AND   BUILDERS'   GUIDE.





Vol. I.]





SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 1868.





[No. 3.





Published "Weekly by "

C.   W.   SWEET   «&   CO.,

EooM 81 Would Building, No. 37 JPaek Row,

TERMS. .
Six months, delivered..........................   8 00

PRICE OF ADVERTISING.

1 square, ten lines, three months.................$10T00

1 square, single insertion............'..............    1 00

Speci.ll Notices, per line...................'.......       20

Business cards, per month.........................   2 00





DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.

Never was a grander field open to artistic
developments than is now presented to our
architects in Domestic Architecture. This
branch of the art is entirely of modern
growth. In the palmiest days of Grecian
magnificence—the age of Phidias and of
Pericles—^^vhile such buildings as the Pan¬
theon were being erected for the instruction
and astonishment of mankind, the private
residences of Athens were mean to a degree
that would now shame one of our youngest
Vl''estern towns. In England, and over the
whole surface of Continental Europe, while
those gorgeous cathedrals were rearing their
noble and awe-inspiring proportions to the
sky, the dwellings of the people who fre¬
quented them Aveie comfortless and wretched,
devoid of all art or embellishment. Art, in
those days, was given up entirely to religion,
and devoted all its energies to the erection of
temples and objects of Avorship. So rapidly
has civilization advanced in later periods of
the world's history that only between three
and four hundred years ago the highest no¬
bles, and even monarchs, considered as the
rarest luxuries what is now within reach of
our present mechanics.

But modern civilization has completely
changed the aspect of things. By the gene¬
ral , spread of education, by the invention of
labor-saving machines, and the importance
giwen to mechanical skill, but, more than all,
bykhe gigantic strides of Commerce, the con¬
dit ion of the whole world has been altered,
am i a new raijk in the social order created.
M( srchants, by bringing the remotest ends of
thfc earth in contact, by exchanging their pro-
dutets, and accumulating into their hands the
wealth hitherto wielded only by monarchs or
prApstly domination, made themselves felt as a
po||^er and ultimately obtained the reins of pro-
gr|ss. By them the titled and the privileged
W(|re humbled and the masses lifted up from
thjicir deep abasement; and many a crowned
h^d has bowed before the " merchant prince,"
foy aid, as humbly as did Antonio to the im-
mtbrtal Jew on the Kialto. By uniting them¬
selves with both the higher and the lower





grades of society, the merchants formed the
necessary links that now irrevocably bind
together the whole modern social system.
Under their encouragement manufactures of
all kinds sprung up; useful inventions were
fostered; hterature was diffused; men began
to acquire, not only a taste for the comforts
and luxuries of life, but the means of obtain-,
ing them; and, finally, the fine arts received
an impetus they had never done before, in
the records of man. During the time that
merchants were the leading men and princes
in Venice, Florence and Genoa, Italy was the
school of art. Under their fostering care
Genius seemed to spring everywhere sponta¬
neously from the soil, and flooded the world
with wonders that will remain models of art
to the end of time. It was equally so with
Holland and Flanders, when they were recog¬
nized as commercial centres; and when Eng¬
land became the mistpess of the world's com¬
merce, we saw again the Fine Arts transport
themselves thither, and diffuse themselves
among the people to an extent unparalleled
in their former history.

But where and in what era of the world
has Commerce held such sway, and her " mer¬
chant princes " more wealth, power and en¬
lightenment, than in our country at the pres^
ent time ? It is true we are not able to boast
of the concentrated glories of hereditary
Chatsworths, Balmorals and Holyroods,—^for
the very genius of our institutions is opposed
to such existencies—but, as far more than an
offset, where are princely fortunes to be found
in such abundance and scattered so promiscu¬
ously as over the boundless surface of this
continent ? "Where, in the whole world, can
more genuine liberality and legitimate ambi¬
tion be found allied to wealth? and where
can artists be found more absolutely unfettered
by conventionalities, in any new field of in¬
vention that may open itself to their artistic
genius ? We repeat that never before was a
wider scope presented to the architects of any
country than to our own, at the present time,
in the display of Domestic Architecture.

That the tasteful appreciation and knowl¬
edge of the Fine Arts among our rich mer¬
chants and capitalists have not always kept
pace with their wealth and liberality is best
proved by comparing the results of their out¬
lay with those of their prototypes in the old
commercial cities of Italy; by taking many
an expensive house in Fifth avenue, for in¬
stance, and contrasting them (artistically and
inventively) with those of similar cost chosen
at random in the streets of Genoa; or by
placing one of our any latest and most con¬





spicuous specimens of domestic architecture
-^that at the comer of Thirty-fourth street
and Fifth avenue—alongside of any of the
thousand marble palaces of Venice, that
probably never cost anything near its outlay.
Architecture is a thing of cultivation, not of
spontaneous growth; with well-recognized
principles that cannot be neglected. ITot
only should our architects be well-instructed
in art, but those who employ them should
also cultivate a knowledge of it, in order to
enable them to choose between good and bad
artists, and thus to promote instead of cor¬
rupting public taste. We have all the ele¬
ments in our favor. To say that we have
hitherto done the best that we could, in our
public and private buildings, would be a sorry
compliment indeed to the architects of this
country; but we have abundant evidence,
from many a genuine work of art among us,
as well as the boundless future before us, that
the Fine Arts generally—and Architecture
especially—are about to start here on a career
unparalleled in the annals of the past. With
the new impetus created by the demand for
costly residences up-town,—especially in the
neighborhood of our beautiful Central Park,—
with the manifest thirst in the public mind
for a higher standard of art than that to
which we have been hitherto accustomed,
and with all the blunders and shortcomings of
past efforts to warn us from their imitation,
men of even advanced years will yet live to
see the domestic architecture of jSTew York
rival, if no« surpass, in splendor that of any
of the proudest old Capitals of Europe.





BOGUS 5EWSFAFEBS.
One of the greatest frauds upon the busi¬
ness community is the publication of circu¬
lars and advertising sheets under the name of
newspapers. It is an imposition on the pub¬
lic, who occasionally buy such papers by
accident; a nuisance to the business commu¬
nity, who are incessantly canvassed to patron¬
ize these humbug sheets; and a clear case of
fraud upon the advertisers, who get no return
for their outlay. We have one such concern
in mind now. Its contents consist (1) of
advertisements; (2), of the sales to which the
advertisements refer; and, (3), of notices of
the sales about to take place as per adver¬
tisements, and nothing else. These papers
cost next to nothing to get up, and their
circulation, too, is limited to the business men
who advertise with them. Of course, these
fraudulent sheets must get out of the way
when a real Uve paper comes into life devoted
I to the same interests.   It is wisdom for them