File:American architecture (1892) (14588216377).jpg

Identifier: americanarchitec92schu (find matches)
Title: American architecture
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Schuyler, Montgomery, 1843-1914
Subjects: Architecture
Publisher: New York, Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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rals still ex-hibit wooden ceilings, they so far come short of fulfil-ling the idea of a cathedral, and the antiquarians arepretty well agreed that the purpose of the builders wasto make their ceilings as durable as their walls, andthat they failed to carry out their purpose either throughlack of means or through doubt of their own ability toconstruct stone ceilings. Considering the elaborateexpositions of construction in the true timber roofs ofthe English Gothic, the boarded ceilings of Ely andPeterborough were plainly makeshifts, and equally amakeshift would be the wooden ceiling, of trefoil sec-tion, hung to the timbers of the roof and concealingits construction, which Mr. Richardson designed for theAlbany Cathedral. We come here, rather unexpectedly, upon the ques-tion of style. If a vaulted ceiling be so eminentlydesirable in a purely monumental building as to amountto an architectural necessity, it is equally clear that thegroined vault—that is to say, the vault formed by the
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GROUND-PLAN. AN AMERICAN CATHEDRAL jqj intersection of two or more vaults—is necessary to thecomplete development of the vaulting system ; and forthis the Romance architecture in which Mr. Richard-son preferred to work, and which in a general way maybe called the style of his design for Albany, does notprovide.* The churches of the Provenyal Romanesquewere vaulted, but with a continuous tunnel vault, sup-ported equally at all points, and demanding an enor-mous thickness of wall, pierced by few and small open-ings, to withstand the lateral thrust of the arch. Theintroduction of groined vaults involved a concentrationof the supports and of the counterforts—that is to say,a series of buttresses in place of a continuous wall.The piers of the nave and the exterior buttresses, con-nected by flying buttresses with the vaults the thrustof which they withstood, thus constituted the frame-work of the building, and the wall between the but-tresses became a mere screen, as finally it did beco

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