The Silver Messenger

American Architecture.

If architecture is "frozen
music,"
American architecture has
been a
medley of "Yankee Doodle," "The Ar-
kansas Traveler," and "ragtime." Af-
ter the colonial period, which gave us
fine specimens of public and private
buildings, there followed two genera-
tions of bad building, the result of
sudden growth. Taste had little place
in a country working night and day to
erect necessary shelter. That America
is advancing in all the arts is to be
expected. The outlook for architec-
ture is especially hopeful. A commit-
tee appointed by the American Insti-
tutes of Architects has reported that,
"on the whole, architecture is being
taught in America with a broader
view, and in certain respects more ef-
fectively than in any other country."
There are reasons why this good
teaching will count in practice, thinks
Youth's Companion. The architect dif-
fers from other artists in that his
practical studio is millions of dollars'
worth of materials. That studio, the
means of developing the art, is afford-
ed by the amount, diversity and cost-
lyness of American building. There is
a general improvement in taste and
increased respect for expert opinion.
Rich builders, individuals and corpora-
tions, losing much of the arrogance
which money breeds toward all forms
of service, show disposition to give
the architect free hand to work out
his ideas, and not merely produce as
a hireling what the patron orders. We
may look in another generation not
only for great art in public buildings
and costly dwellings, but for the re-
action of great things on little, for the
disappearance of the salmon-pink
dwelling beneath the jig-sawn porch
of which the American has erstwhile
been proud to sit. Finally, since archi-
tecture, dependent on native materi-
al and landscape, is an indigenous art.
it invites the architect, preeminently
among artists, to create original, na-
tive types. The future may produce
buildings of distinctively American
beauty.