Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/274

 256 THE BUILDING NEWS. Marcu 29, 1872. THE ARCHITECT'S OFFICE, GUILDHALL. HE Officers’ and Clerks’ Committee of the Cor- poration of London, having inquired into the manner in which the business of the City Architect's office is conducted and performed by the Architect and the various officers in his department, have issued theirreport. As regards the permanent staff, the Committee find that it was upon the appoint- ment of the present Architect and Surveyor con- tinued at four assistants, but in 1869, when Mr. Baker, the third assistant, was appointed the officer to survey the City and Bridge House estates, Mr. Murray, the fourth assistant, was promoted to be third assistant, and his appointment was not filled up, a youth only being, under the authority of the report of 1869, since engaged for the office. These statements show that the staff of four assistants, as settled in 1863, was for the general business of the office, as contemplated by the terms of the report then presented, whereas such business has been varied and extended by special works. With a decrease in 1869 of the strength of the staff has come, not a decrease, but a positive increase of work. Mr. Henry Carver, the second assistant, who has beenin the office for twenty-five years, has for some time past suffered from continued ill-health, and a temporary draughtsman has been employed in his room. From the foregoing it will be at once seen that to place the office on a satisfactory footing certain alterations and modifications are necessary. The Committee agree in the opinion of the Architect and Surveyor, that the staff should consist of a principal or first assistant, a second assistant, a third assistant, two draughtsmen, a junior assistant, and a messenger or office boy. In the duties of Mr. Baily, the principal clerk, certain modifications will be necessary to make them harmonise with the spirit of thisreport. Mr. Murray, it is proposed, should (pending Mr. Caryer’s return or an arrangement for his retirement) take the position of second assistant, attending also to the business of certain committees, and more particularly to the general affairs of the department. ‘The third and fourth assistants are to be competent draughtsmen, and the senior of these might also be called upon to attend to the business of committees. The junior assistant is for copying work, and to aid in office business generally. et CHROMATIC DECORATION FOR STREET ARCHITECTURE. HE paragraph which appeared in our last im- pression commending the way in which the re- painting of the Regent Quadrant has just been carried out has brought to mind some remarks made by Mr. J. P. Seddon on the subject indicated by our heading at the Architectural Conference last year. Mr. Seddon said that one sees, rather too often as it is, painters’ scaffolding and appliances in use, and workmen engaged in a triennial task of slobbering in monotone the facades of mansions, the owners of which would doubtless find means for a higher class of even temporary decoration, if it happened to be fashionable. The surface of the front of a street - house is not generally so very extensive as to render some decoration out of the question on the score of expense. Nevertheless, for most external architec- ture, and especially for buildings of public import- ance, the polychromy should undoubtedly be con- structive rather than applied; but we have for this afair supply of suitable materials which demand would largely increase. Terra-cotta of varied hues, bricks of numerous tints, tiles of excellent character, are at hand, but it is strange that so little use has as yet been made of them. Some years ago he had pleasure in working with bricks and blocks of terra- cotta, made of beaatiful colours to choice at the Poole potteries, but the limited demand for them caused the discontinuance of that manufacture. A vigorous use of colour would greatly enliven our guakerish streets, and surely there are few artistic qualities of any kind in them now that could possibly suffer by it. Of course large and important struc- tures should not have too motley a garb, but much consideration ought to be given to the colour of their material, and the dignity of their soberer treatment would be greatly enhanced by the variety in the smaller buildings around them. In themselves, per- haps, a broad yet powerful contrast in the general hue, as compared with their surroundings, should be sought, such as might be produced hereafter upon the frontage towards the Thames Embankment by public buildings wholly of red or gray granite or gold-coloured magnesian limestone interspersed with private houses in rich red brickwork, instead of a collection of nothing but the drabs and dirty browns now so much affected. Conceive the effect of such a varied line of buildings as suggested, rising as a stately background to the gardens lately laid out along the banks of the Thames. : CHATEAU DU LUDE, FRANCE. 