334 THE BUILDING NEWS.
_ Aprm 26, 1872.
and there are, moreover, just as many angles in the
line of wall. This infirmity of outline naturally
gives the elevation a very feeble, dislocated look ;
and, unfortunately, it has no positive redeeming
merit. The windows are ugly and mean, the pinna-
cles absurd, and the tower not worth the cost of its
foundations.
This will never do. Simplicity must not be dili-
gently lost, nor dignity; and power be frittered all
away. These necessary characteristics would be at
once attained if the lines of roof and walling were
made continuous and straight, interrupted only by
the gable of the hall, which might be brought for-
ward to the front, and by the projecting tower,
which must be re-designed. The octagon staircases
can be changed in form with no loss of convenience,
a range of dormer windows might decorate the roof,
and an arcade of shops would enliven the ground-
floor frontage abutting on the Strand. The pinna-
cles and carved bands would be omitted with advan-
tage in every way; andif Mr. Street is unable to
design windows and tracery in the graceful manner
of the fourteenth century, an advertisement in the
Builder will discover plenty of help for him in this
rather important branch of Gothic art. Many a
“ professional” reputation has been made by the
“assistance” of some clever drawing clerk, whose
name, however, does not transpire beyond the nar-
row range of “ office” notoriety. A successful rail-
way jobber of “pushing” habits, or a bankrupt
builder with efficient patronage, may do wonders as
an architect by a judicious expenditure in office
salaries.
Now what we have proposed for Mr. Street’s de-
sign is, in fact, extinction; but there is small blame
to Mr. Street for this necessity. He, like the rest
of his class, has to please or satisfy a public whose
taste in all that concerns the building art is univer-
sally degraded. Accustomed through life to the
most hideous extent of building that the world ever
saw, regarding any knowledge of the house in which
he lives as common and vulgar, fit only for builders
and low fellows of the baser sort, the average Lon-
doner, in presence of the art that most affects bis
comfort and his life, is supercilious and ignorant,
conceited and debased. Even of the external aspect
of the streets he has no clear perception, and has
never formed an intelligent opinion. With the ar-
chitecture of Wigmore-street he feels quite at home:
Cromwell-road and Grosvenor-place he thinks are
“very fine,” and the British Museum, he is in-
structed, is a masterpiece.
This, then, is the quality of person or mind that
an architect who would be successful must seek to
satisfy. And, if he has ordinary experience and
knowledge of the world, he naturally adopts the
most direct and easiest method to command success.
Prettiness is, of course, essential. What else is ar-
chitecture for, if not to be pretty? Of the short-
comings and bad taste of his design he may be per-
fectly or imperfectly aware, but he overlays it with
ornament, and encrusts it with carving, until the
whole is pronounced to be beautiful. In this great
requisite of modern architecture Mr. Street fails.
He has no sense of ‘prettiness,” and he substitutes
confusion. He was afraid of simple expressiveness,
and he has become incoherent. He has grievously
erred, not, however, from negligence or want of will,
but merely from natural incapacity. Every man
is not a born confectioner; and if his work fails
through subjection to the influence of adepraved and
vulgar public taste, which yet he is unable to satisfy,
Mr. Street can hardly be reproached for this unfor-
tunate result.
But there is also the class of dilettanti who have
to be appeased. ‘These are the people that know all
about styles and dates—travelled men, sketchers,
ecclesiologists, and the like. Among these Mr. Street
appears to have fallen, and to have found their
patronage to be as damaging by its priggishness
as the demands of the public are from their igno-
rance. The influence of this class is occasionally
useful, but many a well-meaning architect must
haye found himself grievously burdened by their
equivocal patronage, which becomes a weight quite
as often as a support. Mr. Street has been greatly
injured by their awkward advocacy. The knowing
talk about ‘“‘skylines” and ‘ fenestration,” and all
the cant of the literary amateur, has for some
months been the language of a certain class of news-
papers and magazines. Such “knowingness” is,
however, only that half-knowledge “that puffeth
up; but its habitual effect is painfully evident in
Mr. Street's buildings, which seem either to be para-
lysed by a pseudo-clerical infirmity, or designed by
some sacerdotal epicene. Mr. Street is not the only
sufferer from this cause. A large number of our
recent churches evince the pernicious influence of
this emasculated tone of criticism, and are made
mere specimens of the transient ecclesiastical fashion,
instead of permanent monuments of art.
