USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 23
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A transitional link between the earlier work and that of the more intensely American sculpture was formed at the same period by Kirk Brown of Massachusetts, working in New York, and by Thomas Ball, living in Florence. A transitional group of sculptors residing abroad-such as Story, Green- ough, and Miss Hosmer-were thoroughly imitative of Italian work; while John Rogers of Salem almost created a sculptural genre by his effective statuette groups, mostly con- cerned with Civil War episodes. Olin Warner, while a classi- cist, was showing greater freedom, but the road was open to the rising more American group, headed by Augustus Saint Gaudens. He was born overseas, but his statue of Chapin
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CONCEPTION OF PLAN
in Springfield and his Shaw Monument in Boston had a marked effect upon New England work. The preeminent New England sculptor is Daniel Chester French, who studied for a year with Thomas Ball in Florence. His early manner was traditionally classic, but after time spent in Paris it partook of the free and sensitive quality of French sculpture. Among his best works in New England are the John Harvard statue at Harvard College, the memorials to Milmore and to John Boyle O'Reilly, the Melvin memorial in Concord, and the Parkman memorial. Mr. French's work is of great charm, refined, with dignity and sentiment.
Augustus St. Gaudens had already shown himself eminent. Trained in Paris under Jouffroy, he early gave evidence in his work of greater freedom and enterprise than the preceding neoclassicists. While New England cannot claim him as one of her sons, three of his best works-the "Deacon Chapin" in Springfield, and the Shaw and Phillips Brooks monuments in Boston-are in Massachusetts. Another well-known New Englander is Herbert Adams.
CONCEPTION OF PLAN (1890-1900)
The decade 1890 to 1900 was signalled by a very much more comprehensive study of large architectural problems than had previously been undertaken. It had been the custom to build universities, hospital groups, and all buildings associa- ted for a common purpose with little relation of the buildings to each other, designed according to the individual desires of donors and scattered fortuitously over the land. The one harmonizing conception was that they should be assembled about a campus. Unfortunately, this adolescent idea is still too often prevalent. No group of academic buildings in New England was planned with a view to architectural effect. Nor was there harmony of general character nor association with the terrain. Buildings were planted, not assembled; and the effect was wholly haphazard. No object lessons were at hand; formality for the sake of dignity and uniformity of effect were sacrificed to the rustic likings for natural landscape. The magnificent plan of L'Enfant, drawn up in 1791 for the city of Washington, was not appreciated and was constantly in danger from congressional ignorance. Olmstead for years
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attempted to ameliorate these conditions, with constantly in- creasing success in his treatment of parks. It required the Exposition of 1893 in Chicago to bring to the public at large the possibilities of the noble qualities of studied planning and the mutual association of buildings in harmony with each other.
EXPOSITION BUILDINGS (1876-1910)
Expositions were no new achievement. In 1857 occurred the great exposition in London, which invigorated the dor- mant Victorian art. In 1876 the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia brought together whatever we possessed of art. In 1889 there was an exposition in Paris, which was an at- tempted apotheosis of steel structure. All of these were best known from the exhibits, not for their architectural beauty. It was reserved for the World's Fair at Chicago to present an object lesson in architecture and to establish an exposition of dignified architecture, its enhancing environment conceived upon a large scale and adequately embellished by sculpture and painting. It deliberately avoided eclecticism, stating frankly its adherence to classicism, even to establishing the scale of the orders used. Here at last was a great object lesson teach- ing the method of dealing with large projects, which were already being considered and which have multiplied throughout the land. It has had a salutary effect upon every large enter- prise since undertaken; it was consistent in character through- out, with the exception of one or two buildings which seemed exotic ; it possessed a general saneness of dignified expression devoid of eccentricity, which fortunately remains an American trait. Its success in the collaboration of the artists is one of its most instructive features, and it stimulated endeavor to a remarkable degree.
