American Architecture

Modern American architecture includes all the architecture of America which has recently been built, or is being built to-day. It includes the conservative and the radical, the archeological and the original. To limit modern architecture to that which seems to embody what are called modernistic tendencies would be not only foolish, but arrogant. The architecture which to-day is regarded as unprogressive, a generation from now may be in the van, and no man, be he layman, critic, or designer, can pass an infallible judgment, or even make a good guess, as to what is to be the architecture of the future. Modern American architecture is the American architecture of today.

The mechanical fallacy, or, if we approve it, the mechanical theory, has loomed large in the criticism of modern American architecture. The analogies, most of them superficial, between Gothic architecture and steel construction made it inevitable. Almost as soon as the first timid attempts in the "Chicago construction" appeared, critics at home and abroad began insisting upon the desirability of the design revealing in the skyscraper the system of construction which made it possible.

The history of American architecture is dotted with disasters in polychromatic design. Happily, this difficulty is being recognized and met. The great monuments of color in the past, like Raphael's loggia or Pintoricchio's decorations for the Borgia Apartments, are being studied as such monuments should be studied- not for imitation, but as successful solutions of a problem -and a few monuments of American architecture have just appeared which can compare, in the matter of successful color, with anything that has been done in the past.

A brief sketch, therefore, of the development of American architecture, with especial reference to that side of it which affects modern design, is the necessary prelude to any discussion of the types of buildings, or the tendencies of architecture to-day. The traditions of American architecture date back to the earliest Colonial period. Colonial architecture varied widely, however, period by period, and was influential more in its later phases than its earlier. Its influence on modern architecture is felt tremendously in domestic design and only occasionally in monumental architecture. American architecture has become sophisticated, polite; the whole point of view of the designer has changed. The "Georgian Colonial" has arrived, the style which exerts the profoundest influence of any upon American domestic architecture of to-day.

The immediate source of inspiration of such buildings as Mount Airy is not far to seek, and brings us to another point of interest in Colonial architecture, as it is of interest today: the use of published documents. Such documents are commonly used and often abused. In the eighteenth century, there were few, if any, real architects in America . The wealthy client, now having arrived at a dignified position in Colonial society, employed a builder of skill, taste, and a familiarity with the published works - actual or hypothetical- of fashionable architects abroad and especially in England . The influence of such books on American architecture cannot be overestimated.

By the end of the eighteenth century, a change came over American architecture and a new style appeared which it is of the utmost importance to recognize if we are to understand the inspiration for much of the best of our modern work. The new style we can call "Early Republican," as opposed to the "Georgian Colonial" of the earlier eighteenth century.