A REVIEW of the publications received up to the time of going to press yields about the usual number of interesting illustrations of architectural design. The work of American architects which we show this month is good of its kind, but the kind is not new. The pictures largely explain themselves. From the Scientific American for May, the Court at Mill-Brook, Bryn Mawr, Pa., by Mr. Charles Barton Keen, shows a pleasing informal composition, straightforward use of materials, effective accessories in the way of potted shrubs, and a simplicity of character that is perhaps a little overdone.
Two buildings of semi-public character show the hand of the scholarly architect. From The Brickbuilder for April, Clinton Hall, by Messrs. Howells and Stokes, is a building for the use of social organizations on the East Side of New York. Of this building we published the perspective drawing and some of the working details in plates of the March number, 1903, and it is interesting to note how successfully it has worked out. The plans show bowling alleys and billiard room in the basement, coffee room and restaurant on the ground floor, assembly hall throughout the second story, and club and lodge room above. In elevation the roof garden has a sort of black eye from the elevator house, but apart from this the design is simple and straightforward with detail that counts for more than it costs.
Messrs. Reed & Stem have produced in the Union Railway Station, Troy, N. Y., a handsome mass of building, whose centre has a row of ample arched windows framed in a colonnade of engaged composite columns, and flanked by well conceived masses in the nature of corner piers. The detail of these is not quite appropriate either in scale or in character. The plates are from The American Architect for April 2nd.
We illustrated last month from the Builder a proposed church designed and drawn by E. B. Lamb. It is interesting to compare with this a proposed hall for imperial monuments at Westminster by John P. Seddon and E. B. Lamb jointly, which appears as a supplement to the Builders' Journal and Architectural Record, for March 30, 1904 The interest of this project centres in the spire, which, however well designed, seems to have for its sole object to dwarf the colossal Victoria tower of the Houses of Parliament at the left, and throw into the shade Westminster Abbey on the right. We confess to a feeling that this aspiring piece of design, including the apparently secondary hall for imperial monuments, should be erected almost anywhere else in London than on the site proposed for it. (Mr. Despradelle’s projected monument to the glory of the American people is a more stupendous and far more effective design than this, and is enhanced by its setting between lake and prairie.)
The same Builders Journal and Architectural Record for April 13th contains an article on a new form of hospital ward, the Y-shaped ward illustrated herewith, for which it is claimed that it has all the advantages of the circular ward with a very great saving of space, and all the advantages of the parallelogram ward with a saving in length and height. The heating by a “central fire-place block” is characteristically English.
From the Architectural Review (London) for April, we show a plan and a view of the new Medical Schools, Cambridge, by Edward S. Prior, a building of a dignified academic character and of curious indirectness of plan. We assume that the unusual position of the wing containing the museum has reference to some vista down the street, but the description merely states that the plan is L-shaped with contemplated extension beyond the lecture theatre.
Another school building from the same number of the Review is the Leeds School of Art, where the most uncompromising exterior with absolutely literal expression of the class studios is emphasized, not decorated, by the mosaic panel over the entrance from a cartoon by Gerald Moira. This decorative panel in itself is of excellent character, strong, simple, restful, and worthy of a better setting. Another suggestive piece of decoration from English sources is the building for offices in Leicester by Messrs. Everard & Pick. Its sole feature is a swell or bay of manifold small pane windows resting on cleverly decorated paneling in cost lead work from plaster models in low relief. This is frankly better than the commercial copper bay.
The illustrations from The Architect show two interiors: from Mr. Belcher’s Colchester Town Hall, wherein the architect’s part clearly stops short of the furniture and accessories, including the usual organ. Mr. Belcher’s fine manly style is as worthy in this place as on the exterior of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. We take exception to the inlaid decorations in the frieze blocks of the great hall as being trivial and out of scale, and we note with ready approval his bold omission of capitals from the square columns at the foot of the stairs, a startling but defensible innovation.
A design that is truly appropriate to its place is the competitive scheme for the enlargement of the University of Jena, the work of Professor Hocheder, illustrated in Architektonische Runds chau. The reversion to baroque architecture is a necessity imposed by the older buildings. The composition of the new vestibule and academic theatre above is at once free and forceful; strength and delicacy are blended happily.
Architects who may have to design electric light standards can take a hint from
those of the Botanic Garden in Brussels (from l'Emulation), which were designed by the sculptor Constantin Meunier and by Charles Vanderstappen. The reproductions are too small to give any but a very general idea of the detail. M. Victor Rousseau executed the first standard, of which two views are given; M. Paul Du Bois executed the second example, and M. Jules Lagae the third standard from the sketches of the designers.
Finally, we have borrowed from the Zeitschrift für Bauwesen the great concrete dam that collects water for the power station of Solingen, simply for the picture it makes.
