Public building

“ They do not overlook, of course, a beautiful public building in this city or that, perhaps ten altogether, or an occasional private residence on Millionaire Avenue, which are monuments to the genius of the men who created them and of which any country may be proud. What they mean is that as a people we seek and secure the right combination of utility and beauty in our homes more frequently in the country than in the city. ”

“ The streets are so wide that they seem out of proportion to the low brick buildings. The principal public buildings, constructed of brick and stucco, are the government-house, assembly building, treasury, municipal hall, cathedral, courts of justice, police headquarters, provincial museum and railway station. ”

“ There are also libraries, residences for all the officers of the House, on a scale of the most princely magnificence, and more than a score of committee-rooms abutting off the longest corridors of any public building in the world, not excepting the Escurial in Spain. Everywhere you may see acres of polished oak above and around you. ”

“ The architecture of public buildings was varied, unique, superb, and in complete contrast to the monotonous sameness of private dwellings. Skilled architects had planned that no two government buildings should in any way be similar. ”

“ The tendency to award the designing of important public buildings, such as State capitols, county court houses, city halls, libraries, and hospitals, by competition instead of by personal and political favor, has resulted in a marked improvement in the quality of American public architecture. ”

“ Then, on the squares, at the points where the avenues met, rose the many public buildings, huge piles in which triumphed steel and iron. Their magnificence was compounded of simplicity, of logical fitness for the purpose for which they were intended, and of intelligence in the choice of materials and style of decoration. In these buildings it was intended that the people should be at home; the museums, libraries, theatres, baths, laboratories, meeting and amusement halls were but so many common-houses, open to the entire community. ”

“ One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a pair of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often before any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining engine. ”

“ To sacrifice the health of the sick to splendour of architectural effect, to place the building in a bad air only that it may present a more commanding front to a great public place, to make the wards hotter or cooler than they ought to be, in order that the columns and windows of the exterior may please the passers-by, would be monstrous. ”

“ The new city is laid out on a magnificent scale of distances, with wide streets, fine, open squares, plenty of room for gardens, both public and private; and the art buildings and art monuments are well distributed; in fact, many a stately building stands in such isolation that it seems to ask every passer what it was put there for. ”

“ All the interspaces between the backs of houses are gardens. The churches, hospitals, theatres, banks, lecture-rooms, and other public buildings, as well as some private buildings such as warehouses and stables, stand alone, forming parts of streets, and occupying the position of several houses. ”

“ Walk the streets of London; everywhere you will see huge blocks of ready-made decoration, pilasters and porticoes, friezes and façades, hoisted on cranes to hang from ferro-concrete walls. Public buildings have become public laughing-stocks. They are as senseless as slag-heaps, and far less beautiful. ”

“ They need also libraries, picture galleries, and basilicas, finished in a style similar to that of great public buildings, since public councils as well as private law suits and hearings before arbitrators are very often held in the houses of such men. ”

“ The city does not deceive itself into supposing that that great building is a unit from which the police are to keep out and the civic authority to be excluded, but it says: "These are public highways, and light is needed in them, and control by the authority of the city." ”

“ Under the head of Municipal Architecture is included every application of the science to those purposes of social life not included under the former heads, such as public buildings of all descriptions connected with the civil business of life, up to the arrangements of entire cities. Men, therefore, must have been assembled together for some time, they must have agreed upon certain compacts and regulations of society, before this branch could have made any progress in the world. ”

“ But where the broad avenue, at midway, spreads still wider, forming a spacious square, are thickly clustered the public buildings of the town and county,—together with the meeting-houses, the taverns, the bank, the shops, and a few handsome dwellings, whose large dimensions and ornate style show them to be the abodes of people of wealth and consideration. ”

“ Public buildings of course demand the first attention; and in a country like our own, owing its prosperity to its commercial enterprise, its political organisation, and its unequalled system of municipal government, we have witnessed in the course of the last few years the commencement, progress, and completion of costly and magnificently adorned buildings. ”

“ No construction or erection in a city of the first class of any building, bridge or its approaches, arch, gate, fence, or other structure or fixture which is to be paid for wholly or in part by appropriation from the city treasury or other public funds, or for which the city or any other public authority is to furnish a site, shall be begun until the approval of the jury shall have been given to the design and proposed location thereof. ”

“ All the churches, halls, district court-house, theater, and other public buildings are finer than those destroyed in the big fire, and again are seen trees and grounds of handsome appearance in various parts of the city. ”

“ If any one will stand in the front of the building, which is only 450 feet in length, he will be able to count no less than thirteen different fronts, none of them differing much in extent; the composition is thus broken up, the unity and mass of the building are lost, and the repose and dignity which should characterize an important public edifice are entirely wanting. ”

“ Having laid out the alleys and determined the streets, we have next to treat of the choice of building sites for temples, the forum, and all other public places, with a view to general convenience and utility. If the city is on the sea, we should choose ground close to the harbour as the place where the forum is to be built ”

“ The public buildings, which are the town-house, of two stories, with low pillared arches, and the church, are all that strike the eye of the stranger; the others are comprised of some few one-story dwelling houses and stores, with huge doors and barred windows, occupied by citizens and small dealers. ”

