Spire

Spires of a simple type crown many of the Italian campaniles, and during the i3th, 14th and 15th centuries, spires and lanterns were frequently added to earlier towers. In neither Italy nor Spain, however, was the highly developed spire a native form, and Italian spires were simple, slate, tile or metal covered, pyra midal or conical roofs of timber. Burgos cathedral is unique in Spain in possessing two western spires of intricate, open-work masonry, which date from the 15th century. These, however, are known to have been designed by a German architect.

German luxuriance, which had already appeared in the numer ous varieties of timber spires used on the Rhenish Romanesque churches, found equally congenial expression in the stone spires of the Gothic period. The early, simple type is seen in the solid spires of S. Elizabeth at Marburg (not completed until the middle of the 14th century but probably from a 13th century design). The cathedral at Freiburg has a spire (127o-88) which is of a new and infinitely richer type. The low, square tower carries a high, octagonal lantern, each side of which is capped by a slim gable and filled with delicate tracery, the corners of the square being filled with rich, triangular pinnacles, one of which is con tinued up as an open, spiral staircase, giving access to the upper portion. The spire rises above the lantern, a mere cage of open work tracery, with crocketted edges, amazingly light and delicate in effect. Somewhat similar, although even more intricate in their pierced stone-work are the western spires of Regensburg cathedral (late i5th century), by Roritzer. These open-work spires became the rule in Germany, as illustrated in the intricate cage of Stras bourg cathedral (spire, 1435) ; the west towers of Cologne cathe dral, built in the i9th century from mediaeval drawings; the over complicated lace-work of the cathedral at Vienna (433) and the spire at Ulm, over soo ft. high, built in the last years of the i9th century, from 15th century drawings.

The spire of Oxford cathedral (1220) is a perfect example of the Early English spire type; it is octagonal, has a marked entasis or convex curve, and is decorated with dormers on each face and corner pinnacles. The great spire of Salisbury cathedral (1250), 406 ft. high, shows the tremendous aesthetic advantage of the greater steepness there present, which became the rule in the later English spires. During the Decorated period it became customary to finish the top of the tower with a parapet, either battlemented or of pierced tracery, and to set back the base of the spire behind the face of the wall. With this change the use of broaches dis appeared and tall, corner pinnacles, sometimes supported on corner buttresses, filled the tower corners. An early example of the parapeted tower with a spire, in which broaches remain and the corner pinnacles are raised up to the top of the broach, is that of Ashbourne church, Derbyshire (14th century). Among the

loveliest of Decorated spires are the two western spires of Lich field cathedral, with heavy but effective, corner pinnacles. The highly developed type of spire with corner pinnacles and a parapet below can be seen in St. Peter's, Kettering, and Sts. Peter and Paul, Oundle (both in Northamptonshire), both of the Perpen dicular period. In other examples a little flying buttress connects the corner pinnacles with the face of the spire, as in the exquisite Perpendicular spire of Louth church, Lincolnshire. Many Per pendicular spires are often ornamented with crockets up the angles.

Renaissance.

The spire was a form never thoroughly ab sorbed by the Renaissance, which preferred domed lanterns crowning towers. Nevertheless, during the 17th century in Ger many, most effective, fantastic, spire-like forms were developed. These, based partly on Italian Baroque prototypes, usually had profiles of broken concave and convex lines, crowned at the top with a sort of onion dome, the whole rising to a considerable height, and, in imaginative quality, far surpassing any of the Italian examples. It is such fantastic spires crowning the simple towers of village churches, which give much of their character to the little towns of south Germany and Austria. At the same time, in England, the spire idea was receiving a much simpler and more straightforward, and equally effective, Renaissance expression, through the efforts of Sir Christopher Wren and his followers, particularly in the churches built after the Great Fire of London in 1666, such as St. Martin's, Ludgate hill, St. Mary-le-Bow and St. Bride's, Fleet street, all by Wren. St. Mary-le-Strand (early i8th century) and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (1721-1726) both by James Gibbs, which simplified and refined upon their Wren prototypes, are very successful.

Even more effective are many American colonial spires, which, although originally based upon the work of Wren and Gibbs, achieved a fresh beauty through still further simplification. Par ticularly noteworthy is the type in which a small, octagonal, arcaded lantern crowns a simple, square tower and carries, usually above an attic, a simple, slim, white spire, as in the Old South Meeting House, Boston (1729) and the extremely delicate, white, wooden steeple of the church at Farmington, Conn. (c. middle 18th century). Such steeples as that of S. Paul's chapel, New York (c. 1767), Christ church, Philadelphia and S. Michael's, Charleston, S.C. (1742, occasionally attributed to James Gibbs himself), although more monumental in treatment and more English in effect, still retain the characteristic Ameri can delicacy. This trend toward the more slender and attenuated proportions reached its climax in the exquisitely light spire of Park street church, Boston (1819), by Peter Banner. (For bibliography see GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.) (T. F. H.)