HOW TO JUDGE ARCHITECTURE

H o w  t o  J u d g e
A r c h i t e c t u r e

A POPULAR GUIDE TO THE APPRECIATION
OF BUILDINGS

By
RUSSELL STURGIS, A.M., Ph.D.

Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Member of
The Architectural League of New York, The National
Sculpture Society, The National Society of Mural
Painters, etc., etc. Author of “Dictionary of
Architecture and Building,” “European
Architecture,” etc., etc.


NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.
33-37 East Seventeenth St., Union Sq., North

Copyright, 1903, By The Baker & Taylor Co.

Published, September, 1903

Contents

Illustrations

How to Judge Architecture

CHAPTER I

EARLY GREEK DESIGN

The reader must feel assured that there are no authorities at all in the matter of architectural appreciation: and that the only opinions, or impressions, or comparative appreciations that are worth anything to him are those which he will form gradually for himself. He will form them slowly, if he be wise: indeed, if he have the gift of artistic appreciation at all, he will soon learn to form them slowly. He will, moreover, hold them lightly even when formed; remembering that in a subject on which opinions differ so very widely at any one time, and have differed so much more widely if one epoch be compared with another, there can be no such thing as a final judgment.

The object of this book is to help the reader to acquire, little by little, such an independent knowledge of the essential characteristics of good buildings, and also such a sense of the possible differences of opinion concerning inessentials, that he will always enjoy the sight, the memory, or the study of a noble structure without undue anxiety as to whether he is right or wrong. Rightness is relative: to have a trained observation, knowledge of principles, and a sound judgment as to proprieties of construction and design is to be able to form your opinions for yourself; and to understand that you come nearer, month by month, to a really complete knowledge of the subject, seeing clearly what is good and the causes of its goodness, and also the not-so-good which is there, inevitably there, as a part of the goodness itself.

It will be well, therefore, to take for our first study some buildings of that class about which there is the smallest difference of opinion among modern lovers of art, namely, the early Greek temples. There is no serious dispute as to the standing of the Greek architecture previous to the year 300 B. C., as the most perfect thing that decorative art[1] has produced. It is extremely simple: a fact which makes it the more fit for our present purpose: but this simplicity is to be taken as not having led to bareness, lack of incident, lack of charm: it has merely served to give the Greek artist such an easy control over the different details and their organization into a complete whole, that the admiration of all subsequent ages has been given to his productions.

It must be noted, however, that nothing of this complete beauty is now to be seen above ground. Plate I shows the famous temple at Pæstum on the west coast of Campania, southeast of Naples: the temple called that of Poseidon, to which god (called by the Romans, Neptune) the ancient town which stood on this site was dedicated. This is the most nearly well preserved of the Doric[2] temples, with the single exception of the small building in Athens called the Theseion, or Theseum, see Plate III, and it is larger and more interesting than that. Plate II gives the Parthenon at Athens from the northwest

and from the northeast. This building by common agreement of modern students was the most perfect in design and the most highly elaborated in detail of all the Doric temples of early time. The Parthenon as we see it now in its decay, dominating the town of Athens from the top of its rock or looked at close at hand, lighted by the Grecian sun or by the moon for those who are romantically inclined, is unquestionably a most picturesque and charming ruin; it is imposing in its mass, interesting still in its details, and invested, of course, with an immeasurably great tradition, historical and poetic. That fact must not be forgotten for a moment: but, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that this admiration, this enthusiasm, is not given to the work of art. It is not at all to produce such a ruin as we now see that the Grecian artist thought and toiled. Admire the ruin to your heart’s content: but be careful that you do not allow too much of this romantic association to enter into your love of the artistic entity, of the lost Parthenon, which we have to create out of the air, as it were. And beware of the admiration of ruins as you would of the “tone” given to a picture by time: it is not that which the artist proposed to himself or even thought of, and it is the artist’s purpose that you must ask for, always. That is the first thing. Until you are sure you know that purpose, fully, it will not do to find fault with the work of art, or even to praise it too unreservedly.

On the other hand, it is extremely important to consider the probable ancient surroundings of the building in question. The upper figure of Plate III may show, not only the interesting building itself from a good point of view and with its peculiarities strongly accentuated (as is pointed out below), but also as showing how, except for its coloring, the temple must have been seen by the Athenians in the days of Conon. The modern houses are very like what the ancient houses must have been, for, although the ancient houses had even less door and window-opening upon the street and more upon a court or yard, yet we may imagine ourselves in such a yard of antiquity, and the red-tiled roofs, the homemade chimney, the humble and unkempt aspect of the whole may be assumed to stand very well for the humbler quarters of Athens in antiquity. This temple also is a ruin: but the fact that, as seen in Plate III, there are still visible the sculptures of the metopes,[3] and the fact that the roof of the pteroma[4] is still in place, so that there is no sunshine coming down behind the columns where sunshine was never meant to be—these conditions go far to give us a peep at the building as it stood in those great days. No other photograph can give a better idea of how the columns are set closer near the corner; nor a better idea of the reasons for this peculiarity; for the sky is seen between the columns at the right hand; and the dark wall of the naos[5] in the same relative position on the left hand, and the chief cause for the smaller intercolumniation at the corners is obvious enough, as shown below in connection with the model Plate IV.

