Fillet (architecture)

“ As I have said on other occasions, a Mediæval barn is as good and as true in its architecture as a cathedral; both are essentially in the same style, yet one is as obviously a barn and as absolutely subservient to the requirements of a barn, as the other is a church. One has no windows, but slits of some 4 inches wide, and yet looks as Gothic as the other, which has more window than wall. ”

“ In the designing of school buildings nowadays close attention is paid to beauty of architecture, symmetry of form, convenience of arrangement, and durable but artistic furnishings. All unwittingly the child receives an aesthetic training through his daily life in the midst of attractive surroundings.
Many of our rural schools are doing excellent work in teaching children to beautify the school grounds. ”

“ But if American girls are trying sculpture, no woman of us all, I believe, has attempted architecture, which is strange; for little girls often find the greatest amusement in making ground-plans on the slate, and ladies frequently suggest the whole idea of their houses to the architect, and sometimes complain bitterly of the mistakes of the builders in carrying it out. So, whether they would ever aspire to cathedrals or not, I am sure women would succeed in planning the loveliest and completest of homes. ”

“ Trees of various kinds should be planted in appropriate places, and groups of shrubbery should help to form an attractive setting. The school grounds should have a serviceable fence and gate and there should be a playground and a school garden.
Architecture of Building.—No school building should be erected that has not first been planned or passed upon by an architect; this is now required by law in some states. A building with handsome appearance and with appropriate appointments is but a trifle, if any, more costly than one that has none. ”

“ I cannot be persuaded, however, even by the numerous examples of this practice, that it is not absurd for pillars to support pillars: it seems as if children were playing at architecture, and trying how high they could make their building reach. ”

“ All things in these schools—buildings, teachers, and pupils—were according to pattern, and engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony.
These brief descriptions contained volumes of protest against the dead uniformity of school architecture, and against the sacrifice of individuality in schools. There are no other buildings in which there should be more care taken to have truly artistic architecture than in schools, because the children are influenced so much by their environment. ”

“ School architecture, especially where populations are dense, has become an important science, involving problems of light, heat, ventilation, etc., together with questions of furniture, fire-proof construction and playgrounds. ”

“ On the inner side of the nursery, a door leads into a large closet, or child's sleeping-room, 9×8 feet; or it may be used as a dressing-room, with a sash inserted in the door to light it. A door may also lead from it into the small rear entry of the house, and thus pass directly out, without communicating with the nursery. On the extreme left corner of the nursery is a door leading into the back entry, by which it communicates either with the rear porch, the dining-room, or the kitchen. ”

“ The spire is the simplest part of the Romanesque or Gothic architecture, and needs least study in order to be felt. It is a bit of sentiment almost pure of practical purpose. It tells the whole of its story at a glance, and its story is the best that architecture had to tell, for it typified the aspirations of man at the moment when man's aspirations were highest. ”

“ The façade of the north side of the court of Kirby Hall, for instance, is divided into bays by colossal pilasters of hybrid style, which have not even a semblance of structural meaning, since they carry only ressauts of an entablature, the total height of which is less than the diameters of the pilasters. ”

“ Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end, would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive; ”

“ Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every twenty years, we must double our houses. Besides, we build of such perishable materials, that one half of our houses must be rebuilt in every space of twenty years, so that in 405 that time, houses are to be built for three-fourths of our inhabitants. It is, then, among the most important arts; and it is desirable to introduce taste into an art which shows so much. ”

“ If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure. ”

“ For this book does not show of what architecture is composed, but treats of the origin of the building art, how it was fostered, and how it made progress, step by step, until it reached its present perfection. ”

“ The architect should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory. ”

“ All these must be built with due reference to durability, convenience, and beauty. Durability will be assured when foundations are carried down to the solid ground and materials wisely and liberally selected; convenience, when the arrangement of the apartments is faultless and presents no hindrance to use, and when each class of building is assigned to its suitable and appropriate exposure; and beauty, when the appearance of the work is pleasing and in good taste, and when its members are in due proportion according to correct principles of symmetry. ”

“ The lower walls of the interior of the square beneath this vault have an order of pilasters, and over the entablature of this order are arched windows, one on the north and the other on the south side, each of which has a mullion and jamb shafts of the Certosa tapering type, and pseudo-Gothic tracery. Most of the details of this interior are of stone, which give it a more monumental character than the buildings before noticed have. The outside is of brick, the square part being plain, with simple angle buttresses, and crowned with a cornice of classic profiling. ”

“ The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is no doubt a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect. ”

“ He who wishes to avoid such a disaster should leave a cavity behind the facings, and on the inside build walls two feet thick, made of red dimension stone or burnt brick or lava in courses, and then bind them to the fronts by means of iron clamps and lead. For thus his work, being no mere heap of material but regularly laid in courses, will be strong enough to last forever without a flaw, because the beds and builds, all settling equally and bonded at the joints, will not let the work bulge out, nor allow the fall of the face walls which have been tightly fastened together. ”

