The American Architect The ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW
VOL. CXXV Wednesday, April 23, 1924 number 2444 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE in SPAIN
BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM, F.A.I.A., Lit. D., LL.D. THE inclination to hold all essential archi
tecuure to consist in the major works of
Church and State, and more or less to disregard the testimony of housebuilding outside the category of castle and palace, must be firmly resisted in Spain. Here this more modest, but peculiarly personal type of work takes a high place and casts almost as much light on the genius of the Spanish people as do the great monuments of civic and ecclesiastical achievement. Half the charm and the instruction of the cities lies in the streets and squares, and towns like Cadiz, Ecija, Carmona reveal even m ore through their dwellings than through their churches, palaces and municipal buildings.
Of course most of this is very late, XVIth century at the earliest, but the real principles of Spanish artistry persisted here after they had been suppressed by Philip II and Herrera for half a century, and the voluptuousness that
succeeded with Churriguerra never percolated further than the more princely type of palaces. The native asceticism and reserve of the Spanish coupled with their austere good taste prevailed in private houses of town and country down to the
very end of the last century, when here as elsewhere architects began to take the place of masterbuilders and craftsmen and to enforce their own artificial modes as the right sort of thing to do. It is a curious fact that outside of England and the
United States, modem housebuilding has been excruciatingly bad even when comparatively high standards have been attained in most monumental work. In France, for example, while really fine things were being done in civic and official architecture, domestic work, both in city and country, was just as bad and silly and pretentious as possible; almost as degraded and discouraging as similar efforts at churchbuilding. It is this sort of thing that has become prevalent in Spain during the last twenty-five years, and while little of it succeeds in matching the work of Cataluna, and particularly Barcelona, in sheer depravity, it is all pretty bad even though in a sense pathetic because of the evident effort on the part of the architects to recover something supposedly Spanish and make it live again—a task they have wholly failed to accomplish. Such beautiful old cities as Seville have had great boulevards slashed through them,
(Copyright, 1924, The Architectural & Building Press, Inc.)
IN THE COURT OF THE CASA DEL GRECO, TOLEDO (From “Picturesque Spain.” By permission of Brentano’s)
VOL. CXXV Wednesday, April 23, 1924 number 2444 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE in SPAIN
BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM, F.A.I.A., Lit. D., LL.D. THE inclination to hold all essential archi
tecuure to consist in the major works of
Church and State, and more or less to disregard the testimony of housebuilding outside the category of castle and palace, must be firmly resisted in Spain. Here this more modest, but peculiarly personal type of work takes a high place and casts almost as much light on the genius of the Spanish people as do the great monuments of civic and ecclesiastical achievement. Half the charm and the instruction of the cities lies in the streets and squares, and towns like Cadiz, Ecija, Carmona reveal even m ore through their dwellings than through their churches, palaces and municipal buildings.
Of course most of this is very late, XVIth century at the earliest, but the real principles of Spanish artistry persisted here after they had been suppressed by Philip II and Herrera for half a century, and the voluptuousness that
succeeded with Churriguerra never percolated further than the more princely type of palaces. The native asceticism and reserve of the Spanish coupled with their austere good taste prevailed in private houses of town and country down to the
very end of the last century, when here as elsewhere architects began to take the place of masterbuilders and craftsmen and to enforce their own artificial modes as the right sort of thing to do. It is a curious fact that outside of England and the
United States, modem housebuilding has been excruciatingly bad even when comparatively high standards have been attained in most monumental work. In France, for example, while really fine things were being done in civic and official architecture, domestic work, both in city and country, was just as bad and silly and pretentious as possible; almost as degraded and discouraging as similar efforts at churchbuilding. It is this sort of thing that has become prevalent in Spain during the last twenty-five years, and while little of it succeeds in matching the work of Cataluna, and particularly Barcelona, in sheer depravity, it is all pretty bad even though in a sense pathetic because of the evident effort on the part of the architects to recover something supposedly Spanish and make it live again—a task they have wholly failed to accomplish. Such beautiful old cities as Seville have had great boulevards slashed through them,
(Copyright, 1924, The Architectural & Building Press, Inc.)
IN THE COURT OF THE CASA DEL GRECO, TOLEDO (From “Picturesque Spain.” By permission of Brentano’s)