Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/270

 252 THE BUILDING NEWS. Marcu 29, 1872. itself, and which, after a very few years of exposure to the air, ends in the production of mere black deformity. But we would call attention to our writer’s own words, as he speaks with practical knowledge :— The Houses of Parliament, built of stone selected by a Royal Commission of scientific men, began to decay before completion—chemists were consulted how to preserve it—and it has since been necessary to renew much of the work. The Travellers’ Club House in Pall Mall has had to be painted, to arrest further decay and to disguise its unsightly appear- ance. The details of the Institution of Civil Mngi- neers have absolutely crumbled away; and the same result is to be seen in other large towns. At Man- chester the ancient parish church (now the cathe- dral) was so decayed that a few years ago the old tower was pulled down and rebuilt, and it has been necessary to recase the whole building. At Stafford the old parish church is now in the hands of the masons for the same purpose. Now, in these cases, it is not the stone that was defective, for material from the same quarries was used in the old village churches in the neighbourhood hundreds of years ago, and is in the same condition to-day as when it left the hands of the workmen. The fact is, being porous and absorbent, it has no power of resisting the destructive acids of the London atmosphere, which, entering with the moisture of the air, cause rapid disintegration, so that it begins to decay imme- diately it is set in a building. Yet, although these facts must be well known to the architects employed by the Government, they continue to erect the most costly buildings in this perishable mate- rial; and it is certain they will still do so, unless those having the power put a stop to so wasteful an expenditure of the public money. Their delight is in carved stone crockets, finials, spandrels, and other details, which make a great show for a time, and please the unreflecting public, but—however beautiful in themselyes—are not only destroyed, but are lost to sight in four or five years, from soot and smoke deposit. They were the details of design when ancient cities were no larger than modern villages, and when the smoke nuisance was un- known. The immediate question to which these ob- servations are applied by the author is that of the erection of the future Courts of Justice. And his recommendations are twofold—the same which (we venture to repeat) we have ourselves constantly but unsuccessfully urged. The first is, the use of granites, porphyries, or other material which will bear some polish and repel the accumulation of soot, instead of freestone, as far as practicable. The second is, the abandonment of fine carved work in exteriors, andthe substitution for that highly charged and ornamented style which is un- happily popular now, of a style of simple severity ; which, whether in itself preferable or no, is the only one befitting the conditions of climate under which we live. As to the use of granite, the writer says :— The facades erected in past years show a strong feeling in favour of colour (on the part of the public), and the noble material proposed affords an ample scale for this purpose. From Scotland we have red, pink, and gray; from Cornwall, yellow, black, and white; from Shap, in Cumberland, a flesh colour; and a beautiful syenite or porphyry so near our doors as Mount Sorrel, in Leicestershire. These colours are not vulfarly glaring, but sufficiently subdued for the most satisfactory effect. Thus, by means of colour, we should secure that relief which is an essential in architectural design, and is obtained ina stone (freestone) building by light and shade produced by numerous breaks in the frontage, which are inconvenient in our streets, and by deeply-cut mouldings and carvings, which collect dirt. And it may easily be imagined that architectural effect of no common order might be produced. As to the style to be adopted, the writer’s verdict is even more decisive, and, we must add, in accordance not merely with his views or our views of taste, but with the laws of common-sense :— The designer(working in granite or other cognate material ; but the rule is in truth equally applicable whatever the substance used) must boldly cast away all thought of the minor details of Medieval build- ings, and endeayour to design in a style appropriate to the material. . Now the whole of the work above described would be imperishable. It could not even be damaged in appearance by soot or smoke, but, on the contrary, being polished, would be cleaned down by every shower of rain. . Such details (as he describes) designed by competent per- sons would, I believe, amply make up for the loss carved stone crockets, pinnacles, and spandrels, and would cost less, as, from their simplicity of form, they could be executed by ordinary masons instead of highly-paid artistic carvers. We must once more add—reverting to arguments constantly repeated by thought- ful erities, and of which the force is most stolidly neglected by those charged both with the execution and superintendence of public works—that this question does not involve difference of taste. It is simply one of ‘to be or not to be.” A highly-ornamented facade of Bath stone may, if you please, be the most beautiful product of architectural art; but cuz bono, if it is destined to be shrouded in filth and squalor within a very few years of its erection? And is not this doom inevitable? Is there any exception to the law as regards metropolitan buildings? Has any practical means been devised, has even any serious effort been made—unless, indeed, in the whitewashing of Temple Bar —to restore the pristine beauty of elevations utterly blackened and disfigured, such as those of the Horse Guards, the Treasury buildings, Somerset House, and so many more, of which the charms are merely matter of tradition only, and preserved by the imagination and not the eye. It is, in plain truth, just as sensible a proceeding to build a palace of ice, as did the Empress Elizabeth, with the certain prospect of its melting in a few months, as to build it of perishable cal- careous stone, and with abundance of project- ing decoration, which the first showers of a London winter will clog and mark with their sooty deposit. And yet, knowing all this, we proceed, to the great joy of the architects who govern our taste and drain our pockets, precisely as if we had over our heads the sky of Greece or Egypt. The south front of the new Burlington House is just finished— creamy white, and charged with finical orna- ment, as pretty while bran new as a delicately moulded jelly—and we all know perfectly well that in ten years’ time as many of us as survive will turn away with disgust from its shapeless mass of clotted ugliness. And we see no prospect at all of averting the same doom from the future Law Courts. No one really cares enough about them—great as has been the wrangling—to make one