THE SKY-LINE IN MODERN DOMESTIC BUILDINGS.

By A. J. B. BERESFORD-HOPE, F.S.A., Hon. Fellow.

Read at the Ordinary General Meeting of the Royal Institute of British Architects, March 14th, 1864.

THERE is no one here present, I should imagine, who has not often found himself gazing at the river front of Somerset House, as he whirls in a Hansom over Waterloo Bridge. With what feelings each of us may have looked upon that famous building I cannot tell. Personally I must, with all deference to its eminent architect, say, that to my eye it offers an instructive combination of strength and weakness. As laid out within the four great straight lines of base and balustrade boundaries, the composition deserves the highest praise. But although those lines comprehend the entire area over which Sir William Chambers seems to have imagined that the art of the architect extended, they do not include essential portions of the building, which not only exist in actual construction, but which are powerfully conspicuous to the passer-by. I do not allude so much to the cupola designed to cap the centre, and on that account barely adequate, as the crowning mass of the entire river front, as I do to the mean looking roof, with its innumerable fantastic array of hideous chimney pots and chimney tubes. I anticipate the answer that will be made to these strictures. I shall be told, in the first place, that the chimney pots and tubes are no part of Sir William Chambers's own work; and, secondly, that when he built Somerset House he had no idea that it would be overlooked by a bridge in immediate proximity, and so that he contrived a parapet and a roof mutually intended to mask and to sculk in presence of the critics in the wherries; the point of view from the surface of the Thames itself being the one about which he was most concerned on that side. I readily accept this defence, because it concedes the position which I desire to occupy. Somerset House, by the confession of its warmest admirers, is not a structure built for all circumstances, nor to be seen under all points of view. Something, therefore, must have been wanting in the artistic repertory of its architect, which has so far made it defective. What that deficiency is will be the object of this paper to unravel.

But before we enter on the main question, let us for a few moments contemplate, as a strong contrast to Somerset House, another famous pile overhanging the river of a great capital, and the more so because the building, as I know it, is now a thing of the past, the Pavilion de Flore at the Tuilleries, which is being re-built, perhaps beautified, if so, more's the pity. The old Pavilion de Flore, of the style which intervened between the absolute Renaissance and that of the seventeenth century, was grey and grim, but very stately, rising over the Seine like a keep, with its steep self-vindicatory roof, and its solid tower-like chimneys. Criticise the Pavilion de Flore as you like, you feel that it was real, palatial and grand; the reason is, that the very points on which Somerset House is most weak, are the distinguishing characteristics of the Parisian structure. In one word, at the Pavilion de Flore the skyline was foremost in the architect's mind-at Somerset House it was entirely overlooked.

In treating of the sky line in modern domestic buildings before this Institute, I shall regard the subject from an architectural rather than a merely picturesque point of view, not merely enquiring what forms of sky outline are most agreeable to the eye, but also pointing out what method of construction conduce to the creation of those forms. I have been induced to take up this subject from the pleasurable conviction, that out of the battle of styles has grown up on both sides a genuine desire to be real, and to make the most of, instead of masking and playing tricks with, all features of construction. I shall not wander into controversy by arguing which side gave the impulsion towards this reform. I accept it the more readily as it allows me to discuss the first principles of the domestic sky-line, from data which

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will equally be accepted by the classicist and the Gothicist. At the same time, the limits of a paper only allow me to skim the question, while many considerations of the highest interest, such as the influence of local scenery on local architecture, must remain unhandled. No doubt the general appreciation among architects of our own time, of the need of a true sky-line created by the building itself and not by any fantastic excrescences perched on the cornice, is but the revived perception of a truth of which, as we have seen, the architects of the Valois and the Bourbons realized as keenly as those of St. Louis; but it is one which had been so much forgotten in England under the influence in our towns of architects of the Chambers and Adams school, and in presence of the numberless builderbuilt country houses, whose stuccoed hideousness deforms some of our fairest parks, that I claim for its revival the merit almost of a promulgation of a new truth. I disclaim any imputation of irreverence when I say that this principle is most aptly prefigured by the Apostolic illustration “and to our uncomely parts we give the more abundant comeliness." The precisionist school seems to have arbitrarily assumed that certain portions of a building, the roof that carried off the water and lodged the domestics, and the chimneys that carried off the smoke, from the presumedly menial functions which they fulfilled in the economy of the mansion, were and onght always to remain uncomely; so the roof was kept low and almost out of sight, and the cornice or balustrade tilted up before it, with just room for the open intervening gutter, in noble disregard of the damp, the smells, and the darkness thereby inflicted on the persons whose ill luck compelled them to sleep there; and the architect stopped his chimneys short at a tiny distance above that low pitched roof, leaving it to the smoke-doctor to convert the neither beautiful nor useful thing, which he did not blush to call chimney, into something else still less beautiful, but more useful, which might in some degree do that for which chimneys were originally invented-carry off the smoke.

