Boston City (part 16 of 67)

Athalie, the Forty-third and Ninety-fifth Psalms, and the whole Midsummer Night's Dream music, with orchestra, and with the admirable reading of Mr. George Riddle ; Schumann's Manfred, with Mr. Howard Ticknor's reading, and scenes from Goethe's Faust, - both for the first time here, the latter twice, and with the aid of Mr. Henschel, Mr. C. R. Adams, Miss Gertrude Franklin, and other acceptable solo singers; Max Bruch's Odysseus and Fair Ellen; IP. Hoffmann's Fair Melusina ; and many fresh and well selected smaller works.

charming and most graceful Russian lady, Mme. Essipoff, - by some mis¬ chance not sought here with so much enthusiasm as her rare artistic quali¬ ties deserved. In 1878-79 Franz Rummel paid us a few flying visits. In 1879 Rafael Joseffy gave us most plentifully out of his rich stores, and seemed to many to surpass all before. The last were Constantin Sternberg (Russian) and Oliver King, the young composer and pianist to the Princess Louise of Canada. Occasionally, too, came S. B. Mills and Richard Hoffman of New York, Mme. Rive-King, Mr. F. Boscovitz, and more.

In the mean time Boston has been rich in pianists of its own, among them three or four who are pre-eminent. Of Perabo we have already spoken. At about the same time with him, Carlyle Petersilea returned from Leipsic studies, who seems to have all the most difficult music at his fingers' ends, is equal to any task, whether in performance or accompani¬ ment, has many pupils, and indeed a flourishing Academy of Music, and would command many votes in any competition for the first rank. B. J. Lang, whom w'e have met all along the road in various useful functions, has grown year by year, by force of talent, unremitting industry, temperate self-control, practical wisdom, and high aim, to a position of the widest influence, perhaps, among all our resident musicians. He has probably taught more pupils than any other teacher. His days would hardly seem long enough for all these hours ( Stunden) , as the Germans call such les¬ sons; yet he has found time for a continual round of concerts and recitals, for the training and conducting of choral clubs, church choir, sometimes a symphony, for presiding at the organ in the oratorios, as well as at the piano in rehearsals, and for the bringing out of many new works of the larger kind. He, too, has been a teacher of teachers. It has been truly said of him that his pupils have become his disciples ; they all espouse his cause, and he can always count upon their loyalty. Quite a group of these are among the most available and useful members of the active musical force of Boston, always ready in emergencies, where an able pianist, or three or four together (as in a Bach concerto), are required. The group includes Messrs. G. W. Sumner, G. A. Adams, Id. G. Tucker, Arthur Foote, and J. A. Preston, all of whom give concerts and recitals of their own with programmes of great interest, and rank as excellent pianists; and we must add (more on the ground of general musicianship and critical intelligence than of piano¬ playing as such) the name of William F. Apthorp. The youngest of these leading spirits, Mr. William H. Sherwood, came later (1876), and has had less time to carve out his quarter of the empire. His accomplished wife (Mrs. Mary Fay Sherwood, a gifted pupil of Dresel twenty years ago) shares his work and triumphs with him, Mr. Sherwood, a native of West¬ ern New York, is of the school of Kullak in Berlin, and won admiration there. His strong, vital touch and accent, the precision, fluency, and bril¬ liancy of his execution, and his almost boundless repertoire of masters old and new, have placed him among the foremost concert artists. He has an eager host of pupils, and he gets a deep hold on them if they have any talent. Some of them have won distinction in their turn. Mr. Sherwood is always in demand for concerts, festivals, and Summer Normal Schools in other cities South and West. When we add to these the names of S. Liebling, Otto Bendix, John Orth, H. P. Chelius, Edward B. Perry (a real artist, although robbed of sight), Miss S. Winslow (earnest pupil of the Stuttgart school), Miss Amy Fay (now in Chicago), Miss Josephine E. Ware, Mr. Warren Locke of Cambridge, Mr. T. P. Currier, and more too numerous to mention (for history must leave off unfinished in order to leave off at all), we find Boston amply provided with pianists, if with no other musical resources.

But while we count up all these hands and brains that have been weav¬ ing out before our hearing eyes so vividly and palpably the marvellous tone-poems of the piano-forte composers, let us not forget the instru¬ ment itself which has made this possible, and of whose manufacture and enormous multiplication Boston, from the first days of Jonas Chickering, has been one of the world's chief seats. If only to do honor to that name, which might have figured fitly and prominently in any one of the pre¬ ceding periods, we should dwell a moment here. Boston abounds in piano manufacturers, many of them prosperous and widely known, engaged in an extensive business; but all will heartily admit him, and the great house he has built up, to be the first and foremost of their craft. He did not live to enjoy our "heyday " of pianists (he died in December, 1853) ; but none the less has most of the music made here by the greater part of them been through the medium of the Chickering pianos. He " builded better than he knew." His superior intelligence, his inventive genius, and great moral force of character and purpose almost suffered in the general first impression that he made, from the remarkable development of all the kindly, generous, and gentle traits in him. He was a most simple, un¬ assuming, plain, and quiet person in his manner and appearance. The Irish singer, Henry Philips, in his Reminiscences (1843), having been engaged for the Handel and Haydn oratorios and invited to dine with the president of the society, says: "I had conceived Mr. Chickering to be a tall, stout man, somewhat proud and austere ; good-hearted, but with an odd way of showing it. . . . Judge of my astonishment, when a little thin person walked into the room, with a modest, ordinary, almost bashful cast of features, who shook me by the hand as if he had known me all his life, whose hard palm bore the evidence of labor, and whose dress might have been brushed with much advantage. He apologized for not being at home when I arrived ; hoped I would pardon his appearance, for he had been hard at work in the warehouse. ' Mrs. Chickering will make up for my want of dress,' said he, with a smile; 'so I'll just polish my hands and we'll have dinner. Hayter will be here in a few minutes.' " And again: "How am I to speak of this man, whose affability, charity, hospitality, industry, humility, honor, and sobriety, all combined to render homage but a slight acknowledgment of his virtues."

Do we not see the simple country lad, after he came to town, drawn to that Park Street choir, as the moth to the candle, and not quite happy until his voice could mingle in the harmony? Later we may see him, presidentconductor, beating time for the Handel and Haydn chorus (1843-49) ; and again, in the days of his prosperity, extending hospitalities to musical artists, assisting young beginners, active in the councils of the Mechanics' Association, and a generous patron of all good charities and public enter¬ prises. Well and wittily was his health once given: "Jonas Chickering ! like his own pianos: Upright, Grand, and Square."1

Of Chamber Music in the stricter sense of violin quartets, etc., during this period, there have been but flickering, though frequent, manifestations. The old Mendelssohn Quintette Club has grown more and more peripatetic, carrying the gospel of good music into distant parts, even to the Pacific coast; yet Boston has remained its home and starting-point, and all its " missionary work " has not prevented it from giving us, at the beginning or the end of every season, several rare feasts of the older and the new crea¬ tions in this form of art. Its membership has changed repeatedly, Mr. Thomas Ryan alone maintaining the identity throughout. It was never, probably, in a more excellent condition than at present, - if its movement only were not so centrifugal !

