fortunate, bubbling gases. Belgium is favored with more elevation, giving her canals an appreciable current, so that without a doubt their contrasting cleanliness robs Holland of any right to the “100 per cent clean” prominence. Dutch streets in the poorer sections of Amsterdam and Rotterdam would not be tolerated even in our own Ghettos and Boweries. The big and exasperating mosquito population, swarming up from stagnant waterways throughout the summer nights, helps end the idea of perfect Dutch cleanliness. But in the morning when the welts subside and the sun shines, one philosophically decides that perhaps there must necessarily be some imperfection along with all the strides of modern progress.
The Holland of canals and windmills is slowly disappearing. The forces of electricity are supplanting those of wind; the motor bus is substituting the canal boat. The effect is marked in idle, dilapidated windmills, and canals being filled in for boulevards. The old houses with their quaintness have already seemed to succumb to modern buildings, so that in Amsterdam there are scarcely a dozen unmolested old houses which would dare call themselves of architectural or pictorial merit. Rural districts and isolated farm groups are the sole survivors of the old which was beautiful. But still one is not disappointed.
Holland of today is more of an achievement than though she had done nothing more than preserve old buildings like so many museum pieces. She has perhaps let the architectural treasures of the past languish and fall to ruin so that she has no sections
DE TWENTSCHE BANK, AMSTERDAM
like Albi, Rothenburg, San Gimignano, Segovia, or Bruges to amplify history for future generations. But she has modern monuments in commercial buildings which will be a lasting memorial to her present-day genius. These are designed so as to express steel or concrete skeletons in a manner commensurate with ideas of architectural beauty, as well as being in accordance with today’s economic considerations. In this connection there is absolutely no reference to strange creations sometimes seen published—buildings without much reason and certainly less taste. Only the class of building is here considered which shows a knowledge of what architecture has achieved in the past, but has altered and recast with refreshing thought in a new, big way to solve more adequately the problems of the present.
In Amsterdam facing the central Station and about a quarter of a mile off, rises the Bourse, one of the best examples of Holland’s modern accomplishments. It possesses a most varied and interesting mass which honestly expresses the various utilities which are carried on within its variegated red brick walls. The main facade facing the “Dam” is symmetrical only up to where the clock tower grows out of the wall surface below. It then becomes an unsymmetrical treatment substantiated by the perfectly good reason that in no other position, owing to the layout of the neighboring thoroughfares, could the clock be as generally and easily seen. Every diverse expression on the exterior when investigated can be traced to a simple reason made necessary by good sense in the plan. There are wide
A STORE AND OFFICE BUILDING, AMSTERDAM
The Holland of canals and windmills is slowly disappearing. The forces of electricity are supplanting those of wind; the motor bus is substituting the canal boat. The effect is marked in idle, dilapidated windmills, and canals being filled in for boulevards. The old houses with their quaintness have already seemed to succumb to modern buildings, so that in Amsterdam there are scarcely a dozen unmolested old houses which would dare call themselves of architectural or pictorial merit. Rural districts and isolated farm groups are the sole survivors of the old which was beautiful. But still one is not disappointed.
Holland of today is more of an achievement than though she had done nothing more than preserve old buildings like so many museum pieces. She has perhaps let the architectural treasures of the past languish and fall to ruin so that she has no sections
DE TWENTSCHE BANK, AMSTERDAM
like Albi, Rothenburg, San Gimignano, Segovia, or Bruges to amplify history for future generations. But she has modern monuments in commercial buildings which will be a lasting memorial to her present-day genius. These are designed so as to express steel or concrete skeletons in a manner commensurate with ideas of architectural beauty, as well as being in accordance with today’s economic considerations. In this connection there is absolutely no reference to strange creations sometimes seen published—buildings without much reason and certainly less taste. Only the class of building is here considered which shows a knowledge of what architecture has achieved in the past, but has altered and recast with refreshing thought in a new, big way to solve more adequately the problems of the present.
In Amsterdam facing the central Station and about a quarter of a mile off, rises the Bourse, one of the best examples of Holland’s modern accomplishments. It possesses a most varied and interesting mass which honestly expresses the various utilities which are carried on within its variegated red brick walls. The main facade facing the “Dam” is symmetrical only up to where the clock tower grows out of the wall surface below. It then becomes an unsymmetrical treatment substantiated by the perfectly good reason that in no other position, owing to the layout of the neighboring thoroughfares, could the clock be as generally and easily seen. Every diverse expression on the exterior when investigated can be traced to a simple reason made necessary by good sense in the plan. There are wide
A STORE AND OFFICE BUILDING, AMSTERDAM