Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/521

 June 21, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. 499 SS ig ree John Gilbert, Mr. C. Landseer, Mr. Calderon, and Mr. Street, all members of the Royal Academy of Arts, while Science was represented by Dr. Perey, Mr. Hawksley, Captain Galton, Mr. Barlow, and other distinguished gentlemen. In architecture, Science ana Art were brought into intimate relations. Without the one, the foundations and structure of a building could not be complete; and without the other the appearance of the building would be most incomplete. He would ask Sir John Gilbert to say a few words on behalf of Art, and Mr. Hawksley, the President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, would reply to the toast in the name of Science. Sir Joun Grupert said he was glad to meet his brother artists, the architects, on that occasion. He and they were all engaged in the same pursuit and aim; they were all artists, whether they worked in marble, stone, or brick, or used the palette and pencil; their aim was the pursuit of beauty. He thought that the architect who had no knowledge or appreciation of or feeling for the beauty of form, for light and shade, and colour, was not proficient in his art ; and, onrthe other hand, a painter could not be said to be thoroughly a painter if he had no love for that glorious branch of art, archi- tecture. Mr. Hawxsvry, President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, said: Mr. President and gentlemen, Thus suddenly called upon, without prior intimation, to answer for a great body of gentlemen who are esteemed and dis-esteemed by the architects in particular, is a duty which [ shall find it very difficult to discharge. For the art-architects the engineers have the greatest possible esteem; for the engineers the architects have the least possible esteem. (Laughter and “No, no.”) To you we are indebted, and we admit it, for every beauty of form; to you we are indebted for being complained against as destroying every feature which is beautiful and delightful in art. (‘‘ Quite true,” and laughter.) But, gentlemen, we have our revenge. We admit ourselves to be the children of the steam-engine, the pick-axe, and the shovel. We do not think our- selves of less value because we derive our origin from such a lowly state. We recognise that in the ancient days—the days of the Egyptians, the days in which architecture took its rise—that almost the same im- plements, and the same powers—except those of steam and coal—were used as in the present day, and that those powers produced the enormous and still beautiful buildings of those days. We know, too, that whatever may have been the state of archi- tecture in alater age, the Greeks never produced any- thing except buildings of a monumental character ; they never paid the least attention to domestic con- struction and to works which reduplicated themselves. And if we come to the days of the Romans, we find the same thing; and, coming down still later to the period of the Mediavalists, what then do we find? Do we find anything more than monumental con- structions which had some reference to or connection with the ecclesiastical life of the people of that day ? The so-called architects of the present day are not only capable of doing all that was done in those four stages of the history of architecture—(‘‘No, no,” and laughter)—but they devote themselves to con- structions with which the health and happiness of the people are intimately connected. We engineers acknowledge all this. We acknowledge the utility of the architects, and we acknowledge that architects in their struggles after utility do not for one moment neglect that which gives to utility its beauty. But, gentlemen, while fully admitting all this, we feel that we, too, have done something for the good of the time in which we live. We feel that although we are mainly the creation of only a period of half a century, and although we deal with the rigid lines of Euclid whilst you deal with the forms which can only be recognised by high artistic powers, we, in our sphere, have contributed something to the happi- ness of humanity; and I do not forget that a few centuries ago the architect and the engineer were one and the same. I do not fail to recollect that Michael Angelo was as great an engineer as he was an archi- tect and painter—(expressions of dissent)—and I do not at this present moment see why the two pro- fessions should not on a future day become re-united. I recognise the fact that the most beautiful bridges of a recent period of the present and the last century are the works of architects, and I donot fail to recog- nise that all that is ugly has been done by ourselves. CLaughter.) But for all this I do not stand here as the apologist of the engineers, although while thank- ing you for the honour you have done us, permit me to say that the engineers have carried out within the last thirty, forty, or fifty years the largest under takings that the world hasever seen. The engineers, too, appreciate architects, and recognise in them an elder branch of what I would call our own profession. (Cheers.) The CHatRMAN said the next toast he had to pro- pose was ‘Success to the work of the recent Conference.” Great exertions had been made to render it a success, and although it had not perhaps been so interesting or so novel as was last year’s Conference, as they had had this year to put into form the results of last year’s discussions and reso- lutions, still the present Conference had rot been unproductive of a great interchange of thought and kind feeling amongst town and provincial members of the profession. Such meetings as the Conference could not but produce cordiality of feeling amongst the members of the profession. He asked the com- pany, therefore, to drink ‘‘Success to the Conference,” coupled with the healths of the delegates from the London and provincial societies, and the healths of the foreign and provincial visitors. He should ask Professor Kerr to say a few words on behalf of the Conference, Mr. Plumbe to speak on behalf of the delegates; Mr. Sturges, of the American Institute of Architects—whom they were all glad to see present—would reply on behalf of the foreign visitors, and Mr. Honeyman, of Glasgow, for the provincial visitors. Proressor Kerr said that, with all due deference to the President, he thought that the present Con- ference had been far more interesting than its predecessor. Last year they were engaged in dis- cussion—this year they had effected results, The proceedings of the last few days had been of that eminently practical character which Mr. Hawksley had described as peculiar to the work of the pro- fession which owned the triple parentage of the steam-engine, the pickaxe, and the shovel. (Laughter.) They (the architects) owned no such complicated parentage, but they had devoted them- selves to eminently practical results. Mr. Puumer, President of the Architectural Association (London), returned thanks on behalf of tbe delegates. The Association which he represented took the utmost interest in the Conference, and hoped that one result of it would be that no very long time would elapse before the whole of the archi- tects throughout the whole of the country would be banded together in one strong society to help each other to obtain for the profession that respect and good treatment which it deserved. Mr. Srureces, of the American Institute of Architects, thanked the