AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE 251 



the Pennsylvania railway station in New York is perhaps the most noteworthy of recent 

 examples. This edifice is of great area, roughly 450X750, but of moderate height, 

 except in the central transept, containing the " concourse " and the main waiting- 

 room. The exterior walls are impressive by their great length and breadth, effectively 

 emphasized by the simplicity of the treatment, which consists in a repetition of similar 

 members. In the shorter but architecturally more important front, there are columns 

 of the Tuscan order, forming a colonnade, continuous but for the central and terminal 

 pavillions. Of the features of the interior the main waiting-room is a reproduction, 

 on a considerably enlarged scale, of the Thermae of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, 

 while the structure of the concourse is an undisguised example of modern engineering 

 in iron and glass. The second in importance of recent public buildings in New York 

 is the Public Library. This shares with the Pennsylvania station the unusual ad- 

 vantage of a main frontage of over 400 feet, in each case obtained by closing a street, 

 whereas the street system of New York limits the normal frontage of a building to 

 200 feet. As in the other case, the unusual length is effectively emphasized, and by 

 similar means. The design of the library is derived from a " project " which obtained 

 the grand prize of the Beaux Arts in 1893. Necessarily, it does not proceed from the 

 actual requirements of the building, which are accommodated as best they may be to 

 a preconceived envelope, insomuch that one of the principal interior divisions is cut 

 by a cornice midway of its height and has no expression at all on the outside. A like 

 inexpressiveness characterizes all the recent public architecture. The architectural 

 feature of the new Court House in Chicago is a colonnade including five of its ten storeys, 

 though these storeys are nowise superior in importance or different in function to the 

 storeys not included. In the recent Education Building of the state of New York at 

 Albany, a colossal colonnade, of which the columns, 65 feet in height, are metallic 

 skeletons surrounded by marble shells, all the storeys are included in the "order," 

 which thus constitutes the entire structure, with the exception of a tall blind attic. 

 Yet interiorly the structure is an " office building," an aggregation of separate and 

 equal cells. This mode of design, abandoning specific expression in favour of the 

 artificial unity of a grandiose architectural mask, allows no scope for individuality, 

 and abandons all hope of a characteristic or national expression in architecture. 



In commercial building a national type has perforce been evolved out of the " skele- 

 ton construction," developed under the absence in the United States of any restriction 

 of law or custom upon the individual owner of the height to which he may carry his 

 building. In these many-storeyed buildings it is manifestly impossible to apply the 

 formulas or canons of the modern . academic interpretation of classic architecture. 

 In one " skyscraper," (the new building of the Western Union Telegraph Co.) now 

 under construction in New York, the architect has indeed undertaken to subdivide a 

 wall of some thirty storeys by a superposition of two classic " orders." More com- 

 monly, the architect is content to emphasize, by separateness of material or treat- 

 ment, the separateness of the beginning, middle and end, of his wall, more or less 

 corresponding to the classic subdivision of base, shaft, and capital, and to garnish the 

 more conspicuous parts of the resulting structure with classic detail. This practice, 

 however, is not invariable. The latest of the very tall commercial buildings of New 

 York (the Woolworth building), thus far the tallest of them, and, next to the Tour 

 Eiffel, the tallest building in the world, rejects the classic subdivision into base, shaft 

 and capital, or at least the classic proportion between these three members, and chooses 

 what may be called, at least in comparison, a Gothic treatment. The metallic skeleton 

 is distinctly felt through the necessary protective envelope, in this case of terra cotta, 

 and the envelope is attenuated to the utmost, in disregard of the accepted classical pro- 

 portions. The success of the attempt, as of previous attempts at expressional treat- 

 ment on a less conspicuous and imposing scale, gives some ground for hope that the 

 American " skyscraper " may become a typical work of art, as well as a typical em- 

 bodiment of the modern commercial spirit. 



Meanwhile, the successes of American architects have been mainly in dwellings, 



