AN ARCHITECTURAL PILGRIMAGE in OLD MEXICO* T
HERE are but few main traveled roads in American architectural literature. These
have been so constantly used that the bordering lands are deeply encrusted with dust. The periodic additions to this literature have made very few departures from these roads and they may be considered merely as maintenance or repair undertakings. There must be some reason for following these clearly defined and well beaten paths. Perhaps it is that architecture lacks that spirit of adventure that does so much to improve the arts of painting, sculpture and literature and the professions of medicine, surgery, engineering and scientific research. If this is the real condition, it must arise from some restraining influence which has held its sway over American architecture throughout the three hundred years of its existence.
Our forefathers did not find a native architecture in the greater part of the United States _because the aborigines had no permanent places of abode, commerce or accumulated property. More than two centuries passed before the architecture of the Southwestern natives of Hew Mexico and Arizona was made known to us and their structures possessed nothing but the element of shelter. It was then incumbent upon the first settlers to reproduce in some manner the
*An Architectural Pilgrimage in Old Mexico, by Alfred C. Bossom. With Foreword, text and 110 plates, indexed. 10 1/2 x l3 1/2 inches, cloth. Charles Scribner s Sons, New York. Price $20.00.
precedents of the lands of their origin. It does not appear that any serious effort has been made in later days to deviate from this early American architecture except to go back to its sources in Greece, Rome and their renaissance.
How close this adherence has been to certain types and forms is well illustrated by the words of a recently published review of a book which reproduced illustrations of these ancient forms. It reads:
Notwithstanding the sweeping changes which are being wrought in modern architecture in the spheres of construction and planning, it is doubtful if at any time in the history of the modern world more attention has been given to the following of precedent in the sphere of ornament. For century after century architectural students have continued to use ornament bequeathed to modern times by the ancient world, and the occasional use of motifs derived from other sources is generally sufficiently short-lived to prove its lack of power permanently to please, leaving the dependence upon classic design.
This is a general attitude toward architecture held by architects, teachers, students and those artistic mountebanks who assume that to us the essence of art is incomprehensible, hence there is no necessity for their attempting intelligibly to disclose the mystery—an assumption of understanding without right. If the above quotation truly represents an existing condition, it their follows that we of this age have no creative power whatever, no sense of beauty, proportion and fit EL CALVARIO, TEHUACAN, MEXICO, WITH ITS LOW STAIRWAY. A DELIGHTFUL ENTRANCE TO A FORMAL
GARDEN
HERE are but few main traveled roads in American architectural literature. These
have been so constantly used that the bordering lands are deeply encrusted with dust. The periodic additions to this literature have made very few departures from these roads and they may be considered merely as maintenance or repair undertakings. There must be some reason for following these clearly defined and well beaten paths. Perhaps it is that architecture lacks that spirit of adventure that does so much to improve the arts of painting, sculpture and literature and the professions of medicine, surgery, engineering and scientific research. If this is the real condition, it must arise from some restraining influence which has held its sway over American architecture throughout the three hundred years of its existence.
Our forefathers did not find a native architecture in the greater part of the United States _because the aborigines had no permanent places of abode, commerce or accumulated property. More than two centuries passed before the architecture of the Southwestern natives of Hew Mexico and Arizona was made known to us and their structures possessed nothing but the element of shelter. It was then incumbent upon the first settlers to reproduce in some manner the
*An Architectural Pilgrimage in Old Mexico, by Alfred C. Bossom. With Foreword, text and 110 plates, indexed. 10 1/2 x l3 1/2 inches, cloth. Charles Scribner s Sons, New York. Price $20.00.
precedents of the lands of their origin. It does not appear that any serious effort has been made in later days to deviate from this early American architecture except to go back to its sources in Greece, Rome and their renaissance.
How close this adherence has been to certain types and forms is well illustrated by the words of a recently published review of a book which reproduced illustrations of these ancient forms. It reads:
Notwithstanding the sweeping changes which are being wrought in modern architecture in the spheres of construction and planning, it is doubtful if at any time in the history of the modern world more attention has been given to the following of precedent in the sphere of ornament. For century after century architectural students have continued to use ornament bequeathed to modern times by the ancient world, and the occasional use of motifs derived from other sources is generally sufficiently short-lived to prove its lack of power permanently to please, leaving the dependence upon classic design.
This is a general attitude toward architecture held by architects, teachers, students and those artistic mountebanks who assume that to us the essence of art is incomprehensible, hence there is no necessity for their attempting intelligibly to disclose the mystery—an assumption of understanding without right. If the above quotation truly represents an existing condition, it their follows that we of this age have no creative power whatever, no sense of beauty, proportion and fit EL CALVARIO, TEHUACAN, MEXICO, WITH ITS LOW STAIRWAY. A DELIGHTFUL ENTRANCE TO A FORMAL
GARDEN