USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 43
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influence came another from France, with the Athenaeum, the City Hall, Arling- ton Street Church and the old Technology building as outstanding examples of an intelligent treatment of Renaissance motives. On the whole, we came out pretty well and it was not until the early 80's that terrible things began to happen, e. g., the northerly addition to the State House, the Court House, what was once known as "Dr. Hale's Church," and others too horrible to mention, many of them, fortunately, now done away with.
It was just at this moment, when the awful decade 1876-86 was in full flower, that something happened, not only for Boston but for the whole northern Atlantic seaboard and its hinterland. Two men portentously appeared, as by the grace of God, one in Boston (though a native of the far South), the other in New York, and it was these two architects, with the addition of a third, who in less than twenty years changed ignominy into honor, defeat into victory. The three great names are H. H. Richardson, Charles F. McKim and William M. Hunt. With the co-operation of the American Institute of Archi- tects and the excellent schools of architecture - the earliest and best of such institutions - the whole tide was changed until now it is safe to say that . architecture in the United States is at least on a level with the best to be found anywhere in the contemporary world.
There is hardly another case in history of the regeneration of an art in so brief a space of time, of an ascent from so low a depth to so high and continuing an elevation. Boston is proud to possess the two great monuments that stand as the era-marking events of this redemption - Trinity Church by Richardson and the Public Library by McKim. It is true that the former Brattle Street Church in Commonwealth avenue antedates Trinity by a few years and its very beautiful and original tower was in a sense the first overt act in the great archi- tectural revolution, but it was Trinity that turned the tide and by the sheer force of its virility established a new, if fleeting, style. It still remains a great, though now outmoded, work of art and is a milestone in American architectural history. There are other notable works by Richardson in surrounding towns, North Easton, Cambridge, Quincy, and they all played their part in making all architecture, for the moment, "Richardson Romanesque." Then the great architect died and for a time his able followers produced such excellent structures as the ci-devant "First Spiritual Temple" (now a movie house), the Cambridge City Hall, the Ames Building and other good things, many of which have since been destroyed by fire or ruthlessly demolished, as, for example, the really fine Unitarian Building on Beacon street, which has given place to a hotel. Un- fortunately, however, this sort of thing was easily imitated but not to be equaled. The tyros and camp followers got hold of the idea and for a time unspeakable atrocities were poured forth until the thing became a positive scandal.
It was just one of those grotesque aberrations - or rather its threat - that proved the providential opening for the entrance of that other creative element that through its interplay with Romanesque was to work the complete regenera- tion of an art that had fallen on such evil days. The City of Boston was to build a new Public Library in Copley square and by the machinations of politics it was to be a most egregious example of degenerate "Richardsonian" at its worst. The very foundations were in place when a group of "old family" Bostonians suc-
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ceeded in getting matters into their own hands, with the result that the young Charles Follen McKim of New York was entrusted with the work of preparing an entirely new design. So came the new library, almost the first step not only in ousting the alien Romanesque, but in setting a fashion of revived Renaissance that maintained its supremacy in secular architecture throughout the whole eastern part of the country until the advent of the skyscraper, now some twenty years ago.
The influence of this most beautiful building cannot be exaggerated. In its simplicity and scholarly dignity, its exquisite and varied detail and in the novel manner - reminiscent of the days of the Medici - in which McKim had called into co-operation all the great artists he could lay hands on, it was a revelation of beauty - still is, as a matter of fact - and proved the directing force that drove everyone along the new road.