The true artist, however, rejects all these influ-
ences, and works to please or satisfy himself, re-
gardless alike of public or patrons. That such is
the only sound method of practice may be clearly
shown by examples of success and failure due to the
observance or neglect of this very fundamental law
of good design.
In the remarks which we think it our duty to
make on the present state, and practical difficulties
of English architecture, we are influenced by no
personal or professional prejudice or feeling, and to
avoid at first all questions about styles and schools,
we will begin by referring to the works of modern
engineers. Rennie and Telford had little or no need
to regard the opinion of the public. They had the
intelligent support and generous confidence of a few
men of influence and good sense. And, as the
result, the Menai and London bridges are two of the
most simple, dignified, and noble buildings in the
world. Times and methods have changed. Now
we have competitions eyen for bridges; and engi-
neers being men of business, and careful to keep
safely on the road to professional success, most
readily abandon all reserve, and start on a career
of extravagance and pretence,
Their success may be held to be their justifica-
tion. With Blackfriars Bridge, for instance, we
find the public thoroughly well pleased, though the
design is really a wonder of depravity. Polished
granite columns of amazing thickness, with carved
capitals of stupendous weight, all made to give
shop-room to an apple-woman, or a convenient plat-
form for a suicide. The parapet is a fiddle-faddle
of pretty cast-iron arcading, out of scale with the
columns, incongruous with the capitals, and quite
unsuited for a work that should be simply grand in
its usefulness; and at each corner of the bridge
is a huge block of masonry ¢ propos of nothing, a
well known evidence of desperate imbecility.
On the Thames Embankment, again, these big
blocks, which were probably suggested by the late
Mr. John Martin’s architectural vagaries, are very
freely used, so that, from the river, it would appear
that they were the chief object for which the em-
bankment itself was made. The new lamp-posts, of
which we have heard so much in the newspapers,
are a senseless jumble of “objects,” from colossal
and very ugly fishes to miniature and meaningless
faces, thrown together without reference to scale or
order of any kind. The garden railing is little
better than the lamp-posts, and is even more vexa-
tious from its greater quantity. The comparatively
simple railing round Hyde Park is far preferable to
this pretty panelling, which will completely hide the
flowers when they grow, and which is in curious
contrast with the heavy granite parapet and piers
on the other side of the road. This parapet, with
its pedestals and piers, is a sad waste of space and
money. If it were all cleared away, and replaced
by a simple stout iron railing, and a narrow sloping
bank of grass, we should have the true effect of an
embankment, instead of a mere parapet wall. The
road and the river would both look considerably
wider, and the prospect along the curve of the em-
bankment would be unobstructed. A clear view of
the river would be gained for pedestrians, who now
see little but the smoke of the passing steamboats;
and the view from the river itself would be less dis-
mal, and not so unpleasantly suggestive of canal
locks where “ drags are in constant readiness.” The
river, in fact, would look beautiful instead of
ghastly, and the saving in hewn granite would be
sufficient to provide for every care and protection
that could be required. On the outer face of these
parapet piers there are large metal lions’ heads and
rings. They look like door-knockers; but, suppos-
ing they are meant for mooring-rings, why are they
hung up high in the parapet out of reach, instead of
being fixed solidly down in the quay wall, at or
below the high-water line? As mere ornaments
they are childish; their large size diminishes the
apparent scale of the work to which they are at-
tached ; and their repetition every thirty yards for
some five or six miles will be a weary monument of
the dulness of the engineer who designed them.
