Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/161

Rh new Academy of Music; look at the proposed Cranston Hotel, the new County House, Mr. Beecher's Church, the proposed Catholic Cathedral; 'tis hardly unfair to say—look at the new Post Office. Can we build worse than these things? A few excellent buildings prove that this is the fault of the public, and not of the architect. The Corn Exchange and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the work of Eidlitz; the New York Academy of Design, by Wight; Mould's churches—"All Souls," "The Holy Trinity," the Presbyterian Church in Forty-second Street, and his Parish School attached to Trinity Chapel—these, with, perhaps, Trinity Chapel, by the younger Upjohn, and various smaller buildings by other men, are proof enough that if good work were called for, it could easily be supplied. The fault of our not having good buildings lies, we are convinced, wholly with the public and with the committees that represent the public. Take a single example. The trustees of Mr. Beecher's church called for plans for a new building. Many were sent in, among them one by Mr. Mould, a strikingly original work, not merely beautiful and interesting, as is everything that he produces, but remarkable even for him—a design whose inventiveness and fitness of adaptation would have made it noticed anywhere. Yet this design was not so much as considered, and we are told by an architect who has no personal reason for his admiration, that he, in vain, tried to get the committee to consider it. Well, we all know what is the result of this committee's labors. This is only one example, but they lie thick about us. Here are three great public buildings about to be erected—a new building for the War Department at Washington, a new Capitol at Albany, a new Post Office in New York. Does any one believe that we stand any chance of getting a good building in either of these cases? Immensely costly buildings we shall get, that we may safely reckon on, but nothing good to look at. The new Post Office will only shut off a little more of our scanty napkin of blue sky, and smirk with some unmeaning phiz or other—"Classic" or "Renaissance"—at the pretentious and ugly, because unsuitable "Herald" Office over the way. The truth is that we must wait still longer before the public will be in a position to demand good buildings for its money. We are not educated up to the point where we can take no pleasure in unmeaning ornament, in crude plans, in flimsy construction. It needs that we be made to feel, in what is called a practical way, the evils of bad building, the solid advantage of good building. Perhaps the late developments with regard to insurance may do something to hasten the day of better things. But it must necessarily be slow work. It cannot be denied that the best teachers would be first-rate buildings, well planned, beautiful in design. The few that have already been erected here have been of great service in stimulating thought and pointing out a better