January, 1916 
11 
Courtesy of the Architectural Record 
A Pacific Coast type-a residence at Los Angeles, California 
E. B. Rust, architect 
Courtesy of the Architectural Record 
An adapted Mission type-a residence in Dover, Mass. 
James Purdon, architect 
as it should be. Styles that are united, original and unusual, 
come of a society of like nature. This quality we lack at 
present in any faintest degree;. we have neither racial nor 
social nor philosophical nor religious unity. When we have 
this, as we may gain it through the present sifting of souls and 
of peoples like wheat, we can hope for a consistent artistic 
expression. At present the best we can hope for is increasing 
good taste, honesty, -sincerity and a fine interpretation of our 
chosen styles. It is precisely these things we are getting in 
abundant measure. 
Early Architectural Floundering 
When the last tradition of a popular and instinctive art van¬ 
ished, about 1825, we forthwith began our search for old styles 
to conquer; we found plenty of them and annexed them piti¬ 
lessly, quite without understanding what any one of them 
meant. Greek, Gothic, Italian, French Empire, Renaissance, 
English, Colonial, all were successively taken in hand, with 
astonishing and even terrifying results, one being indubitably 
the production, in the space of seventy-five years, of the most 
awful architecture recorded in history. Now we deal with the 
same styles, with others added, but mark the amazing differ¬ 
ence: where once was a childish playing with ill-remembered 
or worse-copied details applied to impossible forms construct¬ 
ed from novel and supposititious materials, is now a keen and 
sympathetic laying hold of the very heart of things, an actual 
thinking in the terms of the style and after the very fashion 
of its creators. 
Take, for example, our own Colonial, a fine style, logical, 
self-respecting, full of instinctive refinement. When I was a 
draughtsman in my first (and only) office in the early Eighties, 
it was just coming into vogue, and the crimes committed in 
its name were as numerous as they were ingenious. Colonial 
stands for simplicity of form and perfect proportion, but at 
An elaborate classical type is this Pennsylvania residence. Horace Trumbauer, architec 