The New England architects working upon the Chicago exposition were Peabody, Van Brunt Howe, Mead, H. I. Cobb, and Charles Atwood, an exceptionally endowed archi- tect who designed the Peristyle, and the Art Building. In the later exposition of 1904 in St. Louis, Van Brunt and Howe, and Walker and Kimball designed buildings. The Chicago Exposition was soon followed by others, large and small: at Atlanta and Nashville, 1896; Omaha, 1898; Buffalo, 1901; St. Louis, 1904; and finally, the Pacific Coast exposition at
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San Francisco, and that of San Diego in 1922, which was beautifully designed by Bertram Goodhue. In every case, despite pessimistic adverse criticism, these expositions have encouraged and stimulated the arts and led to the discovery of ability in men previously but little known. They have been in fact training schools of a larger scope than could have been attained in any other way. In Chicago, in 1893, over three fourths of the artists participating were either born or trained in New England. In St. Louis, 1904, the percentage had fallen to one half, and as art permeates the country it will probably continue to lessen, yet New England continues to be the alma mater for many artists. The Trans-Mississippi Ex- position at Omaha was under the control of Walker & Kim- ball, the latter a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of The Architectural Review. These architects were members of the Board of Architects of the St. Louis Exposition, the plan of which was theirs.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE GOTHIC
Coincident with the growing trend to classicism, as dif- ferentiated from the erratic eclecticism of Victorian taste, Ralph Adams Cram designed buildings in the Gothic style, with an analytical intelligence as to its structural expression hitherto neglected, and with appreciation for its beauties of expression and symbolism which was to a preeminent degree possessed by his partner, Bertram Goodhue, and resulted in a remarkable series of churches, and later in the group of build- ings at West Point. The Gothic style had been used tradition- ally by Englishmen in America, such as Upjohn at Hartford and C. C. Haight in New York.
BUSINESS STRUCTURES (1880-1920)
In the decade from 1880 to 1890, the use of steel in struc- ture increased. Rolled beams were used in floors and as re- enforcement. Verticals of steel were built up of channels and Z-bars. Serious conflagrations, such as that of Boston in 1873, created a desire for fireproof construction. Slow-burn- ing construction, as advocated by Edward Atkinson for mill buildings, was found to be ineffective. Building laws were
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revised, and by 1886 tentative steel frames reenforced masonry buildings. The engineers, having used such frames in bridge spans, began to experiment with them in buildings.
The invention of the elevator, at first hydraulic, was nearly contemporaneous. Before this period buildings for occupancy seldom exceeded four stories in height, as ascending by stairs was an arduous task and the top story had little rental value. High structures also required thick walls in the lower stories, which minimized floor areas. A new condition arose which made it possible for buildings to rise to any height and all stories to be easily accessible. Each possibility cooperated with the other, and the thoroughly American skyscraper was born. The first building constructed with a steel skeleton was erected in 1889, at 50 Broadway, New York, and during the next ten years buildings gradually became higher; but it was reserved for the twentieth century to fully develop the type, until its excesses compelled the restraint of law.
New England, with a unique blend of imaginative foresight and conservative action, limited the height of buildings in Boston to 125 feet. City lots in congested American com- munities had been laid out according to the Teutonic tradition of small frontage and great depth, in order to get as many holdings and fronts as possible upon the public market place, instead of the Latin tradition of building around courts, which has made possible the long façades and dignity of Latin cities. When the high building first appeared in America, its bare party walls were principal factors, and a row of narrow façades were arranged side by side like sample strips of wall paper. Little by little properties have been coalesced, and zoning laws have produced a series of enormous terraced towers, designed upon all their sides and extremely effective in their masses. Designs became vertical instead of horizontal in treatment, and a unique and often majestic architecture, which is entirely American in its inception and its develop- ment, was the immediate result.
ART ORGANIZATION AND INSTRUCTION
New England first instituted art commissions to control civic monuments, and extended their scope from local actions to State control. Late in the 'nineties Boston introduced the
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first art commission to control civic monuments, and estab- lished the first planning boards and civic improvement com- mittees. About 1900 was founded the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, the progenitor of many other similar societies, of which it remains the largest.
In architecture New England has been represented in the presidency of the American Institute of Architects by Robert Peabody and R. Clipton Sturgis, and Peabody & Walker were members of President Roosevelt's commission in control of art in the District of Columbia. Henry Bacon was the architect of the magnificent Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Walker has been for some years a liaison officer appointed by the Educational Committee of the American Institute of Archi- tects to consult with universities and other schools throughout the country for further extension of art teaching.
To the Art Department of Harvard-Dr. Denman Ross, George Chase, Edward Forbes, Pope, Post, Edgell and Paul Sachs-is due the growth and unique character of the Fogg Art Museum, which has elevated college art education.
