BROWN HOUSES AND LIGHTNING CONDUCTORS. 



shop-fronts, and private dwellings, with solid-looking fagades of this brown stone, have 

 sprung up all over New- York, as if by magic. It is undeniable, that the use of this 

 stone has amazingly improved the character of the buildings, both public and private, 

 that adorn all the newer and better portions of the city ; for there can never be any 

 comparison instituted between the expressionless brick walls that formerly made up 

 all of New- York, (and that still make up all of Philadelphia and Baltimore, and the 

 more expressive and architectural effects that have grown up since freestone has come 

 into general use. Architecture, like sculpture, demands stone before it can develop 

 and blossom in all its fair proportions — and dull and monotonous as much of the brown 

 sandstone* used in New- York, is, we owe to its greater facility under the chisel, the 

 only just pretension to architectural beauty, that any of our cities have yet made. 



So far, it is all very well. There is something real in the color of any stone, and 

 therefore, in a certain degree satisfactory, because it is the natural color — though the 

 stone may be by no means the best one. 



But now comes the imitation — the false instead of the real — the paste instead of 

 the diamond. Brown stone houses are the best houses in town — therefore they are 

 the fashion. Now, unfortunately, there are many brick houses that cannot by any 

 conjuror's wand be turned into brown stone. Still, the owner is very unhappy, not to 

 live in a brown stone house — it is such a miserable thing not to be a la mode. What 

 is to be done? The house painter is the only man who alone can solve this problem. 

 And he solves it — by fainting his house " Victoria brown" — i. e., the fashionable 

 dingy brown stone color, (in imitation of our freestone.) 



Now, as we think few things uglier than red brick walls, we have no objection to 

 calling in the help of the painter to impart the agreeable impression of a pleasing color, 

 instead of an ugly one — to the otherwise insipid, meagre, brick surface. All that we 

 complain of, is, that any body should be forced to swallow, as a quack medicine to cure 

 all diseases that the optic nerve is heir to, this eternal, dingy " Victoria brown." 



The only object of painting the surface, (beyond that of preserving it,) is to please 

 the eye. Why not, therefore, choose a pleasing drab, or a soft, warm gray, or a light 

 mellow fawn, or any one of the many quiet, neutral tints, that are as easily mixed in 

 a paint-pot as this dingiest and most melancholy color — the color of dead leaves in au- 

 tumn? Why not take two or three shades, (only shades, not distinct colors,) of the 

 same drab, or gray, and by painting the body of the house one shade, the window- 

 dressings and the cornice another, and the blinds another, give some pleasing variety 

 of expression, (for color alone is capable of doing wonders in this way,) to our other- 

 wise monotonous meagre piles of brick houses? Why not — but it is useless to in- 

 quire! The painter, shaking his " Victoria brown" brush at you, stops your mouth 

 with that answer from which, in the opinion of the multitude, there is no appeal, "this 

 is the color, sir, everybody prefers now." 



If fashionable Victoria brown is simply an error of taste in town, it is an abomi- 

 nation — a miserable cockneyism in the country. But in the country it has come, (at 



* We notice with pleasuie, tliat several of the newer structures in New- York, are of a sandstone of a much lighter 

 shade — the color of which is very haticisorr.c 