company for the honour they had done him and the American Institute of Architects in so kindly associating his name with the toast. American architects all looked up to the architects of this country as their guides American architects honoured their professional brethren in this country, and did their best to follow them—although at a very long way off. Mr. Honeyman, of Glasgow, in replying, said that the architects of Scotland highly appreciated the efforts of the Institute in holding these Con- ferences, which he was quite sure would tend not only to promote cordiality of sentiment, but unifor- mity of practice. Mr. Bervsrorp Horr, M.P., in proposing the health of the President, remarked that Mr. Wyatt had done more than any of his predecessors in the Presidential chair of the Institute to enable the pro- fession to assert itself before the world by asserting, in the first place, that its members were at unity amongst themselves. So long as the Institute of Architects was only a corporation, a club offering a wide sphere of good fellowship, or a field for the “Battle of the Styles,” it did not do its duty—it was not up to the mark; and the sufferer by the Institute’s not being up to the mark was architecture itself. (Hear, hear.) He looked upon the Conferences of last year and this year as the beginning of a better day for the profession and for architecture. (Hear, hear.). He had not had the privilege of taking part through pressure of other engagements, although last year he was able to take a more active part, but he was truly glad to learn from Professor Kerr that the Conference had taken definite action on most of the matters brought under its consideration. Last year’s Conference was rather an occasion of hand-shaking and kindly greetings and congratula- tions, and an occasion for the throwing out of great ideas. This year the harvest sown last year had been carefully reaped and garnered. That the Con- ference should have been enabled (in the face of much discussion and in the face of the hard and imperious treatment which the profession had met with at the hands of those whom it might fairly claim as its protectors) to revise and settle the Magna Charta of professional practice was a great fact. The value of the profession had been recog- nised on the present occasion, too, by a most intrepid son of such illustrious ancestors as the steam-engine, the pickaxe, and the spade, but his words might be taken to prove either one thing or the other. Their general intention seemed to have been to prove that because nothing was built in olden times but monu- mental works, and as upon those monumental works was based the architecture of the present day, there- fore the engineers, seeing that their works were monumental, claimed to be the elder brothers of the architectural family. He (Mr. Beresford Hope), however, had heard of, and, indeed, seen such things as the canals of Venice, the streets of Nuremberg, and the Rows of Chester ; and unless he was greatly deluded, there was a great deal of tender and delicate art dispersed over the private dwellings of the men and women of England in olden times. He had also, he thought, read somewhere or other that the Greek temple from which the basilicss of the Romans and the minsters of the Normans were developed, and from which the Cologne and the Westminster of our day had descended step by step, was something like a few posts stuck upwards, then a few posts stuclc across, and some thatch across the top—nothing very monumental in that. However, they were not there for argument, and he therefore begged to propose the health of the President. They welcomed their President, and were there to tell him that if ever there was the right man in the right place, the man was Thomas Wyatt, and the place the Presiden- tial chair of the Institute of Architects. He had won the confidence and the good esteem of the pro- fession, and deservedly so, for he never forgot the gentleman in the man of business, nor the man of business in the gentleman, (Applause.) The Present thanked the company for the en- thusiastic way in which they had received the toast, and said that ever since he had had the honour to occupy the chair of the Institute he had been most kindly and courteously treated by all, and the most generous interpretation put upon all that he had done in his official capacity. He hoped that one result of the Conference would be to effect a more thorough organisation of the members of the profes- sion, and, consequently, something like uniformity of action and kindred sympathies and feelings. What had been done by the Conference that week had been done in no trades’ union spirit, but it had been done with a view to putting the profession in an honourable and clearly-defined position before the public. Although there had been some little diffe- rences between them at the meeting that morning, he felt sure that those differences were now forgotten, and that they would all abide by what had been decided upon. The fact was that it had been found necessary, owing to changed circumstances, to slightly modify and add to some of the rules regu- lating professional practice. Seeing that the old rules had been drawn up ten years ago, it was not sur- prising, as the times went, that they should be found to need some slight modification; and he should be greatly surprised if, at the end of the next ten years, the regulations now agreed upon did not need addi- tional amendment. The President concluded by calling upon Sir Digby Wyatt to propose the toast of “The Sister Arts of Literature, Sculpture and Painting.” Sir Dicsy Wyatt said that architects recognised certain ‘auxiliary forces” as great aids to the prac- tice of their art. Those auxiliary forces were paint- ing, sculpture, and literature. Of painting and sculpture it would be folly to deny the value, since almost every important work in which the architect engaged owed a great share of its beauty to the assistance which he obtained from the members of those professions. These arts should be studied by architects, especially in regard to the way in which they could be combined with or introduced into their buildings. It was given to but few architects to design and carry out the whole of the sculptural and pictorial accessories of a large building, but the architect ought to have a sufficient knowledge of those arts to enable him to define a scheme of deco- ration suited to his building. As to literature, it was a great aid to the student of architecture, and it was an encouraging fact in this connection to see that some of the high class periodicals of the day were beginning to show great discrimination in writing upon architectural matters. Among the standard works on architecture, those by Mr. Street were second to none, either in accuracy or interest, and the profession was deeply indebted to Mr. Street as a writer on architecture. With the toast he, at the request of his brother the President, coupled the names of Mr. Street, R.A., Mr. Beavington Atkin- son, Mr. Walter Thornbury, and Mr. C. Landseer, R.A. Mr. G. E. Srreert, R.A., in responding, said it was the first time in his life that his name had been as- sociated in this manner as a representative of literature, and he did not think that he had written largely enough to entitle him to the name of a literary man. He would just say, however, that there seemed to him to be no way in which architects
 * in the business proceedings of this year’s Conference,