The older architect, appreciating, by reason or by instinct, that as in God's architecture of the mountain and the forest, the peaks and the tree tops, standing against the sky, give character to the entire landscape, so in man's architecture the sky-line must be studied if the structure is intended to be complete and successful. What if the uses of the upper parts of the house are not so dignified as those of the lower floors, still they are needful, and it is with these that he has to make the sky-line, and therefore was more abundant comeliness given to the attic and the chimney, and together with their comeliness more thorough usefulness, inasmuch as the attic gained light and air and headway, while the conspicuous chimney proved equal to its appropriate office.

A short retrospect will show that I have not been unjust to our classical architects of the middle of the last century, in charging the neglect of the sky-line chiefly apon the influences of their teaching, too readily responded to by the ignorance and the cupidity of the builders. The attention which the Mediæval architects of England paid to their sky-line needs no proof. It is as visible in the castle as in the minster, at Carnarvon as at Lichfield. It is equally visible in the farm house and the oak-framed cottage. When the growth of civil organization consequent on the termination of the War of the Roses, and of the accession of the Tudor dynasty, had induced the smaller squire and the substantial yeoman to build for themselves larger and more durable mansions than their ancestors thought of occupying; then too the skill of the architects-most of them, it may be, obscure local men-seemed chiefly bent on giving an effective sky-line to the many-gabled hall or grange, whether of stone or of half-timbered construction. The vicious element in the Jacobean style, viewed in its mass and not in its details, was the insolent capriciousness with which it played with the sky-line, in many a fantastic gable. In turrets and in towers Jacobean was always clever, and often very graceful, and it ever made the sky-line its leading object.

When Inigo Jones, in the reign of Charles I, and Wren in that of Charles II, established for a

time the supremacy of classical and Italian architecture, the newly fashionable style was handled with due regard to the sky-line. The finely broken façade of the Palace of Whitehall is evidence of Jones's regard for this essential feature. Wren's appreciation of the sky line stands confessed in the forest of London steeples, so marvellously diversified as a whole-each so ingeniously put together-all clustering round the central dome of the vast cathedral. It equally stands confessed in the curved outlines of Christchurch gateway, Oxford, in the massy tower of Warwick, and in the statue-capped library of Trinity College, Cambridge. To turn to the works of lesser men at the last years of the seventeenth and commencement of the eighteenth century, who can say that there is no feeling for the sky-line in those snug red-brick houses, with developed roofs and solid chimneys, of which we still see so many specimens basking at the outskirts of our quiet country towns, inside their walled and fruitful gardens ! If we study the grander buildings of the earlier eighteenth century, zeal for the sky-line assuredly inspired the palaces of Vanbrugh, Castle Howard and Blenheim, and the churches of Hawksmoor, such as St. Mary Woolnoth and St. George's in the East, which heavy though they may be called, are the genuine products of an original and masculine ability. It was, I say, reserved for the architects of the middle of the eighteenth century to deal with the roof and its accessories, as if it were something unclean. The reason of this caprice does not lie very far off. They moulded their style upon models procured from countries which were not in so much need of artificial warmth as we are, and in which chamber accommodation was more scantily provided, and they were unable to vary their specialties so as to accommodate those wants of their age and climate, which actually pressed upon them. Yet there stood in evidence against them, not the spires and the gables merely of our Medieval towns, but the temples and the towns of old Greece and Rome. That the sky-line was deeply studied by the ancient architect in his public buildings needs not to be demonstrated. The Acropolis of Athens alone is proof enough, crowning the steep rock with its towered fortifications, and fronting the sky with the stately Propylæa, the spreading and irregular mass of the Erechtheum, and the gabled Parthenon, all clustered round the colossal image of Minerva Polias, rising like a Flemish Beffroi, at once the visible central point and the tutelary deity of the city. The Capitol, and Mount Palatine, bear equal evidence. But how about private houses? I assert that there is proof sufficient to show that in spite of the small size, the inconsiderable height, and what we should now-a-days consider the meanness of those habitations, they were, nevertheless, built upon a principle of sky-line based on the effects of roofs, sometimes low pitched and covered with tiles, and sometimes flatly covered, combined with variations of height in the houses themselves, produced by the irregular superposition of stories, so as to impress the whole composition with an effect analogous to that which would be given by a large distribution of low

towers.

