File:American architecture (1892) (14771541491).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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e mun-dane aspect of the Romanesque monuments that pre-ceded the great cathedrals. The modelling of thesecathedrals is carried so far that nothing is left un-modelled; there are no longer any surfaces ; the wholestructure is anatomized; and the modern architect,even while he stands astonished at the result of thisunsparing analysis, may yet say, It were to considertoo curiously to consider so. But it is not by refusingthe aid these wonderful structures offer him that hecan advance upon or equal them. The developmentof a cathedral requires, indeed, a system of piers andvaults and flying arches and weighted buttresses. Butthese need not be the same features in modelling, indetail, or in expression that we know in historical ex-amples. Instances are not wanting to show that they * See Mr. Charles Herbert Moores excellent Development andCharacter of Gothic Architecture, published since this paper waswritten; a work which no student of Gothic or of cathedral-buildingcan afTord not to read.
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AN AMERICAN CATHEDRAL jq- may be massed with the stalwart simpHcity of the Ro-manesque builders as well as drawn into the complexand bewildering forms they assumed in the later Gothic.In his design for Albany, Mr. Richardson has shownvery clearly that an artist, whose individuality is strongenough, can put its stamp upon whatever he adopts.The common distinction that Romanesque is a round-arched and Gothic a pointed style, is shown to be base-less in an unmistakably Romanesque church in whichall the openings of the clere-story are pointed lancets,in which the pointed openings elsewhere far outnum-ber the round arches, and in which the architect hasintroduced tracery, sparingly but effectively, without atall marring the unity of the structure. Nay, the churchowes the suggestion of some of its noblest features toworks that did not exist until the period classified asRomanesque had closed. A modern architect forfeitshis birthright who does not use all that the past has tooffer him of hel

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