The Warner weekly sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1885, 1885-06-05
MODERN ARCHITECTURE.
Bill Nye Tells What Called Out His First
FalsehoOd.

u LODAA ~ ASGOo ~ 0hI O4O Ia Ahuy
be contemplating the erection of a
summer residence for me, as a slight
testimonial of his high regard for my
sterling worth and symmetrical es-
cutcheon,--a testimonial more sugges-
tive of earnest admiration and warm
personal friendship than of great in
trinsic value, etc., that / hope he will
not construct it on the modern plan of
mental ha~lluciatiop and morbid delir-
ium tremens peculiar to recent archi-
lecture.
Of course, a man ought not to look
a gifthouse in the gable end, but If
than to build me a summer cottage
and throw in odd windows that no.
body else wanted, and then daub it
up with colors that they have bought
at auction and applied to the house
after dark with a shot gun, | think it
is time that we had a better under
standing.
Such a structure does not come with
in either of the three classes of renals-
sance. 1t is neither Florentine, Roman,
nor Venetian. Any man can originate
such a style of architecture if he will
drink the right kind of whisky long
enough, and then describe his feelings
to an amanuensIs. Imagine the sen
sation that one of these modern, sawed
off cottages would create a hundred
years from now, if it should survive!
But that is impossible. The only
cheering feature of the whole matter
is that these creatures of a d~isordered
imagination must o o pass away, and
the bright sunlight of hard horse-sense
shine in through the shattered dormers
and gables gnawed-off architecture
of the average summer resort. A
friend of mine, a few days ago, showed
me his new house with much pride.
He asked me what l thought of it. /
told him / liked it fI~rst-rate. Then |
went home and wept all night. 1t was
my first falsehood.
The house, taken as a whole, looked
to me like a skating-rink that had
started out to make money and then
suddenly changed its mind and re-
solved to become a tannery. Then
ten feet higher it had lost all self
respect and blossomed into a full
blown drunk and disorderly surround
ed by the smokestack of a foundry
and with the bright future of thirty
days ahead with the chain-gang.
That's the way it looked to me.
The roofs were made of little odds
and ends of misfit rafters and distorted
shingles that somebody had purchased
at sheriff's sale, and the rooms and
stairs were giddy in the extreme. /
went in and rambled around among
the cross-eyed s~taircases and night
mares till reason tottered on her
throne. Then / came out and stood
on the architectural wart called the
side porch to get fresh air. This
porch was painted. a dull red, and it
had wooden rosettes at the corners
that looked like a brand-new carbuncle
on the nose of a social wreck. Far
Their up on the d~emoralized lumber
pile / saw now and then, places where
the workman's mind had wandered
and he had nailed on his clapboards
wrong side up and then painted them
with the paris green that he had in
tended to s or something else. 1t
was an odd looking structure indeed.
If my friend got all the material fer
nothing from people who had frag-
ments of paint and lumber left over
after they failed, and then if the work
men constructed it nights for mental
relaxation and intellectual repose, with
out charge, of curse the scheme was
a financial success, but INTELLECTUALLY
the house is a gross violation of the
statues in such cases made and pro-
yided, and against the peace and dig
nifty of the state.
There is a look of extreme poverty
about the structure which a man
might struggle for years to acquire
and then fail. No one could look up
on it without feeling a heartache for
the man who built hal house, and
probably struggled on year after
year, building a little of it at a time
as he could steal the lumber, getting
a new workman each year, building a
knob here and a ~protuberance there,
putting in a three-cOrnered window at
one point and a yellow tile or a wad
of broken glass and other debris at an
other, patiently filing in around the
ranch with any old rubbish that other
people had got through with, and
painting it as he went along. taking
what was left in the bottom Of the pots
after his neighbors had painted their
bobsleds or their tree boxes-little fa-
vors thankfully rcceived-and then
surmounting the whole pile with a
potponri of roof, a grand farewell in
cubus Of humps and hollows for the
rain to wander through and seek out
the different cells where the ~lunatics
live who inhahit it.
I tell my friend of one thing that !
thought would improve the looks of
his house. He asked me eagerly
what it could be. ! said it would take
a man of great courage to do it for
him. He said he didn't care for that.
He would do it himself. If it only
needed che thing he would never rest
till he had it, whatever it might be.
Then / told him that he had a friend
49, - or.,tl f~nok uhn xucY1d cfaof