The Washburn leader. [volume] (Washburn, McLean County, N.D.) 1890-1986, 1911-04-21
IMPROVE THE
VILLAGE STORE
Commercial Architecture Is as
Bad as Il Ever Was.
USE TOO MUCH FIMERY.
Merchants Alone Spoil Appearance Of
q Community by Trying to Make
Their Places Of Business Look More
Prstentious Than They Really Are.

community ~ tFyluS 70 "aNe
Their Places Of Business Look More
P%retentious Than They Really Are.
Nobody can live in a suburb, nobody
can rusticate in a resort" nobody can
run into the country for a week end. IT
Of a sensitive turn Of mind, without
finding ause to bewail the exceeding
badness Of the commercial architecture
of his place Of residence. s~ojourn 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 pic
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
a house as any Of his neighbors. But
the ugliness, appropriateness and
vulgarity of his place of business are
as staring and uncomfortable us 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 it's blight over the res
tdential 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.
e%rations, by decades. The store is as
bad as ever-one 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 ap-
piled in his work the manuals which
had come down to him from the colo
NAL time and was fain.e 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 excuses 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 a 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 ut me-"
his store stridently demands, by his
architecture if he owns it. by its glar-
ing signs if he only rents it.
Finally he desires that his building
shall look more costly than it 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 e%xpedient ever'
resorted to by man.