousuess of one's position when stand- ing under that impending mass of super- structure defended by tiny stems, and sheets of scarcely, discernable French plate-glass, that must always prove a most serious drawback to the gaudiest display of fancy work, however other- wise attractive to- customers. But how is this dilemma to be over- come ? Some efforts have been made to continue up the fragile appearance of the store, and thus produced an elfin dream of a building all glass and fram- ing. The practical disadvantages of such a construction are numerous and so apparent to every mind that it is un- necessary to name them here. And, after all, does this treatment really over- come the difficult}' ? Certainly not — the columns, so called, of the store are diminished to the very smallest possible diameter, and consequently those of the superstructure could not be less, and being over each other for, say four Stories, the appearance is still more vis- ionary, and fear inspiring. The spider weaves his gauzy web on the suspension principle ; man under- takes to construct those webs of com- merce of which we speak, on no princi- ple at all. Here then is a fair and open field for the inventive genius of our profession to exercise itself upon, and he that comes the nearest to a realization of the wished for solution of this riddle of design will deserve well of the world of sense and and true taste.