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THE ARCHITECTURAL ANNUAL

our Government architecture more worthy of the greatness and intelligence of the Republic. In the city of Washington the whole country has an admirable object-lesson. No city is more full of architectural warnings. None better exemplifies in its buildings what is and what is not architecture. One does not need a professional education to feel mortified at the sight of certain buildings that have been thrust upon these beautiful highways in comparatively recent times, though what architecture is and of what it is capable is thrown in the face of the most stolid citizen, whenever his eye is turned beyond the crowded avenue, to the green park and the long lines of the marble Capitol, and to the great white dome rising grand and noble above them into the morning mists.

As we feel all this very deeply, we have reckoned it a great privilege that the National Government has, of late years, consulted with our officers and members regarding work in charge of the Treasury and several other Departments. On these occasions, and at all other times, we have advocated in an unselfish manner all measures that might lead to added dignity in our permanent Government buildings and greater stateliness throughout our National Capital. If great Government buildings are to be scattered about the country, if a boulevard is to traverse the National Capital, if the future buildings for the Government are to be effectively placed in this beautiful city, if the White House, in which we all take such pleasure and pride, needs to be increased in size, we want each and all of these works carried out by the best artistic skill that the country can produce and by nothing less efficient. Nor are we alone in this wish. So far as I have observed, the public aspires to even better things than our best talent produces. our best talent produces. They want the very best. Now that architecture is a matter of active interest to great numbers of people in all parts of the country, it ought to be possible to bring to life again the admirable artistic spirit which one hundred years ago planned the city of Washington, and built its earlier and best monuments.

That we devote this evening to a discussion of this subject indicates that the Institute anxiously desires thus to promote the improvement of architecture controlled by the National Government, and we have an opportunity to see what has been accomplished by the Government, under its new system, in the exhibition that is arranged for this meeting of the drawings for those Government buildings that are in charge of private architects.

The current newspapers state the the Supervising Architect of the Treasury has advised in his report that the supervision of Government work designed by private architects be in charge

of the Government office. I hope our good comrade will find some other remedy for whatever difficulties there are in applying private practice to public work. An architect's business is to build buildings, not to sell drawings. The designer's supervision, at least of artistic details, is most essential to success, and it is certainly common opinion that all over this country the constructive portions of great buildings are superintended for private corporations by their architects in more energetic and economical ways than those that the Government has usually been able to adopt. It seems to me, therefore, that if the Supervising Architect has had some unfortunate experience, or if the Government demands more exactness and routine than private clients, the employment of a really efficient clerk-of-works on every building, paid for by the Government and under the control of the architect, in addition to his supervision, would probably afford a full cure for such trouble as may exist.

We never discuss the question of Government architecture without recognizing the attitude held from beginning to end by the present Secretary of the Treasury. We have formally thanked him before now, but we cannot forget the broad and liberal views he has always held towards our art. We cannot forget his great and patient consideration of those members of the profession who have dealt with him on these subjects, and the singlenesss of purpose with which, in spite of discouraging rebuffs, he has held firmly to a large minded and intelligent course. By his loyal deference to high professional standards he has set architects an example of how they themselves should regard their own professional dignity. If the present method of conducting the architectural work of the Government produces, as we hope it will, a great result, it will be due in the first instance to Secretary Gage.

No subject can be of more serious interest to the Institute than its relations with the youth of our profession. One of our committees has considered for us, and will report to us, upon our relations with the architectural schools and the junior societies. Many of our Chapters have taken steps towards unity of effort between the young and the old. To make progress in membership from the junior societies to the Chapters easy and natural and desirable should be our first endeavor. Indeed in this country, such a task ought to be easy. One of the greatest charms of our profession is the joyous atmosphere of youth and buoyancy and hope in which we work. The art itself is young with us. It is only within a few years that architecture has become the lifework of thousands in our country, and if, in establishing the profession, we have made many

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halting steps as artists, and if, in the swift turn of the wheel of progress, a man only too quickly comes to regret his early productions, yet we are all conscious of constant advance and full of faith for the future. We are all looking forward and not back. The assistants who form our office families, and in coöperation with whom our work is produced, are young. They are ambitious youths, who, at home and abroad, have had every advantage of education in art and engineering. They and we work together in the full belief that, even if the future of architecture does not lie with us, yet, at least, it is to have a great future here. Everywhere the pace set is that of youth, and the rapidity of our building operations makes our work so arduous and full of strain that the strong and vigorous only survive. There are no old architects among us. If an architect lasts at all, he lasts young.

