The American Architect The ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1924NUMBER 2446
CHURCH OF ST. AYOUL, PROVINS
FRENCH and SPANISH COUNTRY CHURCHES Sketches and not very significant comment by SAMUEL CHAMBERLAIN
(Copyright} 1924, The Architectural & Building Press, Inc.)
NO French landscape seems to be entirely complete without, the familiar touch of a, country church spire. One associates it with poplar lined roads, patchwork fields, tile roofs and muffin-like wheat stacks as being- an inseparable accessory to the charm of rural France. It is as characteristic as the Dutch windmill, the Italian cypress, the American silo. And no type of architectural monument, naturally enough, appears in greater variety and frequency than the churches. One can jot down a hundred church towers in a day’s railway journey. One of America’s best known architects has a notebook filled with delightful sketches of such subjects which he made
from a moving train. Transportation has become speedier and bumpier since that time, I am hoping. Efforts to follow his worthy example resulted in jostled jottings of a somewhat grotesque nature.
One stumbles across such a number of small churches, the very directness and simplicity of whose exteriors are expressive of the organism within. A sketch is much more useful in discussing them than weighty paragraphs. Hence the unusual scattering of illustration. One of the familiar examples is the Church of St. Ayoul at Provins, a curious and fascinating jumble, whose picturesqueness is only exceeded by its eccentricities of plan. The Church of St. Lazare, in the happy little Bergundian town of Avail on, is likewise a bit of a melange, but it is the pos
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21, 1924NUMBER 2446
CHURCH OF ST. AYOUL, PROVINS
FRENCH and SPANISH COUNTRY CHURCHES Sketches and not very significant comment by SAMUEL CHAMBERLAIN
(Copyright} 1924, The Architectural & Building Press, Inc.)
NO French landscape seems to be entirely complete without, the familiar touch of a, country church spire. One associates it with poplar lined roads, patchwork fields, tile roofs and muffin-like wheat stacks as being- an inseparable accessory to the charm of rural France. It is as characteristic as the Dutch windmill, the Italian cypress, the American silo. And no type of architectural monument, naturally enough, appears in greater variety and frequency than the churches. One can jot down a hundred church towers in a day’s railway journey. One of America’s best known architects has a notebook filled with delightful sketches of such subjects which he made
from a moving train. Transportation has become speedier and bumpier since that time, I am hoping. Efforts to follow his worthy example resulted in jostled jottings of a somewhat grotesque nature.
One stumbles across such a number of small churches, the very directness and simplicity of whose exteriors are expressive of the organism within. A sketch is much more useful in discussing them than weighty paragraphs. Hence the unusual scattering of illustration. One of the familiar examples is the Church of St. Ayoul at Provins, a curious and fascinating jumble, whose picturesqueness is only exceeded by its eccentricities of plan. The Church of St. Lazare, in the happy little Bergundian town of Avail on, is likewise a bit of a melange, but it is the pos