How much this was needed may be indicated by the two contemporary structures in Boston, the Suffolk County Court House and the first, or northern, addition to the State House. The first is bad enough but the second, attached ignominiously and shamelessly to Bulfinch's lovely old monument, is perhaps the only edifice in America (with the possible exception of the Philadelphia City Hall) in which every element, every detail, even to those of the smallest magnitude, is absolutely and perversely bad. These remarkable achievements were, however, the last gasp of an expiring barbarism (with the ecclesiastical structure on the corner of Newbury and Exeter streets) and from then on the vigor and masculinity of Richardson and the sensitiveness and almost feminine quality of McKim had their assured progeny in the shape of excellent, though not numerous, works of right-minded architecture. Much of this was domestic and in the shape of very beautiful private houses in the newer Back Bay. Here the streets are worth studying and searching for single houses of real beauty, sandwiched in between the stereotyped "brownstone fronts" of the 80's and the Romanesque ineptitudes of the early 90's. Farther out, in and near the Fens, more majestical structures arose, the admirable Symphony Hall, Horticultural Hall, Opera House, together with the slowly-growing Art Museum and the Harvard Medical School. Most of this work is good, sound Renaissance, varied in genre but personal and well-controlled, as Bostonian architecture should be. With these examples should be included the very noble "Longfellow Bridge" and, just across the river, the Technology buildings that, surprisingly, are so effective seen across the wide expanse of water.
Ecclesiastically Boston has not kept up the pace with the rest of the country in its astonishing redemption and development of church building. Its needs had been pretty well satisfied during the eras of Victorian Gothic and Richard- sonian. No outstanding church has been built in Boston proper since Trinity and the New Old South, though the suburbs and surrounding towns, par- ticularly Dorchester, Cambridge, Somerville and Newton, have much to show, some of the best being Roman Catholic, Unitarian and Congregational. There is not much of the new Gothic that took the field about 1890 and has illuminated the land with a "white robe of churches," but there is some excellent revived Colonial and Georgian and not a little that is Lombard or Byzantine in its provenance. There is nothing, however, that can compare with the great
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outpouring of powerful and significant religious art that curiously enough marks New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and so many of the smaller cities of the Middle West. This is indeed curious, as the fashion for a revitalized Gothic had its inception here in Boston.
In the case of universities and colleges the state of affairs is very different and Greater Boston has as fine a showing as one could ask. After many and varied misadventures Harvard seems at last to have fallen into her stride and in the new buildings around the yard, and especially the "Houses" along the river, has struck a high note in revived and amplified Colonial. These last dormitories marching gravely along the shores of the Charles are perhaps the most vital examples we have of the new phase of the original style of Harvard and the English Colonies and go far towards fulfilling a promise that in time this stretch of winding river may be not unworthy to compare with the "Backs" of old Cambridge in England.
I already have spoken of the architecturalized engineering of the new Technology buildings. Not far from the Art Museum, in the Fens, is a very different sort of thing, the picturesque and delicately thought-out Emmanuel College, expressed in terms of the New Gothic and setting the pace for the more magnificent group, by the same architects, slowly taking form farther to the West - Boston College. Here is another very superb pile of Gothic structures, finely placed and promising, on completion, a real contribution to creative architecture. The influence of the fine type of educational art that centers in Boston radiates far into New England, and, particularly in the preparatory schools, very beautiful examples of both Gothic and Colonial are to be found in Newport, Exeter, Andover, Groton and many other places.
Commercial building in Boston, after a brief effort to adapt Romanesque to purposes for which it was least fitted of all possible styles, relapsed into a quite undistinguished type of pseudo-classic and held there until the steel frame and the setback came into vogue. Even now the new mode is treated with conservative and commendable discretion. There are one or two examples of the "ziggurat" type that has made New York the wonder of the world, but these are modest in elevation and discreet in design. Boston held out against the skyscraper longer than most cities and even now nothing excessive or egregious is possible - barring the Custom House tower, which after all, was the affair of the authorities at Washington. As for the ultra-modernist sort of thing that has filtered in from overseas, nothing yet appears. There is one instance of the quaint French conceit of some twenty years ago, but of the real thing, as it exists in Paris, Berlin and a few other provincial towns, there is nothing. Boston is slow to act and having waited now for so long there is probably little chance that it will ever establish a foothold, since already the fever shows definite signs of passing in the lands of its birth. Here and there the better sort of modernism shows itself in shop windows, where it is appro- priate and effective, while undoubtedly whatever good there may be in it will last and serve as a vitalizing force, though not a determining factor, in the architecture of the next generation.