The young may nerve themselves to exertion by the thought that Raphael's career, with its abundant production, was over at thirty-seven. It is left to those of us who are older to remember that, though Bramante is said not to have seen Rome and the Pantheon until he was fiftyfive years old, yet he was still young enough to form, after that age, his monumental style, and to evolve the work that has made him one of the great leaders of our craft. Recalling this, we, too, feel young, and take new hope and courage. We can scarcely prize too highly this happy, joyous, progressive, youthful spirit. As we thus keep young and hopeful, it should be easy for us, and, indeed, we should be eager to increase, in all practical ways, the cordiality of our relations with those who are our juniors in the profession, and who, we hope, are to be our successors in the Institute.

To further this end, your Executive Committee voted to invite the officers of the Architectural League of America to attend this Convention, with the privileges of the floor, and we hope to have the pleasure of welcoming them here today.

When we consider our professional relations toward each other, we open up a large field for discussion, for our efforts to promote the efficiency of the profession have been sharply criticized. One hesitates to discuss the question lest it obtain more importance than it deserves, but, as it is a live subject, it is well to see how far criticism is merited.

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We are told that unless we enforce a standard of honorable practice more strictly we shall fall in public esteem, and the action taken by the Judiciary and Executive Committees this year in certain cases has seemed to some people inadequate. It is not for me to say whether this opinion is just, though one would suppose that our critics did not hold it to be a grave matter to be compelled to defend one's honor before our Judiciary Committee. One would think that censure by the American Institute of Architects was a light and unimportant thing, leaving no scar or no regret. Is it true that any of us think this? If we were the defendants, would the technical degree of criticism on our professional conduct matter much, compared with the misery of the thought that our comrades had criticized us and proved their right to do so? You may be sure that other men are made much as we are.

That the American Institute of Architects should discipline such few of its members as act dishonestly or unfairly seems to need no argument. Such punishment should be clear and decisive. It is not a light matter It is a very important one. Although few of us would be in the Institute if discipline were its only object, still it is very desirable that we should claim a high standard of conduct, and even of etiquette, from our fellow-members. It is one of the objects of our association. We may consider that we are agreed upon this. We all feel this so strongly, that, when professional opinion attributes improper conduct, and when adequate discipline does not follow, there is a widespread outcry that your Directors and Judiciary Committee are weakkneed. This course of reasoning is not just, and I think it important to discuss this subject thoroughly, and decide exactly where the trouble, if any, lies. If it is possible, let us improve our methods.

To dispense absolute and complete justice, we should need the full machinery of the courts. We can be thanful it is not often required. All we can hope to do is to express professional opinion; but we should be adequately prepared to do this.

Where we fail, or appear to some to fail, it is evident that the chief difficulty lies in the method of presenting charges. The Judiciary Committee is elected by you from your own body, and its members, presumably, are as ready to discipline as you. But what are they to do if, as is bound to happen, the charges are carelessly framed, perhaps by angry or biased persons, in such manner that they cannot be substantiated? And what is to be done, as also happens, when those who bring charges are too little in earnest to appear at the hearing or furnish needed information?

QUOTED FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ANNUAL, 1900.

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Plainly, it is impossible for the Judiciary Committee to formulate charges or add anything to those made by others. Its duties are those of a court, and none of our national customs permit the committee to be both court and prosecutor. Besides, it should, in justice, protect the rights of the individual as well as the interests of the profession. Hence, the Judiciary Committee has, properly, as I think, declined to go through the form of trial of any individual or firm unless definite charges and specifications have been submitted to it. The question is, therefore, how shall the ungracious task of prosecution be performed?

It is more difficult to produce testimony and prove a point before the National Committee than a local one. In the local Chapters, where many are keenly interested, and the facts are easily obtained, an investigation is more readily and justly made.

Hence, possibly, the very best solution of all this problem lies in the proposition on which you are to vote, that a man expelled from his own Chapter shall cease, ipso facto, to be a member of the Institute, though he may retain the right of appeal. This arrangement would dispose of most cases that are likely to arise, and the Judiciary Committee would thus become, in most instances, only a board of appeal for cases decided by the Chapters. For this, the present machinery would suffice.

It ought, however, to be possible to bring cases directly before our Judiciary Committee. The local Chapters may be inert, or the defendant be a member-at-large. If the Judiciary Committee is thus to examine cases at first hand, or even if appealed cases are referred to it, the cases should be presented before the committee by a lawyer. We may as well recognize that we do not manage this business well, and have no desire to learn how to do it better. The weakness of the present situation does not lie in the faint-heartedness of your committee, but in the fact that volunteer prosecution before a national committee is likely to be careless, prejudiced, unsupported by witnesses, and not to be depended upon. Nor is it right to subject reputations to the risks inherent in such amateur courts. But the lawyers are a class of men who constantly deal with such subjects, and are experts at the business, and just as a man employs an architect, we should employ a lawyer fitted to deal with these subjects.