In 1869 and in 1871 Mr. Bernhard Listemann undertook quartet mati¬ nees, which were too good to yield to first discouragements. Again in 1874-75 he formed a Philharmonic Quintette Club, which in its turn has dis¬ appeared. Several such Pleiad groups have sparkled for a while, and set too early. In 1873 Messrs. C. N. Allen, J. Mullaly, Wulf Fries, and others formed the Beethoven Quintette Club, which made good headway for a time; now, as a quartet club, with Mr. Gustav Dannreuther in the second place (sometimes alternating with the leader) it is doing excellent service, both in public and in " musicales " in private houses.

Most of the chamber-concerts of these years have been in the mixed form of trios or quartets in which the piano-forte holds the central place. Mr. J. C. D. Parker gave a course of trio-soirees in 1869; Mr. Arthur Foote another, every Saturday evening in February and March of the present year, assisted by Messrs. Allen, Dannreuther, Fries, etc., and with choice song-selections; and the faithful teacher Mr. Junius Hill has for several years had trio practice carried on among his advanced pupils with the aid of professional artists. In all of these the programmes have been mainly

1 The magnitude and the importance of the piano-forte business in Boston has a signal illus¬ tration (since we have room for only one) in the note subjoined : -

Dear Sir, - In reply to your request for statistics we will say, that Mr. Jonas Chickering began to manufacture Pianos in Doston, April 15, 1S23. The first year he finished

Should the same number be finished in 1881 and 1882 that were produced last year, it will be safe to call the pro¬ duct from 1873 to 1883, 21,928. We anticipate an increase in this number.

classical and most instructive. Other leading pianists - Perabo, Lang, Leonhard, etc. - have often introduced such trios, quartets, and quintets into their concerts and recitals ; and the two Conservatories for years have kept up a continual round of chamber-matinees (mostly with piano and with singing) for the improvement of their throngs of pupils.

In 1 879 was formed the Euterpe, a society having more of the elements of permanence. It holds itself free to choose its field in any form of music, but thus far it has devoted itself to the one form for which some institution was most needed, - to the violin, quartet, quintet, octet, and the like. Regard¬ ing such music as best suited to a comparatively small and select audience in a small hall, it has held a somewhat private and exclusive character, dispos¬ ing of its tickets personally, upon the " associate-membership " principle, and limiting the membership to one hundred and fifty subscribers, each entitled to two season tickets. It began Jan. 15, 1879, with a series of four concerts, and has since given two more series of five. Its policy has been to employ the best quartet parties of Boston and New York, alternately, in the inter¬ pretation of its strictly classical programmes, limited each time to two string compositions in sonata form.

Opera has still remained the beautiful exotic and capricious visitor it always was ; the fever of a week or two, refusing any wholesome, permanent organic form. It has brought us in these fifteen years some famous singers, and given us first hearings of a few more or less important works. In 1867 - 68 there was the Strakosch Italian troupe, - Mme. Parepa-Rosa, Miss Phillipps, Signors Brignoli, Susini, etc.; afterward Mme. Lagrange; and there was a Maretzek troupe, including Mme. Rosa, Minnie Hauck, Ronconi, etc. In 1870 and in 1872 Mme. Rosa gave us good opera in English, with such singers as Mrs. Seguin, Miss Rose Hersee, Miss Clara Doria, Mile. Vanzini, and Messrs. Castle, Lawrence, Tom Carl, Campbell, Cook, and others; and to her we owe the Oberon of Weber, the Water-Carrier of Cherubini, and Rossini's La Gassa Ladra , besides good familiar pieces. Then the Siren took the form of Christine Nilsson, in three several visits (1871 - 74), sup¬ ported by Miss Cary, Messrs. Capoul, Maurel, Jamet, etc., who for a novelty brought us Mignon by Ambroise Thomas; and we had Verdi's Aida, sung by Mme. Torriani and Miss Cary, Signor Campanini, etc. ; and at the new Globe Theatre three weeks of Mile. Albani, who with Miss Cary, Signors Carpi, Del Puente, etc., gave us the first hearing of Wagner's Lohengrin (1875). In 1873 came Pauline Lucca, with Miss Kellogg and Mme. Di Murska; in 1876, for a few nights, the queenly Tietjens ; and in the spring of 1877 there was vouchsafed to us the fresh sensation of a "Wagner Festival" of a whole week at the Boston Theatre, with Mmes. Pappenheim and Clara Perl, Herren Werrenrath, Bischoff, Blum, etc., who gave four specimens of the Wagnerian drama, - Tannhauser, Lohengrin, the earlier Fliegende Hol¬ lander, and Die Walkyrie ; and, as an acceptable offset, Beethoven's Fidelio in a better style than we had had before. Finally there have been three short seasons of " Her Majesty's Opera," under the direction of Colonel

Mapleson, in which Italian opera has been given on a more complete scale than by any visiting company before ; and the fascinating high soprano, Etelka Gerster, with Miss Hauck, Mme. Frapolli, the brilliant tenor Campanini, etc., in a long list of standard operas, have drawn enormous houses, - the principal novelty being Bizet's Carmen.

French opera bouffe has had its brief demoralizing day among us, and has found a speedy antidote in something full as light and popular, while innocent, and musically more original and fresh. But first we must not for¬ get to speak of several genial and charming comic operettas, composed by our own Julius Eichberg and popular before and since the French invasion ; namely, the Doctor of Alcantara, the Two Cadis , etc. The effective substi¬ tute and cure for the opera bouffe contagion appeared in the extraordinary popularity of Sullivan's Pinafore , which ran through all the theatres, and which, being easy music and within the musical and vocal means of many of our clever native singers, has resulted in numerous domestic companies for its performance, as well as in not a few imitative or half-original attempts at composition in a similar vein. Whether these bubbles, rising on all sides and glittering each for a brief spell in the gaslight of so many theatres, are any indication of an original creative principle below the surface, which may yet assert itself in really musical, imaginative, and noble lyric works both light and serious, and give us finally the native opera, the institution so long speculatively and vainly dreamed of, - time alone will show. Some of these playthings certainly are clever; some, on the other hand, show but the slightest symptoms of musicianship, being ingeniously made up for a pres¬ ent purpose, not composed ; yet the practice they involve begets a certain empirical routine-familiarity with knacks and processes, without which genius, even if it should abound, could not be operative. Perhaps it is the nursery for greater things in store.

