Column (architecture)

“ Sometimes the stalactite roofs are lofty, sometimes we have to bend our heads in order to pass from one vaulted chamber to another; here we have a superb column supporting an arch; here a pillar in course of formation, everywhere the strangest, most fantastic architecture, an architecture moreover that is the work of ages; one petrifying drop after another doing its apportioned work, column, arch, and roof being formed by a process so slow that the life-time of a human being hardly counts in the calculation. ”

“ Each of them presents a different series of proportions, mouldings, features, and ornaments, though the main forms of the buildings are the same in all. The column and its entablature (the technical name for the frieze, architrave, and cornice, forming the usual superstructure) being the most prominent features in every [84] such building, have come to be regarded as the index or characteristic from an inspection of which the order and the degree of its development can be recognised, just as a botanist recognises plants by their flowers. ”

“ In the best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled up to the root of the shaft, and the columns have no independent base; they stand on the even floor of their foundation.
§ VIII. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when the column is of great thickness in proportion to its height, and the sufficient firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor, is evident, it is the best of all, having a strange dignity in its excessive simplicity. ”

“ These arched openings being often wide, a good deal of disproportion between the height of the columns and their distance apart was liable to occur; and, partly to correct this, the column was often mounted upon a pedestal, to which the name of “stylobate” has been given.
It was also sometimes customary to place above the order, or the highest order where more than one was employed, what was termed an attic—a low story ornamented with piers or pilasters. ”

“ When I expressed enthusiasm over the column the architect ran his eye past the frieze to the top. "In the first place, that dominating group up there ought at once to express the character of the column. But it doesn't. You have to look twice and you have to look hard. One figure would have been more effective. But there is a prejudice among some sculptors against placing a single figure at the head of a column, though the Romans often did it. But if a group had to be used it could have been made much clearer. ”

“ It gave an opportunity for the employment of forms and motives which could not be [Pg 200] used at all, or used in a very restricted fashion, in more solid structures, such as palaces and temples. Of all these that which most closely results from the necessities of wooden or metal construction is the column, and we therefore find that it is in this tent-architecture that it takes on the characteristics that distinguish it from the Egyptian column and give it an originality of its own. ”

“ Both columns and pilasters are here again placed in pairs, the narrow intervals being narrower than in the Cancelleria, and in the portico the interval on the axis, opposite the portal, is wider than the other wide ones, while at each end a column is necessarily paired with a pilaster. The plain wall of the upper stories is uniformly rusticated and smooth-faced. The windows of the principal story are framed with mouldings of quiet classic profiling, have simple cornices on consoles, and are ranged on a podium with a ressaut under each window. ”

“ In some such way in the column the real art of building passes from that which is purely organic imitation to the definite purpose of scientific rule, and from this to a position which again approximates to the organic result. We find it necessary to draw attention to this twofold point of departure from the actual necessities and the purposeless self-subsistency of architecture, because the true type unites both principles. The beautiful column originates in the natural form, which is then transformed into the post, that is, it submits to the uniformity and scientific precision of form. ”

“ The pilasters of the ground story are raised on a panelled podium, while the columns of the upper story, and of the attic, are carried on consoles. The attic has no openings, and the columns of the small order here are equally spaced, with narrow intercolumniations, and an entablature block over each column in place of a continuous entablature. The ground story opening has a plain, round arch, while that of the upper story, which is arched also, is framed with a stilted order, and crowned with a broken pediment of curved outline. ”

“ How little modern Architects are capable of modifying the Ionic capital, and adapting it to particular circumstances, may be seen in [Pg 35] the colonnades of the façade of the British Museum, where, at the re-entering or internal angle formed by colonnades at right angles to each other, the column at the angle has two adjoining voluted faces given to it; but as a re-entering or inner angle is circumstanced quite differently from an external one, the consequence is that each of those faces falls opposite the baluster side of the columns ranging with it either way. ”

“ We may suppose that an architect has a porch to design, and that the owner of the house does not have a great deal of money to put in it. There are four turned columns, a cornice, with a rafter finish, and underneath, a space in which may be inserted a small band of inexpensive scroll-work. A knowledge of the earlier architecture comes to his assistance in a wonderful way. For the turning on the columns the architect may select that from a column of the early English Gothic architecture of the fourteenth century. ”

“ Four such arches forming a group, there are interposed two pairs of columns, as seen on the left of the same plate; and then come another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, not less than forty arches, perhaps of many more; and in the grace and simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves I hardly know its equal. Its like, in fancy of column, I certainly do not know; there being hardly two correspondent, and the architect having been ready, as it seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources whatsoever. The vegetation growing up the two columns is fine, though bizarre ”

“ ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. The Persians, like the Egyptians, used the column as an internal feature in hypostyle halls of great size, and externally to form porches, and perhaps, also, open kiosks without walls. ”

“ But the lower will seem to be larger, because it will project to the edge of the plinth. The astragals must be one eighth of the trochilus. The projection of the base will be three sixteenths of the thick­ness of a column.
4. The bases being thus finished and put in place, the columns are to be put in place: the middle columns of the front and rear porticoes perpendicular to their own centre ”

