building of a simple rectangular plan, 216 feet long | St. Paul's in New York (fig. 10), a little later, built of and 105 feet broad, in which the same style is employ- brown freestone, and with a more consistent attention ed with marked refinement and elegance. Here the to architectural effect both without and within. material of the front and the two ends is marble, while the rear is of brown freestone. Such richness of material was as yet extremely rare. Building-stones of good quality were everywhere rare and costly. The Capitol at Washington had been built of a wretched brown freestone from Virginia, which was soon covered with white paint, hardly more out of the desire to counterfeit the nobler material than to preserve the stone from speedy decay. The Boston State-house was built of brick, the colonnade and all the architectural ornaments being of wood. FIG. 10.-St. Paul's, New York. From the simplicity and reasonableness of these early buildings American architecture soon lapsed into a series of more or less extravagant and absurd departures, not to be accounted for on any ground more satisfactory than that of fashion or whim. It is perhaps not singular that this fall should be contemporary with the increase in the number of professional architects, ill prepared to meet the difficulties of practice in unfamiliar styles, yet ambitious to produce effects of novelty. The first fashion (for it can only be called such) to find general favor took the form of a Greek revival. lic buildings, churches, banks, and even private houses, were built after the similitude of a Greek temple, with a portico of two, four, or six columns at one end or both, but with the startling solecism of rows of win Pub FIG. 9.-Park Street Church, Boston, Mass. In these early examples of public buildings the result must be reckoned fortunate: the architects followed loyally and without undue ambition the grander models of the European capitals. The same may be said of the churches which were built at the same period. Architects were few and modest, not yet possessed with the spirit of exaggeration, and the examples which remain to us of their work are calculated to inspire us with a sense of respect for the skill, good taste, and temperance with which they used the slender resources at their command. As fair representatives of the churches of the first twenty years of the century we may cite Park Street Church in Boston, built in 1810 (fig. 9), whose fine steeple, as was usual with the earlier churches, is the only architectural feature of the building, but is in itself worthy of Wren or Gibbs; and FIG. 11.-U. S. Custom-House, Philadelphia. dows piercing the walls. That the adoption of such a style for buildings to serve the ordinary purposes of modern life tied the hands of the architect, and deprived him of all freedom as to the disposition of his plan, was perhaps not less obvious to him than it is to us; but it was not a sufficient objection in his eyes to the use of the Greek model, which continued in favor for many years. The custom-houses of Philadelphia (fig. 11) and New York, the former originally built for the United States Bank, are examples of the more splendid use of this style. Both are of white marble, with octastyle Doric porticos at either end. In the New York building the metopes of the frieze are plates of glass which light an attic story. The Boston customhouse (fig. 12) is an example of the same style used in The Greek fashion, absurd as it was, held undisputed sway for nearly a generation. Rude attempts were made from time to time at building churches in the Gothic style, but the results were for the most part so unfortunate that the older forms were generally adhered to until about 1840, when the building of Trinity Church in New York (fig. 14) set before the eyes of men the first worthy example of what might be done with the Gothic in the hands of a master. The master here was Richard Upjohn, English by birth, who came to this country in 1829, being then about twenty-eight years old, and settled in New Bedford, Mass., as a cabinetmaker, employing his evenings in teaching drawing. In 1832 he removed to Boston, where he worked as an architectural draughtsman, and even FIG. 13.-Girard College, Philadelphia. ished in 1847, is at once the most splendid and the most preposterous ever raised in this country for educational purposes. It is in outward form a full Corinthian peripteral temple, 169 feet long, 111 feet broad, and 97 feet high, built throughout of white marble, the columns 6 feet in diameter and 55 feet high; the background of this magnificent colonnade being of course on all sides a cella wall pierced with three stories of windows, which admit an interrupted and insufficient light to the rooms within. The example set by the architects of important public buildings was duly followed in churches, town-halls, banks, and even in dwelling-houses, not only in cities, but also in country towns. Houses are still to be seen in the vicinity of all the larger cities whose front consists of a monumental portico of Ionic or Corinthian columns (the Doric was less common in domestic buildings, as being inconveniently massive) two or three feet in diameter, built up of pine planks, and surmounted with the correct entablature and pediment, the whole painted a dazzling white, only relieved by the bright green window-blinds. FIG. 14.-Trinity Church, New York. practised architecture in a small way, furnishing designs for small churches, of which St. John's at Bangor, Maine, is one. A few years later he became a resident of New York, and when it was determined by the government of Trinity Church to build a new edifice instead of enlarging their old one, Mr. Upjohn was employed-whether in competition or not we do not know-to furnish the designs. The church was built between the years 1839 and 1845. It was the largest and most costly religious building in the United States, measuring 80 feet in breadth and 192 feet in length, and with a stone spire 284 feet high. More than this, it was the first instance in which the Gothic style had ever been used in this country with knowledge and skill. Considered as the work of a man whose opportunities for practical work had been at best but limited, the result was most surprising. There is in Trinity Church no indication of an uncertain or inexperienced hand. The proportions are just, the construction is scientific, the details are well chosen and well placed. There is no striving for originality or picturesqueness. It is the work of a student who is contented to