Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/308

 290 THE BUILDING NEWS. Aprin 12, 1872. persons, like those which stood on the site of the new Law Courts, are sweptaway, there is no meeting called together to utter a remon- strance. So, with all the philanthropic fuss and pother and commercial appeals and efforts to give the people better houses to live in, but little in reality is done. Sir Sidney Waterlow has, therefore, done good service in calling the attention of the public at the present moment to the contemplated destruc- tion of a large number of houses inhabited by the working population. By two bills now before Parliament for the construction of the Mid-London Railway, power is sought to remove 487 houses and 2,415 persons; and by another bill power is sought by the Metropolitan Board of Works to remove 668 houses, and to displace 1,457 persons. In neither of these bills is any positive power asked for, or any responsibility assumed to remedy the evil which this wholesale destruc- tion will inflict on the working population. Sir Sidney says— ‘“The Metropolitan Board of Works has suggested in its ‘statement’ that ‘ the ground adjacent to the proposed street is adapted for model lodging-houses,’ and the promoters of the Mid-London Railway have inserted in their bill provisions ‘enabling the company to appropriate lands for the purpose of erected dwellings for the working classes.’ But neither the Metropolitan Board nor the Mid- London Railway pledge themselves to carry ont these suggestions. Other railways, when asking for compulsory powers to pull down dwellings, have asked for and received permis- sive powers for the erection of new ones, but those permissive powers have never been exercised. The Metropolitan Board of Works has only followed former precedents in asking for compulsory power to remove houses without seeking any authority or accepting any obligation to provide improved dwellings of the same class in place of those destroyed ; and I believe that, unless some such obliga- tion be actually imposed by Parliament, the Board has no power to take any step towards providing such dwellings. The new streets are constructed with funds raised by local taxation, and the Board is expected to let and sell the surplus land at the highest price it will fetch, regardless of the claims of persons who have been removed from their homes or of the purpose to which the land is to be ap- plied. It is scarcely needful that I should point out the evil of this one-sided legisla- tion. The people thus turned into the streets must crowd for shelter into localities which are already too full, and we shall witness a repetition of the evils which were so justly denounced some years ago. It is now tho- roughly understood that overcrowding not only inflicts moral and physical injury on the class immediately affected, but that the mis- chief too frequently spreads in all directions, and strikes home even to those who think themselves the farthest from its influence.” No doubt our legislation is ‘‘ one-sided,” and will, we suppose, so continue until the people exert the legitimate influence which their numbers and votes command, in de- manding a better state of things. When, after years of labour, a bill was passed to redeem the muddy banks of the Thames and change them from sources of disease intoa magnificent embankment with gardens and shady walks, the Duke of Buccleuch demanded a fabulous compensation, and he ultimately obtained a large proportion of his demand. Though the said Duke only lived in his house on the Thames a comparatively short time of the year, and though he had other stately man- sions big enough to house a battalion of sol- diers; though he was really put to no inconvenience, and his London residence was made healthier by the change, he had many thousands of pounds compensation. But we Suppose it has never entered into the dreams of our legislators, certainly not the ducal portion of them, to give working men com- home for some railway or metropolitan im- provement. But still these working men, comparatively helpless as they are, demand some consideration. If the Duke of Bue- cleuch’s House were removed altogether, it would be but little or no inconvenience to its occupant, as he would have the means of building or buyingamansion near by. But when working men are dispossessed, they aresubject to considerable inconvenience. They have either to go into neighbourhoods already over- crowded, or remove to the suburbs or localities removed from their daily work. The com- panies, therefore, thatobtain authority to re- move houses wholesale, should be compelled to make provision for corresponding accom- modation as near as convenient to the places from which such houses were removed. It is easy enough to say, Let working men live in the suburbs of London, where rent is cheaper and the air purer. But they cannot do that without a sensible consumption of money and time, which is of the first importance to them. This question of decently housing the people of London and our other large towns is daily increasing in importance ; many people think that the efforts made by the different associations and the trustees of the Peabody Fund are overtaking the wants of the metropolis: nothing of the sort. The efforts hitherto made and the results achieved are as amere bucketfull in the ocean. London is increasing at the rate of about 50,000 persons annually, and we don’t believe that all the model lodging-houses and other houses of a similar kind intended to supply a mighty metropolitan want would accommodate one- half that number; hence the evil is actually increasing upon us, and this in the face of agitation, philanthropic zeal, and legislative assistance. Why is this? It is necessary that the truth must be told. Model lodging- houses, as a rule, are commercial failures, and men of capital don’t care about investing money in them ; and one cause of this failure is a mis- ' placed and