Almost simultaneously the two Conservatories, so called, started on the race, - the Boston Conservatory on Feb. 11, 1867, and the New England Conservatory one week later at the Music Hall. The former was and is the enterprise of the accomplished artist and musician Julius Eichberg, who as director was assisted by Messrs. Kreissmann, Leonhard, and numerous able teachers since their time. It has always had a goodly number of pu¬ pils, to whom it has sought to impart a sound musical education, while it has not catered for the largest number. It has followed the economical system of teaching by classes, dividing the lesson among four pupils at a time ; it has furnished good instruction in all the practical and theoretic branches; it enables its pupils in the course of every season to hear a great deal of good music, by providing chamber-concerts for their benefit. In one department, the Violin School, it is unique. Here Mr. Eichberg has accomplished wonders. Little girls and boys of six or eight, who look almost overweighted by the instrument, play music of considerable difficulty, with facile, finished execution and with good expression. The more ad¬ vanced among them do not shrink before the concertos of Spohr, the con- cert-pieces of Ernst, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, or even the great Chaconne by Bach. This last-named masterwork has often been played together, in well-nigh perfect unison, by half-a-dozen of these pupils of both sexes. They also practise quartet playing, and know many of the string quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven by taking actual part in them. Indeed, a quartet club of four young lady-pupils (complete with 'cello and viola) is in continual demand for concerts ; and several of the graduates from these classes have since been favorite pupils of great European masters like Joachim. Here is material for our future orchestras.

The New England Conservatory, founded by Dr. Eben Tourjee, after one or two similar experiments in his native Rhode Island, gathered from the first into its fold the greatest number of pupils. It has counted nearly fifteen hundred at once. It has taught by classes of six together. Its roll of teachers has included, from time to time, the name of nearly every leading Boston member of the musical profession. There is hardly a well-known pianist, organist, singer, contrapuntist, or orchestral player who has not, at one time or another, spent some hours of his busy day in the class-rooms of this populous Conservatory. Of course not all among these throngs of pupils expect to become musicians: many avail themselves of such facilities to learn, at small expense of time or money, to play or sing a little, to listen well, and talk intelligently of music. Among them also must be many who have talent, which they have earnestly and dili¬ gently cultivated with these aids ; and have thus become fitted to go forth as teachers in their turn, - perhaps as artists. The Saturday concerts, in which leading artists often take part, - concerts which now count up to over six hundred in number, - have helped to familiarize the pupils with the best works of the best composers. The very atmosphere of such a thronged and busy musical beehive cannot be without some influence. This Conser¬ vatory has for several years been supplemented by a musical department in the Boston University, in which advanced pupils, - under the same director and essentially the same corps of teachers, - study with a view to practical musicianship. The piano-forte class, under the care of Mr. J. C. D. Parker, has shown sometimes remarkable proficiency.

Among the music schools of Boston, the Perkins Institution and Massa¬ chusetts School for the Blind has from the first stood high.1 In age it ranks them all. From its very infancy, in 1832, its far-seeing, philanthropic founder, Dr. S. G. Howe, felt the importance of compensation for the want of sight through finer cultivation of the sense of hearing, and knew the peculiar aptness of the blind for music. Here again we meet at the thresh¬ old, as first music teacher, Dr. Lowell Mason (1833). He was succeeded, about 1840, by that able and earnest musical educationist and journalist of the Academy days, Mr. Theodore Hach. Then came the lamented Joseph Keller; then for nine years Mr. Anton Werner, followed by Carl Ansorge, - all faithful, excellent instructors. But the department received a new impulse and expansion, and its standard was greatly raised, during the War of the Rebellion, under the administration of Mr. F. J. Campbell, himself blind from the age of three, an accomplished and intelligent musician hav¬ ing a genius for organization. He made himself acquainted with all the musical activities and principal musicians of the city ; and every opportu¬ nity was given to the pupils of hearing the oratorio, symphony, and other high-class concerts. Their own proficiency as organists, pianists, and cho¬ rus singers was strikingly exhibited in their occasional concerts, or before chance visitors. Some of them were equal to the rendering of great fugues of Bach, sonatas of Beethoven, etc. Their programmes, indeed, were and have ever since been of a high and classical character. Their band of brass and reeds has won favor wherever it has been heard. Mr. Campbell's ambition, seconded by Dr. Howe, was to build up a complete national col¬ lege of music for the blind in America; but meanwhile, travelling in Europe, he fell in with the blind physician, Dr. T. R. Armitage, in London, who had conceived a similar idea. They joined forces, and from their eloquent appeals and energetic labors sprang the Royal Normal College and Acad¬ emy of Music for the Blind at Upper Norwood, Surrey, near the Crystal Palace, under the patronage of Queen Victoria, the Prince and Princess of Wales, etc., and very liberally endowed. Mr. Campbell was placed at its head in 1872, and it is still carried on with signal success under his direc¬ tion, with a corps of teachers nearly all recruited from our Perkins Institu¬ tion here. Music is pursued there in the highest sense of art, as is shown by its programmes, in which such artists as Von Biilow, W. FI. Cummings, etc., have sometimes participated.

Mr. Campbell's place here has been well filled by Mr. Thomas Reeves, also blind, under whom the musical department has not only held its own, but gained important ground. For a number of years the tuning of pianos has been a special study with not a few of these pupils, to whom it opens a means of livelihood. Under a highly intelligent blind instructor, Mr. J. W. Smith, they become not only expert tuners, but can take apart and put together the mechanism of the instrument, and keep it in repair. For sev¬ eral years all the pianos in the public schools of Boston have been intrusted to these blind tuners.

Meanwhile, music in the University has overtaken and outrun the dream of those early founders of the Harvard Musical Association. Harvard has her chair of music, on an equal footing with the rest, worthily filled and fruitful in results. Mr. John Knowles Paine of Portland, Me., after long and earnest studies in Berlin, returned to this country in the autumn of 1861 ; gave admirable evidences of his mastery of the organ, especially in the great school of Bach; was shortly afterward employed at Harvard to succeed the lamented Levi P. Homer as college organist and musical instructor; was appointed "Adjunct" Professor of Music in 1873, and was raised to the full professorship in 1875. His earlier functions at the Uni¬ versity were limited by the want of funds for such a branch ; and the idea itself of the true functions of a musical professor had to be gradually wrought out and defined experimentally as he went on. Yet he contrived, by his own zeal and example, to awaken an earnest interest for music in many of the students, and to increase the general faith in music by good concerts and by the new dignity and worth which he imparted to the musi¬ cal side of academic anniversaries, inaugurations, and memorial services. With the professorship came formal recognition of music as a branch in the curriculum, as one of the " elective " studies. Professor Paine's classes are carried through four several courses, which occupy from three to four years according to the progress of the student. These are (1) Harmony; (2) Counterpoint; (3) History of Music; and (4) Musical Form and Analysis, with exercises in Canon, Fugue, Sonatas, etc. The number of students in these four "electives" for some years has averaged thirty. It is now about twice that number. Each year has elicited several highly credit¬ able original compositions in some of the higher forms, by pupils of these classes. In two instances has a baccalaureate received "honors" ( summos honores ) on account of musical proficiency. Several young men have pur¬ sued their musical studies with the professor after graduation, and have, on the ground of a satisfactory examination in the same, received the degree of Master of Arts. These have stepped at once into the practice of the musi¬ cal profession.

