The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1911-06-29
IMPROVE THE
VILLAGE STORE
Commercial Architecture Is as
Bad as It Ever Was.
USE TOO MUCH FINERY.

Merchants Alone Spoil Appearance Of
Community by Trying to Make
Their Places Of Business Look More
Pretentious Than They Really Are.
Nobody can live in q suburb. nobody
can rusticate in resort" nobody car
run into the country for week end il
of a sensitive turn of mind. without
finding cause to bewail the exceeding
badness of the commercial architecture
of his place of residence. sojourn or
visitation. says M. Schuyler in Art
and Progress. The domestic architec-
ture of suburb resort or country village
is improving year by year. Village
improvement societies in villages even
far from the madding crowd i'm
port notions'of establishment. Stately
villas are coming to.occupy the pie
turesque coigns Of vantage and pretty
cottages to line the village streets
The local tradesman alone does not
seem to be affected by the aesthetic
uplift. Curiously, in his private capac-
ity as householder and citizen he may
build and inhabit as pretty and modest
house as any of his neighbors. But
the ugliness. appropriateness and
vulgarity of his place of business are
as staring and uncomfortable as ever,
in so much that when your suburban
friend takes you home with him for
overnight or over Sunday the dismal
ness of the business quarter through
which he drives you from the station
is apt to extend its blight over the res
idential part so that you cannot enjoy
even that as you might if to get to and
from it you did not have to traverse
the main street.
The dwellings are improving by gen.
erations. by decades. The store is as
bad as everyone Is tempted to say
worse. There are New England vii
lagos which retain stores as well as
churches and houses built by the vii
lage carpenter at the beginning and
down to the twenties and thirties of
the nineteenth century. when the
colonial tradition had not yet died out,
and the carpenter possessed and APP
piled in his work the manuals which
udu COIuc oONlI ~ Tic COiO-
NAL time and was fain. when his
client would let him, to signaliZe the
village store with a correctly drawn
and carefully executed order of which
the detail was as good as that of the
| neighboring houses. which is to say
very good indeed. But to him have
succeeded carpenters Of less training,
and discretion. who have abandoned
themselves to the excesses of the Wild
est jigsawyery.
Ponder that and you will under
stand why village commercial archi-
lecture is so bad. Every builder aims
to be conspicuous by being seen above
| his neighbors Here is vulgar mo-
| tive to begin with. His place of bust
ness is bound to be pretentious. while
his place of abode is becoming less
| pretentious. Come and look at me"
his store stridentIy demands, by his
architecture If he owns it. by its glar-
| ing signs if he only rents it.
Finally ne desires that his building
shall look more costly than 1t is. This
is an obviously vulgar motive. and
| the device which is most commonly
employed to put IT in practice. the
sheet metal cornice. Is perhaps the
vulgarest architectural expedient ever
resOrted to by man. sxe