If you vote favorably on the amendment proposed to you, and establish that the Chapters, as courts of first resort, shall pass upon cases before them, it will rarely happen that the Judiciary Committee will need to act in the first instance. I suggest that we might settle that the

right of appeal from the Chapters shall be to the Judiciary Committee as a final court. I also sug gest that, in such cases, as well as when the Judiciary Committee examines questions at first hand, the Executive Committee might be directed by us to pass first on the written charges generally, as a grand jury. If the Executive Committee finds substantial basis for the charges, direct them to place the case in the hands of legal counsel at the cost of the Institute for prosecution before the Judiciary Committee as a court. I believe this, or something like it, to be the business-like disposition of this disagreeable subject.

The subject of discipline involves really the larger question of professional ethics, and this is an opportune moment to discuss whether our standard is advancing, and whether our conduct toward one another is improving, and what we can do to further desirable improvement. This matter has difficulties of its own, for opinions may differ, fairly, at least, in regard to such details of professional conduct as are conventional and usual, rather than moral. Some of the opinions held of such matters are unsupported by legal right or by general business morality. In fact, they all are governed ultimately by public opinion, and the important thing is to have that in a healthy state.

Our controversies centre mainly around competitions, but no one can deny that even in this nervedestroying and objectional side of an architect's work public sentiment is far more healthy than

Probably we cannot do away with competitions, but the public in a short time always accepts what the self-respect of the profession courageously demands. To-day there are far more competitions that are limited and paid than formerly, and to the great benefit of employer and employed. To-day far more architects insist on these restrictions, and in the long run, they gain by it. Public opinion has governed very strictly far more hateful things even than competitions ; for instance, the practice of duelling, and it can be trained, and I believe it is being trained to ameliorate competitions.

As one instrument towards obtaining a healthy public opinion, the American Architect prints weekly the code of ethics that is recommended by the Boston Society of Architects. We thus become familiar with what we agree to in unprejudiced moments. It is a still better thing for us to discuss these matters in a friendly way at these meetings. The more we meet and talk with each other the more opinions crystallize, the better we know each other, the less likely we are to yield to that hustling and crowding spirit that is at the root of any troubles that reach our Judiciary Committee, and it is one of the chief advantages

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of our Institute that it leads to that acquaintance and association of architects from all parts of the country which best subdues the mean or selfish hustler. Indeed, the older of those among us must all recognize that the term "unprofessional conduct" is now applied by general consent to practices which were not long since of not unusual occurrence, and that a distinct advance in this direction has accompanied the increase in numbers and power of the Institute.

But to demand a definite written code of ethics is to ask for something difficult of attainment. They have never been simple to frame, and their enforcement has brought many a church and association to grief. In our case it would be difficult to state precisely what code should be enforced. Happily, though we may feel helpless to form a code that we all agree upon, all these codes were, in fact, summed up once in a very few sentences that might well be printed in those journals which now print our less widely accepted codes. These sentences inevitably form the basis of all our discipline. Differ as we may in small details, we all know that upright, professional conduct means nothing but being a gentleman; and we are sure that all codes of professional ethics finally reduce to the Golden Rule.

A healthier subject for our attention, and one that interests us all more than the discipline of the unworthy among us, is the due reward of youthful genius, well-trained skill, and honorable professional life. If we succeed in making membership in the Institute a goal eagerly sought for, it might go far towards eliminating the need of discipline. Surely most can be gained in an association of educated gentlemen by offering the hope of distinction, by honoring excellence, rather than by chastising the unworthy. For this reason I commend to your attention the changes in the by-laws proposed at Pittsburgh and now to be acted upon, which provide that, with certain exceptions, all candidates for admission to membership shall be graduates from some recognized architectural school, or shall have passed examinations held by the Institute. This subject was fully discussed last year at Pittsburgh. Still more, I would give my urgent and hearty approval to the new and happy idea that our Secretary has envolved, of an annual election through the Directors and the Convention Delegates, of a certain number of Associates to be Fellows, because they have distinguished themselves in successful work.

Our Constitution states that an election as Fellow shall be for professional merit. It has always been our aim and intention that a high standard should be maintained for the Fellowship grade, and that in some way the name of Fellow

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Mr.

shall indicate professional distinction. Brown's suggestion would render this intention thoroughly effective, and I know of no measure which would tend more to make the title of Fellow one that any member of the profession would be proud to hear. In the Institute, as in any long-established association, the young often feel as if they stood no chance for honors with those more prominent in the profession, but in an election of the sort proposed, the young would take an equal stand with the old. Good work alone would count, and we should be sure that prominence and the title of Fellow would be due, not to accident or seniority, but to a general agreement among his comrades that a man is worthy of honor. With these distinctions open to our Associates, I think we should soon cease to complain that men who stand aloof from us reap the advantages in honor and remuneration that have been made possible for them by years of toil on the part of those in our Chapters. Instead of our seeking members, I think membership will be sought by all desirable men. are asked in print, "to show that an obscure man in the right is more to be honored than an eminent man under suspicion," and we are told that if we do this the younger architects "will gladly ally themselves with the organization and give it the new life that is vitally necessary now." action now proposed will, I think, in a measure answer this demand.