In the Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Despradelle succeeded Letang as Professor of Design, Duquesne followed, and the chair is now occupied by M. Carlu. Professor Frank Chandler succeeded Professor Ware as the head of the department, and at his death was succeeded by Professor William Emerson. The traditions are those of the École des Beaux Arts, considered in relation to American conditions. The fine Evans Wing of the new Art Museum was designed by Guy Lowell, a graduate of the École des Beaux Arts.
TWENTIETH CENTURY STATUS (1900-1930)
As has been stated, New England has been conservative in the erection of skyscrapers : the rapid development of the type did not occur until after 1900, when the Flatiron Building, Singer Building, and Woolworth Building were erected in New York. The type seemed justified in New York City on account of the narrowness of Manhattan Island and the large value of land per square foot. The conditions on the lake front in Chicago approximated that of New York. Elsewhere
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skyscrapers seem unnecessary. They have made city streets into deep canyons which, with their terraced masses caused by laws enacted to control light and air, bear a resemblance to the deep erosions and terraces of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. They create a similar impression of titanic forces, and of an apotheosis of commerce. A single skyscraper can, like a prominent tower, act as a focus; but as fast as they are multiplied, confusion is courted.
The opening of the twentieth century found New England in the position of a mother whose children had gone out all over the country, and, while loyal to her, were developing their own environment with a very youthful energy. Her sons were great financiers, like Morgan; great railroad men, like Charles E. Perkins. Everywhere they were in power, and as years went on they were connected with great industries and established endowment funds. No enterprise was undertaken in New England without the bread she had cast upon the waters coming back to her a hundred fold. She had been the mother of museums, of libraries, of hospitals and asylums, of art schools and art education in all its branches, and every- where they appeared within her borders. Her efforts were assisted by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations, and breadth of view enlarged with increased opportunities. Plan- ning boards were established. Engineers and architects be- came cooperators.
As the scope of problems increased, mutual cooperation in all the arts was apparent. The arts have gleaned from every source. To relate their vicissitudes and their Protean shapes would be a task dealing with much confusion but also with many successful achievements, underlying which there has been in New England a saving grace or inherent conservatism tending to acknowledge traditions, which has saved it from erratic efforts. A number of painters who had been pupils of Duveneck, such as DeCamp and Mills; and graduates of the Museum School, such as Tarbell, Benson, and Hale, have been prominent in the last thirty years. Mural painting was undertaken on a larger scale. Henry Walker, Reid, and Sim- mons were at work upon the Massachusetts State House, C. E. Mills on the Franklin Institute; and the decorative mural paintings in the Boston Public Library by Edwin Abbey
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and John Singer Sargent are noted contributions to the art. Brush and Abbot Henderson Thayer, DeCamp, Tarbell, Ben- son, and Hopkinson became well-known portrait painters and were commissioned to paint portraits of the celebrities of the Great War. Benson became a famous etcher, and the list of able New England painters is long.
The Copley Society of Boston, composed of artists and patrons and lovers of art, has for years held notable exhibits, such as the Sorolla and the Whistler collections of pictures. For nearly forty years the artists' costume festivals, under the auspices of the Copley Society, have been spectacular exhibits of the costumes of historic epochs. Pageantry has been well handled in the New England cities, in Salem, Marblehead, Portsmouth, and elsewhere. An elaborate pageant was that at the opening of the new Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology. The scenario was written by Cram, and the costumes for the two thousand participants were assembled by Walker.
The Isabella Gardner Museum, the collections and the build- ing due to the munificence of Mrs. John L. Gardner, is the finest of the private collections, although many others exist in Massachusetts-as that of the Essex Institute, in Salem, and of the American Antiquarian Society, in Worcester.
In sculpture some of the best recent men have been Kitson, Brewster, and Bela Pratt. Cyrus Dallin has been especially skillful in his figures of American Indians, whom he has epitomized; and Paul Wayland Bartlett is acknowledged to have been one of the ablest men of his generation. American art is no longer inferior to the work of foreign artists, and has received a high meed of praise from foreign artists; nor have the minor arts been neglected : in every craft the work has become distinguished.