Strictly speaking, Boston in its architecture since 1880 is not an out- standing example of widespread development. It is a city that has always
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started things, leaving it for others to carry out what has here been begun. Trinity Church, the Public Library and the new Gothic movement are good examples. The greatest works of Richardson are all outside Boston and as far away, for example, as Albany and Pittsburgh. The work of McKim, Mead and White was, in its results at least, as wide as the continent and the same is true of the new ecclesiastical Gothic. Boston has had no abnormal growth and, though Greater Boston is now the fourth city in population in the United States, this growth has been largely by accretion. There has been no demand for great monumental work either secular or religious, though certainly there is sufficient opportunity, and numerous needs exist in both categories that might well be met. As it is, her fame rests on what has been preserved from the past of a century and two centuries ago, and on the few really era- making structures of the 80's.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Although Boston has no speeimen of his work, some mention may well be made here of Louis H. Sullivan, a Bostonian by birth and education, who is regarded as the founder of the radieal modern school of arehiteeture. Lewis Mumford, in an article in "Seribner's Maga- zine" for April, 1931, deseribes him as "the first American architeet conseiously to think of his relations with civilization." He adds that "Sullivan saw that the business of the arehi- teet was to organize the forees of modern society, diseipline them for human ends, express them in the plastic-utilitarian type of building." It appears, however, that he is esteemed as a thinker and as the teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright, the leader of his sehool, rather more than as a master of architectural design. Books like "The New World Arehitecture," by Sheldon Cheney, and "American Art," by Suzanne La Follette, contain warm appreciations of Louis Sullivan and his work. "The American Architecture of Today," by George H. Edgell, may be consulted for a more temperate judgment.
Not many, however, of the established arehiteets of the eity have followed Sullivan and Wright, though examples showing the influence of their style are beginning to be seen here and there. For the most part our accomplished practitioners have preferred to adapt traditional patterns to the needs of modern life, cffeeting through compromises more or less happy a transition from old forms to new uses. Of the many who have lived here and con- tributed to the arehitectural landseape of the eity our limited space permits the mention of only a few.
The late Guy Lowell, arehiteet of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (in consultation with Constant D. Despradelle, Edmund M. Wheelwright and others) and of the Court House in New York, ean scarcely be omitted from the list. Charles A. Coolidge, alone or with his associates, has designed some of our most imposing buildings, such as the Ames Building, the South Station, the Merehants National Bank, the Harvard Medical School group and Harvard freshman dormitories, the Boston Lying-In Hospital, the new Fogg Art Museum. His reputation is not confined to Boston, for he is the architect of Leland Stanford University, of the Chieago Public Library and of buildings for the Rockefeller Institute.
Franeis R. Allen and Charles Collens gave us Emmanuel Church and the Andover Theological Seminary at Cambridge. Among their principal works elsewhere are eight buildings at Williams College, twelve at Vassar, and the buildings of Union Theologieal Seminary, New York. From the office of R. Clipston Sturgis came the Franklin Union Building, the old First National Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Brookline Publie Library, the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind,- as well as a eathedral in far-off Manila. A. W. Longfellow, in partnership with his brother, designed the City Hall at Cambridge, Phillips Brooks House, the Semitic Museum and the Arnold Arbo- retum Building for Harvard, Agassiz House and dormitories for Radeliffe College, and some of the larger Boston elementary sehools.
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EVANS GALLERIES, MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS
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LEFT, A PUBLIC SCHOOL CLASS VISITING THE MUSEUM RIGHT, MAIN STAIRWAY, LEADING TO THE ROTUNDA (Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts)
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The late Julius A. Schweinfurth designed public buildings (some at Wellesley), churches and many residences, such as the home of W. H. Coffin in Brookline, which has recently been called "one of the most beautiful houses ever designed by an American architect."
Harry J. Carlson has designed dormitories for Harvard and Wellesley, a chapel for Bates, a library for Hamilton College. Chiarles C. Coveney, with others, is the architect of the Christian Science Church; Wheelwright, Haven and Hoyt of the Opera House; Clarence H. Blackall of Tremont Temple, the Colonial Theater and, with others, of the Metropolitan Theater; Parker, Thomas and Rice of the R. H. Stearns Building, the John Hancock Building, the Chamber of Commerce, the Consolidated Gas Company Building, the Five Cents Saving Bank, the United Shoe Machinery Building, as well as of important buildings at Johns Hopkins University and in Hartford.
