Architecture and Democracy | Page 4

the neo-feudal architecture of our city streets, we find it to lack unity,
and the reason for this lack of unity dwells in a divided consciousness.
The tall office building is the product of many forces, or perhaps we
should say one force, that of necessity; but its concrete embodiment is
the result of two different orders of talent, that of the structural engineer
and of the architectural designer. These are usually incarnate in two
different individuals, working more or less at cross purposes. It is the
business of the engineer to preoccupy himself solely with ideas of
efficiency and economy, and over his efficient and economical
structure the designer smears a frosting of beauty in the form of
architectural style, in the archæological sense. This is a foolish practice,
and cannot but result in failure. In the case of a Greek temple or a
mediaeval cathedral structure and style were not twain, but one; the
structure determined the style, the style expressed the structure; but
with us so divorced have the two things become that in a case known to
the author, the structural framework of a great office building was
determined and fabricated and then architects were invited to "submit
designs" for the exterior. This is of course an extreme example and
does not represent the usual practice, but it brings sharply to
consciousness the well known fact that for these buildings we have
substantially one method of construction--that of the vertical strut, and
the horizontal "fill"--while in style they appear as Grecian, Roman,
Renaissance, Gothic, Modern French and what not, according to the
whim of the designer.
[Illustration: PLATE II. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY]
With the modern tendency toward specialization, the natural outgrowth
of necessity, there is no inherent reason why the bones of a building
should not be devised by one man and its fleshly clothing by another,
so long as they understand one another, and are in ideal agreement, but
there is in general all too little understanding, and a confusion of ideas

and aims. To the average structural engineer the architectural designer
is a mere milliner in stone, informed in those prevailing architectural
fashions of which he himself knows little and cares less. Preoccupied as
he is with the building's strength, safety, economy; solving new and
staggeringly difficult problems with address and daring, he has scant
sympathy with such inconsequent matters as the stylistic purity of a
façade, or the profile of a moulding. To the designer, on the other hand,
the engineer appears in the light of a subordinate to be used for the
promotion of his own ends, or an evil to be endured as an interference
with those ends.
As a result of this lack of sympathy and co-ordination, success crowns
only those efforts in which, on the one hand, the stylist has been
completely subordinated to engineering necessity, as in the case of the
East River bridges, where the architect was called upon only to add a
final grace to the strictly structural towers; or on the other hand, in
which the structure is of the old-fashioned masonry sort, and faced with
a familiar problem the architect has found it easy to be frank; as in the
case of the Manhattan Storage Warehouse, on 42nd Street, New York,
or in the Bryant Park façade on the New York Library. The Woolworth
building is a notable example of the complete co-ordination between
the structural framework and its envelope, and falls short of ideal
success only in the employment of an archaic and alien ornamental
language, used, however, let it be said, with a fine understanding of the
function of ornament.
For the most part though, there is a difference of intention between the
engineer and the designer; they look two ways, and the result of their
collaboration is a flat and confused image of the thing that should be,
not such as is produced by truly binocular vision. This difference of
aim is largely the result of a difference of education. Engineering
science of the sort which the use of steel has required is a thing
unprecedented; the engineer cannot hark back to the past for help, even
if he would. The case is different with the architectural designer; he is
taught that all of the best songs have been sung, all of the true words
spoken. The Glory that was Greece, and the Grandeur that was Rome,
the romantic exuberance of Gothic, and the ordered restraint of
Renaissance are so drummed into him during his years of training, and
exercise so tyrannical a spell over his imagination that he loses the

power of clear and logical thought, and never becomes truly creative.
Free of this incubus the engineer has succeeded in being
straightforward and sensible, to say the least; subject to