The completion of her grand Memorial Hall, by the addition of the Sanders Theatre, gave to Harvard a well-nigh perfect room for musical performances, attractive to the eye, convenient to an audience of nearly fifteen hundred persons, and excellent acoustically. The musical professor of course was not slow to avail himself of these advantages ; and for sev¬ eral winters the Theatre has been the scene of noble concerts, both of orchestral and chamber music, in the course of which Professor Paine's two symphonies have been produced, setting the seal upon his inventive genius and learning as a true composer. His crowning achievement, however, has been in the orchestral and choral music which he has composed for the performance in the Greek, by students, of the (Edipus Tyrannies of Sophocles, - a triumph of artistic zeal, skill, and thoroughness without ex¬ ample in this country, and too fresh in the minds of all who witnessed it or read of it to require more here than a mere word of mention.

And now that our old University has its musical professor, its noble theatre for music, its earnest students of the art and science, its fledgling composers even, - shall not the evolution go on until there shall be a full faculty of music, as there is of medicine, of theology, of science? Thus would be practically solved the problem of the true Conservatory, or complete school of music, with that guarantee of disinterestedness and of permanence which only an established university can give.

should look into the public schools, where singing has been taught on a progressive system, from the youngest primaries upward, both by rote and note, for at least forty years. This movement started rather vaguely, to be sure, contenting itself at first with demonstrating that all children, with a very few exceptions, only enough to " prove the rule," can be taught to sing. It was the assertion of a faith, rejected by our Puritan forefathers, in the musical nature of man. Starting in the early days of the Academy of Music, it has grown up into something which can properly be called a Boston institution ; and if its principle is sound, the germ of a musical future is contained in it. But we are compelled to omit our brief sketch of its history.

Music in the schools has gone so far that it cannot go back. Generations are growing up sensitive to musical tones, knowing concord from discord, attentive to music when they hear it, interested in it, able to sing somewhat with pleasure to themselves and others, and to read simple music. What a contrast to the dearth of opportunity in those old Puritanic days when a child, had he the genius of a Beethoven in him, found not the slightest sympathy to call it out ! Look on that picture and on this ! There pleasantness was sin, and the undying musical nature of man (as real as the religious, the in¬ tellectual, the social nature) was only part of the original depravity. Here you have stepped into a public school, - say in one of the poorer quarters of the city, - during the lesson by Mr. Holt or Mr. Sharland ; you hear the singing and catch the quick, intelligent replies of class after class of girls of eight, nine, ten years old, whose pale complexions tell of homes of poverty in crowded lanes. This is the bright hour of their week, - the hour of higher life and consciousness, of innocent delight and sense of a new power and freedom ; and they gain more and more of this inspiring and uplifting re¬ source as they pass through the older Grammar and the High School classes, until they are prepared to be absorbed into the vocal clubs, and renovate the oratorio chorus with fresh voices and more skill in music than their fathers had. Surely we have made progress ; and so long as we are faithful to our public schools, music, and music's benign influence, will not die out among us.

Here we must make an end. The story is by no means complete; it is full of omissions of worthy names which have escaped us, and of some topics, important in the eyes of many, which have had to pass unmentioned, since it would be impossible to treat them all in less than a whole volume. But if we have in any degree succeeded in making clear the unity of move¬ ment from the beginning to the present in the musical development of Boston, then the history itself, imperfectly as here set forth, should furnish motive for still higher effort in the same direction. The musical past of Boston, if she will truly read it in the light of the idea which can be traced through all the stages of its progress, is to be cherished as the warrant of a providential mission, a pledge to higher duty, and the promise of a fairer future.

RESULTS. - And now from the height that we have reached let us sur¬ vey the actual position. Among many good signs it is enough to note these few : -

1. Boston is self-dependent now for oratorio festivals, for symphony performances, cantatas, pianists, violin school, chamber-music, - all save opera.

2. For two years the whole musical community has been engrossed in " the orchestral problem," - how to have a permanent orchestra, - now in a fair way of immediate solution through the noble enterprise of Mr. Higginson, in addition to the earlier societies.

3. It is matter of common remark, that, during the past social season musical parties and reunions - often of a high and classical character, em¬ ploying a Beethoven Quartet Club, etc. - have been on the whole the most frequent form of " society."

4. The vocal clubs (Apollo, Boylston, Cecilia), which began with partsong singing, find more delight in giving larger works - cantatas and the like - in their integrity, with orchestra.

5. Boston has outgrown apparently the childish ambition for " monster" musical festivals on an unprecedented scale of magnitude, and has settled down upon the more musical, artistic, satisfying plan of periodical oratorio festivals as an institution, within the limits of true art and common-sense.

6. We have now our own composers, in whom we can take pride; the chief of whom, as musical professor, represents music at last accepted among the branches of higher culture in our ancient University, and one chief aspiration of the Harvard Musical Association realized.

7. The very marked improvement in the tone of musical literature and criticism, particularly in the daily and the weekly press, rendering the strug¬ gling musical journals, as such, almost superfluous, unless on some more comprehensive plan of means and men.

8. And meanwhile the nursery, down in our youngest schools and upward, where instruction in the rudiments of vocal music has become a nearly uniform, progressive institution which there is every motive to de¬ velop and perfect, - this, should all else fail, contains for us the seed of " music of the future."

Chapter Viii Architecture In Boston

J- of the first settlers of Massachusetts Bay comes, it must be confessed, rather from association than from any intrinsic quality as of beauty or pict¬ uresqueness in the buildings themselves. The Puritan was no lover of beauty in any form ; and in his sombre memories the greater or lesser glories of that English architecture with which his eyes had been familiar in his earlier home were but the blazonry of " low ambition and the pride of kings." He was, however, a lover of good and comfortable living; and as soon as the immediate pressure of poverty was lifted, he began to provide himself, in place of the log-houses with which for a time he had been fain to content himself, with dwellings in which as much as possible of the old English comfort might be had, and which wore both within and without an air of characteristic neatness, order, and substantial thrift.

Of these early dwellings the materials for illustration are extremely scanty. In the towns, they were promptly destroyed one after another by the frequently recurring conflagrations which the great house-fires, burning in chimneys of logs rudely plastered with mud or clay, invited, and which the thatched roofs rendered nearly impossible to arrest. In the account of Dankers and Sluyter, who travelled through the colony as late as 1680, we read: "All the houses are made of small, thin, cedar shingles, nailed against frames, and then filled in with brick and other stuff ; and so are their churches. For this reason these towns are so liable to fires, as have already happened several times ; and the wonder to me is that the whole city has not been burnt down, so light and dry are the materials." This danger was not unappreciated at the outset, as may be seen by a passage in a letter of Governor Dudley written as early as 1631, shortly after the burning of Mr. Sharp's house in Boston.1 Having spoken of the liability to quick house in Boston took fire (the splinters not be- rods off, and burnt that down also; yet they ing clayed at the top), and taking the thatch, saved most of their goods." - Winthrop's Jourburnt it down ; and the wind being northwest nal, vol. i.

and disastrous fires, he continues thus: " For the prevention whereof in our new town, intended this Summer to be budded, we have ordered that no man there shall build his chimney with wood, nor cover his house with thatch, which was readily assented to." 1 The order had, however, little more than the force of a recommendation, and, though "assented to," was not generally obeyed. We do not, indeed, after a little time hear further of wooden chimneys ; but the roofs of the commoner houses continued for many years to be covered with thatch.2

The earliest houses were naturally of a single story, and of the simplest plan, construction, and design. When the dignity of an additional story was attained, the backward slope of the roof was carried down to a height of eight or ten feet from the ground, generally covering the kitchen ; and this feature afforded the one touch of unconscious picturesqueness which re¬ deems the prosaic ugliness of the Puritan houses. The view of the Curtis homestead in Roxbury, given in Vol. I. p. 406, will serve to remind the reader of the effect of this familiar form of roof. Now and then the back¬ ward slope was broken at the level of the front eaves, and carried down at a lower pitch, as in the Aspinwall house in Brookline (Vol I. p. 221), or the Pierce and Tolman houses in Dorchester (Vol. I. pp. 431-434).