follow loyally the ancient models and to reproduce as closely as may be the ancient effects. But it would be too much to say that fifty years of rapidly-increasing knowledge and more rapidly-increasing expenditure have enabled us to produce a single church which can be pronounced the superior of this first work of an untrained and self-taught student. Mr. Upjohn continued in a large and varied practice for more than thirty years, building not churches only, but dwelling-houses and civic buildings of various uses. His buildings are widely scattered over half a dozen States, and while they are of course of unequal merit, they have all been designed with conscientiousness and refinement. It is, however, by his example of the use of the pure English Gothic in his churches that he has been of the greatest service to American architecture. The advantage of this influence was not immediately apparent. The classical style, which had furnished three generations of modest builders with churches in which dignity and propriety, not untouched with elegance, were joined with convenience and appropriateness, was abandoned for the newer style. The temple was forgotten; the cathedral was now the approved model. But the Gothic style was a much more complicated instrument than the Greek, and less governed by rules and proportions to be found in the books. In the hands of untaught architects it was capable of producing results more afflicting on the whole than those which had followed the use of the classic style. Only here and there a church or a chapel was built in which a little of the Gothic spirit was caught and preserved. But this was not all. As in the case of the Greek fashion twenty years earlier, so now the Gothic became a fashion, and houses, large and small, especially in the country, showed a tendency to become violently Gothic and to decorate themselves with sharp wooden gables and battlemented eaves and crocketed pinnacles. The absurdities of such a use of the style were, however, too apparent to be long persisted in, and Gothic became in a few years restricted mainly to churches, where it has prevailed as by common consent to the present day. In the mean time, the condition of the people was changing with great rapidity. The growing cities, centres of commerce and manufactures, were developing in wealth and luxury. In this development a taste for architectural display occupied naturally a prominent place. Public and private buildings became yearly more ambitious and costly; the humbler materials which satisfied the builders of a generation before, like the classic models which furnished their modest façades, were far from satisfying their richer descendants. The broadening field attracted to the pursuit of architecture increasing numbers of men ready to style themselves architects and to undertake the duties of the profession, but whose training was for the most part limited to such as they could secure from their experience at the carpenter's bench. It was natural that under such conditions, among a people in whom the native sense of beauty is wanting, and while as yet no attempt had been made to supply that want by education, the architecture of the cities should soon present abundant examples of every form of ugliness and vulgarity which ignorance and ambition together could invent. Essays were made in every style known to history, from the Egyptian temple to the Swiss chalet. The introduction of cast iron as a building material dates from this period. The cheapness and rapidity with which castings of any desired pattern could be multiplied led to the adoption of this material to a considerable extent, not only for shop-fronts-where, the great end being the display of goods behind great sheets of plate-glass, the attenuation of the supports gained by the use of iron columns was a welcome ad vantage-but also for the entire fronts of buildings. An order of Corinthian columns with entablature at so much a pound was thus repeated as many times as the number of stories required, each story being an exact repetition of the one below. The iron being painted in imitation of marble and the spaces filled in with plate-glass windows, a certain grandiosity was attained, not procurable so cheaply in any other way. Numerous examples of this meretricious architecture are to be seen in almost every street of that portion of New York devoted to business, and the bad example was followed, though to a less extent, in some other cities. Fortunately, it was discovered before many years that this cheap splendor was in the long run expensive, the iron-work tending to deteriorate rapidly from rust, and requiring constant outlay to keep it in safe condition. This point settled, the progress of cast-iron architecture was brought to a sudden stop. In the course of time, fortunately, the rapid material development of the country began to bring about a perceptible though inadequate education in matters of art. Foreign travel increased to a remarkable extent, and the splendors of the European capitals and cathedral towns became familiar to large numbers of those classes upon whom the production of architecture is dependent, while to those who did not travel abroad photography brought home the first adequate representations of the best buildings of all ages and countries. To these influences must be added the writings of Ruskin, not less widely read in America than in England, and not less immediate and powerful in their effect. It is easy at this interval of time to see the extravagances and fallacies with which these remarkable works were filled, but it is impossible to deny the influence which they exerted at a period of great degradation in art, in opening the eyes of intelligent people everywhere to the worthlessness of many of the things they had been used to admire, and to the beauty which it was possible to substitute. It is certain that large numbers of young and enthusiastic disciples were moved by the eloquence of Ruskin to take up the profession of architecture, and in their practice to contemn all building bearing the stamp of the Classic or Renaissance, to distrust every opening that was not covered by an arch, to regard with aversion all conventionalized ornament and all symmetry of parts, and generally to treat the question of one architectural style or another as a matter not of good taste, but of good morals. In the United States, as in England, the practical effect of all this was the general adoption of a modified Gothic style for civil and domestic as well as religious buildings-a style in which |