The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1883-09-25
TOWN ARCHITECTURE.

the matters OF Location, OrOaQ SLreelS
running brooks trees and gardens.
tits not among the beautiful places
in the matter of the architecture.
If it would not be regarded as trea-
son. we might say that in this res<
peCt it was abomiHable and downs
right ugly. In the constitution of
nine-tenths Of the dwelling houses,
athe sole object f-the builder has
been the getting together of plain
walls surmounted by plain roof
light and air have been taken
into consideration to some
extent, and now and then
a man has ,strayed beyond the abso-
lutely necessary, into the field of
convenience. But how rare has the
domain 6ftHe beautiful or the arts
tic been entered The really pretty
homes, including cottages and the
more imposing and statelier struc-
lures, will not average one to the
block of ten acres of ground sur
rounded by 100 rods of street, sEY-
cry man has been. his own architect,
and what 5000 men, who know
nothing of architecture, cannot pro-
duce in the way of ugiiness Of ,crea7
ton, would astonish even the ma
tiYes. 1t is. trues the large
percentage of the houses were
built by poor people who
had no money to expend for beauty
or ornamentation; this circum-
stance, of course, has largely con-
trolled in the matter, but poverty is
no bar to good taste, and ought not
to destroy ideas of. the beautiful.
However, lack of money is not
responsible for all the plainness, the
grossness of SO many of the Salt
Lake houses, for the dwellings Of
the rich, with few exceptions, have
been designed by their owners, and
are just as ugly in appearance
as the unpretentious houses of
the poor. Brick and adobe have
been thrown together in awkward
shapes, the idea being to keep
out cold ia winter and heat in
summer. People do not seemingly
understand that an architect can get
both usefulness and elegance from
material from which the average
man will get only the former. The
good building material that has been
piled up here in staring walls with
out regard to grace or ornament,
under the direction of a competent
designer would have made the
town as pretty and attractive
INTELLECTUALLY as it is beautiful in
every other respects. There are in
dicstions of \ gratifying change in
this matter, some of the dwelling
houses, as well as most of the bust
ness blocks now going up bearing
evidences of the presence Of the
architect. Still, the departure from
the old style of square house, a
door in the centre, window on
either side, plain gables and roofs,
and a painful absence of projections,
porches, porticos and angles, and
a plentiful supply of staring
square fat windows, is not very
striking. 1t is the rule, and
the exceptions are SO rare as to ex-
cite comment. This is all wrong.
People will be more refined and
better from living in houses that
display artistic taste in their con-
struction and arrangement both out
side and in. 1t is the duty that
every man owes to his family and
the community to make his home
attractive to the eye as. we'll as to
the other senses, and if he is able to
do SO and fails, he is just 50 muchin
debt to the world. It is mis-
take to look upon the
architect as a useless person,
as so many are inthe habit of doing.
The reasonable fee that is paid to
the skilled designer is as wise an
investment as the man who builds
makes. we hope that another year
will find our architects the busiest
persons in the community, and that
in the near future the town will
show in its handsome cottages and
more shapely mansions that Salt
Lakes citizens realizs there is some
thing in the beautiful, not every
thing being confined to the homely
and useful.