Edifice

“ But alas! these sciences, arts and languages, are almost always mistaken for the edifice itself—an edifice whose external decorations are much more valued and regarded than the great purposes for which it should be constructed: in other words, it is prepared more for show than use—more to attract the admiration of others, than really to benefit for all time the vain possessor who is to live in it, and to derive lasting security, comfort and true enjoyment from the skilful adaptation of all its various parts to the complete attainment of these inestimable blessings. ”

“ As we wandered through the vast pillared courts, many chambers and curious passages, peered into the secret ways and underground and intermural alleys, and emerged upon the roof, we thought what a magnificent edifice it must have been for the gorgeous processions of the old worship, which are sculptured on the walls. ”

“ You stumble upon them in a drive or a walk. You catch a glimpse of an ivied front at the midmost point of a great estate, and taking your way, by leave of a serious old woman at a lodge-gate, along an overarching avenue, you find yourself introduced to an edifice so human-looking in its beauty, that it seems for the occasion to reconcile art and morality. ”

“ We have dwelt at some length upon the orientation of buildings, upon the importance attached to their angle stones, and upon the precautions taken to place an edifice under the protection of the gods, and to preserve the name of its founder from oblivion. ”

“ As the edifice is erected by diligently laying one stone upon another, until it finally becomes a splendid temple, piercing the heavens with its glittering spire, so a good name must be built up by good deeds, faithfully and constantly performed, as day after day carries us along amid the affairs of life. ”

“ The whole edifice, in spite of gross and many architectural faults—faults of construction, faults of arrangement—breathes a certain robust grace, a barbaric charm, making it the most interesting and most grateful of sanctuaries in our land. ”

“ For this reason, though we shall notice every class of edifice, it does not come within our proposed plan, to enter into any detailed consideration of the inferior buildings of each class, which afford no scope for the play of the imagination by their nature or size; but we shall generally select the most perfect and beautiful examples, as those in which alone the architect has the power of fulfilling the high purposes of his art. ”

“ THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE
I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them may contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.
It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building.
To build—literally, to confirm—is by common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. ”

“ Thus we have church building, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify; but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ”

“ In a little time a new edifice was projected, larger and more magnificent than the former, and thus better fitted to meet the wants of the age, and to indicate the progress and advancement of society. ”

“ Men skilled in architecture might do what we did not attempt: They might probably form an exact ground-plot of this venerable edifice. They may from some parts yet standing conjecture its general form, and perhaps by comparing it with other buildings of the same kind and the same age, attain an idea very near to truth. ”

“ Let us add that if it is according to rule that the architecture of a building should be adapted to its purpose in such a manner that this purpose shall be immediately apparent from the mere aspect of the building, one cannot be too much amazed at a structure which might be indifferently—the palace of a king, a chamber of communes, a town-hall, a college, a riding-school, an academy, a warehouse, a court-house, a museum, a barracks, a sepulchre, a temple, or a theatre. However, it is an Exchange. An edifice ought to be, moreover, suitable to the climate. ”

“ The first gathers the materials, the second constructs the edifice, the third, by use, by practical application, tests whether it be a fit building to live in, whether it is constructed on sound architectural principles. ”

“ For, supposing that we were for a moment to consider that we built a house merely to be lived in, and that the whole bent of our invention, in raising the edifice, is to be directed to the provision of comfort for the life to be spent therein ”

“ Such, then, are the principal points to be kept in view in the edifice itself. Of the mode of uniting it with the near features of foliage and ground, it would be utterly useless to speak: it is a question of infinite variety, and involving the whole theory of composition, so that it would take up volumes to develope principles sufficient to guide us to the result which the feeling of the practised eye would arrive at in a moment. ”

“ Now, we have defined the province of the architect to be, that of selecting such forms and colours as shall delight the mind, by preparing it for the operations to which it is to be subjected in the building. Now, no forms, in domestic architecture, can thus prepare it more distinctly than those which correspond closely with the first, that is, the fixed and fundamental, part of character, which is always so uniform in its action, as to induce great simplicity in whatever it designs. Nothing, on the contrary, can be more injurous than the slightest influence of the humours upon the edifice ”

“ Peter's the less easy it is to realize that so magnificent and wonderful an edifice has been constructed by man. Compare the stupendous structure with the puny attempts of the present day. Architecture seems almost a lost art. ”

“ Do not let the reader deceive himself by erecting in his imagination an edifice of brick or stone, with all the magnificent architectural display which belongs to the modern style of American cosmopolitan architecture. ”

“ The houses I may add, and especially the sacred edifices, are built in a peculiar and rather fantastic style of architecture. They are all whitewashed; so that when illumined by the brilliant sun of midday, and as seen against the pale blue sky of the horizon, they stand out more like shadows than real buildings. ”

“ You see the broad and well-paved way sweep through the long vista of palaces and public and private edifices, from one end of the city to the other; and the contrast between the bright blue sky above, and the screen of mountains which form the background far in the distance, enveloped in the clear aerial tints of this transparent atmosphere, combined with the variety of colouring and graceful proportions of the architecture, is more magnificent and beautiful than I can describe. ”