2 this week give an illustration of one of the many interesting chateaux now existing in the Valley of the Loire. It was completed about the year 1535, and we commend it to the study of modern architects as a fine example of French architecture of the period of Francis I. For breadth of mass, delicacy of detail, and consequent grand effect, it would be difficult to find it surpassed. Our view is taken from the park, the bridge seen on the left being the entrance over the moat, now dry. ——_@____ THE CATHEDRAL OF TRENT. FEY an eye unaccustomed to Italian form (says - the Saturday Review) the first sight of the Cathedral of Trent is yery striking. The traveller will most likely approach it from the north, where the nave and north transept occupy the southern side of the great square of the City. Everything at once tells him that he is in Italy. The central cupola, the open galleries running along nave and transept, are features which have their representa- tives in Germany, but here they seemed clothed with a new character and a new meaning; and the few and small windows, and, above all, the porch with its columns resting on the backs of lions, are distinctly and characteristically Italian. He may, perhaps, remark the windows of the aisle, where the double splay characteristic of German Romanesque is relieved by a profusion of external shafts and arches, in marked contrast to the usage of England and Normandy. He may mark this as a happy means of adorning a feature which, when treated as it commonly is in Germany, always has a certain look of rudeness and bareness. In the wheel window of the transept he will also mark a form of a fami- liar feature, which will show that he has wandered far away from either Lincoln or Amiens. From this point of view the east end is lost, embedded in amass of buildings of which the most prominent feature is a tower, as tall and almost as slender as an Trish round tower, but with two rows of the charac- j teristic coupled windows with mid-wall shafts. Here, too, he will mark for the first time the peculiar battlement which, from its frequent use at Verona, has got the name of the Scala,while on another machi- colated tower which forms part of the group he will see a developed shape of the stepped battlement of Treland. He will not be inclined to tarry long over the west front, with its incongruous tower; but unless he enters the building he will most likely make his way to the north-east—by far the finest point for a view of Trent Cathedral and its adjoin- ing buildings. The group isa noble one. The cen- tral octagon, with its domical covering, rises above the choir and south transept, the latter finished by an attached apse, and with an eastern porch with the pillar-bearing lions and one of the pillars itself twisted like the mystic pair at Wiirzburg. The tall aisle-less choir, with its gallery, its tall shafted windows, its stately apse unencumbered by surround- ing chapels, may perhaps again suggest the memory of Wiirzburg in the shape of its New Minster. But in S. Kilian’s the strongly-marked cornices and the shafts not bearing arches show a distinctly Classical tinge, while at Trent all is late and richly- developed, but still perfectly pure Romanesque. And this rich Romanesque of the church itself con- trasts in a marked way with the adjoining buildings, once the episcopal palace, where we see windows of the ruder German type and an apse of clearly earlier date than that of the Cathedral. The machi- colated tower also comes in well from the same point. In fact, few more striking groups can be found anywhere. We turn to the inside, and we find something for which the outside has hardly prepared us. The gloom of the church, the low clerestory with its very small windows, is thoroughly Italian; the absence of the triforium is also Italian, and sometimes German ; but the piers, except in their prodigious height, are those of an English or Norman church. We haye here neither the square piers of Mainz and Ziirich, nor the basilican columns of Murano and Torcello, nor yet the alternation of the two in 8. Zeno at Verona and 8. Burchard at Wiirzburg. The section of the piers and their nook-shafts, their capitals, their whole appearance, is thoroughly Norman, save only that they and the arches which they bear are carried up to a height rare in Romanesque of any sort, and whose proportion is really more like that of the latest English Gothic. But the likeness does not go beyond the proportion. The tall pillars of an Eastern or Western English church bear a clerestory which sometimes becomes a very wall of glass; those of Trent carry an upper range which is small indeed, and pierced, as the sky of Italy demands, with the smallest of windows. It is hardly conceivable that this nave, formed of six arches, such as we have described. can come from the same hand as the peculiar Romanesque of the outside of the choir. On turning to local history the matter becomes per- fectly plain. . . We have then at Trent a