Perry, Shaw and Hepburn are the architects for the restoration of Williamsburg, Vir- ginia, and have been prominent in housing work, college buildings and school construction. Peabody and Stearns (now Appleton and Stearns) have been among the outstanding architects of the period. C. Howard Walker and his partner were architects-in-chief for the Omaha Exposition of 1898 and Mr. Walker was a member of the board of architects for the St. Louis Exposition. Kilham, Hopkins and Greeley, Frank I. Cooper and others have specialized in sehools, Edward F. Stevens in hospitals, Chapman and Frazer in domestic structures, others in rural buildings or churches. Other firms that should receive mention are Wads- worth, Hubbard and Smith, Andrews, Jacques and Rantoul (now Andrews, Jones, Biscoe and Whitmore), Strickland, Blodget and Law, Little and Russell, Kendall, Taylor and Com- pany, James H. Ritchie and Associates, and indeed many more.
Boston even has a firm of women architects, composed of Lois L. Howe, Eleanor Manning (Mrs. Jolinson O'Connor) and Mary Almy. It has given to New York a distin- guished member of the firm of McKim, Mead and White (many of whose works are to be found in and about Boston) in the person of William M. Kendall. A Boston firm of eccle- siastical arehitects, Frohman, Robb and Little, have been less aetive in this city than else- where, among their larger projeets being the completion of the National Episcopal Cathedral at Washington, the Episcopal Cathedral at Baltimore and the chapel of Trinity College, Hartford. Of Mr. Cram, Mr. Maginnis and Mr. Brown, contributors to this volume, it is not necessary to speak here. Brief sketehes of their careers and all too brief mention of their principal creations will be found in Chapter XVI.
If in addition to the structures already mentioned we consider such characteristic Boston monuments as the Harvard Stadium, the Longfellow and Anderson Bridges, the Harvard School of Business Administration, the Technology group, Symphony Hall, Fenway Court, the Widener Library, the Copley-Plaza and Ritz-Carlton Hotels, the Second National Bank, the new First National Bank, the Teachers' College, the old High and Latin Schools, and other schools, churches, bridges, hospitals and miscellaneous structures too numerous to specify, it must be admitted that the recent period has not been barren in actual production. Evidences of its produetiveness, of its ambition even, meet the eye at every turn. They focus the view from almost any direction and dominate the main approaches by land and sea. Without some acknowledgment of this sheer fecundity the record would be incomplete. Nor should one neglect smaller publie buildings, like the broad, flat shelter, crowning the Over- look at Franklin Park, the work of C. Howard Walker, or the sharply gabled Head House, exquisitely placed, accenting with quiet inevitableness a protruding tip of shore at City Point, which was designed by Edmund M. Wheelwright. These, of course, are landscape effects, and perhaps o.ir article on Landscape Design in Boston during the last fifty years will have more triumphs to record than any that could be written on Architecture; but in this art also it would appear that Boston skill and talent have been employed freely, and often to good purpose, at home, as well as throughout the country.
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
By HENRY VINCENT HUBBARD
When Justin Winsor's Memorial History of Boston, 1630-1880, came out . in 1881, there was no acknowledged sisterhood of the arts, as we know this today. The editor limited the application of the term, fine arts, to the chapter on painting and sculpture, and in addition he devoted one chapter to drama, one to music, and one to architecture. In the index there was no reference to the term, landscape architecture, or even to landscape gardening, although at that time the city had already called in consultation a landscape architect in the person of Frederick Law Olmsted to advise regarding the newly proposed park system, fully described by Charles W. Eliot, 2d, in this book.
In 1880, however, landscape architecture was beginning to take its rightful place as one of the arts in America, recalling its traditional status of honor in Italy, France, England and Germany, and its still more ancient rôle in China and Japan. Olmsted and Vaux, drawing inspiration from the legacies of Michelangelo, LeNôtre, Repton, and Prince Pückler, had departed from the horticultural taste lingering in the works of Andrew Jackson Downing, and had given in the Central Park, New York, and Prospect Park, Brooklyn, a great public object-lesson in the differentiation of the landscape art from horticulture on the one hand and from architecture on the other, as well as from the basic and contributory science of engineering.