“ It is evident that the predominating object in designing a plan for the city, was first to secure the most eligible situations for the different public buildings, and to arrange the squares and areas so that the most extended views might be obtained from every direction. ”

“ Palaces, and the chief public buildings, in a city are, from a variety of causes, transferred to new sites; and the cities, of which they must be the centres, must correlate themselves to the sites of the new buildings. ”

“ With reference to the interior of the new Houses of Parliament generally, I would suggest that the walls of the several halls, galleries, and corridors of approach, as well as the various public apartments throughout the building, should be decorated with paintings having reference to events in the history of the country, and that those paintings should be placed in compartments formed by such a suitable arrangement of the architectural design of the interior, as will best promote their effective union with the arts of sculpture and architecture. ”

“ The public buildings of this country, no longer laughing-stocks for foreigners, are at once spacious, beautiful, substantial and convenient. In them the new American style of architecture, [67] in which proportions are of more value than arrangement, finds fitting types on every hand. ”

“ Later the social activities in educational, charitable and recreational lines, become organized and evidence themselves in schools, hospitals, theatres and clubs, increasing diversity of function resulting in increased diversity of structure. Analyzing city land according to its utilization, it may be divided into three main classes, that used for business, that for residences and that for public or semi-public buildings. ”

“ Our public buildings, which with scarcely an exception are either ludicrously mean or obtrusively hideous, now occupy conspicuous positions in every station and municipality, and, being naturally accepted as models for imitation, are rapidly accustoming the native eye to what is vulgar and tasteless. What weight in the opposite scale can be attributed to the teaching of a few schools or an occasional grant for the restoration of an ancient palace or temple? ”

“ Again, many reservations have passed from public into private ownership, with the result that public buildings have lost their appropriate surroundings, and new structures have been built without that landscape setting which the founders of the city relied on to give them beauty and dignity. ”

“ The shops, the houses, the public buildings, the parks, the streets, the recreation grounds, then followed in intelligent creation. Its public buildings are fine, and the grouping of them about the open flower-planted spaces is very effective. It is a handsome city, with the single drawback of monotony in the well-built houses. ”

“ There are many fine public buildings, and yet they can lay no special claim to architectural excellence. The old streets are narrow, crooked, and in some places ascended by steps, on an angle of forty-five degrees ”

“ One of the patriotic members of the city government, distinguished for his enterprise, and his public spirit, undertook the job, and gave to the ancient walls of unhewn stone their existing "form and pressure;"—at an amount, too, not much exceeding, probably, twice the cost of two new buildings of the same dimensions.
Architecture is one of the crowning glories of a city; and nothing more strongly indicates the cultivation of a people, than refinement in this beautiful department of science. ”

“ Owing to this favour I need have no fear of want to the end of my life, and being thus laid under obligation I began to write this work for you, because I saw that you have built and are now building extensively, and that in future also you will take care that our public and private buildings shall be worthy to go down to posterity by the side of your other splendid achievements. ”

“ The city plan, for example, establishes metes and bounds, fixes in a general way the location and character of the city's constructions, and imposes an orderly arrangement, within the city area, upon the buildings which are erected by private initiative as well as by public authority. ”

“ Adjoining the town hall, and covering fully an acre of land, is a handsome block of buildings, devoted to the various Government departments, including the Treasury, Railways, Lands and Survey, Public Works, and Post Office. ”

“ Under the legislation cited, developments of private property may be to a considerable extent controlled, bill-boards may be abolished, structures may be limited in height, the design of private buildings may be modified, solely in the interest of the public’s sense of beauty. ”

“ Even the great plate-glass windows lined within and without by comfortable chairs commanding, as they did, the principal public square or park and all the fascinating forces of so vigorous and young a town, were such as would naturally be occupied by the bloods and sports of the village, the traveling salesmen, and the idling big-wigs of political and other realms. ”

“ There should be at least four out-buildings, detached from the main edifice and from each other, and in such positions as shall at once answer the purposes of the institution, and be consistent with the symmetry of the whole establishment: each building should be, as far as practicable, devoted to a distinct purpose ”

“ Some of the houses are handsome, but the greater number have a compressed, squeezed-up aspect, which arises from the compulsory narrowness of frontage in proportion to the height of the building, and all of them are bright and new, as if they were just finished to order,—a most astonishing proof of the rapid development of the city. ”

“ The administration was then renovating it from top to bottom, opening streets and squares in the middle of the old quarters, constructing spacious promenades and gardens, and sumptuous public edifices, in a word, giving air and light and splendour and beauty to a city which was already beautiful in addition to being placed in a unique situation. I think there must be very few cities which in a few years have managed to destroy and rebuild, according to new plans, so large a part of themselves. ”

“ When thus territorially settled, men know one another, and discover who should lead in secular affairs and who should follow; special aptitude for work and for administration becomes recognized and properly applied; and as each house erected by its own proprietor upon a freehold site is pretty sure to be a sound, substantial structure, the result of constant effort at improvement, such endeavour and experience naturally give the architectural culture needful for the proper management of public works. ”

“ City building, as a deliberately thought-out enterprise, is indeed a lost art, in this country at least, and this art has not only to be revived, but has to be carried to finer issues than those who have before practised it ever dreamt of. ”