The brief for New England's influence in the arts is indis- putable, nor is it ever challenged; and it strongly encourages the hope that it will be as far reaching in the future as it has been in the past.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
The American Architect (1876 and later years).
The Architectural Forum (1917 and later years)-Successor of the Brick- builder.
The Architectural Review (19 vols., 1891-1921)-Absorbed by the American Architect.
BAYLEY, FRANK WILLIAM .- Five Colonial Artists of New England: Joseph Badger, Joseph Blackhorn, John Singleton Copley, Robert Feke, John Smibert (Privately printed, Boston, 1929).
BELKNAP, HENRY WYCKOFF .- Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass., Essex Institute, 1927).
BENJAMIN, SAMUEL GREENE WHEELER .- Our American Artists (Series 1 and 2, Boston, Lothrop, 1879, 1881)-Very brief.
The Brickbuilder (25 vols., 1892-1916)-Continued as The Architectural Forum.
CAFFIN, CHARLES HENRY .- American Masters of Painting (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, Page, 1913).
CHAMBERLAIN, NATHAN HENRY .- A Paper on New England Architecture (Boston, Crosby, Nichols, 1858).
CLEMENT, CLARA ERSKINE, AND HUTTON LAURENCE .- Artists of the Nine- teenth Century and their Works (2 vols., Boston, Houghton, Osgood, 1879).
CORNER, JAMES M., AND GODERHOLTZ, ERIC ELLIS .- Examples of Domestic Colonial Architecture in New England (Boston, 1891).
Dow, GEORGE FRANCIS .- The Arts and Crafts in New England, 1705-1775; Gleanings from Boston Newspapers (Topsfield, Mass., The Wayside Press, 1927).
EDGALL, GEORGE HAROLD .- American Architecture of Today (N. Y., Scrib- ner's, 1928)-Valuable for the illustrations.
FIELDING, MANTLE .- Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors, and En- gravers (Privately printed, Phila., no date).
ISHAM, SAMUEL .- The History of American Painting (N. Y., Macmillan, 1927).
JACKMAN, RILBA EVELYN .- American Arts (N. Y., Rand, McNally, 1928). KIMBALL, SIDNEY FISKE .- American Architecture (Indianapolis, Bobbs- Merrill, 1928).
LESTER, CHARLES EDWARDS .- The Artists of America (N. Y. Baker & Scribner, 1846)-Biographical sketches.
MOORE, CHARLES HERBERT .- Development & Character of Gothic Archi- tecture (N. Y., Macmillan, 1899).
NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL OF DESIGN FOR WOMEN .- Prospectus, By-laws (Boston, 1851-1856).
POST, CHANDLER RATHFON .- A History of European and American Sculp- ture from the Early Christian Period to the Present Day (2 vols., Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1921).
ROBINSON, FRANK TORREY .- Living New England Artists (Boston, Cassino, 1888)-Biographical sketches, reproductions of drawings and paintings. ROBINSON, JOHN, AND DOW, GEORGE FRANCIS .- The Sailing Ships of New England (Series I-III, Salem, Marine Research Society, 1922-1928)- Pictures of vessels reproduced, with an introductory text.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ross, DENMAN WALDO .- A Theory of Pure Design (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1907).
STURGIS, RUSSELL, and FROTHINGHAM, ARTHUR LINCOLN .- A History of Architecture (4 vols., Baker & Taylor, 1907-1915).
TAFT, LORADO .- The History of American Sculpture (N. Y., Macmillan, 1924).
WALKER, CHARLES HOWARD .- The Theory of Mouldings (Cleveland, Jan- sen, 1926).
WATKINS, WALTER KENDALL .- "The New England Museum and the Home of Art in Boston" (Bostonian Society, Publications, Second Series, Vol. II, pp. 101-130, Boston, 1917)-The Museum was located on Scollay Square, Boston, formerly the Williams-Smibert estate.
CHAPTER IX
RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REFORMS (1820-1861)
BY EDWARD EVERETT HALE Professor of English at Union College
THE SUNRISE OF IDEALISM
In the year 1844-almost half through the nineteenth century-a lecture on the New England reformers was given by Ralph Waldo Emerson. As we look back on the event it seems clear that he was the person who best could speak with authority upon that matter. He wished, he said, to speak of the new ideas, the new movement, the new spirit of which everybody was conscious in the life of the time; and he began by saying that whoever (that is, whoever had opportunity of knowing) looked back for twenty-five years would be "struck by the great activity of thought and experimenting." Great activity of thought (not to mention experimenting) was certainly a characteristic note of the first part of the nine- teenth century in New England and elsewhere. The new ideas began to come into men's minds before the general period mentioned by Emerson. Indeed, some of them were current in the eighteenth century, and all of them were natural developments of that earlier period.
