House & Garden 
tures should be high enough from the floor to 
guard them from damage by ordinary acci¬ 
dents. Here are ideal conditions at once of 
architectural appropriateness and of pictorial 
visibility ; here the greatest freedom of com¬ 
position is possible; here the fullest pictorial 
treatment, short of illusion and compatible 
with general principles of decorative style, is 
not only possible but desirable. Yet it is 
just this space that architects seem most loth 
to give over to the painter. Whether archi¬ 
tects prefer the evident costliness of precious 
marbles or carved wood to the more recondite 
costliness of paint spread by a master, 1 do 
not know. But it is certain that the place 
where the painter could do his best, the place 
where in the past he always has done his best, 
where what he does would show to the best 
advantage, and where, if ill-judged, it could 
do the least possible harm to the architecture, 
is the place which the modern architect— 
especially the American architect—least often 
asks him to adorn. 
Kenyon Cox. 
uggpwi 
‘syitity! 
■■'-.iJi.teW'.fA 
SKETCHES FOR THE VESTIBULE, AT 2 123 SPRUCE STREET, PHILADELPHIA 
DESIGNED BY WILSON EYRE, ARCHITECT 
See page 102 
IOl 
