Good style means the historical note which measures the success of an architectural design. It is the distinct theme we must be able to recognize throughout, no matter how elaborate or original the accompaniment. To exemplify which point I have selected the Searles cottage, erected in 1889, at Block Island (see Plate LXXXVI), not because it was erected without regard to expense or financial returns, for there is much domestic architecture in America erected quite as independently of either consideration which would ruin my argument were I to use it; but because the Searles cottage is one of the most original designs in American Renaissance, without in the least compromising good style, that I know of in contemporary work. It is said to have been designed by a decorator, but in that case merely adds another instance of the truism that there are decorators who should be architects and architects who should be decorators. The illustration shows the
[Illustration: SEARLES’ COTTAGE--EXEMPLIFYING ARCHITECTURAL STYLE.]
[Illustration: THE MODERN AMERICAN DWELLING--EXEMPLIFYING FASHION.]
building in process of construction, but let us place it beside the illustration of a very recent example of modern house and see what happens. I think thereby will be conveyed to the mind of the reader more insight of the difference between style and fashion in architecture (see Plate LXXXVI) than could be accomplished by writing in a week. At last we see a house with a cupola where the cupola has a recognized mission, and pleases rather than offends, as occurs also at Mount Vernon, in Virginia (Plates XXVII and XXVIII), and where it crowns the roof of the McPhædris house at Portsmouth (Plate XXXI). Here are instances where we should miss the cupola as part, not so much of the design, perhaps, as of the style, the historical atmosphere, were it absent. It would be the incomplete sentence, in other words, where the original thought had not been completely expressed.
I am aware that the Searles cottage is not one that, ordinarily, would be called “pretty.” The cottage I designed for Mr. Mitchell, at East Orange (see Plates LXXX, LXXXII, LXXXIII and XCI), I dare say answers to that description better, as does also Princessgate, at Wyoming, N. J. (see Plates XVIII, LXXXIV, LXXXIX and XCI), but I am speaking now of style, the picturesque is something else again. I can fancy the beginner in architecture leaning over his drawingboard and saying, “Well, that’s the funniest Colonial house I ever saw!” But the first year of his course will correct the slight astigmatism from which he suffers. For, even should he fail to pursue the engaging study of style, style is so insinuating, because of the immense significance it has behind it, that very soon it will be speaking to him. And while the student feels it only in that first intangible stage, unable to say to himself what it is, even while people aver that the Searles cottage was entirely misplaced on the treeless coast of a pelagic isle, while they tell him that no use could be found for it except as a kind of casino, yet there will begin to dawn upon him an uncontrollable appreciation, just as began to dawn upon the aged auditor in the pit of the old-time playhouse at Paris during the production of a masterpiece by Molière, till, toward the end of the second act, no