The new movement continued long after Emerson's analysis and criticism. It was destined to come to a climax, in public affairs, in the Civil War; a climax which might indeed be called a catastrophe. For after the Civil War, America was different; at first there seemed no great dominant ideas; and when new standards and guiding principles emerged they were different from those of the ante-bellum period. The Reign of New England Idealism, some call this earlier period; "the Golden Day," a recent writer has called it. It might properly
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be called a period, for it had striking characteristics which mark it as different from the decades before and after. It was idealistic, spiritual, enthusiastic to a degree unknown in America before or after.
To the casual observer it might easily appear that this spirit of religious and social reform in Massachusetts was charac- terized in the life of the sage himself. Emerson began his active career a Unitarian minister. He was the editor of the Dial, the publication of the transcendentalists. He was the personal friend and the American champion of Thomas Car- lyle. He was deeply impressed by the ideas of German and French writers of his time. In most of the striking phases of our subject we might view him not only as a sympathizer but as a guide. Yet this perplexing person resigned his pastorate of the Second Church ostensibly on a point of church observ- ance, but really because he was not in entire sympathy with the Unitarian movement. He declined to call himself a tran- scendentalist, and saw with disapproval much in the movement so called. He so essentially differed from Thomas Carlyle that it was probably only long-continued separation that made possible their long friendship. He read much of German philosophy but never attempted to be a philosopher himself. He took no step to associate himself with any of the commu- nistic experiments of his day. A sizeable collection could easily be made of his uncomplimentary remarks about the social reforms of his time. He was no representative of the spirit of social and religious reform of his day because he was neither social nor religious in the sense in which those words were commonly used. He preferred simply being himself to being a member or leader of any movement whatever.
EARLY UNITARIANISM (1800-1845)
Seeking today for the permanent residuum of the "thought and experimenting" of that time, nothing more obvious or durable can be found than the writings of Emerson. But if we want to understand the time as it appeared to itself, as it developed in the eyes of men and women, we shall have to look elsewhere. The most important element is the rise and growth of Unitarianism.
254 RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REFORMS
Unitarianism is sometimes spoken of as coming into the foreground with the election of Henry Ware as Professor of Divinity at Harvard in 1805; with the controversy arising in 1815 over the article on American Unitarianism in the Panoplist; with the Baltimore sermon of W. E. Channing in 1819; or with the founding of the American Unitarian Association in 1821. All these events were definite points in the growth of Unitarian ideas. But the beginnings of that religious, philosophical, and educational movement called Uni- tarianism arose in Massachusetts before such public manifes- tations.
The name "Unitarian" was not chosen by those to whom it was applied, nor was it really descriptive. It is true that the Unitarian clergy of Massachusetts differed from their more orthodox brethren on the subject of the doctrine of the Trin- ity; but they also differed from them on other subjects which, under the circumstances, they thought much more important. If the Unitarian wing of the Congregational body had chosen a name for themselves in 1821, it would probably have been some such term as "Liberal Christians." Such they essentially were. "Liberal" was the name then beginning to be very generally given to men with the ideas and aims of the Boston Unitarians of that day. They were the liberal, often the radical, members of the ecclesiastical body, differing with their more conservative or reactionary brethren on many subjects, among which the most important was the place of the Bible in the ages and its interpretation and use in life.
If the "Unitarian Controversy" had been, as it seems to have been elsewhere, merely a controversy concerning the nature of God and of the person of Jesus Christ, it would have been of less importance as an element in the life of the time. In the Massachusetts of that day it was something much more than that. The particular doctrine of the Trinity was but one of many theological dogmas which had for some time weighed on the minds and thought of young New Eng- land. Unitarianism was fundamentally liberalism in theology : modernism we should call it now. From one standpoint the Unitarians might be deists, from another they might be mystics; whichever they were, they were reluctant to be confined by the system of Calvin or of Jonathan Edwards.
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