202 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pations have presented fresh, problems with which to deal. The 

 increase of great corporations, the building of railroads, new 

 forms of transportation by water, the changes of life in every 

 state, have caused new difficulties for the architect, all of which 

 must be correctly solved if we are to make any true progress. 



In our houses, stores, office-buildings, hotels, homes, factories, 

 machine-shops, depots of construction, warehouses, churches, 

 dwellings, and places of amusement, there is a constant need for 

 the application of new ideas and the devising of new methods. 

 The work that is before our architects is immense, and the way 

 in which they apply themselves to it will largely influence our 

 future advancement. Yet in the face of all this the battle of the 

 styles waxes furious; and if one obtains a handsomer building 

 than his neighbor, he is told not to complain of its inconven- 

 iences, but to be satisfied that he has got so much. There never 

 was a time when the need of a practical architecture was more 

 pressing than now, and there never was a time when it was so 

 persistently neglected. 



And what is a practical architecture ? Is it one in which 

 beauty is sacrificed to utility, where plainness is to be preferred 

 to ornament, where art is subordinated to engineering ? Not at 

 all ; we can have beauty and utility, art and engineering, all in 

 one building, and still be practical and in line with good architect- 

 ural work. It is true that many "practical" buildings are ex- 

 tremely ugly, and many great works of engineering eminently 

 hideous. It is small wonder at times that there is a revulsion 

 against the practical and a demand for more of the beautiful ; but 

 the error here is as great as when beauty is sacrificed to utility. 

 Use is by no means synonymous with ugliness, and it is quite as 

 important to combat such a view as to condemn beautiful things 

 because they are useless. Practical architecture does not imply 

 any compromise between the two elements, but it does imply a 

 strict application of common sense to all material -things. There 

 is no reason why architecture should be denied the treatment 

 from the point of view of sound sense that is given to every other 

 department of thought and progress ; it is too closely connected 

 with the necessities of life to be made the victim of absurdity. 



There is scarcely a limit to the number of examples of the neg- 

 lect of natural conditions that may be gathered from the archi- 

 tecture that prevails among us. In the search for the beautiful, 

 the demand for impressive facades, the taste for complicated 

 ornament, and a most singular appreciation of the odd, the gro- 

 tesque, and the ugly, there is little attention paid to matters 

 which seem self-evident and are of really vital importance. 

 Windows are arranged to suit a symmetrical facade, whether 

 they are just what are needed for the rooms or not, and, even 