Look back at Plate I, and Plate III, upper figure, and note that these buildings have six columns on the front instead of eight and, therefore, according to the general proportions of Greek temples, should have a greater height relatively to width than the Parthenon, Plate II. Note, farther, that the columns are very much higher and more slender in the octastyle[6] Parthenon than in the Italian hexastyle[7] building, and the relative height of the entablature[8] greater, or as one to two and a half in Pæstum, one to three in Athens. The Doric Order[9] is capable of just about as much diversity in relative heights and other dimensions as is shown here.

The comparatively short and thick columns of the Italian temple are characteristic of an earlier and less developed style than that denoted by the higher and more slender columns of the Parthenon. In like manner the comparatively great thickness of the superstructure in the Pæstum temple, giving a very broad architrave,[10] and a still broader frieze[11] is also suggestive of an earlier date. Now it is agreed that the more lofty and slender proportions of the Order of the Parthenon must have given to the original building a charm beyond that given by the stumpy proportions of the Pæstum temple: but it is also undeniable that many lovers of architecture, of this as of other epochs and styles, love especially the early work, that which is commonly known as archaic. It is exactly like the great enthusiasm excited in many students of Italian art by the earliest paintings, those of the primitifs: in each case the very single-minded and diligent work of the early men has a charm peculiarly its own.

Although the Parthenon is, as mentioned above, a ruin and nothing else, there are still to be found in the shattered stones of that ruin a certain part of that theoretical beauty, that imagined glory of the destroyed work of art, which we are gradually building up in our thoughts. Thus it is in the existing ruins that there have been discovered those curious curves where straight lines had been supposed to exist. If you stand at one end of the stylobate[12] and look along it towards the other end, you will see that it curves upward in the middle with a decided convex sweep. (See Plate III.) If you raise yourself on a scaffolding and look along the underside of the architrave you will find that that also rises in a curve, not exactly parallel or concentric to that of the stylobate, but nearly so. Furthermore you will notice, if you walk about the temple and examine it closely, that the two outer-most columns of the front are much nearer together than the others, as noted above in Plate III: or that, in other words, the three columns which form the corner are grouped much more closely than are the others. Furthermore, it has been discovered by minute measurements that these columns slope inward a very little. Of course, it has always been known that the very visible diminution of the shaft in thickness from the bottom to the top is not according to straight lines (that is to say, that the shafts are not conical) but is according to a very slow and hardly perceptible curve which we call the entasis. Great folios of carefully drawn plates have been devoted to the exact curvature of the entasis and to the more recently discovered irregularities: and a minute series of measurements have been made, by which the whole amount of the irregularity in any one case is now easily ascertainable. This is one of the many elements out of which we have to make up our general appreciation of the building, our appreciation of the existence and the character of these slopes, curves, risings, sinkings, slopings: all of them, it is clear, planned in the most careful and elaborate way, and as the result of many previous experiments. Their object is, of course, to add to the charm of the building, to give it in one case the effect of being very broad in the base and therefore very secure and permanent—in another case, to prevent any possible appearance of sagging or depression in the middle of the long horizontal lines; in another case still, to substitute the subtile grace of a slight and almost imperceptible curve for the harshness of a straight line. Still another thing is traceable in these ruins: the unceasing care with which the work was done, the way in which the separate drums or solid blocks, of which the shafts of the columns are made up, were ground together, one upon another, until they fitted with but the slightest visible or tangible separation. The channeling or grooving of the shafts was evidently done after the drums had been put into place, and it is highly probable that the bells[13] of the capitals were also finished, or received their final very delicate curvature, after the blocks out of which they had been cut had been set, and indeed after the superincumbent block, the abacus, had been lowered upon each one of them.

Another feature in this remarkable design is to be traced in the ruins, and was much more plainly discoverable at an earlier, though still recorded and well-known, date: namely, the original painted adornment of the building, in strong primary colors. In the temples built of soft and rough stone, like that in Plate I, there is known to have been a thin coat of fine plastering spread over the whole surface, and the final delicacy of curve and sharpness of edge must have been wrought in that plaster even more accurately than in the stone beneath. But in the Parthenon, built entirely of fine-grained and hard marble, no such coating was necessary, and the paint was applied directly to the crystalline surface itself. This painting covered very large parts of the exterior, nor is it probable that any single foot of the