At Westminster Bridge, the engineer has spent
his energy in devising another gimerack pattern of
lamp-post, and a series of bad imitations of Gothic
detail; and while so neglecting his special engineer-
ing duty, he has committed a very unworkmanlike
blunder. The fascia of each arch is much broader
than the fascia of the bridge, which spreads over
all the arches. Where these two intersect at the
crown of the arch, the greater width is lost in the
narrower. The mere statement of this in words is
sufficient to show that every arch must appear to be
crippled, suggesting the idea of weakness and insta- }
bility, which the construction and the remarkable |
vibration of the bridge seem further to justify. These are a few specimens of the absurdities that the proverbially “ practical” engineers commit when they pretend to gratify the public taste. Let us now turn to the architects. In the immediate neighbourhood is the railing round the grass plats in Palace Yard, bad in every possible way, and very manifestly so in the extravagance of such an expenditure for the preservation of a few Tom Thumb geraniums. Why cannot architects and engineers learn that the object of a fence is not to distract attention from, but to be subordinate to, that which it encloses? The new areade or cloister is a similar mistake, with a terrible look of perma- nence about it. The railings we may hope to clear away, but these deformities in stone are too heavy to be easily moved. It happened that the base for a tall building was remarkably high; and in making the addition of a very short building, this very high and heavy base was continued as part of the new design. Perhaps ineptitude could do no worse. We do, therefore, call special attention to this bit of recent Gothic; and if our readers will take a few dimensions, showing the proportion of area to pier, and will compare these with the cloisters at West- minster Abbey close by, they will be able to under~ stand the value of ‘names and things” in the archi- tectural profession. Of S. Thomas’s Hospital it is scarcely fair to speak in this category of public favourites, or can- didates for public approval. Public opinion is divided on its merits; and probably its designer, now that he discovers what his drawings really meant, may in this respect agree with the public. About the Midland Railway Terminus, however, there are not two opinions. Here the public taste has been exactly suited, and every kind of architec tural decoration has been made thoroughly common andunclean. ‘The building inside and out is covered with ornament, and there is polished marble enough to furnish a cathedral. The very parapet of the cab road is panelled and perforated, at a cost that would have supplied foot-warmers to all the trains for years to come. This monument of confectionery is a fair specimen of the result of competition among architects for the approval of judges whom they know to be incompetent. The ‘ Midland” directors are able administrators of the railway business, and probably of their own; but was there any evidence that they were qualified in any way to decide upon the respective merits of the competitors, or to select a design to be built in an important metropolitan thoroughfare? Is any one of these gentlemen fur- nished with the necessary knowledge? and if not, how can their accumulatedignorance become efficient in its stead? These are questions that—in the in- terests of the art, about which they are so very care- ful when their own interests are equally involved— the competing architects ought, as a condition pre- cedent, to have had satisfactorily answered. Judg- ing by the building, however, we imagine that quite a different course was pursued; and in the success- ful design, at any rate, the noble art of building has been treated as a mere trade advertisement. Showy and expensive, it will, for the present, be a striking contrast with its adjoining neighbour. The Great Northern Terminus is not graceful, but it is simple, characteristic, and true. No one would mistake its nature and use. The Midland front is inconsistent in style and meretricious in detail; a piece of com~- mon ‘art manufacture” that makes the Great Northern front appear by contrast positively charm- ing. There is no relief or quiet in any part of the work. Theeyeis constantly troubled and tormented, and the mechanical patterns follow one another with such rapidity and perseverance, that the mind be- comes irritated where it ought to be gratified, and goaded to criticism where it should be led calmly to approve. There is herea complete travesty of noble associations, and not the slightest care to save these from a sordid contact. An elaboration tbat might be suitable for achapter-house, or a cathedral choir, is used as an “advertising medium” for bagmen’s bedrooms and the costly discomforts of a terminus hotel, and the architect is thus a mere expensive rival of the company’s head cook in catering for the low enjoyments of the great travelling crowd. To be consistent, the directors should not confine their expression of artistic feeling to these great buildings. only. Their porters might be dressed as javelin men, their guards as beefeaters, and their station-masters don the picturesqne attire of Garter King-at-arms. Their carriages might be copied from the Lord Mayor’s Show, and even the engine wheels might imitate the Gothic window near their terminus at York, These things, however, will eventually come ; the water-tank, we see, is moulded in the Gothic style. Yet who is to blame for all this? The directors meant well, no doubt, and are in a state of childisln
