Baluster (architecture)

“ The wide muntins of the small paned windows, the well spaced string courses, and the oblong panels of blue marble beneath the windows of the upper floor, diversify the surface and impart a grace that quite prevents the impression of dumpy stodginess that less carefully managed Georgian façades sometimes give. A white balustrade, running the length of the building and set where the pitch of the roof breaks into a much flattened gambrel to form a deck, affords an additional note of grace and lightness comporting well with the triple chimneys with arch-joined tops at each gable end. ”

“ The molding is the same; there is the same upward sweep of the ramped rail, and it is also capped with dark wood. On the landing dainty little fluted pilasters support the surbase, their fine scale lending much grace and refinement. One notices there also the beautiful beveled paneling of the window embrasures, the paneled soffit of the Palladian window and its built-in seat. The balustrade is of sturdy conventional type characteristic of the period. Two attractively turned balusters grace each stair, their bases alike and otherwise differing only in the length of their tapering shafts. ”

“ The balconies formed by the ledges over the lower arches are enclosed with balustrades, and balustrades connect the buttresses over the main cornice. The roof is very low and invisible, thus there are no dormers, but large chimneys ornamented with blind arcading break the sky line.
Such is the early Renaissance architecture of France. Notwithstanding its factitiousness, and its ornamental incongruities, it still has, as I have said, a distinctly French expression, though it has not the reasonable character of the native art of the Middle Ages in its integrity. ”

“ From the capitals are carried festoons, which meet with masks and other ornaments in the middle. This series is also crowned with its proper entablature, on which is raised the balustrade with Attic pedestals between, which crown the work. Every thing in this building is finely proportioned, and as happily executed. The projection of the columns from the wall has a fine effect in the entablatures, which being brought forward in the same proportion, gives that happy diversity of light and shade so essential to fine architecture. ”

“ Lionel and Lady Montfort now came before the windows of the house, which was not large for the rank of the owner, but commodious, with no pretence to architectural beauty—dark-red brick, a century and a half old—irregular; jutting forth here, receding there, so as to produce that depth of light and shadow which lends a certain picturesque charm even to the least ornate buildings—a charm to which the Gothic architecture owes half its beauty. ”

“ As there is no longer a real court or nobility to give the tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never, on the other hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways of imitating the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more talent, in distributing them. Propose to an architect to build upon the garden at the back of an old mansion, and he will run you up a little Louvre overloaded with ornament. He will manage to get in a courtyard, stables, and if you care for it, a garden. ”

“ Rich in effect, yet essentially simple in design, it has grace in every line, is not too ornate and displays splendid workmanship. Again a spiral design is conspicuous in the stair balustrades, and the curved newel treatment recalls that of the foregoing stoop. The balustrade of the platform consists of a simple diaper pattern of intersecting arcs with the familiar evolute band above and below. The wing flight was a convenient arrangement for double houses, as instanced by the old Billmeyer house in Germantown, with its exceedingly130 plain iron handrail and straight spindles. ”

“ The house itself is full of [104] interest; all the rooms on the basement and principal floor are vaulted, and the vaulting ribs and corbels are managed with such care as was seldom bestowed upon those features even in the days of stone vaulting. This method of construction was rapidly going out of fashion, most of the houses of the sixteenth century having floors of joists and boards, the underside being ceiled in the early part of the century with wood, and in the latter with plaster. But at Bolsover, as late as 1613, we have stone vaulting beautifully wrought. ”

“ The wainscot consists of a charmingly varied paneling, while the balustrade is lighter in treatment than was usually the case. A simple dark wood handrail, slender, square molded balusters and stairs having a low rise and broad treads lend grace of appearance rarely equaled. Jig-sawed outline brackets of unusually harmonious scroll pattern placed under the molded overhang of the treads provide additional ornamentation of a refined character. The spiral newel is but a simpler form of those already alluded to. ”

“ Still worse was the insistence of the Commissioners on the balustrade which crowns the upper cornice. Wren’s letter to them in October, 1717, was a vigorous protest for a man of eighty-five. “I take leave, first, to declare that I never designed a balustrade. Persons of little skill in architecture did expect, I believe, to see something they had been used to in Gothic structures, and ladies think nothing well without an edging. ”

“ Now, where the roof was thus a place of frequent resort, there could be no more useful decoration than a balustrade; nor one more appropriate or beautiful, than occasional statues in attitudes of watchfulness, expectation, or observation: and even now, wherever the roof is flat, we have an idea of convenience and facility of access, which still renders the balustrade agreeable, and the statue beautiful, if well designed. It must not be a figure of perfect peace or repose, far less should it be in violent action ”

“ Here an order of rusticated Doric pilasters, supporting an entablature with channelled consoles in the place of triglyphs, and a cornice surmounted with a balustrade forming a balcony to the story above, divides the basement wall into alternately wide and narrow bays. A round-arched window in each bay has a heavy keystone in the form of a sculptured bust, which forms at the same time a corbel to the entablature. The unequal spacing of the pilasters leads to an awkward irregularity in the spacing of the channelled consoles which do duty as triglyphs in the frieze. ”

“ There is also a great deal of architecture in the private houses in the villages. A decorated doorway, with a window on each side, and a bold projecting balcony over it is the usual disposition. Sometimes the house is continued above this, with a large arch opening onto the balcony; sometimes the higher part of the edifice is set back, and the balustrade of the balcony is continued in front of a terrace, and in either case the appearance is very handsome, and the parts are never crowded together. The fault of these villages is, that they have nothing rural about them. ”

