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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



December, 1905 



The Observer's Note-Book 



Architects, Old and New 



HERE are many ways in which people who 

 build houses may be classified. For the 

 present purpose we may consider them from 

 the one point of view, those that hate archi- 

 tects and those that do not. It is amazing 

 how widespread is the prejudice which often 

 exists against architects. Some one — the prejudice is so old 

 it may be antediluvian — seems to have started the notion that 

 architects were unnecessary incumbrances of the earth. 

 Very excellent buildings indeed may be pointed out — even 

 to-day — of whom the architect is quite unknown and perhaps 

 always will be unknown. 



The inference is logical and obvious : they were built with- 

 out architects. " Name me the architect," is the triumphal 

 demand, " and I will admit an architect did this work." But 

 it is sometimes impossible to do that, and thus the supporter 

 of the non-architect theory retains his own views and his own 

 appreciation of his mental discernment. 



There are some people it is impossible to argue with. You 

 meet them every day. Their knowledge is abundant, pene- 

 trating, self-satisfying and whole-absorbing. It is doubtless a 

 fine frame of mind to have, for there are many persons who 

 know so little, that to meet one who knows surely, positively 

 and really gives a freshness to life that is as invigorating as 

 it is rare. The architect haters come in this class. It is 

 useless to talk with them, for they KNOW — spelled in the 

 largest letters, Mr. Printer, if you please. There is literally 

 no room for converts here, but it may not be useless to review 

 the general situation as a possible help to the non-diffusion of 

 such notions. 



It seems to be an historic fact, that the cataloguing of 

 architects, their ways, their means, their deeds, their relations 

 to buildings, their personal efforts, their contribution to 

 knowledge, science and art, is a comparatively modern thing. 

 The word architect itself is comparatively modern, and no 

 one will dare say for certain just what sort of a person the 

 architect of classic and of medieval times was. 



If he was anything like the modern article, he was a culti- 

 vated, agreeable gentleman, of polished manners, knowing 

 more of building than of anything else, a charming fellow 

 to know and quite well satisfied with himself, and with others 

 also if he had a multiplicity of jobs. In all these matters he 

 may have had a close resemblance to the modern architect, 

 but it will be safe to affirm that he earned his wages by more 

 personal exertion. He very likely did not have a staff of 

 office assistants who took the drudgery of labor from his 

 shoulders, who did all the work, while he got all the glory. 

 Whatever he was he was a hard-working man, himself daily 

 on the scaffold, directing and working, in charge of every- 

 thing, but fully capable and competent to do everything 

 himself. 



The modern architect is very different. He has the 

 singular advantage of being required only to work with his 

 head. He does not do things himself, but he tells others 

 what to do. He does not have to find out things, but he 

 asks others about them and puts the charge for acquiring this 

 knowledge into his little bill, which the client duly pays. His 

 mental efforts may be accomplished with little visible exertion, 

 but the final results are eminently visible, being, in fact, struc- 

 tures of permanent material which are set up on the face of 

 the earth and destined to last a considerable time. 



This is a very agreeable operation, for it aids in spreading 



forth his fame and perhaps wins him new clients. The latter 

 result does not always follow, for his achievements may not 

 be pleasing and no one may want any more of it. This is 

 a distressing state of affairs, and one difficult to remedy, for 

 an architect without clients is as a poet without readers; that 

 is to say, unappreciated, unknown, without means of support. 



But getting back to older architects, it may be pointed out 

 that the contention that the medieval cathedrals had no archi- 

 tects has long been punctured as an absurd legend without 

 force or truth to support it. It is true enough they had no 

 single architect, as most modern buildings have, but the 

 records of the past have yielded up many an old craftsman 

 who was master builder of the church with which his name 

 has now come to be associated. This, at least, we know posi- 

 tively, and we should have known it intuitively, since never 

 was an idea more absurd than that the great churches of the 

 medieval period — the most glorious structures in stone ever 

 built by human hands — simply were built, without directing 

 guidance and without definite end and aim. 



So we know there were architects, for such the master 

 builder must have been; but we know less of his actual rela- 

 tionship to the work, less as to what he actually did, less as to 

 his own personal part in the planning and building. Here, 

 of course, we have no guide, and can only depend on con- 

 jecture — a sorry enough leader, but all we have. It is safe, 

 however, to assume that the master builder's part was an im- 

 portant one. He did not sit down and draw out the whole 

 structure by rule and compass. He did not design, or have 

 designed by his draftsmen, designs for ornament and detail, 

 which is now the usual course in every architect's office. He 

 perhaps did not concern himself with sanitation, for of that 

 science no one, in his day, knew anything at all. He knew 

 nothing of science, for science is modern and belongs to our 

 own time. But he knew how to build, for his buildings tell 

 us so; and he knew how to build permanently, for many of 

 them have lasted a prodigious time — longer than many of us 

 want the works of some modern architects to last. 



He was, therefore, a real person, doing real work, doing 

 it finely, often with true genius, and generally in a way that 

 has excited the universal admiration of all who have seen it, 

 old and young, medieval and modern. But it was the work 

 itself which excited interest, not the architect himself. He, 

 poor chap, fell into forgottenness, and only his bare name 

 has been recovered in our own time through patient toil and 

 skilled study. 



The modern architect thinks of himself first. Show him a 

 new building, and his first question will be, Who was the 

 architect? And if he doesn't happen to like that architect 

 he will immediately tell you — not for publication — what he 

 did that was bad, and what he ought to have done which he 

 hadn't. If the building has real merit, that may be referred 

 to last, but often in a grudging spirit, as though some other 

 — unnamed person — could have done better had he been af- 

 forded an opportunity. 



Perhaps he could. There is often room for betterment in 

 this vale of woe and sea of tears we call mother earth. The 

 point is of value chiefly as illustrating the horrid modern 

 spirit which too often dominates things architectural and 

 sets people against architects. Any man who does anything 

 is entitled to credit for what he has done. If an architect 

 builds a good building, by all means give him all the praise, 

 all the commendation, all the reward possible. 