When greater accommodation was required without enlargement of the area within the walls, the roof, hitherto of low pitch, changed its form radi¬ cally, starting from the walls at a pitch of sixty degrees or more, and chang¬ ing at mid-height to a slope of half that angle. This is the gambrel-roof, so called, identical in profile with the mansard roof which prevailed in the French architecture of the seventeenth century, but differing from the man¬ sard in that the ends were always gabled. Occasionally the lower slope of the gambrel was carried down a story lower on the back, - as in the Yeaman house in Revere (Vol. I. p. 448), or the house in Willow Court, Dorchester (Vol. IF p. 361). In rare instances the slope of the roof is broken up by gables, as in the Aspinwall house (Vol. I. p. 221).

Whatever variety is discoverable among the houses of this neighborhood during the first fifty years after the establishment of the colony, arises from the adoption of one or another of these forms of roof. The material was the same in all, - a heavy timber frame, generally of oak, smoothly boarded over and covered with clapboards, so that although there was frequently in fact great massiveness and solidity of construction, there was none in appear¬ ance.3 Below the eaves there was no variation from the simple rectangular hundred and fifty buildings, convinced the citizens chimnyes to be stronger than ordinary, to beare of the dangerous character of the prevailing con- good heavy load of clay for security against fire, struction, and the General Court then passed the You may let the chimnyes be all the breadth of first Building Act in the history of the town, the howse, if you think good ; the 2 lower dores See Mr. Smith's chapter in Vol. I. p. 231. to be in the middle of the howse, one opposite

8 A letter from Samuel Symonds to John to the other. Be sure that all the dorewaies in Winthrop, Jr., in 1637, gives particular directions everyplace be soe high that any man may goe concerning the plan and construction of a house vpright vnder. It makes noe great matter mass. Ihere were no accessory features, - no spacious porches, veran¬ das, balconies, to give individuality to the dwelling. In the closely built streets of the towns occasional variations from this rigid simplicity are to be observed, - as the multiplication of gables, the overhang of the second story,1 and the occasional use of rough-cast on the exterior wall, - feat¬ ures which were all combined in the quaint old building in Dock Square, built in 1680, of which a view is given in Vol. I. p. 547. The internal plan was nearly invariable, - a narrow entry, opening from the middle of the front, giving access to square rooms on either hand. In the smaller houses this entry was just deep enough to allow space for the doors to the front rooms between the outside door and the square-framed staircase leading to the bed-rooms above. Behind the stairs a great chimney, with cavernous fireplaces back to back, opened to each room, and rose in square and simple dignity from the middle of the roof. In houses of greater preten¬ sion the entry was broader and ran through the house from front to rear, the stairs having a straight run on one side, and the great central chimney being replaced by two smaller ones between the front and back rooms on either side, or by single stacks on the side walls. The stateliest mansions of the colonial period did not get beyond this simple plan.2

But as wealth increased and the grimness of Puritan life relaxed, and the social life of Boston took on the aspect of a little court around the royal governors, the pride of the wealthy found expression in a class of houses of which some few examples still remain, though the best of them have long since fallen before the march of trade, or, with less reason, through the indifference of their owners. The work for the most part of English artifi¬ cers, these houses followed, so far as the ornamental features were concerned, the fashion of the day in England.3 The English renaissance, which had received the impress of such men as Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren, was therefore the source from which sprang the modest architecture of New England. Its richness and stateliness were beyond the reach of the though there be noe particion vpon the first floje ; if there be, make one biger than the other. For windows, let them not be overlarge in any room, and as few as conveniently may be ; let all have current shutting draw-windows, hav¬ ing respect both to present and future use. . . . In the garett noe particion, but let there be one or two lucome windows, - if two, both on one side. ... I would have the howse stronge in timber, though plaine and well brased. I would have it covered with very good oak-hart, inch board for the prese7it , to be tacked on only for the present, as you tould me. Let the frame begin from the bottom of the sellar and soe in the ordinary way vpright, for I can hereafter, to save the timber within ground, run vp a thin brick¬ work without . . ." - 4 Mass. Hist. Coll , vii. [For other notes on early buildings see Shurtleff's Description of Boston, ch. xlviii. - Ed.]

2 [Other samples of early colonial houses may be noted in the Cradock house in Medford, built in 1639, delineated in Brooks's History of Medford , 1855 ; in Brvant and Gay's Popular History of the United States, ii. 382; in S. A. Drake's History of Middlesex County, ii. 162; and in Whitefield's Homes of our Forefathers, 1879. Also Governor Bradstreet's house, in New Eng¬ land Hist, and Geneal. Reg., i. 75; houses in Pal¬ frey's History of New England, ii. 59-62 ; and still others in Bryant and Gay's United States, i. 522; ii. 31, 37, 46; iii. 122, and in various local histories. - Ed.]

3 John Dunton, in his Letters from New Eng¬ land, in 1686, says: . . . "And when any new houses are built they are made conformable to our new buildings in London since the fire." colonists, but its characteristic elegance and grace of ornament were not unworthily represented in many of the details, both exterior and interior, of the dwellings, the churches, and the public buildings of the principal New England towns. The illustrations given in previous volumes of this work of the Province house, built as early as 1679, the Clark, or Frankland house, built about 1735, the Hancock house, in 1737, and the mansion of Governor Shirley in Roxbury, in 1748 (all illustrated in earlier chapters of this work,), will serve as well as more numerous examples to express the outward char¬ acter of these old mansions.1 There was really not much architecture about them, but what there was was unobtrusive and simple, and worn with a cer¬ tain dignity which is perhaps' more charming to us from its contrast to the ambitious and fidgety performances of later and more learned generations. Their interior decoration was commonly confined to one or two of the prin¬ cipal rooms and to the main staircase. A low wainscoting with square panels and with due cap and base, a light classic cornice of plaster or wood, often with dentils or modillions, a broad and high mantel of wood enclosing the ample fireplace, the chimney-breast above faced with a large panel, very simple dressings to doors and windows, - this was generally the ex¬ tent of the elaboration bestowed on the finish of the best rooms. Now and then, as in the Frankland and Hancock houses, the panelled wainscot¬ ing was carried to the ceiling. More rarely the panelling on the chimneybreast was enriched by an attenuated order of pilasters. However much or little decoration was afforded, the details were almost invariably delicate and refined ; the errors were all on the side of smallness and reserve, never on the side of coarseness. The great staircase was sure to be the object of as much elaborateness of ornament as could be afforded. The carved and panelled ends of the steps, the panelled soffits, the ingeniously twisted new¬ els and balusters of many of these old staircases are favorite subjects for the sketch-books of architectural draughtsmen, and are copied with scrupulous exactness in the most carefully studied work of the present day.2

