Record and Guide





January 22, 189S.





the greater part of our people read practically nothing but the
newspaper, and know scarcely anything of anything (except
their trade or business) that they have not derived from tbe
hasty, scrappy, inattentive reading of these journals. No nation
has ever avoided paying its just debts—in time—and we may
be certain that we are piling up a considerable obligation on
account of our ignorant and depraved newspapers.





NEAR   THE   NEW   UNIVERSITY   CLUB.

OF the huge and massive University Club itself it is too soon
to speak definitely or in detail. The effect that is arrived
■ at In it is the effect of magnitude and simplicity that is made
hy the early Florentine palaces, an effect produced by "scale"
of parts and cyclopean massiveness of masonry. Here the scale
is attained by presenting some nine actual stories in three
visible stages; but that it is attained there can be no question.
What is for more immediate consideration is the tremendous





,1"^







-id©





■'"■   "■"■'   V.  0.\B OF THE NEW HOUSES ON  WEST 3-lTH  ST.

activity in domestic building to which the opening to settlement
of the ground of the old St. Luke's Hospital has given rise. This
is not confined to the ground thus vacated. On the south side
of Fifty-fourth street, as well as on the north, new dwellings
are going up, and even new fronts are being adjoined to old
dwellings merely in the interest of architecture. It was high
time, in the case of one front on the south side, which at present
appears only as a tier of openings with paper hanging and other
marks of habitation. It does not yet appear what this front
shall be, but it appears from its surviving counterpart next door
what it has been, and it has been very had, a front nearly
equally divided between a flat brownstone wall and a three-sided
brownstone bay. Even before the new architecturesque houses
came to shame it, this was ripe for the picliaxe.

This portentious building activity, as in every other quarter in
which such an activity is visible, contains the promise and
potency of higgledy piggledy. The more our architecture comes
to be imported fresh from Paris, the greater the wonder that
the conformity which goes so far to make Paris, and the lack of
which goes so far to unmake New York, should oe so conspicu¬
ously- absent,    Itt Paris it Is enforced by authority.    In New





York we must rely upon the good sense and feeling of the archi¬
tect, and this is there for an untrustworthy reliance. The grad¬
uates of the Beaux Arts might be expected to show the desire
for ensemble in an unusual degree, but in fact they are among
the most conspicuous offenders, among the designers who are
doing their utmost to produce a miscellany instead of a munici¬
pality. The architect of the flrst architecturesque house in a
new or an old quarter may complain with some justice that there
is nothing to which to conform. In West Fifty-Fourth street hs
eould not do that, for there were already before this present
edification began two houses on the south side which might
very well have served as starting points, if not as models. 0ns
of them. No. 50, is especially successful iu its domestic expres¬
sion, and the other, some doors to the eastward, is more than
a good house, as houses go. If the new houses had shown some
recognition of the existence of these, in material, in lines, in
style, something to denote conformity, we might have had a
congruous and orderly composition of street fronts instead of
a series of interjections.

But the interjections may, nevertheless, be worth paying at¬
tention to on their own account, and oue of tliem is very much
so. Tbis, though composed of two houses, Nos. 2S and 25, i:i
architecturally a single work, and a very striking and attractive
work it is. It is an essay in that urban colonial, of which the
earliest and most famous example is Independence Hall, in
Philadelphia, but which continued to he practiced for the first
quarter of the century now closing. There is another recent
example of it in East Seventy-second street, close enough to the
present example to suggest the same authorship, and very grate¬
ful and refreshing, but by no means so successful as this later
work. Like this, that is a double dwelling, but the duplicity is
more insisted on, to the disadvantage of the composition. The
porch is double, and there are six openings in about the same
frontage, say fifty feet. But the openings are so large, especially
the- tall, round-arched windows of tbe parlor fioor, with tho
heads filled with carving, that the front looks huddled. The
main material there, as here, is "Harvard brick"; why so called
is not very clear, for the rough red brick with black headers
was first employed in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and thence
made its way northward. But in the Seventy-second houses it
is used in conjunction with light limestone, as in the Harvard
Club, a combination not ineffective, but by no means so effect¬
ive as that with the white marble used in the newer houses.

Here, instead of the equality of the two houses, one is dis¬
tinctly subordinated to the other, or rather the two are treated
as one. The main porch is in the centre, and gives access to
the wider house, which has three of the five openings of the
front, a like but smaller and less projecting porch at the end—a
mere frame of pilasters and entablature in fact-
marking the entrance to the narrower. This subordinate
entrance does not interfere with the attainment of a practical
symmetry, in a composition of flve openings wide, with the
architectural interest concentrated upon the central feature.
The arrangement is conducive to a much better effect than that
just described, both because the concentration can be much bet¬
ter managed with an odd than with an even number, and also
because the huddling of the openings is obviated, and an ex¬
panse of wall secured that is much more favorable to dignity
and repose.

The general arrangement thus indicated is carried out with
signal skill and success. The basement is of creamy white
marble, of which material are also the flat arches or lintels that
span the windows, the string course, and the crowning balus¬
trade. A triple composition vertically is secured by the heavy
string course which traverses the front above the third story,
thus grouping this with the second as the principal division of
the building, and emphatically setting off the fourth as an attic.
The lateral composition is already secured by the unequal ap¬
portionment of the space between the houses, one of thirty feet
and one of twenty, which brings the main entrance to the centre.
It is emphasized by the central balcony, a light and plain con¬
struction in metal of the old-fashioned forms, in the third floor,
and still further by a like single balcony at each terminal win¬
dow on the second or drawing-room floor. This story is dis¬
tinctly taller than the others, and it is also marked by the su¬
perior enrichment of the window casings. Below and above
there are plain flat arches, in the latter case with a projecting
keystone at the centre. But in the principal story the lintels be¬
come shelf-like projections carried upon tali consoles of slight
projection. The heavy marble balustrade above the architect¬
ural attic nearly conceals the actual attic, or roof story, of which
the dormers show plain pediments in metal.

All this is detailed with the most affectionate care, and to tho
best results. The design of the Ionic capitals of the basement,
the carving of the panels of the entablatures of both entranceft