The American Architect
VOL. CXV
Wednesday, March 26, 1919Number 2257
Architectural History of a Western Town
By Thomas E. Tallmadge, A. I. A.
W
HEN one looks over a collection of photographs de
picting in sequence the dwellings of any town from decade to decade, from generation to generation, he is inclined to lose faith in his belief in the grand sequence of the styles, that majestic evolution dictated by necessity and reflecting epic changes in national customs and ideals. Instead, one is unpleasantly reminded of Godey’s Lady’s Book, or of an old photograph album, showing the succeeding and senseless changes in costume and millinery from simplicity to extravagance, from good to bad and from bad to good. Mr. Cram places the end of the orderly procession of the styles between 1820 and 1830. That great march which started on the Acropolis at Athens and has left its monuments through
ancient, mediaeval and modern times, disappears within the lifetimes of some now living nonagenarians. In other words, architecture made its last stand on the eastern shores of our continent and gave up the ghost in our own Colonial style.
All of the architecture which we are considering lies in the period of architectural anarchy and eclecticism which has prevailed since that ominous decade, as there was no Colonial architecture in the Middle West with the exception of the old French church at Cahokia, Illinois, built earlier than 1750, and a few scattered buildings along the lower Mississippi and New Orleans, built by French settlers. The town we have chosen is typical in many respects, and on account of its culture and wealth is able to present the best examples of those styles (shall we call them fashions?) which have prevailed since 1840. Lying within a few miles of a great metropolis on the shores of a great lake, the site of a university, it has been able to combine wealth, culture and beauty of location to as great an extent as
any other town in the Middle West might do so.
The first houses in this and in any community are the log cabins? built of squared logs with the chinks filled with mud or plaster and covered with a sloping roof. They are of no style and of no time. As the exterior skeleton of the mollusc was a pretty experiment, tried and discarded by nature for the vertebrate idea, so architecture has flirted with the log house from time immemorial, but has gone elsewhere for its grand passions with their majestic consummations. So the log house remains alpha and omega, the same yesterday, today apd tomorrow.
Previous to the founding of the university in 1853 there was no town, and the only settlements were scattered farmhouses and inns lying along the old Ridge Road, which stretched north a mile or two west of the shores of the lake. The town was platted out in 1854, and the first railroad built in the same year. Although the population is now in excess of thirty thousand, as late as 1861 if had a
THE LOG HOUSE. BUILT ABOUT 1840 ON THE NILES ROAD
Copyright, 1919, The Architectural & Building Press (Inc.)
VOL. CXV
Wednesday, March 26, 1919Number 2257
Architectural History of a Western Town
By Thomas E. Tallmadge, A. I. A.
W
HEN one looks over a collection of photographs de
picting in sequence the dwellings of any town from decade to decade, from generation to generation, he is inclined to lose faith in his belief in the grand sequence of the styles, that majestic evolution dictated by necessity and reflecting epic changes in national customs and ideals. Instead, one is unpleasantly reminded of Godey’s Lady’s Book, or of an old photograph album, showing the succeeding and senseless changes in costume and millinery from simplicity to extravagance, from good to bad and from bad to good. Mr. Cram places the end of the orderly procession of the styles between 1820 and 1830. That great march which started on the Acropolis at Athens and has left its monuments through
ancient, mediaeval and modern times, disappears within the lifetimes of some now living nonagenarians. In other words, architecture made its last stand on the eastern shores of our continent and gave up the ghost in our own Colonial style.
All of the architecture which we are considering lies in the period of architectural anarchy and eclecticism which has prevailed since that ominous decade, as there was no Colonial architecture in the Middle West with the exception of the old French church at Cahokia, Illinois, built earlier than 1750, and a few scattered buildings along the lower Mississippi and New Orleans, built by French settlers. The town we have chosen is typical in many respects, and on account of its culture and wealth is able to present the best examples of those styles (shall we call them fashions?) which have prevailed since 1840. Lying within a few miles of a great metropolis on the shores of a great lake, the site of a university, it has been able to combine wealth, culture and beauty of location to as great an extent as
any other town in the Middle West might do so.
The first houses in this and in any community are the log cabins? built of squared logs with the chinks filled with mud or plaster and covered with a sloping roof. They are of no style and of no time. As the exterior skeleton of the mollusc was a pretty experiment, tried and discarded by nature for the vertebrate idea, so architecture has flirted with the log house from time immemorial, but has gone elsewhere for its grand passions with their majestic consummations. So the log house remains alpha and omega, the same yesterday, today apd tomorrow.
Previous to the founding of the university in 1853 there was no town, and the only settlements were scattered farmhouses and inns lying along the old Ridge Road, which stretched north a mile or two west of the shores of the lake. The town was platted out in 1854, and the first railroad built in the same year. Although the population is now in excess of thirty thousand, as late as 1861 if had a
THE LOG HOUSE. BUILT ABOUT 1840 ON THE NILES ROAD
Copyright, 1919, The Architectural & Building Press (Inc.)