“ The laws of the state forbid that walls abutting on public property should be more than a foot and a half thick. The other walls are built of the same thickness in order to save space. Now brick walls, unless two or three bricks thick, cannot support more than one story; certainly not if they are only a foot and a half in thickness. ”

“ They therefore select a natural hillock, run a trench through the middle of it, dig passages, and extend the interior space as widely as the site admits. Over it they build a pyramidal roof of logs fastened together, and this they cover with reeds and brushwood, heaping up very high mounds of earth above their dwellings. Thus their fashion in houses makes their winters very warm and their summers very cool. ”

“ This building was designed by a student of school problems, and is not merely a theory of the architect. Each room, and each detail, articulates with every other room in harmony with a general scheme of which the child and his interests are the prime considerations. The well-being of the child takes precedence over the reputation of the architect. Every nook of the building has its specific function, and this function has vital reference to the child. The location of each piece of furniture can be explained from the viewpoint of the child, and the architectural scheme is considered subsidiary. ”

“ To accomplish the majestically practical work, to shape the whole architecture like a statue, base nothing on impossible modifications of human nature; await nothing from pity. ”

“ The so-called baby-house was an old-fashioned cupboard with glass doors, where certain tender dolls, and other curiosities, playthings too frail to be played with and the like, were ranged in good order, and never taken out except when some one child was unwell, and had to stay in-doors alone. ”

“ In so far as he shares our own physical needs for shelter and convenience he is benefited; but, as a child, with his own specific necessities, desires, and limitations, what has the architect planned for the child—what have the mason and carpenter built for the child? Is there anything in the size and proportion, the material, the internal arrangement, the finish and decoration, to hint of the existence of children on earth?
The most that we find, in the most favoured houses, is "a sunny nursery." In one home of a thousand we find one room out of a dozen planned for children. ”

“ Ten little boys in blue-striped blouses and dark-blue neckties, ten little girls in blue-checked aprons and dark-blue hair-ribbons fixed their eyes on the big folding doors and thought the time for them to open would never come.
All day long excitement had reigned supreme in the Children’s Home, a roomy comfortable house set on the very edge of the big city, and where were gathered the motherless and fatherless children who found love and care under its hospitable roof. ”

“ Since such very powerful kings have not disdained walls built of brick, although with their revenues and from booty they might often have had them not only of masonry or dimension stone but even of marble, I think that one ought not to reject buildings made of brick-work, provided that they are properly "topped." ”

“ By the side of the models of the school-rooms, where children find school-furniture studied with painstaking care and proportioned to their stature, have been placed the works executed by the school-children themselves of every kind, primary, maternal and professional. These works, in a general way, prove an average aptitude for the industrial arts, and indicate a real taste for beautiful forms. A hall is wholly set apart for the pupils of the special schools. ”

“ On the top of the wall lay a structure of burnt brick, about a foot and a half in height, under the tiles and projecting like a coping. Thus the defects usual in these walls can be avoided. For when the tiles on the roof are broken or thrown down by the wind so that rainwater can leak through, this burnt brick coating will prevent the crude brick from being damaged, and the cornice-like projection will throw off the drops beyond the vertical face, and thus the walls, though of crude brick structure, will be preserved intact. ”

“ Let the window, or what is better, the windows, of a nursery be very large, so as to thoroughly light up every nook and corner of the room, as there is nothing more conducive to the health of a child than an abundance of light in the dwelling. A room cannot, then, be too light. The windows of a nursery are generally too small. A child requires as much light as a plant. Gardeners are well aware of the great importance of light in the construction of their greenhouses, and yet a child, who requires it as much, and is of much greater importance, is cooped up in dark rooms! ”

“ A school according to the engraved plan, will be found large enough for all the purposes of an infant school; but if it is wished to be more commodious, it may be of the same length as the plan, and instead of twenty-two feet, may be made thirty feet wide; this will hold as many children as ought to be collected together in one place, and as many as any man and woman can possibly do justice to if it be any longer, it will be difficult for all the children to hear the master. An oblong building is the cheapest, on account of the roof. ”

“ In this municipal Children’s House we would find groups of child artisans, fashioning boards and molding bricks to make the buildings for a toy village. There would be little sculptors and painters, and perhaps a child poet or dramatist. We would see small modistes and milliners learning, through designing doll costumes, the finger deftness and artistic sense which come from combining beautiful colors and textiles. Such a Children’s House would have its own kitchen, where the children could study foodstuffs and cook and serve simple meals. ”

“ Building blocks are truly, as Froebel puts it, "the finest and most variable material that can be offered a boy for purposes of representation." The little boxes associated with the Kindergarten were originally planned for the use of nursery children two to three years of age, and in most if not in all Kindergartens these have been replaced by larger bricks. It is many years now since, at Miss Payne's suggestion, we bought some hundreds of road paving blocks, and these are such a source of pleasure that the children often dream about them. ”

“ Hence, in swampy places, alder piles driven close together beneath the foundations of buildings take in the water which their own consistence lacks and remain imperishable forever, supporting structures of enormous weight and keeping them from decay. Thus a material which cannot last even a little while above ground, endures for a long time when covered with moisture. ”