No Greek nor Roman architect-had the problem of the multiplied wants of European eighteenth century civilization, and the uncertainties of an English climate been set before him-would have solved it, as we have seen that it was solved, by our countrymen, in the much abused name of classical antiquity. Where the architects left off the builders came in, and under their handling that ne plus ultra of dismal featureless ugliness was reached; the stock respectable English street-house, with its oblong holes for windows, and nothing visible of the roof, besides some dumpy chimney pots and some brokenbacked metallic tubes. Perhaps there is one thing even uglier, and that is, this same stock house, respectably beautified with stucco or white paint, pediments run in compo over the windows, and a menacing slice of cornice stuck on in front. Happily we may now laugh at these things with a safe conscience, for we are on the fair road to a better state of things, though far, very far, I fear, from having made sure of that salutary reform. Architects have, I believe, all accepted the right opinion; but the builders, too many of them, are still impenitent. Of course those architects whose style was Gothic

or Elizabethan, were the first to give in their adhesion to the apparent roof. But within these few years we have witnessed the conversion of those who cultivate the Renaissance. Renaissance being still the favourite architecture for London streets, the appearance among us of the artistic sky-line has been of recent date, but happily it has appeared, not only in such big piles as new hotels, and so on, but in many shops, and in some private houses. Still, as I said, the builders are, naturally enough, slow to rise out of the trade ideas, which they are so readily able to manipulate, and thus avoid the expense and control of an architect. So it is, that not only do we see the old type re-producing itself like a contagion, street after street, but we are doomed to witness erected on the pleasant hills of Sydenham and Norwood, and elsewhere, groups upon groups of semi-detached villas, all constructed on one type, and that the most offensive conceivable, springing up in clusters to spoil neighbourhoods lately so beautiful. I appeal to all present whether it is not worth while to do something to check this continuously advancing wave of a bad taste, which is already discredited without being extinguished. With all submission, I contend that the most effectual antagonism is the creation of a popular feeling for that general perfection and grace of outline in buildings (apart from detail or material or colour) of which the sky-line is a very, if not the most, important element.

The first step towards constructing is, to analyse the materials ready to hand for construction. What then are the elements out of which a good sky line may be created in a moderately sized single or double house, in town or country, or in a row of street houses? elements all of them more or less applicable, mutatis mutandis, either to Gothic or Italian. I use the word elements in two correlative senses, as signifying both the architectural forms out of which sky-line can be built up, and also the material portions of the building to which those forms are applicable. First-as to the forms, speaking most generally, the elements of the sky line may be classed as tower, pyramid or cupola-tower including all forms which rise with parallel sides, and a summit line approaching to the horizontal; pyramid all that rise with converging straight, and cupola all that rise with converging unstraight, lines. But for the purpose of this enquiry we must sub-divide a little more minutely, bearing all along in mind that the forms of which we treat must, inasmuch as their effect on the sky line is our immediate question, be regarded as indifferently belonging to linear or solid geometry, and that we may now and then find correlative constructive features, linear and solid, respectively answering to the same form.

The necessity for this distinction, which I fully grant is at first sight open to the imputation of over-minuteness, will be manifest if we recollect in how different an aspect the sky-line of a building presents itself when we gaze upon it at noon day, with the sun's rays searching out each nook and cranny, every moulding and every corbel, and when we view it standing out against the twilight of the sun already set, itself one single mass of inky violet, with nothing distinguishable but the absolute outline seen, as it were, in one plane. Of course, a good sky line ought to please under both these conditions. In the first case, all the forms which are circular, or cubical, will strongly assert their solidity. In the second, they will appear to the eye as simply linear.

The tower, whether square, polygonal, or circular, sufficiently explains itself in the primitive meaning of the word; as a form of the sky-line it also includes the ordinary outline of most houses, a story of one or more rooms casually raised above the remaining building, and chimneys generally. The tall circular stalks of manufactories must also be classified as towers. The pyramid is either obtuse or acute, and to it belong all roofs of a single pitch, meeting at a central point. Spires are acute pyramids, and the ordinary pointed gable is a linear pyramid. Conical roofs are also pyramidal in their outlines, and must, by rights, be referred to this class, although in sun light they have, in spite of their vertical section, much of the effect of the cupola, from the prominence which is then given to their curved element. The truncated pyramid occurs of a low pitch in the roofs of many houses, and of steep pitch in those