HOUSES. AMERICAN COUNTRY-SEATS. 



361 



College as student, tutor, professor, and presi- 

 dent, covered the long period of sixty-two 

 years ; while from 1872 till his death he took 

 an active part in all its affairs, lecturing on his 

 favorite subjects ethics, metaphysics, and 

 rhetoric preaching, and making anniversary 

 and commencement addressee. Of his many 

 published writings the best known are : " Evi- 

 dences of Christianity " (1849) ; " Moral Sci- 

 ence " (1862) ; "The Law of Love, and Love as 

 a Law" (1869); and "An Outline of the 

 Study of Man "(1874). The last three vol- 

 umes have been adopted by several colleges 

 as text-books, and translated for similar use 

 abroad. President Hopkins received the de- 

 gree of D. D. from Dartmouth College in 1837, 

 and from Harvard University in 1841, and that 

 of LL. D. from the Board of Regents of New 

 York in 1857. He became President of the 

 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 

 Missions in 1857, and held that office till his 

 death. 



HOUSES. American Country-Seats. The present 

 epoch of domestic architecture in the United 

 States, though scarcely more than ten years 

 old, is remarkable in performance and in prom- 

 ise. Twenty years ago the late Andrew J. 

 Downing, an architect of repute, declared that 

 our houses were mainly either of the plainest 

 or most meager description, or, if more am- 

 bitious, were frequently shingled palaces of 

 very questionable convenience, and not in the 

 least adapted by their domestic and rural 

 beauty to harmonize with our landscape. 

 Nineteen years ago Mr. E. L. Godkin, in an 

 address before the American Institute of Archi- 

 tects, said that, while their calling was the 

 only one that brought art into contact with 

 busy life affecting men's imaginations while 

 ministering to their material comfort the peo- 

 ple were only beginning to learn the need of 

 architects. "You have been occupied from 

 the dawn of civilization in the construction of 

 temples and palaces, cathedrals and castles; 

 but it is only in our day that the distribution 

 of property and the arrangements of society 

 have been such as to call your services into 

 requisition for the construction of homes." 

 Eighteen years ago the Rev. Dr. William H. 

 Furness, in an address on a similar occasion, 

 lamented the misfortune of the American archi- 

 tect who lived in a country so young in every- 

 thing, especially in the fine arts, that architec- 

 ture was "hardly yet appreciated as an art, or 

 its professors and students deemed anything 

 more than builders and working mechanics. 

 The consequence of this confounding of artists 

 with mechanics is that your art is not only de- 

 frauded of its dignity, but is without its right- 

 ful authority, and you have incessantly to sub- 

 mit to the humiliation of discussing as questions 

 of taste what are no questions of taste at all, 

 but matters of knowledge, of fact, with persons 

 who have never given a thought to them. 



The first private house of the present era of 

 domestic architecture in the United States was 



designed by the late Mr. H. H. Richardson, 

 and erected in Newport, R. L, near the resi- 

 dences of Mr. Louis L. Lorillard and Mr. Cor- 

 nelius Vanderbilt, in the year 1870 ; but it was 

 not until about eight years afterward that Mr. 

 Charles F. McKim designed the Newport Ca- 

 sino, and Mr. Richard M. Hunt the residence 

 of Mr. Henry G. Marquaud in the same city, 

 which were speedily followed by other notable 

 structures in various parts of the country. To 

 Newport, therefore, and to the three architects 

 just mentioned, must be awarded especial 

 honor. So rapid and distinguished was the 

 progress of this new American architecture 

 that the British Institute of Architects, a few 

 years later, sent to the United States a dele- 

 gation of its members with instructions to ex- 

 amine the results obtained by their American 

 brothers. On their return to London these 

 gentlemen reported their surprise and delight 

 at much that they had seen, particularly at the 

 development of the American country-seat. 

 Similar surprise and delight were expressed 

 soon afterward by M. Paul Sedille, the archi- 

 tect of the city of Paris, in a letter to a French 

 journal recounting some impressions of a visit 

 to the United States. Among the best places 

 for studying grouped examples of the new 

 American country-seat are Newport, Lenox, 

 Bar Harbor, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Tuxedo 

 Park, Elberon, the "suburbs of Philadelphia, 

 and the Westchester and New Jersey suburbs 

 of New York city. The whole continent of 

 Europe might be searched in vain for a New- 

 port, a Lenox, or a Bar Harbor. 



No distinctive American or national style 

 has yet been created, but adaptations of for- 

 eign styles and reproductions of our own co- 

 lonial style are numerous. In the country- 

 houses of the Northwest there is a tendency 

 toward Byzantine effects, bold sometimes to 

 brutality. In New England there is an un- 

 mistakable revival of old colonial ; five or six 

 colonial houses have been built in Newport 

 alone during the past two years, that belonging 

 to Mr. H. A. C. Taylor being unusually note- 

 worthy for purity of style. Some architects, 

 like Mr. H. Edwards Ficken, Mr. 0. C. Haight, 

 and Mr. C. A. Rich, are fond of expressing the 

 domestic sentiment of the lowland counties of 

 England. Mr. W. D. Washburn's house at 

 Minneapolis is called modern Gothic ; Mr. R. C. 

 Jefferson's house at St. Paul, modern French; 

 Mr. George Noakes's house on Riverside Drive, 

 New York. Norman Gothic; Col. Andrews's 

 house at Cleveland, Italian Renaissance (see 

 illustration, p. 362) ; Mr. C. A. Potter's house, 

 near Philadelphia, somewhat Flemish. But 

 architects, a? a rule, do not designate their 

 country-houses as specimens of any special 

 styles, and are almost invariably confused when 

 asked such a question as, "What is the style 

 of this house?" Yet it was only ten. years 

 ago that an American architect publicly eulo- 

 gized the " free classic or Queen Anne style," 

 which he described as showing the influence 