distinct specimen of pure and unmixed Romanesque, of a naturally-developed round-arch style, admitting of much elegance and refinement, belonging to the thirteenth century. The style had thrown off all rudeness, but it had not begun to imitate any features inconsistent with itself. There is no sign of any falling-back on merely Classical forms, no sign of any striving after those forms of the Northern Gothic, the true spirit of which proved in Italy to be utterly unattainable. It is a good pure national style, which it was a pity indeed to exchange for the cold and dead imitations of foreign forms which pre- sently set in. —_>—__———_ THE ORIGIN OF FIRES. M* JOHN ATTFEILD writes to the Times in reference to the fatal fire at Kennington. He says:—‘The origin of the fire was shown to be a gas-stove burner placed on a dresser covered with iron, and the superintendent of the Fire Brigade said he had known several instances of fires having been occasioned by gas stoves. These statements induce me to make the following remarks. Mechanics who fix gas stoves commonly cover adjacent woodwork with a sheet of iron, under the erroneous impressior that access of fire is thereby prevented. Such @ covering of metal does not arrest any of the heat, but simply diffuses it to some extent, rendering the boards below after a time as inflammable as touch- wood. To place incombustible material like iron between a source of heat and combustible matter is a wise proceeding, but it is essential that the metal be so supported by little knobs or bars as to be kept half an inch or an inch away from the woodwork. This ensures the constant presence of a laver betweer the hot sheet of iron and the wood; and a layer of air is the finest non-conductor of heat which can be employed under the circumstances. As a professor of chemistry, I speak from a knowledge of the prin- ciples concerned as well as from what is termed practical experience.” —— or THE INSTITUTE AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF SURVEYORS. HE Committee appointed at the conference of the Royal Institute of British Architects last year to consider the question of ‘‘The Employment of Surveyors,” is desirous to ascertain the opinions of the profession with reference to this subject. The accompanying memorandum has accordingly been prepared, and members are invited to favour the Committee with their observations on the several subjects referred to. SuBJECTS RELATING TO WHICH THE EXPRESSION OF OPINION AND THE COMMUNICATION OF INFORMATION IS REQUESTED.* 1. Is it desirable that the practice generally adopted in the case of large works (whereby a surveyor is appointed to represent the employer, and another the builders, such surveyors being jointly responsible to the builder for the accuracy of the quantities,) should bein any way modified ? 2. It was suggested as a convenient course for general adoption that the quantities should be prepared by a sur- veyor nominated by the architect, and who would be re- sponsible to the employer for his accuracy; the builder being relieved from any responsibility in regard thereto. 3. The adoption of this course would go far towards dis- connecting the surveyor from the builder, and making him the agent and adviser of the employer in the matter of quantities, &c. Would this be a system advantageous and desirable for general adoption? 4, A suggestion that the bills of quantities should form: part of the contract was well received. Architects in leading practice mentioned that they had for many years adopted such a course, and found it to work well, and to be equitable to both employer and builder. Are there any valid objections to the introduction of such a system, the dimensions on which the bills are founded being, in such a case, placed in the hands of both architect and builder ? 5. It appears to be not unusual for some architects, especially in the provinces, to furnish the bills of quantities for works to be carried out.under their own superinten- dence. Howeyer convenient this practice may be in some instances, are not special preeautions necessary? Should not the “bills,” in such instances, invariably form part of the contract? And from whom should the architect re- ceive payment for such quantities ? 6. It was mentioned as being an ordinary and reason- able course that the responsibility of the accuracy of the quantities should be thrown upon the builder, by fixing a time, say one month from the acceptance of the tender, during which he might prove the quantities, but after which no objection would be allowed. Might not great injustice be committed under such a system ? " 7. It would be desirable to secure more general uni- formity of practice with regard to the taking out of quan- tities. How can this be best attained? The communication of special information con- cerning local or individual practice on this subject would be esteemed. Architects, 1871, pp. 6, 7, and 10-24 retrial a nes
 * Vide report of proceedings of General Conference of