“ There is no place in which architectural sculpture can be more fittingly displayed than in the capital of a column. It is the most convenient, and at the same time the most conspicuous, position for it. It is, too, the most important feature in every design in which the detached column is used. The gathering together of all the arch mouldings into one above the capital, in order that their forces may be collected before being transmitted to the ground, leads naturally to the laying of a special emphasis on this point above all others ”

“ When there are decorated wall-faces either external or internal, the compositions must follow the rules of the Orders in the matter of the columns, so that the shafts of the columns be not too long nor slender, not over thick nor short, but that the dignity of the several Orders be always observed. Nor should a heavy capital or base be connected with a slender column, but in proportion to the body must be the members, that they may have an elegant and beautiful appearance and design. ”

“ The proportion of voussoirs to arches naturally depended upon the size of the arch,—large voussoirs to large arches, small voussoirs to small arches. Columns were only grouped around piers and on either side of openings; and lastly, the natural development of the column in Romanesque work was toward attenuation,—the later and the better the work, the more slender became the columns, until at last they were merged into the Gothic multiple-columned piers. The carving upon the arch-mouldings is, to a great extent, geometric, consisting of numerous facets cut in the stone, lozenges, etc. ”

“ Doric order, frusta of columns without fluting of any description, soffits decorated with geometric forms, small entablatures, evidently belonging to the interior of the ruined part of the building, and fragments of the superior cornice. No doubt, the square pillars supported columns crowned with a pediment of some sort, and leaving between them an open vista to expose to view and protect some notable object, such as a statue or a sarcophagus.
The whole building is formed of beautifully cut stone, joined with great perfection. No trace of mortar can be perceived. ”

“ PARTHENON ELEVATION SHOWING PORTION OF PEDIMENT FRIEZE AND COLUMNS.
The cornice, again, is emphasized by mouldings marking the important horizontal lines of the building, re-echoed by the lines of the frieze, and counteracted and braced by the emphatic vertical lines of the triglyphs, and enriched by the little dentils below.
Then we come to the cap of the Doric column. It is simplicity itself. A thin square block of marble forms the abacus. ”

“ It is from such a point of view that he proceeds to consider the building art of the Middle Ages and our own time and affirms: "The column is of no value as a constituent feature of our dwellings: it rather contradicts the essence of all our buildings. Our houses do not consist of four columns in four corners; they consist of four walls on four sides, which stand in the place of all columns, totally exclude such, and where they are thrust in they are a burdensome superfluity. ”

“ It is a very beautiful characteristic of classic architecture not to set up more columns than are actually necessary to carry the weight of the rafter and that which reposes thereon. In genuine architecture columns, for purposes of mere decoration, are not truly beautiful. For the same reason also columns which stand up entirely alone do not perform their true function. ”

“ The head of the column crossed the square, passed behind the church and disappeared, but still the tide poured on with slow and regular undulation, dim, mysterious, and threatening. At last the rear of the column came into view, passed, disappeared; the clatter of iron on stone softened to a shuffle, to a murmur, died away. ”

“ A pair of Corinthian monolithic disengaged columns flank each arch, behind which are pilasters. Each column stands upon its own pedestal, and not, as is usually the case in African monuments, upon one common to each pair of columns.
The soffits supported by these, and also the central ceiling, were richly decorated. The entablature is composed of a highly ornate architrave, with rounded leaves at the angles, above which is a cornice. There is also a lofty frieze, as though for the reception of an inscription, and this also is surmounted by a cornice. ”

“ Aræostyle, or wide spacing,—and ditriglyphic Doric intercolumniation may be called such,—produces an effect of openness and lightness, but also partakes of meagreness and weakness, owing to the want of sufficient apparent support for the entablature,—a very frequent fault in Modern Architecture, where frugality as to columniation has often been allowed to produce a degree of poverty which contrasts very disagreeably with that of the decoration affected by the Order itself. ”

“ A tall stone column, the column of the worthy Simon Stylites, who piled it up, stone upon stone, year after year, with his own hands, being wont to sit there for days together with arms extended in the shape of a cross, bowing himself thousands and thousands of times a day till his head touched his feet. ”

“ It is composed of about forty thousand upright stone columns which are fitted closely together, the cracks between them being very narrow but showing plainly the sides of each column.
Most of the columns have five, six, or seven sides; some have four or eight; a very few have nine; and there is one among the forty thousand which has only three sides. ”

“ The children looked in the required direction and saw, flooded in moonlight, a tall, beautifully fluted column, to which was attached a piece of broken ceiling.
“That was once part of the monument you shall presently see as it looked in its first beauty,” he continued. “Come, mount upon my back. We tarry too long in this narrow place where there is scarce room to move, encumbered as it is by these fragments of the past. Let us away to sunshine and blue sky!” ”

“ In Romanesque work the classic proportions are no longer adhered to; the engaged column, attached to the piers, has always a special function to perform, either to support subsidiary arches, or, raised to the vault, to carry its transverse or diagonal ribs. ”

“ In consequence of the known simplicity and regularity of most antique edifices, the task of restoration, by means of drawings and models, is much less difficult than might be supposed. The ground work, or some sufficient parts of it, commonly extant, shows the length and breadth of the building, with the positions of the walls, doors and columns. A single column, or part of a column, whether standing or fallen, with a fragment of the entablature, furnishes data from which the remainder of the colonnade and the height of the edifice can be made out. ”