misused philanthropy. There is something distaseful about the model lodging- house to your genuine working man ; he does not like it because it is surrounded.by an atmosphere of privilege and patronage, and so it will be until the whole movement be placed on a more healthful and solid footing. There is money enough and to spare to build houses enough for the wants of London, and if the money were invested by business men for business ends, the results would be satis- factory. But whilst there are so many societies sunned into sleepiness by aristocratic smiles and hampered by the conditions which a falsely directed philanthropy requires, we shall witness a repetition of failures ; and in the meantime scores of thousands of people will remain in dirty overcrowded dwellings. We shall have some observations to make on a wiser administration of the Peabody trust on another occasion. eet DOORWAYS. roe architectural treatment of doorways, as every one knows, was carried much further in France than in England. Such portals, for example, as those of Chartres Ca- thedral are entirely without parallels in this country, and our traditions of general design would need great modification before the could be admitted. It may be questioned, indeed, whether even in France they were not developed too far: whether the effect of the whole was not sometimes sacrificed to that of one part, and whether the chance of produc- ing the finest buildings in the world was not too often neglected for the sake of producing the finest doorways. The French master mason did, indeed, snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, but he had to leave art behind him when he did it. He gained the superb portals which he hankered after; but he gained them at the expense of proportion, of balance, of repose, and of harmony. So at
 * least it was in extreme cases ; it was a splen-

pensation for being turned out of house and} did sin, but not less areal one; and, however it may dazzle us at first sight, like all that is exaggerated, it wearies us in time. Here in England the tendency was in an opposite direction ; with us the architect fairly over- came the sculptor; not only did he govern him and keep him in his place, but he went further, and scarcely allowed him a place at all. The general designer, to the great ad- vantage of our buildings as a whole, allowed no ambitious detail to overstep its limits ; ar- chitecture was the first thing with him, and ornament the second. His temptation was not, indeed, to make the general design too ad- mirable, or the proportions too perfect, but, trusting too much to proportions and general form, to leave the detail, and especially the doorways, comparatively slight and unin- teresting. Now, there must be plainly be a medium between these two courses, and it should be our business, in trying to revive Medieval art, to find it out. We have the opportunity, to a far greater extent than the Medieval artists themselves had, of compar- ing their works one with another. We have their experiments to guide us; we have had Time himself employed for five or six cen- turies in showing us the merits and defects of their work ; we have had, all this while, and still have, the united imtellect of Europe, critcising, condemning, or approving it ; and if, in fine, we can do no more than copy it as it stands, we must be making a rapid return towards that imitative race from whom, according to some theories, we all originally sprang. We think, then, that for present purposes, there is a good deal to be learned from French doorways, and especially from those of the less ambitious type. Even our own Medieval remains may furnish suggestions on the sub- ject which have not yet beenadopted. Look- ing at the average of what passes in our day for English Gothic, it might easily be sup- posed that our ancestors never got much be- yond a plain moulded arch, and a jamb with three or four nook shafts and chamfers. This may be very good as far as it goes ; but to see it repeated over and over again by almost every one, except some half-score leading architects, is decidedly monotonous. There is, indeed, one thing worse, and that is the wretched parody of a cathedral portal, with its double arch and dividing column, of which it may be said that “no Non- conformist chapel is complete without it.” But we do not propose just now to explore the wonders of ‘‘ Chapel Gothic,” which, in the matter of doorways, as in that of spires, are apt to leave the beholders speechless. It is with average work we are concerned, and not with that which, like Falstaff, seems to have ‘“‘a kind of alacrity in sinking.” Here, then, it is not somuch positive badness in the feature under consideration, as general same- - ness and want of interest that we complain of. Without spoiling a church to make a door- way, the doorway might often be a great deal better than it is. No feature so inevitably receives the spectator’s attention: none is so close to his eye, and so certain to be examined in its minutest portions. buttresses, the cornice, he may only observe from a distance—the doorway he must pass every time he enters the building. This fact, as we observed, only seems to have had its full influence on the Continent: but even in this country there is considerable variety in the modest types which prevailed. There is, indeed, a deficiency of sculpture in English doorways. Being, as after the Norman period they almost invariably are, open to the crown of the arch, they do not offer the same opportunity for magnificent bas-reliefs —or even for detached figures—which most foreign ones do. ‘The presence or absence of the lintel and stone tympanum is of itself enough to account for some other differences. For instance, such a lintel evidently allows the great arch to rise much higher in the elevation than it otherwise would: for, what- ever height may be decided on for the open- ing, this height becomes that to the impost, The windows, the. 4 A