serious effort to attend to the use of solid material and sim- plicity of ornament in their elevation. And yet, without such attention, whatever their merits may be, in their first freshness, in the eyes of lovers of English Gothic, or Venetian Gothic, or ‘‘ Italian” Gothic, or of the fanci- ful beauty of the Louvre, or the richness of extravagant Renaissance, they will—for all these styles come unhappily under the same condemnation—present to our children only a lugubrious warning against expending millions on no permanent result at all, without common forethought, and in defiance of every- day experience. The columns of our daily papers are devoted every morning to the end- less controversies which our embryo Temple of Justice has oecasioned: the ‘ battle of the sites,” the battle of the styles, the battle of the architects; but we look in vain for one word to indicate that any combatant in the arenahas devoted one thought to the question of far paramount importance to them all— that between preservation and perishableness, form and chaos, beauty and decay. ———— A PLEA FOR GOTHAC.* T ET us now proceed to examine what there is in 4 the nature of Gothic art which enables us so very confidently to prefer it to any other. And here we may say that we should be the last to ignore at all the claims which Gothic architecture has upon our love and reverence by reason of its connection with all that is most interesting in the history, the romance, and the religion of our country ; whilst at the same time we are quite prepared to maintain its claim to be up to this time our only national and in- digenous form of architecture. These would be strong grounds indeed for loving any form of art; but they are not the grounds on which at present we desire to insist on the truth of our views. They are rather reasons founded on tender sentiment than on practical considerations, and architecture is so essen- “From No.1 of the Lambeth Review, published by MITCHELL & SONS, 52, Parliament-street. tially a practical art that we prefer to put forward none but practical arguments in favour of the style on which, as we believe, our architects ought to found the whole of their future work. The arguments for the use of the Gothie style in buildings of every description are, then, mainly these —that it is a practical, a real, and, in this country, a natural as well as a national style, and, above all, eminently a free style of architecture; suited, there- fore, to deal in the best way with the many new problems of construction and materials which have to be solved by every architect in these days. These are the arguments for Gothie architecture which have often been put forth and have never been seriously controverted, and which, indeed, admit so little of either a denial or an answer, that one cannot affect to wonder at the course pursued by objectors, who, ignoring altogether their very existence, devote themselves instead to meeting the other arguments for it, which appeal indeed to the sentiments and instincts of very many of us with the greatest possible force, but which are still not the real founda- tions on which we ground the whole superstructure of our belief. ’ The reality and truthfulness which characterise all good Gothic art are then its real claims on our re- spect, and, unless architects always remember this in their work, they will find no difficulty whatever in sinking as low as any of their predecessors. If we examine the ancient examples of domestic architecture still remaining in every part of our country, we shall find that they are almost invariably designed and constructed on the simplest and most utilitarian system. Their ground-plans were arranged, notin order to secure an academical uniformity on the exterior, nor without reference to the undulations of the ground on which they stood, but so as exactly to suit the wants of the building and of the locality. The facility indeed with which a medizval architect suited his work to its position is marvellous, Tis building seems to grow out of the ground on which it stands naturally and vigorously, and requires no artificially-made mounds of unnecessary earthwork, painfully precise in their heavy outlines, to serve as sham foundations for its walls. The arrangements of an old building, where they mark customs or wants which have died out, are not such as any one need slavishly imitate. But the principle of the arrangements was one which we should all do well to follow. Rooms were not packed together within a square box-like outline, and lighted, whatever their size or insignificance, by windows of the same shape and importance; but the use of each room was appropriately marked by the character of its decorations, and (to take one example out of manyy instead of designing chapels and infirmaries of great institutions so absolutely identical in appearance as not to be distinguishable one from the other (as we have seen done lately), the use of almost every part of a building was marked even on the exterior: if there was a chapel, it was conspicuously a chapel; if a hall, the guests and retainers had no difficulty in seeing afar off where they should find it. If a house was to be built for defence, Carnarvon and a hundred castles elsewhere may tell how naturally it was done. If for study and seclusion, what can be more practical than such colleges as those of Winchester, Oxford, and Cambridge, or more perfectly adapted for their purpose than the great institutions of the religious orders which are still the jewels that adorn the fairest spots throughout our land? The internal arrangements to suit the convenience of the occupiers were as natural and often conse- quently as picturesque as those arrangements of the exterior which were devised to suit the locality—and we can never do better than follow their example in this respect, Nothing is so wearisome as the dreary similarity of the plans of modern houses: you do not want to be able to settle before you enter exactly the number of rooms and position of every one of them ina house. If there be a surprise of any kind in some unexpected arrangement, in a new position of a staircase, in a room lighted by windows a little out of the common in their place or shape, or with some pleasant recess where you can escape from the usual four square simplicity, how grateful do you not feel to the designer? You feel directly that you are in the presence of work done by a man who has thought about putting some of his own mind into it, and of giving it some human interest; he must have cenceived of his room furnished and inhabited; he knew that a quiet bookish corner might be made here; that there, in the cheerful recess of the bay window, a merry family group might assemble; that on the wall here the best work of art the house possessed might be fitly enshrined in its frame; whilst there the eye would be satisfied with the diaper grave or gay on the tapestry or hanging with which the walls are covered. In the hall one would like to find recesses where they were wanted; a