AND   BUILDERS*   GUIDE.





Vol. X.                     NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 18^2.                        No. 250.





Publi-ihed Weeklu bv

T][E REAL ESTATE RBCOllD ASSOCIATION.

TEEMS.

One year, in ad v.ince.............."........ 56 00

All communications should be addressed to

•7 AND 9 WARllBN STRKET.





No receipt for money due tlie Eeatj Estate Eecop.d
will be aclaioivledged unless signed by one of our re,s;nlar
collectors. HuNTiv D. Smith or Trio.MAS F. Cummi.ngs.
All bills for collection will be sent from the office on a regu¬
larly printed form.





CTSTOM  AHB   INYE!«TI01I I^  AECHITEC-

TUSE.

TtiEEE are two antagonistic classes of thinlc-
ers in architecture, as. in every other field of the
Fine Arts, which for want of better terms might
be called the Orthodox and the Heterodox.
The first of these believe in ancient examples
as the alpha and omega of all art. They are
content to copy them with childish dependence,
and to slavishly follow the traditions of the
past, without any regard to progress and devel¬
opment. To them the invention of any new
style appears a perfect impossibility, a mere
myth, and they sneer at such a thing as inven¬
tive talent, believing that all which is necessary
to success is faithful copyism of .good models.
They take a column from the Parthenon, if of
the G-reek persuasion, and detail its proportions
to the minutest fractions; or if of the Gothic
school, select the mouldings from rare old exam¬
ples and lay them dovm with mathematical pre¬
cision. The student who shall dare to deviate
by the breadth of a hair from the exact dimen¬
sions and proportions of that Greek column, or
who shall venture to make the undercutting of
that Gothic moulding a little deeper or a little
shallower than the original, is a dangerous
member of the community, who deserves to be
ignominiously expelled from the realms of art.
Such men believe that architecture gradually
grew to perfection in past ages, and that to
touch its decrees is almost sacrilegious. They
have no faith in individual genius, and think
that architects are made, not born, that any
good draughtsman, if he will only sinlc his own
individuality and honestly copy what the past
has laid before him, will fully accomplish all
the requirements of art.

The other class of thinkers take the very
opposite ground. They deny that the past had
any exclusive patent for the good and beautiful
in art, and claim that the present is as open to
all the triumphs of inventive faculty. So far
from excessive learning being any aid to imagi¬
nation, they assert that it of tenet proves a draw¬
back. Lord Macauiay says somewhere, that
the rudest nations,' the unlearned vocabulary
of uncultivated society, have been most produc¬





tive of practical genius Blair, in his " E ssay on
Rhetoric," sustains this opinion, and says that
there is imagery enough in the short speech of
a wild Indian chief to supply half a dozen epic
poems. The reason for this is obvious. From
the very paucity of knowledge, the agents iu
both these cases have to fall back upon Nature,
the fountain of all thought, for their similes.
Nations, like individuals, are first poetical, then
philosophical, and though the vivid impressions
of youth may lose themselves in the maturer
faculty and age of reason and generalization, it
is clear that no mere reference to past exam¬
ples can compensate for thought. Backed by
such reasoning these thinkers disclaim all obe¬
dience to past authority, and assert that our
architects would effect more by cultivating the
spirit of origiuality within them, than they can
glean from all the art of ancient or mediasval
times.

The fact of the matter is that both these
ideas, if properly regulated, are good, but car¬
ried to excess are only productive of evil.
There is no genius, however great, that can
afford to discard the lessons to be gained from
the accumulated wisdom of past ages; whUe,
on the other hand, no amount of archseological
lore can compensate for the loss of original
thinking on the part of a designer. Architec¬
ture in the present day, and nowhere more
prominently than in this country, is unfortti-
nately suffering from the abuse rather than the
use of both these ideas; although the heterodox
party seem to have considerably the advantage.
While there is no reason whatever why we
should slavishly follow the models of the past,
there is equally no reason why we should take
what has been stamped as excellent by the
accumulated thought and wisdom of whole
generations, and paraphrase them by unmeaning
applications which never entered the imagina¬
tions of the iuventors. Styles have grown by
gradually grafting perfections upon what ori¬
ginally started in the actual necessities of man.
The Grecian style, the eastern or tent-like form,
the high-steeped gables of the Gothic age, had
all their varied origin in human necessity,
niUch as the outward garb of the Esquimaux
or the dweller in the tropics to-day. To miS:
and confound these different styles, each one
full of its own intrinsic beauties, is therefore an
unwarrantable and senseless anachronism that
betrays no inventive faculty, bnt the very lack
of it. Such incongruities are so opposed to
everything rational, that the most uneducated
eye is offended when it meets them, without
being able to trace the source of the displeas¬
ure. A Grecian pediment, for instance, flanked
by Gothic buttresses and pinnacles, produces
an admixture that the most untutored would
recognize as absurb, the reason why it is so
being only known to th'ose who have made a





study of the subject. And yet, looking over
the architecture of our city, how many of these
monstrous specimens of "novelty" and "in¬
ventive faculty " do we meet with ?—cases in
which styles of every description are mixed up
without the remotest reference to th^ir mean¬
ing or adaptation. This is the worst of all
phases in which ignorance of art can be mani¬
fested. If some imperious law could be pro¬
mulgated upon the subject, we should say let
the man of genius, taking the noble models of
the past for his guide, catch the spirit which
animated those producti(ms while evolving hia
own originality ; but let the brainless man be
content to follow the examples of his betters
where he is manifestly incompetent to lead.
In short, in the present condition of architec¬
ture here—where each man thinks himself as
capable as another, with or without the neces¬
sary education—a little more orthodoxy would
do us no harm, if it would only induce our
architectural students to imbibe a little more
of the good which has gone before them, be¬
fore considering themselves qualified to take
independent flights in the regions of inven¬
tion.





TIIE   NEW  MEMORIAL  PEESBYTEKIAN
CHURCH.

This new place of worship, just completed at
the comer of Madison avenue and Fifty-third
street, was. opened on Sunday last for divine
service. It is one of those costly and conspicu¬
ous, ecclesiastical buildings, professedly Gothic,
which are going up with such rapidity in the
city, especially in the much improved neigh¬
borhood in which it is located, and consequently
calls for more than a mere passing notice. The
Rev. Dr. P. H, Tyng, Jr,, in his address on
the occasion of the opening, said emphatically :
"I have a settled conviction that the Gospel
can never live in a Gothic church—one of them
must go dovm." Considering that the reverend
gentleman was at the time speaking in a church
which, if it aims at any style at all, certainly
attempts to class itself as Gothic, the expres¬
sion reads very much like a covert satire upon
the design. Allowing him to be right in his
opinion, there is nothing whatever to prevent
the Gospel from living in the New Memorial
Presbyterian Church; for, whatever its aspira¬
tions may be. it certainly cannot pretend to be
strictly called a Gothic church. In Gothic forms
it abounds; Gothic tracery to the windows
Gothic arches, buttresses, mouldings, etc., but
these are so intermixed with other forms of
totally distinct styles that it puzzles any one to
invent a nomenclature for it.

The faults of this buildiag—externally at
least—are more in matters of detail than pro¬
portions, which latter are usually very good.