New Doors for the Architectural School at Harvard 
all-important fact. The architect does not 
deny that twice two are four, but he passes 
on to the next thing and looks beyond this 
mere mathematical fact. By temperament, 
training and actual experience the average 
engineer is apt to be unsympathetic to the 
architect’s point of view. Nevertheless,should 
the architect neglect his engineering, no mat¬ 
ter how beautiful his work may be, it will 
probably be lacking in those essential quali¬ 
ties which will make it live, but the reverse 
proposition as applied to the engineer is un¬ 
fortunately not true. 
I hope that you will not for one moment 
consider that I am unconscious of the value 
of the engineer’s point of view or that I have 
any less respect for him because our point 
of view is so different, but I do feel very 
strongly that the engineer’s point of view is 
one-sided,and to that extent, narrow; and for 
that reason he is not the best person to be en¬ 
trusted with every phase of municipal improve¬ 
ment. He attaches too much importance to 
facts and leaves no room for imagination. 
Whatever a man may style himself, it he be 
capable of conceiving and executing a really 
great architectural work, whether it be an 
individual building, an avenue, a park or a 
whole city, he is in that sense a great archi¬ 
tect : such was Michael Angelo, the painter 
and sculptor; in a different way Lenotre, 
who is always referred to as a landscape archi¬ 
tect ; and still in another way Roebling, the 
engineer, who had the skill to produce a 
masterpiece of engineering of such beautiful 
proportions as to class it as a work of art, 
and Major L’Enfant, the engineer, to whom 
credit is due for the beautiful plan of the 
City of Washington—one of the only plans 
in existence laid out deliberately and in ad¬ 
vance, with an amount of foresight and artistic 
judgment so great that notwithstanding the 
unintelligent departure from his scheme and 
development of his plan, it has, nevertheless, 
produced a beautiful result,even in its present 
mutilated form. 
I trust that a better understanding of the 
functions of the engineer and the architect, 
and a more thorough blending of their tasks 
may gradually lead to a proper solution of 
the many municipal problems which now 
confront us. This solution can only be sat¬ 
isfactory when effected with both the artistic 
and the practical ends in view. 
THE NEW BRONZE DOORS 
FOR THE ARCHITECTURAL SCHOOL AT HARVARD 
W HAT has been described as a new ex¬ 
periment in casting in this country has 
been most successfully carried out by the 
John Williams Bronze Foundry of New 
York in the execution of the new bronze 
doors for Nelson Robinson, Junior, Hall, 
as the home of the Harvard Architectural 
School is called. T he doors were designed 
in the style of the Italian Renaissance by 
McKim, Mead & White, and received the 
personal attention of Mr. McKim. The 
excellence of the caster’s work is shown in 
the absolute retention of the softness and 
delicacy of the original modeling in clay, no 
chasing, filing or sharpening having been 
done, as is usually the case. That is to 
say, even the rich ornamentation in very 
low relief of the stiles and rails, common¬ 
ly treated as plain surfaces, was so pre¬ 
cisely preserved as to render all retouching 
superfluous. 
The ornamentation ol the doors was done 
by Buehler & Lauter, who also had a hand 
in the making of the greatly admired bronze 
doors of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New 
York, which were modeled by Andrew 
O’Connor, Herbert Adams and Philip Mar- 
tiny. The front of the Harvard doors is di¬ 
vided into thirty-two panels, ranged in rows of 
eight perpendicularly. The alternate squares 
of the two outer series bear portrait medal¬ 
lions, executed by the Piccirilli Brothers, of the 
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