scraper design that with hut one brilliant exception the American efforts constitute a class by themselves in their approach to a satisfying aesthetic mastery.
This is with clue allowance for the fact that the best men among foreign competitors as a rule may not have participated and that some of the English and Canadian work especially entitles its authors to classification with the American participants under the general estimate of comparative
worth ventured above. Also that the American efforts contained a large enough proportion of the horrible to present no occasion for national conceit in the general level of aesthetic taste illustrated.
Disregarding the Tribune competition, however, and coming down to what existing work illustrates in its approach to “a new architectural style” there are a number of examples already in existence which illustrate the steady progress which skyscraper design has been making in this direction during the past decade. Among these the Pershing Square Building is an instance where conservative adherence to precedent has been combined with a more logical technique of materials
for the exterior tailoring of the actual construction which in virtually all our buildings today is merely clothed by an applied covering. All who contemplate the consistency of treatment given our modern office buildings will concede that, in terms of exterior surface design, they are usually not well tailored. At all events, not tailored logically and significantly. In respect to any frank recognition of the actual organic fact in their construction they remind the observer very much of the late
lamented Ward McAllister’s dictum upon the fundamental propriety of women’s dress: “that it should aim to conceal as far as possible, the fact of their bipedity.” The average office building in its applied dress of historic stylistic design pretty well illustrates the same disappointing result in the camouflage of anatomical fact. Or rather, one ought to say, accomplishes this with baffling completeness in some respects while betraying in others the existence of corporeal actualities with irritating insistence and inconsistency.
Ward McAllister has passed and with him the voluminous upholstery of earlier feminine dress and we have entered the advanced stage of the
Brick and terra cotta detail at twentieth story level
Pershing Square Building, New York
York & Sawyer and John Sloan, Architects
This is with clue allowance for the fact that the best men among foreign competitors as a rule may not have participated and that some of the English and Canadian work especially entitles its authors to classification with the American participants under the general estimate of comparative
worth ventured above. Also that the American efforts contained a large enough proportion of the horrible to present no occasion for national conceit in the general level of aesthetic taste illustrated.
Disregarding the Tribune competition, however, and coming down to what existing work illustrates in its approach to “a new architectural style” there are a number of examples already in existence which illustrate the steady progress which skyscraper design has been making in this direction during the past decade. Among these the Pershing Square Building is an instance where conservative adherence to precedent has been combined with a more logical technique of materials
for the exterior tailoring of the actual construction which in virtually all our buildings today is merely clothed by an applied covering. All who contemplate the consistency of treatment given our modern office buildings will concede that, in terms of exterior surface design, they are usually not well tailored. At all events, not tailored logically and significantly. In respect to any frank recognition of the actual organic fact in their construction they remind the observer very much of the late
lamented Ward McAllister’s dictum upon the fundamental propriety of women’s dress: “that it should aim to conceal as far as possible, the fact of their bipedity.” The average office building in its applied dress of historic stylistic design pretty well illustrates the same disappointing result in the camouflage of anatomical fact. Or rather, one ought to say, accomplishes this with baffling completeness in some respects while betraying in others the existence of corporeal actualities with irritating insistence and inconsistency.
Ward McAllister has passed and with him the voluminous upholstery of earlier feminine dress and we have entered the advanced stage of the
Brick and terra cotta detail at twentieth story level
Pershing Square Building, New York
York & Sawyer and John Sloan, Architects