MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. 275 



Prof. F. W. Chandler, who at the same time is head of the Architectural 

 Department of the city and member of the Fine Arts Commission, it 

 has now attained a most enviable reputation. Institute students com- 

 peted for several years for the prizes offered by the New York Societe 

 des Beaux Arts, and in each competition in which they entered they 

 carried off the gold medal and the highest honors. In the three com- 

 petitions of '94-'95, no less than seventy sets of drawings were submitted 

 by all competitors. The two gold medals, four first mentions and two 

 second mentions were awarded to Institute students. Of the nine 

 designs sent from the Institute, six were placed by the jury among the 

 first eight of the seventy designs submitted; two received second place 

 and one was put out of competition because of too great deviation from 

 the preliminary sketch. This great success is doubtless due to the 

 rigorous training which the students receive in architectural design 

 at the hands of Professor Despradelle, himself a graduate of the Ecole 

 des Beaux Arts, a winner of high honors in Paris, and of the third 

 prize in the recent Phoebe Hearst world competition for the new "build- 

 ings of the University of California, and within a few weeks the winner 

 of the first medal in architecture in the Paris Salon of 1900. For three 

 years the students are continually engaged upon architectural design, 

 and the work of each student is examined and criticised before the 

 class by a jury from the Boston Society of Architects. Students in 

 architecture have also the opportunity, if they desire, of taking an 

 option in architectural engineering, in which they are given a course in 

 the theory and design of structures as rigid as that received by the 

 students in civil engineering. The relations between architecture and 

 engineering are exceedingly close and are becoming closer every year. 

 The work of the architect, aside from the aesthetic design of his build- 

 ings, is becoming more and more like the work of the engineer, and 

 requires a thorough knowledge of engineering construction. 



During the past year, after very careful consideration, the faculty 

 lias also established an option in the course of architecture, devoted 

 particularly to landscape architecture, including, besides a large amount 

 of work in architecture proper, instruction in horticulture and landscape 

 design, on the one hand, and in surveying, topographical drawing, 

 drainage, etc., on the other hand. The landscape architect has here- 

 tofore had no opportunity to secure a thorough training in his profes- 

 sion, except by passing through an apprenticeship, as was formerly 

 necessary in the older professions. On account of the steady increase 

 in this country in the demand for trained landscape architects and the 

 increasing attention which is now being paid by our municipalities to 

 questions concerning public parks, and also by private individuals to 

 the beautifying of private grounds, there seems now to be an unusual 

 opportunity for young men to devote themselves to this branch of 



