This epoch, 1830 to 1870, includes also the time of the Gothic revival, properly so called; that is, of the earlier years of that movement— of the time when the reformers were full of hope and courage, and believed that the sin cerity and the logical construction and decora tion of Gothic churches were capable of tieing reproduced. The intellectual movement assumed that modern churches were cold, devoid alike of ornament and of interest; while the churches of the Fourteenth Century—for it was the later Gothic which first attracted the stndent—were full of interest. Therefore, those engaged in the movement undertook to study the forms and the details, and to reproduce them exactly for a while, believing that there would come in evitably a Gothic style which would be either the old one revived or some modification of it still more nearly suited to modern !feeds. Again, as to civic and domestic buildings, the enthusiasts believed also that these would be far more admirable if they were built as the Fourteenth Century Italians and the Fifteenth Century Frenchmen built, Moreover, this style admits of all kinds of adornment by means of the colors of natural material. In England. in France. and in Germany, preceding genera. tions had done little of that; but in Italy they did much. and it was deemed clear that modern architects might study Italian as well as other forms of Gothic. All this can be found at length in the writings of the authors of that time— authors of whom some are still in repute—and in the work of a host of later writers. men who also were inspired with the same hope of speedy improvement of the artistic situation. One set of studies of the past having failed, another was thought sure to succeed; and only after twenty years of effort did it begin to be clear that nothing complete was to come from the Gothic revival. The most costly building of the style was almost the earliest, the great Westminster Palace (q.v.), designed by the elder Charles Barry., who was knighted as having been the architect of the home of the British Parlia ment. This building is studied Irma the most formal type of the Tudor style, and the at tempt to cover it with rich decoration only enhances the evident formalism of the constantly repeated details of ornament. lm spite of this, in Germany and in England, the style became al most exclusively etalesiastieal. while the clas sical methods prevailed for civic buildings. In France it had so little effect upon the strongly organized and deeply convinced workmen and thinkers of that most artistic of modern nations that only a few buildings of completely mediawal character were built, either in France itself or in the countries under immediate French influ ence. These, when they were built, had, how ever, this great superiority, that they were com pletely constructional, vaulted in masonry if not according to the strict Gothic principle of rib vaulting, which was as yet barely under stood, and consistent in all their parts, while the English work of the same period and Ameri can imitations of it were very apt to be dis figured within by plaster imitations of medifrval forms. Since 1870 there have been some evi dences of more thoughtful and therefore more original ways of working. There have been some designs which are not based upon buildings of the past more then this, that the old systems of proportion. the old methods of making a building effective, halve been in the designer's mind. One of the most carefully studied of these is the great building on the Trocad&ro hill at Paris, which was begun about 1875 and finished in time for the great Exposition of 1878. This is a vast building, more than a quarter of a mile, measured in a straight line, from out to out, occupying a most advantageous position and richly adorned by sculpture on a large scale in its immediate surroundings and out skirts rather than in its own walls and door ways. It is not possible to say to what his torical style it belongs; it belongs to 1101w. Less entirely free from possible classification under an ancient name is the best of American free work, such as Trinity Church in Boston, which, although entirely Romanesque in spirit, is studied from the Romanesque of Europe. and contains features dimly traceable to French, to Spanish, and to English antiquity, while all are harmonized into a modern design. Such a de sign, too, was All Souls Church in New York, a study indeed of Italian Romanesque, but as com pletely a modern design as the Trocad&ro Palace itself. So there are sonic smooth-faced street façades in which, the question being merely to design a front and to arrange the fenestration agreeably, great independence has been shown. Great Britain has heen rich in buildings of this sort, for the devotion of many of her best designers to the Gothic revival had at all events given them the habit of constructional design ing; they have i,een, on the whole, far less con trolled by tradition than the Frenchmen, while also far less successful in producing buildings of permanent charm such as results from thor oughly matured designing. It is to be noted
that a tasteful and satisfactory design is much more quickly got in a style already familiar to the artist and to his critics, the cultivated pub lic. Cultivation in such matters must go far beyond the knowledge gained by travel and by general reading before the student can recog nize the attempt at new methods of design and partly judge them. There is, therefore, a very strong inducement to every designer to work on the old lines.
The novel systems of building caused by mod ern scientific advance have not lied so much influence upon design as bad been anticipated. in France, as early as the middle of the Nine teenth Century, it was seen that wrought-iron was to become an important element in future building, and those who sought to influence for good the designing of the time pointed out many ways in which it could be utilized. At the seine time, in the United States, cast-iron in hol low columns and in shells, imitating ent-stone work, was introdueed; and while the shop fronts of all American cities' came to be made of this material, there were also very many facades which, though apparently of stone masonry, were from street level to roof composed ex elusively of a series of cast-iron members held together by riveting. Again, at a later time, when the steel-cage construction for high build ings was introduced, as is shown below, the opportunity for a fresh movement in design seemed to be given; but this was rendered im practicable, partly by the legal requirement that iron should everywhere be protected from the effect of heat in ease of conflagration, and partly by the same willingness to repeat old forms under new conditions which had controlled the designing of the cast-iron fronts mentioned above. Still another opportunity seemed to be afforded for the use of ironwork in design; namely, in the buildings of the great expositions, from their commencement in London In 1851 through the entire half-century; but here it has been the exception rather than the rule to base the design upon the ironwork itself. The disposition to make the buildings of one of these great fairs as attractive as to a multi tude of people, and the need of great haste in their construction, has prevented thoughtful con sideration from being given to their design, and the introduction of staff and of plaster boards has facilitated the imitation of rec ognized architectural forms in mere outside work, in the simulacra of architectural structures, supported, indeed, by an iron frame, but not recognizing that framework as part of the building proper. Thus, in one of the great halls of Chicago of 1893, or of Paris in 1900, there was, without, what passed for a cut-stone facade of great elaboration and necessary cost; but within, this character disappeared completely, and the whole interior was a vast cage—a greenhouse as completely non-architectural as the original building in Hyde Park in 1851. Here and there a building has been built con structionally of wrought-iron, having the spaces between the members of its light frame filled in with colored brickwork or the like. Such a building was that of the municipality of Paris at the Exposition of 1878. Its walls were of common hard brick, between uprights and hori zontals of wrought-iron, while its wide and very high doorways were enriched beyond all modern practice by a combination of terra cotta in high relief and glazed and richly painted tiles. Similar attempts have not been more numerous during the later years of the cen tury than when the subject first excited atten tion. Thus, the excellent reading-room of the National Library at Paris, roofed by means of Wrou gh t - i 1ml arches carrying cupolas of brick work faced with tiling, dates from the years before 1865. The most effective ornamentation in the days of the Gothic revival is that of the Oxford Museum, completed about 1860; and the most effective artistic ironwork in any of the larger buildings of the great expositions was that of the square domes of the Paris building of 1889. In this way the few attempts at artistic ironwork have been scattered over a half-eentnry, without resulting in any deter mined school of design. In like manner a few houses have been built fronting on the streets of Paris, and in certain Belgian cities, in which the iron framework is treated on the same sound, constructional principles as those in volved in the wooden "half-timbered" construc tion of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries. These, however, are very rare exceptions, and the only recent development of the same fine art treatment of metal has been in the very moderate attempts at logical building of shop fronts, balconies, greenhouses, and shelters above doorways of entrance. The few attempts to treat strictly engineering structures, bridges, and the like, in an artistic way have not been successful.