Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/218

206 to the requirements of the time. It would not call for comment were it not that modern builders so persistently refuse to recognize it as a fundamental principle in building. Nowadays, when an architect designs a building, he is satisfied he has done all he is required to do if it looks well. If the builder of a house wants a stairway or a window in a particular place because he thinks it will be more convenient, and thereby interferes with the symmetry of the drawing that is submitted for his inspection, he is argued out of it because, forsooth, it will destroy this carefully prepared symmetry or spoil some technical gimcrack that the architect regards as his chief device; and if by chance the owner carries the day, the architect retires in chagrin, and despairs of his art ever making good progress.

No greater harm is done to the true advancement of architecture than this insistence that exterior effect is the sole end to be desired. More than any other cause it has operated to depress the art, and helped to make people question the utility of intrusting their interests to the architects. It has spread abroad the impression that these gentlemen, who might be very useful, are unnecessary luxuries, and that a much more comfortable dwelling can be built by indicating one's own desires and following one's own suggestions and views as to convenience, than by paying large sums for "pretty" façades that very likely conceal more discomfort and dissatisfaction than the most vivid imagination can conceive of in a twelvemonth. As a natural result there is a popular skepticism as to the value of professional services that not only hinders the development of a modern architecture, but does serious injury to the profession as well. Yet architects have only themselves to thank for this condition of things, and they can never hope to win the confidence of the public until they have laid aside their so-called art, and begun to design structures with the sole end of making them answer the requirements for which they are intended.

The most remarkable movement in modern architecture has been the Gothic revival, in the midst of which we are living. It has resulted in the wholesale approval of all that is mediæval, and all that bears the impress of Gothic art. It is important, not only as showing an interest in the really good work of previous times, but as indicating an appreciation for an art that is based on common sense and the adaptation of ends to means. Gothic architecture is nothing if not sensible. It originated in a time in the world's history when building was at its lowest ebb. The founders of Gothic art were possessed of limited means; they were without wealth, and their general knowledge was of the scantiest. The magnificent structures to which the Romans had been accustomed were impossible to them. Every stone counted, every item