The morning journal-courier., 1908-01-22


 thing to do, and often existing con dition make another solution possible and advanta geous.
 As to the advantage. both from the point of view of convenience and that of artistic effect of the grouping to- gether of public buildings having to do with the administration of the city. there can be no serious question: whether in some cases this has not been carried too far by the ;ntroduc ton into the group of such buildings as public libraries, which answer an entirely different need. may perhaps be questioned Ands I have often thought that the desire in such groups for a perfect and formal regularity has not been without its drawbacks.
 Let us beware of formula or a set of formulae. Existing conditions. of different grades. and levels, of streets. of buildings, even when they do not seem at the glance very important, may suggest an individual note in cur plan; the value of which if it is based on any such condition is often incal- eulable.
 Mir. Gaudet. in his invaluable work on the Elements and Theory If Archi- lecture, a book from which I have lib- orally borrowed both ideas and exam ples. says Tn regard to provisions for the future, which are assuredly very difficult, we should exercise great dis cretion: we can hardly do more than create sites; and we are apt to fall in- to monotony by the abuse of some for- mal architecture which is decided up- on Sometimes people have gone so far as to imagine that they could compose the picturesque, and I will say here, that the picturesque can only be ob- tained by diversity, by liberty, and by time"
 Now I am not prepared to go quite as far as MT Gaudet Picturesque is word that we all of us use differently, and perhaps each one of us different moments. But If we cannot create pie turesqueness itself. we can at all events create the possibilities of picturesque ness. Such possibility was created. doubtless quite unconsciously, in New York, when Broadway and Fifth ave- nue were allowed to come together at 2Srd street-ther are similar condi- tions wherever Broadway crosses the other avenues At the first name site, everybody recognizes the picturesque ness of the Flat Iron building due largely to the site itself. Suppose against the narrow end of this build- ing there had been built fountain; as the Fontaine St. Michel at Paris was built under similar conditions: we should have increased this pictur- sequences many fold, and have added materially to the beauty of the city without taking away appreciably from the commercial value of the building This Is what I mean by creating the possibility of picturesqueness. There are other such opportunities in New York-only too few of them it is true
 and some of them will eventually be made the most of
 A case of certain kind of pictur- sequences obtained by Mir. Gaudets re- cipe of diversity. liberty and time, ex- ists in the City Hall Park, where the time at all events has been but short and where the result Is as purely acci- dental as can well be imagined. For here we have the City Hall itself pret- ty generally acknowledged to be the best public building of its time in the country--a beautiful, refined small scale building, set in a park of very modest dimensions; the whole sur rounded in a most astonishing way by the gigantic tall office buildings about it-making one think of some palazzo del pedosta in Italy with the tall Tus- can towers around 1t. And this seems to me picturesque in spite of all that has been done to spoil 1t in the park itself
 have warned you, however, against any formulae in the plans for civic improvement and I only ask you now to think of the picturesque possibili- ties as we'll as those of purely for nal character. The best results gem erally come from mixture of the two ideas, and a careful consideration of the conditions which may dictate one or the other. Even among our Ameri- can cities. there are few where there are not some things worth preserving from our modest antiquity. It is cer- tainly we'll worth while to respect these, to amellorate their setting wher possible, to make the most of them; and in this respect not to inn itate Paris, where much of the work of Philibert de rOrme, and the beau tiful church of Cluny were destroyed by the pitiless improvers of streets, If Is most regrettable that this is so sell dom done or attempted to be done If St. Pauls chapel or St. Johns church in New York, to take these as exam ples, had been ever so little considered in the layout of the city. we should have cause for profound gratitude. and we could hardly have achieved a satisfactory result for these buildings without departing from a strict reg ularity of plan in the surrounding city streets
 It Is also true that in our formal dispositions, we are apt to forget that regularity Is only really effective and justifiable when 1t can be seen at a glance. as is the case for example in the Place Vendome in Paris. where the composition of the whole is easily felt at once. A good and effective com position in city planning is generally one which results from a well defined space, from a single and simple idea or from existing condition. short street, like the Rue Royale at Paris lends itself to such composition; and such differences of level as are com. mon in Rome-for example the sroun of buildings at the capitol. All these effects which we admire so unreserv- edly when we see them abroad. are perfectly legitimate and proper ef- fleets for us to seek at home. >Let us have as many arrows in our culver as possible.