Introductory
A Word about Architecture

The earliest records we have of man, centuries before the building of the first temples that bordered the Nile, are found in the remains of his ancient dwellings. The building instinct, the desire for a home that would shelter him from the elements and from wild beasts, marked man's development from brute nature. In many places this first home was a cave scooped from the earth in a hillside or was hewn out of the rock, with a boulder serving as a doorway. In others it was woven of reeds or formed from the boughs of trees. Man's dawning intelligence taught him to use the material that could be most easily adapted to the walls of his shelter. Even to-day many races still live as primitively as their forefathers ages ago. You see it in the skin tepee of the Indian, in the ice-built igloo of the Arctic Circle, and in the adobe or mud hut of the torrid regions. But, so long as the houses were built only for protection against heat, cold, and rain, we do not speak of their architecture. It is when they combine a certain grace and beauty with their usefulness that building them becomes an art. Thus architecture came gradually into being, in the growth of the first great nations.

Four thousand years ago, in Greece, it attained the highest point it has reached in what we call proportion and beauty of line; the great buildings of the Roman Empire gave it the majesty and dignity that comes from size and mass; while in the cathedrals of medieval Europe it found a new and more splendid form. To-day America is, above all others, the building nation, and the style of architecture that we are developing will tell to the future the story of the progress of our artistic ideals and our civilization. Just as climate changed the form of primitive dwellings, so it influences the architecture of highly civilized nations. As society grew more complex people gathered together in great cities; religion, wealth, and the ideas of the people began to determine the character of their buildings, as well as the location and the materials of which they were constructed.

Let us see how climate varies the type. If you have lived in the North, you will know why a different kind of building is more appropriate there than in the hot South, where protection from the sun is the chief consideration. In one place we build to keep warm, in the other to keep cool. In the snow lands, there are steep roofs to let the snow slide off so that the roof will not be crushed by so great a weight. In hot countries, the houses are usually built around a court-yard, and have a flat roof on which the people gather in the evening.

What has building material to do with it? That is even plainer. Where clay is abundant we shall find many houses and public buildings of brick. When a country is young and there are forests everywhere, lumber will be plentiful and cheap, and the great majority of the buildings will be constructed of wood. This applies at the present time to our own country, where, outside of our large cities, wooden structures are almost universal. In Europe, on the other hand, where the forests are few and carefully guarded, stone and concrete take its place.

What has religion to do with building? Religion inspired the Greeks to design their beautiful temples, in order that their place of worship might be worthy of their gods. In the Middle Ages the same spirit of devotion impelled men to spend years of toil erecting the great cathedrals.

And wealth? A prosperous people will have better and more permanent buildings. They will be able to maintain great architects who will give their whole time to designing and building beautifully and suitably for all the practical and artistic needs of life. The treasures of monarchs and princes have produced countless castles and palaces in Europe, while in America, libraries and buildings of charity have been sown broadcast over the land, through the wealth of private individuals.

These are only a few causes that have resulted in the manifold developments in the art of building. It is a process of growth that never really ceases; even the decay and ruin of a civilization does not prevent the spread of its architectural ideals. The creation of the type of edifice that we call the sky-scraper in the United States during the last few years, may be cited as an instance of this growth, although it had for its immediate cause the narrowness of the island on which the city of New York was founded.

As you progress in the study of the types of buildings, you will see that every building ought to mean something definite, and should have an outward as well as an inward fitness to the purpose for which it is to be used. A church ought to be quite different from a jail, and a department store or a factory should not look like either. The man who builds his dwelling in a village street to-day so that it looks like a medieval castle, or the committee that erects a school that resembles a jail, has made a mistake for which there is no excuse; a mistake which, with the simplest knowledge of the main buildings of the world and their meaning, would have been utterly impossible.

During the development of architecture, in the different countries and through the different ages of the world, certain distinct styles of building have grown into being. There are not very many different styles, because each one was hundreds of years in becoming perfected. At length, one building in particular, or a few buildings, represented the very best in all that long growth.

