THE PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 



BY ALFRED DWIGHT FOSTER HAMLIN 



[Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin, Professor of the History of Architecture, Head 

 of School of Architecture, Columbia University, b. September 5, 1855, Con- 

 stantinople, Turkey. A.B. Amherst College, "1875; A.M. ibid. 1885. Post- 

 graduate, Mass. Institute of Technology, 1876-77; Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, 

 1878-81. Special Assistant, Department of Architecture, School of Mines, 

 Columbia University, 1883-87; Instructor, 1887-89; Assistant Professor, 

 1889-91; Adjunct Professor, 1891-1904. Corresponding Member of the Ameri- 

 can Institute of Architects. Member of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and 

 Sciences, Architectural League of New York, National Geographic Society. 

 Author of A History of Architecture ; European and Japanese Gardens, in col- 

 laboration with others. Contributor of many titles to Johnson's Encyclopaedia, 

 International Encyclopedia, and Sturgis's Dictionary of Architecture.] 



IT is not easy to estimate correctly the significance and true 

 proportions of present-day movements. We are so near them, that 

 by the laws of historical perspective as inexorable as those of 

 linear perspective the relative importance and true dimensions 

 of things are distorted into false aspects. If the observer would not 

 be misled by mere appearances, he must seek to divest himself of the 

 traditional prejudices of his present-day environment, and survey 

 the scene from heights whence he may command broader horizons 

 and discover the larger aspects of the view. If we cannot reach the 

 mountain summits of detached and impartial criticism, we can at 

 least attain the nearer heights, and find profit in the survey from 

 even so modest an elevation. 



We are asked to consider the Problems of Modern Architecture. 

 This title may be interpreted in various ways; but for the purposes 

 of this discussion I shall take it to refer to those great questions of 

 tendency which have become insistent with the progress and the 

 changes of modern civilization: the questions of the whence and 

 the whither of modern architecture. How have modern conditions 

 come about, and how shall we deal with them? How shall the art 

 be vitalized? What influences are impinging upon it, and how under 

 these influences may it be guided in the direction of progress? It 

 is these broad problems of present drift and future development 

 which I have chosen to discuss, rather than the technical details of 

 modern office practice. If it is important for the critic and the 

 theorist to acquaint themselves with the practical aspects of the art, 

 it may also be profitable for the active practitioner to look up and 

 away from his drawing-board and take account for a brief space of 

 these larger questions of his art. 



Let us first briefly note the way we have come during the past 

 century, so that by observing the force and direction of the influences 

 that have brought us to our present station we may the better take 



