scraper. How interesting is the history of the development of this class of building! At the time of its birth the skyscraper was surely not intended for a parading feature along our thoroughfares, but as a necessity dictated by the imperious demands of the rapidly developing business in our congested cities. Room in the business centers was growing scarce and rent ran high. There was only one logical solution at a time when locomotion was not so easy as to-day, and that was the superimposition of a new city over the old. Buildings were doubled and trebled in height. The strides, as far as engineering was concerned, were huge. There was no limit to the possibilities offered by the steel frame. But the men of the architectural profession were taken aback. It was all so sudden that the first solution which offered itself was the actual multiplication of elements: if an office building was to be three or four times higher than usual, then the basements must be accentuated three or four times and three orders would in turn superimpose each other, etc. In other examples, three or four regular six-floor-high buildings climbed upon each other with remarkable nimbleness. They made you think of very skillful acrobats.
Meanwhile cultured people began to take the matter to heart. Our schools of architecture were just beginning to bloom. As classic architecture began with worshipping Vignola, the latter’s book was taxed for the solution of this most modern of all problems. One solution—if not the best—was offered, which took hold of all the mechanically inclined minds: the same divisions of the classic order, base, shaft, and entablature, were to find their counterpart in the design of the new type of office building. Soon there were to be seen elaborate bases whose height was determined by the formula; then practically barren shafts, and, at the height prescribed by the teachings of Vignola, came another elaborate part corresponding to the entablature. The easy so-called solution spread like wildfire from coast to coast and from North to South. All these new structures “meant business.”
Now, at best, these giants were mere masks. They could not stand the slightest test of rationalism. What relation was there between the appearance and the reality? None. Huge columns and portals adorned the entrance, and you supposed that they ushered you to equally important quarters. Great was to be your disappointment. For the inside had nothing to do with the front. In fact, one man studied the equipment of the building, its plan, etc., and another, possibly ignoring all the requirements of the program, took care of the front, the main part of the study of which was to conform to the formula and yet make it different from that of a neighboring giant building. It was for the solu
tion of such difficulty that the ingenuity of the designer was to be taxed. But the matter, thank heaven, was comparatively easy, owing to the multiplicity of orders, of borrowed styles, of an infinite variety of materials, etc.
There were some who did not grasp at once the “high” significance of such combinations. Well, a more learned friend explained the matter in a very simple manner. The base, which usually reached the height of the heretofore six-floor building, was kept elaborate because people walking in the street could see the ornaments without difficulty. The shaft was barren, precisely because you could not try to see any detail without getting a sprained neck; as to the gorgeous decorations of the top, they were reserved by the kindly artist for those who looked on the new Babylon from across the river or a few miles off. They were to greet the newcomers to our shores.
But, somehow, this mechanical, camouflaged solution did not and could not take hold of all architects. This sort of dress or veneer applied without any plausible reason on the most interesting achievements of the builder-engineer was something decidedly wrong. As to the theory of its proposed solution, it was altogether false. There was no relation of organ to function in its subdivisions, as in those of the orders. Here the base spreads out in order to carry the upper weight on a wider area, and so forth. The cap spreads also in order to relieve the stress of the architrave as far as possible. Hence there is in the order that peculiar charm which accompanies truth.
Meanwhile the best minds of the country were at work trying to live up to the very definition of art which must be a combination of service, truth and beauty. Observing everything in nature, following in this the very same methods of old, they found there must be on the outside at least a suggestion of the inside. Once more those judicious minds contrived to make architecture abide by the simple definition beautiful construction, whereas it has been heretofore an effort to the contrary, “beauty made constructible.” How could they reach a solution? Here is where the survey of our achievements becomes very interesting, the more so that the next proposed solution is very rational and thereby points to a change brought or to be brought into methods of teaching in all our schools.
The successful architect started by analyzing the very skeleton proposed by the engineer, and he saw at once that the one important element in it was the pier, whose office it is to carry down to the rock all the weight with which succeeding floors loaded it. In such a system no wall supports itself, but its weight is shifted on every floor on the pier. Hence the latter element must needs become the dominant