In the first churches of the Puritan settlers in Boston it is impossible to feel any other interest than that of an antiquarian or a descendant.3 If the earliest dwellings were bare, prosaic, and ugly, these were more so in pro¬ portion to their greater size and conspicuousness. Fess attractive buildings, perhaps, never cumbered the ground. They recall the saying of Thoreau concerning the houses of Cape Cod: "They are little removed from lum¬ ber; only Eastern stuff disguised with white paint, - the least interesting kind of drift-wood." It is then not a matter of poignant regret that no rep¬ resentations exist of the two wooden meeting-houses which stood, the one

1 [Views of the houses referred to are given 2 [There is a view of the Hutchinson house in Vol. II. pp. 89, 527, Vol. III. p. 202, and in the American Magazine , ii. 2 37 (1834). See frontispiece to Vol. II., respectively; and other Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Oct. 1881. - Ed.) examples may be found in Vol II., the Faneuil 3 [The oldest meeting-house in this part of house, p. 523, the Bromfield house, p. 521 ; and the country is that still standing at Hingham, in Vol. III., the Wadsworth house, p. 107, Craigie of which a view is given in Bryant and Gay's house, p. 112, Elmwood, p. 1 1 4. - Ed.] United States, ii. 58. - Ed.]

Architecture In Boston

in King Street, the other hard by in Marlboro' Street; and the latter of which, burned in 1711, was replaced by a brick building on the same site, of which a view is given in Vol. II. p. 219 of this work. The new structure expressed the growing resources of the community, but did not give evi¬ dence of an increase of architectural enlightenment. It was not until a more genial spirit began to pervade the life of the colony, exhibited in the in¬ creased elegance of the dwelling-houses, that the desire was felt for some amelioration in the aspect of the house of worship. The first evidences of this feeling are to be seen in Christ Church in Salem Street, built in 1723, and the Old South, which followed seven years later.1 In the former of these a visible attempt was for the first time made 'to give to the small interior something of the ecclesiastical aspect which belonged to an English church. The pilasters which supported the side galleries were carried up to the roof, making a division into nave and side aisles, of which the former was ceiled in the form of a segmental vault, while the latter were covered with trans¬ verse vaults of similar form between the pilasters. A modest chancel brought the church into essential conformity with the ancient models. In the Old South Meeting-house, on the other hand, the Puritan form was rigidly maintained. The pulpit, with its ponderous sounding-board, was raised high on the side wall to command the two galleries ; the interior was undivided, the flat ceiling unbroken. Within the walls of the two houses the distinction between the Episcopal and the Congregational wor¬ ship was thus plainly marked. On the exterior, however, the distinction disappeared. The Puritan contempt for architectural splendor had, in a hundred years of prosperity, at length given way. Christ Church had adorned its simple front with a lofty wooden steeple of the style Invented by Wren after the great fire of London. The Old South followed the example and reared a more imposing steeple in the same style, which re¬ mains to this day substantially unchanged. The steeple of Christ Church was blown down in a gale in 1805, and replaced by another of somewhat lesser height. In both these instances, as in all the churches for a hundred years later, the architectural ambition of the builders was satisfied by the steeple. The body of the church remained as plain and clumsy as the Old Brick itself. No attempt was made, beyond the occasional elaboration of the eaves into a classic cornice, to soften the square and barren outline or to adorn the parts.

In 1749 the King's Chapel was built from the designs of Peter Harrison, an English architect, pupil of Sir John Vanbrugh, and in his youth em¬ ployed with that master on the works at Blenheim. Harrison after coming to America had found some opportunity at Newport to exercise his talents, and had built there, among other buildings, the Redwood Library. Plis design for the King's Chapel included a lofty steeple, which had to be omitted for lack of funds. The peristyle which surrounds the base of the tower was also omitted for the same reason, but was added in 1790. The interior was the first in the colony to exhibit real architectural merit. Its only conspicuous defect is lack of height, compelling an awkward treatment of the ceiling, which, however, is not enough to destroy the general im¬ pression of dignity and repose.1

Brattle Square was the last of the colonial churches.2 It was built in 1772, with a squat and ugly exterior, unredeemed by any steeple, but with an interior not very unlike that of King's Chapel. The London churches of Wren, Gibbs, and Hawksmoor were the models from which these interiors were studied, and they were by no means unworthy examples of the style of those masters.

Of the early public buildings, properly so called, the list is limited to two, - the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall. Of both these edifices suf¬ ficient accounts are given in a previous chapter of this work.:! Neither of them presents to our eyes the aspect it wore to those who saw it built; yet in both enough of the original character remains to entitle them to a careful and scrupulous protection from further change. The first townhouse dates from about 1657. It occupied the same site still covered by its successor. It was of wood, " built upon pillars in the middle of the town," says Dunton, " where their merchants meet and confer every day." This building, of which no representation exists so far as is known, was burned in 1711. A new one of brick was at once erected, and was in its turn partially destroyed by fire in 1747. The walls, however, did not fall, and the house was rebuilt without delay, in the form with which every one who knows Boston is familiar ; changed, indeed, radically as to the interior, and outwardly in many important respects, but still retaining the most picturesque and characteristic features of its early days, - its broken gables at either end, its tower rising in three diminishing stages from the middle of the long roof, - features of which its admirable position greatly enhances the effect. A sundial formerly occupied the place of the clock in the east gable, the lion and the unicorn ramped in place of the unmeaning scrolls on either side. The simple pitched roof, rising to a ridge, has given way to a clumsy mansard, in obedience to the sordid demand for rentable offices, in addition to those which had before been carved out of the historic cham¬ bers below. Worse than all, an intermittent pressure has been now for some years maintained for the removal of the building, which stands in the way of the impatient traffic of State Street. More than once it has seemed clear that this vulgar clamor, which discredits the commercial intelligence not less than the patriotic sentiment of the city, would prevail, and that the venerable monument was doomed ; but a truer feeling has of late been growing strong in the community, and it now seems probable that the Old State House will be carefully preserved for many generations to come.

1 [A view is given in Vol. II. p. 49S. Har- 2 A model of this house is in the gallery of rison had come over with Smibert, and after re- the Mass. Hist. Soc.

