THE GENUS POME day an architect will write his 
ARCHITECT confessions. Then the lay mind will 
be able to grasp what manner of man it 
is who can find a point in space and say with certainty that yon¬ 
der, where only birds circle and dip, shall men walk; who can 
dissolve a chaos of stone and steel, of timber and cement, into 
an habitation; who can reduce visions to paper and yet know 
that those visions will become reality. For it must be conceded 
that the architect is the lone son of the arts whose feet are 
firmly rooted on earth—yes, as firmly as are the foundations he 
lays. With the nonchalance of an acrobat it would seem that 
he juggles in one hand such mundane matters as stress and strain 
and waterproofing and grillage, while with the other he is crystal¬ 
lizing dreams into skylines and fashioning unbelievable cities. 
Were it not for these seeming contradictions, the genus architect 
could readily be understood. 
The architectural profession, says a writer in an authoritative 
journal, is composed of four rather distinct types of practitioners: 
the experienced, ethical man; the novice of proper education and 
training, lacking only experience; the “architect,” and the shyster. 
And the contributor goes on to lament—and justifiably—the pub¬ 
lic’s lack of discrimination between the different types. Un¬ 
fortunately, as in other professions, there are those parading as 
masters of the art, but whose work is only too obvious an 
example of the public being duped by low prices. These, if the 
truth were but known, are not architects at all, they are not crea¬ 
tors, they would scarcely rank as builders, they are ghouls of 
other men’s work. The prospective housebuilder will find it wise 
to look up his architect and see if he is accepted in one of the 
better known associations. You can generally depend upon it 
that the shyster will be flying alone. 
But here we would speak of the tried and approved architect. 
What is he? What does he stand for? In some circles he would 
seem to be consumed with the pedantry of an academician; 
in others, he talks like a revolutionist. Viewed as a whole and 
in homely simile, the architect is a chemist, analytical and syn¬ 
thetical, working with very tangible substances. He analyzes the 
past and synthesizes it into the present. At all times he is an 
experimenter—or should be, for a slavish following of the aca¬ 
demic is no less deadly than the complete disregard for it. He 
must draw on Greece and Rome, on France and England, for 
ideas; though his ultimate aim is ever to modernize the old, to 
adapt it to present-day needs with the aid of latter-day devices 
and discoveries. And such discoveries are tending not alone to 
the application of conveniences and inventions, but to finding the 
exact use for every kind of substance and applying it where it 
will render the best service. In his art, as in any other, only by 
exercising eternally the principle of selection are beauty and ef¬ 
ficiency attained. 
Were Charles Lamb or one of the other 19 th Century essayists 
writing on the genus architect, they undoubtedly would have con¬ 
sidered them from two characteristic viewpoints, and faltering 
in such steps we would try the same: the architect in his office 
and the architect in his home. 
That a man cannot always be judged by his clients is cor¬ 
roborated in another passage from the writer quoted above, “A 
prospective builder seeking his first experience does not, often¬ 
times, appear to care who makes his drawings, just so he obtains 
them cheaply. Having no particular respect for the building 
he is about to erect, he has even less respect for the architect, 
who appears to be a necessary evil in the affair. The architect 
himself, if he be of the first class, is probably not lacking in self¬ 
esteem and is far from relishing the patronizing attitude of the 
prospective client. He neither kotows nor cringes; and the man 
with money to spend is too likely to resent what he considers 
‘high and mightiness’ in one who is only a servant after all.” 
Truly, it is remarkable how some folks who summon the archi¬ 
tect for counsel fail to strike a medium of attitude toward him. 
Either they treat him as they would the local carpenter — demand¬ 
ing the impossible and, often enough, unwittingly, the inartistic; 
or look upon him as infallible until some misjudgment proves 
him human, whereupon he becomes clothed with all the weak¬ 
nesses of the earth-born. 
In no profession does the client seem to feel it his province to 
exercise such thraldom as in that of building houses; an attitude 
quite absurd when considered from a logical point of view. No 
man would dictate to his doctor, and even the lawyer cannot 
complain that his client arrogates unto himself the last word 
in counsel; yet the architect has often to tolerate and to handle 
with creditable diplomacy unaccountable changes of taste from 
his client that utterly destroy the unity of his work. Often 
enough the owner who would accept unqualifiedly the plumber’s 
dicta on plumbing will question the ultimate decision of the ar¬ 
chitect on architecture. It were time the layman learned that 
some of the monstrosities seen about the land are not wholly 
the fault of the architect. It were also time for him to learn 
that consulting a good architect with an idea for a house does 
not necessarily spell an enormous outlay for counsel fees. 
When the architect comes to build his own house, he is as 
a bird released from his cage. No longer is he held in thrall by 
the wishes or dictates of a client. For years he has been saving 
up ideas of little treatments here and there with the promise 
that some day, when he is to be his own master, he will make 
use of them. He has seen a doorway in France and a chimney 
in England, from the South he has caught the idea for a stairs 
and from Rome the suggestion for a window. Then out from 
their dusty corners are dragged the ideas. He spreads them be¬ 
fore him. This is to be his own house, he says, and he will make 
it a model of perfection and efficiency. Then gradually creeps 
over him the realization that were all these ideas included in the 
one house it would gain fame for being little less than a curio 
shop. 
During the past three years there have been published in 
House and Garden articles on “Homes That Architects Have 
Built For Themselves.” These, together with others shortly to 
appear, are to be made into a book that the man who thinks of 
building a house should find invaluable. Viewed as a whole, they 
represent the best endeavor of the best architects in America. 
There are moderate-priced houses and some more costly. All 
styles are represented and all types of settings and environments. 
Re-reading them proves a stimulus to thought, for, without ex¬ 
ception, these architects, in the building of their homes, have 
striven to attain ideals that well represent the aim of American 
house architecture to-day: to build a house showing restraint and 
simplicity in architecture, to conserve space and attain effects at 
once genuine and yet fitting the purse, and to make the arrange¬ 
ment homey, that the requirements of all the family may be satis¬ 
fied. Viewed from the point of the ethical, these fashioners of 
skylines are teaching by example a lesson no amount of polemics 
could give the public — that the reason for building a house is to 
make it a setting fit to enshrine a home. 
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