“ The problem which the wealthy orders set themselves was, like that of the Lombard church-builders in Italy, to adapt the basilica plan to the exigencies of vaulted construction. Massive walls, round arches stepped or recessed to lighten their appearance, heavy mouldings richly carved, clustered piers and jamb-shafts, capitals either of the cushion type or imitated from the Corinthian, 164 and strong and effective carving—all these are features alike of French, German, English, and Spanish Romanesque architecture. ”

“ Rising ramp after ramp by broad treads and low risers, it leads first to a broad landing in front lighted by the Palladian window over the entrance, and thence upward and around to a gallery across the opposite wall, where a broad double doorway with delightful fanlight above leads into the main hall of the second floor. To the right a narrow staircase rises to the belfry. The classic balustrade, with its mahogany-capped rail and simple landing newels is heavy but well proportioned ”

“ The small arches of the present balustrade are cut mercilessly through the old work, and the profile of the balustrade is cut out of what was once the back of the stone; only some respect is shown for the crosses in the old design, the blocks are cut so that these shall be not only left uninjured, but come in the centre of the balustrades.
§ XXXII. Now let the reader observe carefully that this balustrade of Murano is a fence of other things than the low gallery round the deserted apse. It is a barrier between two great schools of early architecture. ”

“ Peter's, an attic is interposed, but to spring a vault from an attic wall is an architectural barbarism; though it is perhaps no greater one than to spring it from an entablature, as the architects of the Renaissance had done from Brunelleschi down. In the small order of the aisles the entablature is simplified, and has only an architrave and cornice; while a member, like a diminutive attic, in retreat of the cornice, is interposed at the impost. ”

“ Those in the upper storey are round-headed, those in the lower are square-headed and are surmounted by plain architraves, alternately round and pointed. The [286] whole building is surrounded by an order of composite pilasters, cut square save near the doors, where they are round and fluted. Above the cornice is a balustrade, broken judiciously by the pediments of the entrances, which give the building its distinctive feature. The whole is one of the best specimens of early Georgian architecture in England, and the interior is perfectly consonant with the simple grandeur of the outside. ”

“ The blocks of stone are in many cases much larger than they appear, channels being cut upon them to simulate joints. The arch of one window, for instance, which by the rustication would appear to be made up of fourteen voussoirs, has in reality only three. The same lack of conformity of the simulated jointing with the true masonry joints is noticeable also in many parts of the façade of the Riccardi, and I know not how general this treatment may be in the architecture of the Renaissance. ”

“ The balusters are raised on a plinth, which corresponds to the plinth of the pedestal, and surmounted by a rail of horizontal mouldings, which correspond to the capping of the pedestal; hence the baluster is of the same height as the die. ”

“ Precedents for many of these Renaissance aberrations of design may be found in ancient Roman art, and this particular one is foreshadowed at Baalbek, where in the pediment already noticed (p. 95) the entablature, as well as the raking cornice, is broken, the middle part being set back in the plane of the wall, and the parts over the supporting pilasters forming ressauts. But I know of no ancient instance in which the entablature is completely removed between the ressauts, unless the one figured by Serlio [94] (reproduced in Fig. 64) be ancient. ”

“ In the transept, however, the triforium is differently designed, being subdivided into coupled arches, and supported by stone shafts. Many of these shafts are balusters (most likely of Offa’s church) made use of again, with the addition of a Norman capital and base, and sometimes eked out in length by the interposition of Roman tiles (Fig. 254) . Like the balusters I have had the opportunity of examining at Dover and at Jarrow, [26] they bear evident marks of having been turned in a lathe. ”

“ From every position, and with all lights of the day or night, they are equally perfect, and carry your eyes continually away from the peristyle of the smaller temple, which is better preserved, and from the exquisite architecture of the outer courts and pavilions. The two temples of Baalbec stand on an artificial platform of masonry, a thousand feet in length, and from fifteen to thirty feet (according to the depression of the soil) in height. The larger one, which is supposed to have been a Pantheon, occupies the whole length of this platform. ”

“ In design it is generally interesting and scholarly, though there is common to all of it the defect of being too small to be thoroughly well seen and thoroughly effective. The uniformity of this defect of scale seems to prove that the architect erred in estimating the effect of his design in the colorless material employed. The decoration of the recess of the balcony, too, loses effect by being entirely unrelated to the construction, and the stone trellis with which the turret at the angle is overlaid is equally irrelevant to the object to which it is applied. ”

“ The shaft of an order has not, indeed, a proper form for an abutment, and has no buttress expression. Its resistance to thrust is slight, but it is better than nothing at all. Following Sansovino, the architect has introduced a balustrade in each opening of the arcade, and a continuous one as a crowning feature of the cornice.
Palladio himself thought well of this work, and he does not hesitate to say in his book that it will bear comparison with the most beautiful buildings of antiquity. ”

“ It is not so much that the walls are thin, as that they have disappeared: there are no walls—only a series of piers dividing windows, the opening filled with glass being much greater, if measured along a horizontal line running through the windows, than is the extent of the solid masonry. You see at once wherein there is an excuse for the saying “a wall of glass with a roof of stone.” But there is more than this: the primary object of the designer has been to treat his construction as the main inspiration of his design. ”