European Architecture

The fact that European architecture has a more plastic character than the architecture in the U.S.A. is also largely due to the different economic setup of the two continents. Whereas architecture in the United States is ever more subject to the laws of industry, and high salaries make a problem of everything which is not mass-produced, the European architect enjoys a rauch greater freedom in the expression of his imagination and fantasy.

A strong element of unrest is brought into the outline of the spire at St. Michael Paternoster Royal by carrying forward the entablature over each of the eight columns that are placed around the core of its first storey. In the other spires the treatment is similar but the movement is even increased because the columns are no longer arranged at regular intervals but massed at the corners. More excitement is provided by vase-shaped finials which in spite of their classical garb cannot quite deny their Gothic ancestry, and by volute-like buttresses.

It is more than a mere coincidence that of all Wren's creations the dome of St. Paul 's and the steeples of the City Churches are the ones which have elicited an echo in later years and in different places. The dominant features of his greatest secular building, the crowning domes at Greenwich , come directly from the vocabulary of church architecture, and Wren's right to a place in the ranks of European architects of more than national importance can only be based on his church architecture, where he did create something new and unique. In comparison, all his other buildings appear less relevant.

This statement is not intended to impugn the high general level of Wren's personality. His character, his versatility and his outstanding intellect would have raised him high above the average in whatever field of activity he might have chosen. But since we are primarily concerned with Wren as an architect-and rarely did an architect have such opportunities offered to him-our final evaluation must turn on his quality as an artist. Here we recognize a more than average talent, and one which enabled him to achieve remarkable creations even if it was not sufficient to make him into one of the great generators of new ideas who opened up new roads in European architecture.

Without his life work, however, and without its educative and stimulating power, English eighteenth-century architecture-though it liked to think of itself as independent from Wren-would not have reached that height of achievement which, for the first time since the Middle Ages, enabled it once again to exert an influence on the general development of European architecture.