Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/40

36 exquisitely designed. But—not to be invidious—at least, there are 'others.' The Cullum Memorial building is quite worthy in its way and standing alone; but its Polonian fairness serves only to 'swear at' the grim granite, buttressed and embattled, across the plain. By the side of the Memorial (as if it had laid an egg) is the officers' mess—that also not bad architecturally, but a little, just a little, one feels, out of keeping. The hotel, of course, is a bad blot on the landscape, and some other matters need remedying. Let us be patient as well as brutally frank—they are all going to be remedied if the government will permit the architects to 'build up the system.'

To mere panaceas for the accident of incongruity; touches here and there modifying or obscuring or obliterating something hideous or something merely obtrusive, saving sacredly all that can or ought to be saved out of the chaos; never replacing anything really beautiful by something even more beautiful even to propitiate uniformity, and above all guarding jealously the spirit of old associations, always at 'arms-port' to cry, 'Who comes there?' to him—even to a friend, without the academy or within, who can not give the countersign, 'Propriety,' or seeks to substitute 'Utility.'

What a superb foundation these artist souls may build upon! A level square mile, terre-plein whose barbette views throw glances riverward many miles north and south, a steep scarp of primeval rock plunging down sheer to the glacis of water below; outlying works of precipitous hills, piled terrace upon terrace to the highest peak crowned with the gray vestiges of Fort Tufus Putnam.

jot alone the traditions of the military academy invite the artisan and the architect to his best efforts, but here are older historic associations yet ta stimulate also the poet. To the planning of such work as is here contemplated some measure of fine frenzy must mingle with the dull prosaic details of necessity or expediency.

The general plans and such details as have been elaborated show conclusively how grand the scope of alteration, how admirably existing conditions are to be utilized, and the natural features are to l)e availed of. In its material phases West Point may»be easily separated into three distinct periods: that of the early academy, of the old north and south barracks—of the academy as it was when Edgar Allan Poe was a cadet, where Whistler stood higher in drawing than in chemistry, and where Grant and Lee, Sherman and Longstreet got their education. Then came the time of the present barracks, Elizabethan, stately, well appointed. It was erected in 1851. The old academic building was built in 1838, and was replaced by the present modern structure in or about 1890, The third period is that about to be inaugurated.

In the construction of the New West Point the present academic building will be retained; the site of the old chapel being utilized for