We

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Let us now pass from the criticisms on our efforts "to promote the practical efficiency of the profession." Then we are met promptly by quite different criticism on our attitude towards architecture as an art. It is charged that, as a body, we do not encourage original work, and that architecture, as understood by those influential in our affairs, is only a repetition of old forms and wellworn ornaments, applied without reason and as veneers to absolutely new constructive methods. Even if varied opinions assert themselves, it is said that most of us produce nothing but imitations, more or less feeble and inappropriate, of Parisian work, of Mediæval England, of Italy in the fifteenth century, or of Classic Rome itself. Perhaps the professors of architecture are worse than the architects themselves. They are described as "brooding like a blight over their schools," as lauding "symbols and figments," as "harkening to echoes," as pilfering "the spontaneity and charm of youth," and as setting up "the infallibility of tradition." But, the body of American architects, as a whole, are included in these anathemas, and we are told that the hope of the art lies with a new school that is to encourage indigenous and inventive architecture for America.

QUOTED FROM THE ARCHITECTURAL ANNUAL, 1900

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Those of us who have had as long a professional life as myself remember that in our early days the world of architecture was going to be changed by adherence to Mr. Ruskin's formulas, if not by loyalty to mediæval ideas. Since then, the pendulum has swung backwards and forwards, until we are coming to think that it does not matter whether the swing is to the right or to the left, but only whether the clock thus regulated is true to time. The chief value of any new movement is to be found in what it produces, and I believe that when it produces the interesting results we sometimes see, it will be found that they rest on immutable laws, well known and applicable to other and quite different work, and we shall find it passes for new only because of new or enthusiastic methods of presentation.

Happily, as I think, the horror of adapting to our uses ornamental forms endeared by long association is not widespread. Most of us shudder to think what our land would be if subjected to "a liberation of the curative impulse." This fear of plagiarism never affected architects in other ages. Wilars de Honcourt, for instance, after sketching the chapels of Rheims, writes: "In the next page you may see the elevations of the chapels of the Church of Rheims on the outside from the beginning to the end, just as they are. In the same manner will be those of Cambray if they are rightly made." Forthwith he makes his piers at Cambray like his sketch of Rheims, which really varied somewhat from the actual work now to be seen there. Nor are other arts affected by this fear. Nobody can be found who sees things more simply or says them more squarely than Rudyard Kipling. Though he might not like the statement, he is like an American in his ability to see straight, without prejudice or cant. He has told us Homer's methods of design, and perhaps what was good enough for Homer answers for some of

us.

When 'Omer smote 'is blooming lyre,
He' d'eard men sing by land an' sea,
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went and took- the same as me.

The market-girls an' fishermen,

The shepherds an' the sailors, too, They 'eard old songs turn up again, But kept it quiet-same as you.

They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at 'Omer down the road,
An' 'e winked back-the same as us!

Again, although he is not the first or only man to do so, Kipling has imagined the Master of all good workmen setting artists at work anew in the life to come. He says, the good painter may then "splash at a ten-leagued canvas with brushes of comet's hair." Others have dreamed that in the Master's workshop they might be set to design the more modest works of Nature. But if it shall ever be the happy lot of one of us to design a white-oak tree, we shall find it has to be done with time-worn details, with bark and leaves, and twigs and bud and acorn. Yet, the gracious adaption of these to surroundings and circumstances make every white oak an individual, with its own character, and with a beauty that is ever new and fresh. In short, we get no great encouragement to original and fanciful detail from the works of Nature.

It was said that our old university pastor thus lamented the conflict of sects and dogmas, when they all should tend to one and the same end. There was a farmer, he said, near Albany who raised grain. And when the grain was ripe one man told him to take it to market by rail, and one by the canal, and still a third by the road. But when he got to market, he found that nobody asked him anything but whether the grain was good.

Most of us recognize, and are moved to enthusiasm, by a good design even when presented to us in a strange and novel guise. Let us then welcome the help of our critics whenever they show us anything true, and beautiful and good.

I believe that I have thus laid before you in a general way the business that must receive your consideration, and those live issues regarding which our course is watched and is of importance. I trust we may have the wisdom to settle all these questions so that the Institute may prove itself worthy of its position as the national expression of a hard-working, scholarly, hopeful, youthful profession-to whom the necessities of breadwinning are made light by love for the art they practice.

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