The share of Boston in the creation and development of landscape archi- tecture as a separate art is a most important one. Olmsted's writings explaining the aims and ideals sought in his designs were well known in Boston beyond his circle of friends, which at that time included Asa Gray, Charles Sprague Sargent, and Charles Eliot Norton, with whom he had been working, on the Arboretum and the Norton subdivision project, and who were largely instru- mental in causing him to change his residence from New York to Brookline.
At the moment when the politicians of New York were ousting art from its parks, Boston was embarking on an unequaled park system which drew forth the designing genius of the Olmsteds and exercised a profound influence on the beauty of suburban development. The landscape designs for the station grounds of the Boston and Albany Railroad made by the Olmsted office were awakening to the public, and the reasoned plans for the arrangement of homes in land subdivisions set forth new ideas of domestic amenity. The Olmsted office in Brookline, serving as a school for apprentices in the newly defined art, has sent forth many men who have opened offices in Boston as well as in other parts of the country and thus by their practice of landscape architecture pro- claimed its independence.
The careers of two of the Olmsted pupils, Henry Sargent Codman and his brother Philip, were tragically cut short, Henry Sargent in the midst of dis- tinguished work with Olmsted, Sr., on the development of the World's Fair at Chicago, and Philip shortly afterward. Their names are perpetuated in the
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Codman Collection of Books on Landscape Gardening given to the Boston Public Library by Mr. and Mrs. James M. Codman in 1898, which has been since increased and forms one of the great collections on the subject.
Another of the early pupils was a son of President Eliot of Harvard, Charles Eliot, who later became the moving force in the acquisition and development of the Metropolitan park system and who joined the Olmsteds as a partner in 1893, only to be lost to the profession four years later by his untimely death. The biographical volume in which President Eliot commemorated his son in 1902, with the title "Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect," brought the name and significance of the art to the minds of many by whom it may have been before unappreciated. This book itself traces much of the history of land- scape architecture in the region of Boston for the period which it covers, especially 1880 to 1897, and also of the development of landscape ideals, earlier unfolded to the public in the magazine, "Garden and Forest," to which Charles Eliot had been a frequent contributor.
In more recent years, Harvard and Boston men, too, have contributed largely to professional and popular education in the field of landscape archi- tecture by published writings. Three graduates of the Harvard School of Landscape Architecture, Lay, Hubbard and Wheelwright, established in 1910 the quarterly, "Landscape Architecture," recognized by the American Society of Landscape Architects as its official organ, which has had a prosperous and continued existence, and is one of the leading journals of the world in this field. Nolen's edition of Repton, sponsored by the same Society, represented revived historical interest. Hubbard and Kimball's "An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design," developed at Harvard, is used as a text book in many schools of landscape architecture, as well as a guide for study for the amateur. Such books as Loring Underwood's "The Garden and Its Acces- sories" and Herbert J. Kellaway's "How to Lay Out Suburban Home Grounds," directly addressed to the amateur, may be mentioned among Bostonians' contributions; and numerous articles by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., and Arthur A. Shurcliff, Warren H. Manning, John Nolen, Fletcher Steele, Stephen F. Hamblin, and others, in "Landscape Architecture" and the more popular garden magazines, increase the substantial service of Boston in disseminating the principles of the landscape art.
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It was natural that President Eliot at Harvard should establish in 1900 the first professional course in landscape architecture in the United States, although a few single courses in landscape gardening had been offered earlier in the Middle West. The Harvard course comprised a four-year program in the Lawrence Scientific School, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture, with one graduate in 1901, who happened to be the present writer. In 1903 the Charles Eliot Professorship of Landscape Archi- tecture was created, the first holder being Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. In 1906 instruction was placed upon a graduate basis and the present professional degree, Master in Landscape Architecture (M.L.A.), created. In 1908 Land- scape Architecture was dignified by being made a separate department of the University, with the late Professor James Sturgis Pray, who was deeply interested in the addition of special instruction in the principles of city planning,
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