The purpose of this book is to show the reader the essential features of the most perfect buildings, and to give a slight idea of the life of the time which they represented. If you can once discover the reason why Greek architecture is called the most beautiful in the world, or understand how and why the different styles grew and developed, you will be able to judge the appropriateness or the faults of the buildings that are being erected in your own town or city to-day. With such a knowledge, the old church in your neighborhood, the library, the city hall, or the state house will have a new significance and a deep interest to you. This knowledge is not difficult to attain, for you need not go deeply into the subject. In the past, and particularly in the Middle Ages, it was an indispensable part of education. Boys and girls were taught to appreciate the art and beauty in the midst of which they lived.

At the present time we are suffering from the neglect of these studies, a neglect that has produced the ugly, misshapen buildings that disfigure the streets of nearly every community in the country. We are beginning to understand that ugly surroundings are responsible for ugly conditions. A new spirit is sweeping over the country, a belief in the value of beauty, whether it is in the home or in a public building. You cannot begin too early to understand its meaning.

Perhaps it was only a cabin of logs and brush, or if he could get the material, a frame shack big enough to hold a table, a stove, a bunk or two, and his canoe. Even in constructing such a simple and elementary affair, the young builder had to consider two things. His cabin must be the right size for his purpose and for the place where it was to be located. It must be strong and well built to endure the winter winds and resist the rain and snow.

Fitness and strength are thus the two primary necessities for any building, from a boy's shack to a great temple. Now there are three principles on which the art of architecture is founded. Strength, and fitness, and a third, beauty.

Without fitness a building is useless, and is consequently soon destroyed or made over; without strength it falls to the ground; but if it has no beauty it is a mere collection of brick and stones and lumber, that does not deserve to be called architecture, though it may last for years, as a continual reminder of the bad taste of the builder and of the people who endured it.

When we say that architecture demands these three principles, we must understand what is included in each in order to be able to appreciate and judge the buildings we are about to examine.

A principle is simply another word for a general and universal truth, like the principle in mathematics, that the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts. It is a cause that governs facts; an original law, in obedience to which facts exist. A fact may be true to-day and false to-morrow. It may be true to-day that the Woolworth Building is the tallest in the world. To-morrow it might be false. But a principle is a general truth from which others are derived, and upon which many facts may depend, and it is true always. If we state our principles correctly, all facts will conform to them, and if any one tells us anything, which does not agree with a principle, we may know at once that he is mistaken. Principles are much more useful than facts and, if we are sure of a few principles, we can afford to forget many facts.

Take the first principle of architecture that we mentioned, fitness. It has to do with the practical uses of buildings, their convenience and arrangement. A city hall, for instance, should be large enough properly to represent the community, and it should be dignified, because it is a visible symbol of law and order. In this sense the fitness of all of the great buildings of history, even of ancient times, is most apparent. Perfection in this detail means that the building fits into its surroundings as if Nature herself had been the architect. The Romans went much further than the Egyptians and Greeks, and consciously  planned their buildings with skill and science. To-day it is almost the chief requirement of a building, for under it come the many modern necessities of heating, lighting, ventilation, elevators, and drainage, as well as its adaptation to the special purposes of the building; that is, to the purpose for which it has been created.

In addition, fitness is concerned with location and climate. As we have seen, in a country where there is much snow we have a steep roof, while in the hot regions the flat roof serves as an additional floor after sundown. Fitness may have an even deeper and greater meaning when the architect attempts to express in his design, his ideals, or his religion.

Under the second great principle of architecture, strength, come practical problems of making a building secure and durable. We shall see how the forms of buildings often grew out of the necessity of making them strong. The Greeks used the perpendicular and right-angled construction, derived from the lintel and post of their earliest dwellings. This fixed the type of their buildings. The Romans used the round arch as the basis of their immense development of the art under the Empire, and as a result their buildings look very different.

