The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1895-07-26
ARCHITECTURAL
ALTERATION
Expert Criticism of Our
New Million Dollar
City Hall.
MEAN. DULL AND VULGAR
Ridieule Which Extends From
the Toy Block Entrance
Portleo to the Bird Cages
on the Roof.
THE TIN CoRNICE ATR0CITY
Plenty of Space and Fine Dimen-
sions Gave an Opportunity for
Good Art. Which Has Been
Totally Wasted.
from the Architectural Record.1

TFrom the Architectural Record.]
For some reason the public architecture OF
the suburbs of New York has always been
particularly vile. Perhaps one may extend
this remark to the public architecture OF
suburban American towns in general in
spite of some shining exceptions, one or
more of which will probably occur to the
reader in relation to the city he knows best.
Our private building, on the other hand, IS
apt to be seen in the suburbs at its very best.
The contradiction is not inexplicable In
the first place, the noticeable suburban
houses are apt to be built by the best edu-
Gated and the most refined dwellers in the
suburb, as well as the best-to-do, while the
public building is equally apt to be under
the direction of citizens Of the other kind.
In the second place, the suburban house Is
apt to be designed to meet the Individual
needs and tastes of the family which is to In
habit it, and the expression of that individu-
ality, when it is entrusted to competent
designer, is chief part of the charm. The
opportunities for air and light and outlook
are SO very much ampler in suburban than
in an urban house, and the opportunities
also for enlarging the house into ''place"
by giving it a setting of sward and shrub
berry, that no protector of suburban house
ever tries to make it look like town house.
If he did, his neighbors would think him
daft to simulate box with only one front
meant to be looked at and that can be
lighted only at the ends, in house that is
visible all around and that may be opened
on every side. But, unluckily, the pro-
jectors of suburban public buildings do imi-
tate the urban public buildings. To have an
artistic suburban public building would re-
quire, first, willingness to have the status
of their municipality as suburb expressed,
and secondly, discernment nough to choose
an architect capable of expressing it. The
first of these conditions is very apt to fail in
all American municipal architecture, and
this, for the obvious reason that the inhabi-
tants of an American town of the second or
the third or the fourth class are apt not to
acquiesce in the existing status of their
town, but to lay out their public buildings
on the scale of the town that they hope it
will be- when the ''booinn has been fulfilled
to lay out their public buildings as part of
the boom Hence. even when they have had
the luck to fall in with a good architect, and
when the design shows sensibility and
scholarship, it is apt to be more scityfied"
and pretentious than the facts warrant,
and this pretentiousness is with difficulty
distinguishable from vulgarity. When the
municipality is suburb. the suburhans are
apt to project their works on a metropolitan
scale Thus one of the conditions precedent
to an artistic and appropriate public bald
ing has failed. When the other fails also
and an incompetent designer undertakes to
simulate public building more solid and
costly than his client can afford, with an ar
ray of cheap fnery, the resulting edifice
fairly reeks of vulgarity, as reeks the new
City Hall of Jersey City.
The building afforded an opportunity for
an architect. It is completely detached, on
a square of its own, SO that it cal be well
seen all around, and each of its four fronts
must be not far from 100 feet in laieral ex-
tent and is four stories high These are more
than respectable dimensions. Ii there was
not money enough available to put up an
ornate building in cut stone as it clearly ap-
pears that there was not. there was evidently
enough to pur up substantial brick build
ing with ornament enough to relieve its
badness, so far as this coule- not be relieved
by the composition Tsere was nothing at
al in the conditions to prevent building
that would have been creditable to the mu
nicipality and attractive to the wayfarer.
They wanted only an architect, and it is the
lack Of him that has been fatal. The 'tralp'
of the architect is over it all.
Finding differences among architects is
not profitable employment Indeed, the
illitcrate aud iucompetont practitioner SO
strongly resembles himself, wherever found,
that to have seen one of his works is to have
seen them all. Bya curious revenge Of fate
upon him, variety is the thing he always
!, aims at and never attains, and the more he
sbrugsles for variety and novelty, the more