THE
winter of cold storage and canned prod- ucts, one had gone out into the orchard in full summer, and picked the real fruit from the branches. Even though such an experience may produce no direct use- ful result, it is well worth while. Be- sides, it may lead to the opinion that our monumental architecture, however per- fect it may be in respect to planning, is not quite abreast of our minor and do- mestic architecture in the matter of eleva- tions.
Professor Warren’s book goes to the heart of architecture. It is thus of great- er value than a mere treatise on ancient art. Incidentally, it makes less serious the old controversy of Gothic vs. Renais- sance, going beyond the arguments of both parties until they appear to be trav- eling in the same direction; but along roads on the opposite sides of a valley, — not seeing clearly the lay of the land,
ach shouting across that the others are
on the wrong road. In Warren’s eyes, though he does not mention it, a good deal, but by no means all, of Renaissance
is to be condemned, not because it is not Gothic, but because it is bad Greek. More specifically, the book was in
manuscript form at the time of Warren's death in 1917. Professor Fiske Kimball, who was one of his students, under- took the work of making it ready for the publisher. He has performed the task admirably, though we may feel that he has chosen the splendid series of illus- trations too technically and architecturally—as documents mostly. One would like to see a few more pictures of sculpture, more of the beautifully profiled drawings such as are found in d’Espouy and in the works of the first English searchers on the Acropolis, which would have infused a little more of the life and light and beauty and atmosphere of ancient art into the illustrations, as they are so infused into the author’s text. Also, the chapters might have been bet- ter divided.
The work is of fine scholarship, where- in the ripe experience of the practising architect puts an unerring finger on the few mistakes of the scholar-archzolo- gists that arise from their not realizing exactly how buildings are built and how
somewhat
ARCHITECTURAL
RECORD.
the minds of builders work when design- ing them. But it is also more than that, it is the thought of a man who was famil- lar with all the arts and who viewed them in a perspective of a distinguished hu- manistic culture. He expresses himself in a simple, clear, at times vivid, style, recalling the lucid French writings on architecture. His pages are rich in word pictures of ancient splendor, in para- graphs on the dramatic settings of the temples of Luxor and Karnak and their surroundings, of the pageant along the banks of the Nile from the first cataract to the sea, the river approach and en- trance into Babylon and the climax of it all on the rock of the Acropolis.
A contribution to the literature of architecture is Warren’s analysis of the Doric and Ionic order. It makes much contemporary design appear half thought out. If orders are to be continued in architecture, at least their spirit should be grasped, even if their letter is not fol- lowed. This is one point, certainly, where recent progress can be questioned. How placid, colorless, cold, mechanical—sym- bols of a bookish purism—are some of our latest colonnades beside the _ bold. richly decorated, well colored, sunlit Cor- inthian design of Stanford White’s of the Knickerbocker Trust Company on Fifth Avenue!
Professor Warren ranks with the great teachers of the history and principles of architecture. I suppose his bold vision disconcerts somewhat the more prosaic, clerically minded race of scholars, easily upset as they are over any slight disre- gard of the rules, so occupied over minute distinctions as to facts, that they fear to draw conclusions. In one of his charac- tertistic letters Theodore Roosevelt has roundly whacked this type of historian, whose duty—and a most necegsary one, of course—is to look after the corres- pondence, keep the files and catalogue the library. Roosevelt objects to such histori- ans in the role of patronizing the masters —the Parkmans, the MacCauleys. For, he says in effect, no matter how great the need for exact research and statistics, only the master mind can present them in their true value. He alone can picture history in a light which stimulates inspira-
167