“ Many of those rock-hewn edifices, carved out of the living stone which supports the mountain, and are the chief portions of its foundation and structure, have beautiful friezes and entablatures, domes and cupolas, with elaborately arched doors and windows. ”

“ The traditions of architecture were limited to the fantastic elaboration of religious edifices; peasants dwelt in hovels, and citizens in dingy stone prisons, crowded into crooked and cobble-paved alleys. ”

“ Nobody could infer the master-mind in the top of that edifice from the edifice itself. ”

“ It is to these men, to their preeminent skill in architecture, and to their well-organized system as a class of workmen, that the world is indebted for those magnificent edifices which sprang up in such undeviating principles of architectural form during the middle ages. ”

“ These edifices, too, exhibit in their style something of the sturdy pride of their founders, presenting less of ornament and decoration than of domineering height and massive solidity, and striking the visitor rather by their strength than their elegance. ”

“ We shall commence with the lower class of edifices, proceeding from the road-side to the village, and from the village to the city; and, if we succeed in directing the attention of a single individual more directly to this most interesting department of the science of architecture, we shall not have written in vain. ”

“ We build our churches almost without regard to cost; we rear an edifice which is an adornment to the town, and we gild it, and fresco it, and mortgage it, and do everything we can think of to perfect it, and then spoil it all by putting a bell on it which afflicts everybody who hears it, giving some the headache, others St. ”

“ The architecture of these edifices (a visible oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house,—as if a man's bones should be arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the interstices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently picturesque effect. ”

“ Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. ”

“ But those who have advanced to the Kingdom of God have assuredly advanced to a sea of clear and limpid water and thus have attained unto the greatest bounty, the perfect rest and the eternal life to which there is no abrupt end. Their faces have shined with joy, their souls delighted with pleasure, their hearts illumined and their cups overflowed with abundance. Their edifice hath risen high, their palaces have been adorned, their suns shone, their stars gleamed and their diadems radiated with a dazzling light. ”

“ The loftiest edifices need the deepest foundations. ”

“ If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,—others to have danced forth to light, fantastic airs. ”

“ May we not hope to see our native granite reposing in the ever-during strength of the Doric, or springing up in the grand and lofty Gothic, in forms which beauty and utility, the eye and the judgment, taste and devotion, shall unite to approve and to admire? But while we regard sacred and civil architecture as highly important, let us not forget that other branch, so essential to personal comfort and happiness,—domestic architecture or common house-building. ”

“ The soul afterwards perfects her palace—building up tier after tier of all imaginable orders of architecture—till the shadowy roof, gleaming with golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set the heavens ablaze. ”

“ From about these two groups, more or less harmonized by intermediate examples, but always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility—to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. ”

“ If we are to have a fine architecture, we must begin at the other end from that where our sumptuously illustrated magazines on home-building and architecture begin—not with the building itself, but with the whole complex out of which architect, builder, and patron spring, and into which the finished building, whether it be a cottage or a skyscraper, is set. ”

“ As the building stands now, a mere shell, bereft of roof and floors, and with all, except its noble arches and cloisters, crumbling gradually to decay, it is a noble and impressive structure, and enough remains to estimate what it must have been when perfect. ”

“ In all classes of building, whether ecclesiastical, military, monastic, civic, domestic, commercial, or rustic, though the architecture was in reality one and the same, the treatment was absolutely and imperatively commanded by the purpose, and the expression followed by instinct. ”

“ Architecture should appeal most directly to your sympathies. For what is it but the art of making the building in which you have to live and work, or to transact your public affairs, or to pray, as convenient and as beautiful as in the fitness of things it should be. ”

“ Every architect will help erect A palace on a lawn of cloud, With rainbow beams and a sunset roof, And a level star-tiled floor; And at your will you may use the skill Of this gay angelic crowd, When a house is made you will throw it down, And they'll build you twenty more. ”

“ This is beautifully illustrated in architecture, where a monotonous multiplication of like elements is replaced by figures of differentiated elements. No longer is a uniform facade recognized as beautiful, but a variety of features in a variety of elements must be presented in order that a temple, a mart, an executive building, or a business structure may be considered as a pleasing example of architecture. ”

“ To complete the explanation of the construction of the building, we recapitulate its principal dimensions.
The magnitude of these proportions alone, is calculated to excite feelings of profound awe in the spectator’s mind; and when we see added the gorgeous but subdued chromatic decoration with which the interior is ornamented, and the innumerable works of art and industry with which it is so richly filled, we may well be proud of an erection which is destined to confer lasting honor on the American name. ”

“ Believe me, if you study architecture in this practical way, and cultivate your imagination in regard to convenient and beautiful forms of building, you will gain for yourselves a pleasure -giving faculty, and render yourselves, though indirectly, the means of helping your people as they rise in civilization to make their habitations, their buildings of assembly, rise in the standard of beauty too. ”