The small building, measuring forty feet in width and a hundred in length, which Peter Faneuil gave to the town of Boston in 1742, and of which John Smibert, the painter of portraits, was the architect, has grown in breadth and height into a much more imposing edifice, though its charac¬ ter has not been otherwise materially changed. This was, perhaps, the first building in the town in which the architecture was, so to speak, spread over the whole surface instead of being confined to one or two prominent parts.1 In the dwelling-houses a little decoration of the front door-way, a main cor¬ nice, and in exceptional cases pilasters at the corners satisfied the archi¬ tectural requirements. In the churches the external treatment was always confined to the steeple. Even in the Old State House, the end-walls and the central tower were the only portions of the exterior which received much attention, the architecture of the long sides being limited to the dressings of the central door-ways; but in Faneuil Hall, all portions of the exterior received substantially the same treatment, - round arched windows and door-ways, with engaged pilasters between, carrying entablatures at the height of the various stories. As originally built, the ground story was a market, with open arches, and the hall in the second story was somewhat low. The alterations of 1806 doubled the width of the building and the height of the hall, the present galleries being then added at the height of the old ceiling. On the exterior a third order of pilasters and arches was thus added to the two of the original edifice; and the increase of size being un¬ accompanied by any variation either in outline or in detail, and the arches of the ground-floor being closed by doors and windows, a certain blank¬ ness and monotony of effect was the result, which did not belong to the old hall, and which has not been ameliorated by painting the walls of a dusty brown color.

The troubled times which preceded the Revolution put a stop to build¬ ing, and checked the steady growth of taste and luxury. For a full genera¬ tion scarcely any addition of importance or interest was made to the architectural worthies of the town or its suburbs. The return of peace found a people impoverished and fatigued, and with quite other things to do than to indulge a pleasant taste in building. It was near the end of the century before the burden of poverty and depression was measurably light¬ ened. With the gradual increase of the population of the town and the return of prosperity, building was resumed with vigor. Architecturally speaking, this was a critical period in the town's history. A difference is to be observed in the tone and manners of the community; the repose and naivete of the provincial times has given place to a more or less conscious ambition as of metropolitan style. It was then by a singular good fortune that the unrecognized profession of architecture should have been at pre¬ cisely this moment seriously adopted for the first time in New England by a young man of education and taste, whose love for his calling was genuine and steadfast enough to maintain him for forty years in a career which was more fruitful in honor to himself and to the town in which he lived than in pecuniary profit.

Charles Bulfinch, born in Boston in 1763, was graduated at Cambridge in 1781, and entered a counting-room; where, the business of the town being paralyzed by the war, then but just beginning to promise a successful issue, he employed his abundant leisure in reading such works on archi-

1 [This cut follows a likeness drawn in ink, a portrait in oils painted in London in 1786, taken late in life, and owned by Mrs. Stephen and a miniature by Malbone, made about 1788. G. Bulfinch of Cambridge, who also possesses - Ed.]

tecture as were then accessible. From time to time he found modest opportunity for exercising his taste for building, in repairing his father's and his neighbors' houses, which during the dark days had been suffered to fall out of condition. At the age of twenty-one he went abroad and travelled for a year or two in England and on the Continent, where, as was natural, his taste for architecture was greatly stimulated. The great monu¬ ments excited him ; it is even related that in St. Peter's he was moved to tears. He bought himself many architectural books, and in due time came home with, as may be supposed, his career quite clearly determined in his own mind. His first work was the monumental column on the summit of Beacon Hill, which owed its existence to his patriotic enthusiasm and en¬ ergy, and of which the tablets with their inscriptions, preserved in the State House, are all which now remain. Its brief immortal¬ ity was not proof against the en¬ terprise which cut away the hill on which it stood.1 When in 1793 the first theatre in Boston was pro¬ jected, Mr. Bulfinch furnished the design, which appears from the ac¬ counts in the newspapers of the day to have been carried out with much completeness and even ele¬ gance. Of the exterior we can form some judgment from the medal2 which was struck at the completion ' of the enterprise in recognition of the services ren¬ dered by the architect, and which bore on one face an elevation of the front on Federal Street, evidently reduced from the architect's drawing, and on the obverse the following inscription : -

" Presented by the Proprietors of the Boston Theatre to Charles Bulfinch, Esq., for his unremitted and liberal attention in the plan and execution of that building, the Elegance of which is the best evidence of his Taste and Talents."

Nearly at the same time with the building of the theatre, Mr. Bulfinch joined with several other gentlemen in a speculation which resulted in the creation of F'ranklin Place, one of the most interesting features of the city during the earlier half of the century. The original plan embraced two similar crescents, enclosing a small grass-plat with a classic vase in the cen¬ tre. Some difficulties in the way of obtaining the necessary land made it necessary to substitute for the northerly crescent a straight line ; but the plan was in other respects successfully carried out. I his was the first at¬ tempt in Boston at building residences in blocks. Until then the pleasant fashion of setting every house by itself, enclosed by its more or less ample grounds, had been consistently followed. The new buildings were, however, arranged with much skill and good taste, the long line of the crescent being broken in the centre by an archway thrown over an entering street, and the sky-line being judiciously varied by the superior ele¬ vation of the centre and the end wings. The houses were of ample size, with a generous and convenient disposition of rooms, and were for half a century among the most desirable dwellings in the city. But the immediate result of the enterprise was disastrous. The growth of the town, though marked and grati¬ fying, was not yet sufficient to warrant the erection of so large a number of ex¬ pensive dwellings. Heavy mortgages were followed by forced sales at ruinous prices, and Mr. Bulfinch saw himself reduced to His professional standing was, however, not affected by

1 [For some account of the Tontine Crescent, as Franklin Place was originally called, see Quincy's Municipal History of Boston, p. 26 ; and Boston Almanac , 1859. A view of the Tontine Buildings is given in the Massachusetts Magazine, February, 1794; and is reproduced in the Mass.

Hist. Soc. Proc., i. 66, as well as in the present cut. A perspective view is given on p. 363. It was the first brick block built in Boston. The first block of stone buildings was that in Brattle Street. The urn, erected to Franklin's memory in the little Green in the middle of the street,

State House was his next work. The government of the State had out¬ grown the little building at the head of State Street, and on July 4, 1795, the corner-stone of the new edifice on Beacon Hill, drawn to the spot by fifteen white horses, was laid by the Governor and the Grand Master with great pomp and ceremony. The original design suffered in some degree from the shortening of the wings; but in spite of this injury, and of the too slight elevation of the dome above the roof, the building has a simplicity and dignity which disarm criticism, and which, combined with its admirable site, give it in a remarkable degree the character of a public monument.1

Mr. Bulfinch's practice now included public and private buildings of al¬ most every description. The Roman Catholic Cathedral2 in Franklin Street, the New North Church in Hanover Street, and the New South on Church Green at the intersection of Summer and Bedford Streets were built from his designs. The last named was a peculiarly attractive church, octagonal in plan, built of white granite, with a classic portico of four Doric columns, surmounted by a graceful steeple one hundred and ninety feet high. The last of his churches was that in Federal Street, in which for the first and only time he tried the experiment of a Gothic spire, with an unfortunate result. All these churches have long since disappeared. The new steeple of Christ Church in Salem Street was also by Mr. Bulfinch.3

