Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/221

Rh designed, and at the same time be of sufficient beauty to call forth, the commendation of future ages. In other words, utility in architecture is not synonymous with ugliness, nor does it follow that, because a structure is essentially useful, it is any the less beautiful. This fact is of great importance, because many modern builders have the singular idea that beauty of form and utility of structure are mutually antagonistic. The Gothic builders, for instance, employed the grandest forms and the most ambitious designs for their cathedrals; but, when they set about building a dwelling or a warehouse, kept their designs well within the limits for which they were intended. They used the same shapes, the same details, the same ideas, it is true; but the application of them is different in a dwelling from that in a church. Modern architects, on the contrary, do not hesitate to apply forms and methods that are peculiarly ecclesiastical, and which have no significance in any other connection, to domestic work; and it is no unusual thing to-day to see a castle turret decorating the corner of a thoroughfare, or a church doorway leading into a financial institution. A confusion naturally ensues as to the use of the structure, and the average spectator is frequently at a loss to know for what purpose a particular building is intended. In mediæval times such a condition would have been impossible, because then the idea that intention was the chief thing to be expressed in a structure was so firmly imbedded that any other process would never have been thought of.

It goes without saying that, if an adherence to this principle produced satisfactory results in past times, the same methods would bring about equally good ones at the present day. And yet the thought is so far forgotten as to be seldom practiced. Not all the architecture of the present time is bad, but so much of it is, that no opportunity should be neglected of hastening a reform. Our political thought is directed toward reform; we have ballot reform, civil-service reform, tariff reform, and very shortly the art world must have architectural reform, or it will be impossible to live in our houses. In place of use, we are given ornament; in place of intention, we have design. On every side buildings are criticised for their appearance, and are generally found unsatisfactory—a state of affairs that can be directly traced to their lack of ideas. Music is flat and insipid just so far as ideas are absent from it, and the same may be said of architecture. There are unrivaled opportunities for good work and plenty of it in this country, and yet there is a constant cry of dissatisfaction with the products of our architectural labor. Government architecture is as bad as that produced under private auspices. In ancient Rome it was the government's work that was the best done and has survived the longest. In the nineteenth century it is the private