404 WRITINGS OF JOSEPH HENRY. [1856 



been applied in the construction of the Smithsonian lecture- 

 room. To apply them generally however in the con- 

 struction of public halls, required a series of preliminary 

 experiments. 



In a small apartment it is an easy matter to be heard 

 distinctly at every point; but in a large room, unless pro- 

 vision be made in the original plan of the building for 

 a suitable arrangement, on acoustic principles, it will be 

 difficult, and indeed in most cases impossible, to produce the 

 desired effect. The same remark may be applied to the 

 lighting, heating, and ventilation, and to all the special 

 purposes to which a particular building is to be applied. I 

 venture therefore to make some preliminary remarks on the 

 architecture of buildings, bearing upon this point, which, 

 though they may not meet with universal acceptance, will 

 I trust commend themselves to the common sense of the 

 public in general. 



Architectural limitations. — In the erection of a building, 

 the uses to which it is to be applied should be clearly 

 understood, and provision definitely made, in the original 

 design, for every desired object. 



Modern architecture is not, like painting or sculpture, 

 a fine art, par excellence. The object of these latter is to 

 produce a moral emotion, — to awaken the feelings of the 

 sublime and the beautiful; and we greatly err when we 

 apply their productions to a merely utilitarian purpose. To 

 make a fire-screen of Rubens' Madonna, or a candelabrum 

 of the Apollo Belvidere, would be to debase those exquisite 

 productions of genius, and do violence to the feelings of the 

 cultivated lover of art. Modern buildings are made for 

 other purposes than artistic effect, and in them the sestheti- 

 cal must be subordinate to the useful; though the two may 

 co-exist, and an intellectual pleasure be derived from a 

 sense of adaptation and fitness, combined with a perception 

 of harmony of parts, and the beauty of detail. 



The buildings of a country and an age should be ethno- 

 logical expressions of the wants, habits, arts, and feelings of 

 the time in which they wore erected. Those of Egypt, 