The third general principle in architecture is beauty, and this is quite as essential as the others. The causes for the beauty of a building lie partly in the material, its color or its texture, or in the form of the building (which is so important that we shall have to study it in some detail), or in the expression of the building as produced by its character, association, novelty, or structure. It may be a combination of some, or all of these things, or some other thing altogether.

The table on the following page, as given by Mr. Sidney Fiske Kimball, will help us to remember the above classification; and later on some of the words will be more fully examined.

The three great divisions of a building are the walls, the roof, and the windows or openings. Another division might be made into six parts: first, the floor or plan; second, the walls; third, the roof; fourth, the openings, doors, windows, etc.; fifth, the columns and supports; and sixth, the ornaments and decorations. It is the style, shape, and dimensions of these different parts that determine to which of the few great styles of architecture any building belongs.

Most obvious to the average person are the general shape of the mass of the building, determined by the roof and walls; the effect produced by the openings being pointed, rounded, or horizontal; and the presence or absence of columns; but ornament and decoration are also very important and essential things.

In a book like this we can say very little about ornament, although it is so great and essential a part of a building. Absence of moldings alone would change the entire appearance of any great building.

Table of Essentials

As we examine the pictures and study the buildings in this book let us think of them with reference to the "Table of Essentials." If a building in the book or one that we see in our travels pleases and satisfies us, let us apply the principles in trying to discover what is the cause that produces the pleasure and satisfaction. Or if one displeases us, let us try to discover what is wrong about it, what there is that does not conform to the true principles of building.

We all know the meaning of floor, wall, roof, door, and window. We could not describe a house without them. If we did describe a house in these words and our reader did not know their meanings, he would have no idea what we were talking about. Yet people constantly read works and guide-books, who do not know the precise meaning of such common and necessary terms as capital, clerestory, crypt, order, nave, pediment, spandrel, transept, tympanum, and so forth. These and several more must be understood. It is not enough to look them up that you may understand some given description, they should be learned by heart.  It is a thousand times worth while to do so. They are the keys that unlock many doors.

(An alphabetically arranged glossary of architectural terms, and also of the Proper Names mentioned, will be found at the end of the volume.)

The Story of Architecture

The history of architecture tells the story of the development of the art of building. Nations have risen from the darkness of the past, and have attained great power and culture, only to sink into obscurity again, leaving, as the only evidence of their greatness, the ruins of forgotten temples and of cities that once swarmed with life. So the study of buildings is, in its broadest sense, a preparation for the study of history and of civilization itself.

Before beginning to examine the "type buildings" that we have selected for special study, let us take a bird's-eye view of the whole field, remembering that the styles of architecture form a continuous development from first to last. The spirit of each age of the world has determined the changes made from the style of the preceding age, and a knowledge of the buildings that represent the main types will be of everyday service to any one who reads books and newspapers and talks with intelligent people.

Those ancient peoples, the Assyrians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the inhabitants of India, represent the earliest of architectures, but they had little influence upon the great historical buildings we are to study, and we may regard them more as curiosities than as objects of study.

Following these nations came the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, in the order named. The architectures of these peoples we still imitate to-day and we need to know as much as possible about the buildings they erected.

The Byzantine, Romanesque, and Saracenic architectures next came into being and were developed, while, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, the Gothic style led, developing widely and in slightly different ways in all the leading countries of Europe.

Then came the great intellectual awakening of the fifteenth century called the Renaissance, which produced the great painters, the great sculptors, and the great builders of the next three hundred years. From that day to this there has been little new, but revivals and combinations of old styles prevailed until the arrival of the skyscraper and the Modernist.

The different styles are most easily fixed in the mind by means of pictures of the best buildings of these types. It will give a foretaste of what these succeeding styles are like if we think of the subject under the following elementary classification.

Chronological Table

The following table will be helpful for easy reference, as well as for preliminary study, and will enable us to see the relation of any style of building to other buildings in time and place.