Characteristic of Modern the great characteristic of modern Architecture is not the execution of a few grand monumental efforts, but the application of architectonic principles to all classes of structures. The gradual advance of the successive civilizations of the world is marked by the continuous increase of the number of classes of buildings which rose into architectural importance. Egypt has its tem ples and tombs, with a few remains of palaces; Nineveh and Babylon have left their palaces, with some remains of temples and tombs; but scarce a remnant of anything unconnected with king or priest has come down to us from either of these fluviatile civilizations. Greece, mistress of the inland sea, gives us a greater variety, and shows us a people as well as a ruler and a religion; the theatre and the erg-ora make their appearance. Rome, full ruler of all the countries surrounding the great Mediterranean and its subordinate seas, has left us basilicas, theatres, amphitheatres, triumphal arches, immense baths, bridges, and aqueducts, as well as substantially built private houses, in addition to temples, pal aces, and tombs. The Middle Ages, sombre and barbarous though they were, were yet full of life; and though for one or two centuries the cathedral and the castle seemed the architectural sum-total, yet long before they terminated municipal buildings of various classes were to be found in every city and private dwellings bad risen into importance.
Classes of Jloderu list of classes of buildings required in modern times would be a long one. Few structures save the smallest are now without architectonic pretensions. Bridges, docks, quays, water works, gas-works, etc., have usually their architectural parts or features; factories often rise into the domain of Architecture, and yet more fre quently is this the case with warehouses. Legislative halls—national, state, and city—mints, treasuries, post-offices, courts of justice, museums, picture-galleries, railway-stations, banks, office-buildings, exhibition buildings, insurance-offices, churches, schools, universities, schools of fine arts and music, lecture-halls, theatres, hotels, hospitals, asylums, and vast retail and wholesale stores that have become quite independent of the private dwelling, are but a few of the classes of public and semi-public buildings now required. Houses have developed into the blocks known as apart ment-houses, the country and suburban residence is unlike the street dwelling, and seaside cottages are a class apart.
In the architecture of the United States, governmental buildings seem less prominent than in Europe, and churches much less so, while office buildings, hotels, and apartment-houses are carried to dimensions and costliness exceeding those of other countries. Ecclesiastical architecture
has lost its ascendency in these our modern days.
National can scarcely be accounted a fault that as yet America has developed no new style; indeed, it has been impossible for her to accomplish such a feat. The people of both the Americas came originally from Europe; with them they brought their arts and their art, and all tendencies to originality have been checked both by constant inter course with the parent countries and by a constant influx of European blood. The art of America, like its literature, has acquired very little from its natural surroundings; architects, as well as other artists, are too much given to looking backward, too little to looking around and for ward. Whoever expects to find anything peculiarly American in the architecture of the United States will, therefore, be disappointed. The grandeur of the mighty rivers, deep canons, limitless prairies, and resist less cataracts of the land finds but a faint echo in the Architecture of the people, and but little more in its literature. Art and literature alike are exotic to the land, though not to the peope thereof, and are still con ceived, for the most part, in the terms of the ancient environment across the Atlantic.
But notwithstanding the absence of any distinctive style that can be called "American," and notwithstanding, also, the distinct and far too prominent tendencies to imitate the mannerisms that may be in vogue in 35o ARCHITECTURE [NINETEENTH Europe, and especially in England, the exigences of climate, the require ments of trade, changes in social habits enforced by local circumstances, and the variety of improvements demanded by the intellectual and ma terial progress of the country have necessitated considerable change in the internal arrangements and external aspect of ordinary buildings; so that they are recognizable as American. Thus the apartment-house, though no new thing, since even in ancient Rome the donuts was divided into many insulce, and though present under various names throughout Europe, has in those cities of America where it has taken root—notably in New York—developed features peculiarly American.
The American hotel is in many respects unlike the European one, and stores, office-buildings, and public buildings generally, deviate widely in arrangement from European types. Yet even in these edifices that bear most clearly the American stamp the style is European. The influences of race and of that universalism of civilization that is the grandest fea ture of the present age have bound America to Europe with bands which she cannot break, and which check every effort to attain distinctiveness. Yet even in a purely xsthetic aspect America presents some differences from the parent-countries.