The Massachusetts General Hospital; the County Court House, afterward used as the City Hall, which occupied the site of the present City Hall in School Street; the Boylston Market; University Hall at Cambridge; most of the granite buildings on the north side of State Street; the long range of dwelling-houses which occupied that portion of Tremont Street from West. Street to Mason Street, known as Colonnade Row, - these are some of his most important buildings. Before building the Massachusetts Hospi¬ tal, and the Insane Asylum at South Boston which was undertaken at about the same time, Mr. Bulfinch made a visit to several other cities to inspect similar institutions. At Washington he had some pleasant intercourse with President Monroe, then just elected to office. The next year the President on his Northern tour made some stay in Boston, where Mr. Bulfinch, chair¬ man of the selectmen of the town, received him officially and showed him his various works. Of all this reciprocal civility the result was, in no long time, the appointment of Mr. Bulfinch as architect of the Capitol at Wash¬ ington, which had been half burned by the British in the late war. In this honorable position he remained a resident of the capital for a dozen years, returning to Boston in 1830. He was now growing an old man. The only conspicuous building from his hand after his return from Washington was the State House at Augusta, Maine, which was similar in its general design was, upon its removal, placed upon Bulfinch's given in the supplementary notes to Mr. Stangrave at Mount Auburn. Shurtleff's Description wood's chapters in the present volume. - Ed.] of Boston, p. 383. - Ed.] 2 [See view of it in Vol. III. p. 516. - Ed.]

to that of Boston, but smaller. Mr. Bulfinch died in 1844, at the age of eighty. The first professional architect of Boston, holding his modest way through a long life without the stimulus of competition or the encourage¬ ment of good-fellowship ; without the resources of technical training or the equipment of illustrated examples of every style now ready to the hand of every beginner, - his name is in the highest degree worthy of remem¬ brance and honor by the profession which has followed him and by the community in which he lived so long.

During the first fifteen years of Mr. Bulfinch's practice in Boston he had the field to himself. But the growth of the town was steady and rapid, and the number of prominent buildings erected from year to year was soon too great to be embraced within the care of a single architect. Of some of the most important of these it is now impossible to discover the designer. This is the case with the Exchange Coffee House in Congress Street, near to State Street, built in 1808, and an object of great local pride as the finest hotel in the country. It was seven stories high, and covered an area of more than twelve thousand feet. Its front was one hundred and thirtytwo feet long, and was adorned with six lank marble pilasters on a rustic basement, supporting an entablature with a central pediment. The plan showed a great central area, or court, forty by seventy feet, extending eighty-three feet high to the roof, lighted by a dome and surrounded by porticos of twenty columns on each floor, from which opened the rooms of the hotel, - evidently a very grand establishment. Its splendor was short-lived, the building being burned to the ground in 1818. 1

The meeting-houses of Park Street and Hollis Street were built in 1810 and 18 1 1. Like the others of their class their only pretension to be ranked as architectural works lies in their steeples, both of which are of unusual height and of remarkable grace of composition. Park Street was built from the designs of Peter Bonner, an English architect, of whom little is remembered. He built the fine mansion of Eben Crafts, still standing on the northerly slope of Parker Hill in Roxbury. The architect of Hollis Street is, I believe, not known.

One of the earliest of the architects who came in time to share the field with Bulfinch was Solomon Willard, who - born in Petersham, Massachu¬ setts, in 1783, the son of the village carpenter - learned in his father's shop the use of the tools, but showed a capacity for higher things. Before he was of age, we are told he had "mastered Euclid, and shown considerable expertness in mechanical inventions." At the age of twenty-one he came to Boston, working first at his trade of carpenter, but obtaining gradually a reputation as a carver in wood and stone, in which art he had apparently been his own instructor. He carved the Ionic capitals of St. Paul's, the wooden cap¬ itals of Park Street steeple, and the marble panels in the front of Mr. David Sears's house on Beacon Street (now occupied by the Somerset Club) ; he made a model in wood of the Capitol at Washing¬ ton for Mr. Bulfinch, and models in plaster of the Parthenon at Athens and the Pantheon at Rome ; he gave lessons in archi¬ tecture and drawi ng ; finally he appeared as an architect. In conjunction with Alexander Parris he built St. Paul's Church on Tremont Street. Shortly after, in 1825, he was se¬ lected by the Bunker Hill Monument Association, after much vacillation, as the architect of the obe¬ lisk. The history of the adoption of the design for this monument is curious.

A portion of the com¬ mittee were in favor of a reduction of Trajan's col¬ umn, while the remainder were for an Egyptian obe¬ lisk. The latter carried the day, chiefly on the its greater Mr. Horatio presented a model for an hundred feet high, raised on a plinth SPIRE 0f hollis street meeting-house. twenty feet high, ap¬ proached by four flights of steps. This was finally rejected by the commit¬ tee, and a design submitted by Willard for a shaft two hundred and twenty feet high, without accessories, was adopted and carried out.1 Mr. Willard fixed upon a quarry in Quincy as likely to furnish stone of the desired quan¬ tity and quality, and purchased of Mr. Gridley Bryant for $325 the privilege of quarrying as much as might be required for the monument.2 The United States Bank in State Street, a small granite building with the front of a Grecian Doric temple in antis , of which the columns, much reduced in size, now form a part of the facade of the Merchants' Bank building on the same site; and the County Court House, still standing in Court Square, a dismal prison, built in 1832, with two severe Doric porticos at the extrem¬ ities, one of which has been removed, - these, with St. Paul's and the monu¬ ment, were the chief works of Willard.

Alexander Parris was perhaps more engineer than architect; yet in Mr. Bonney's shop at Pembroke, where the boy was apprenticed to the carpen¬ ter's trade, the occupation of his leisure moments was the study of Nichol¬ son's Architecture. At the close of his apprenticeship he removed to Port¬ land, where he furnished designs for several important buildings. A little later we find him similarly engaged at Richmond. It was not until the close of the war with Great Britain in 1815 that he settled in Boston, where both as architect and engineer he occupied a prominent position for nearly thirty years. St. Paul's Church, referred to above as having been built by Parris in conjunction with Willard, was doubtless the best work of both. It presents to the street a simple Ionic hexastyle portico, with somewhat attenuated columns of freestope from Acquia Creek, and a pediment which it was intended to fill by a bas-relief representing Paul preaching at Athens. The requisite funds were, however, wanting for such a luxury as a sculp¬ tured pediment, and the rough blocks remain to this day to remind us of the loss. Had the design been carried out, another laurel might probably have been added to the brow of Willard. Parris built also the Quincy Market,3 the Marine Hospital at Chelsea, the Arsenal buildings at Watertown, and many private buildings of which no record is at hand. He held for fifteen years the office of constructing engineer at the Charlestown Navy Yard, and was charged with many occasional duties outside that position, - as the construction of sea-walls on the islands of Boston Harbor, and several light-houses, beacons, and breakwaters on the New England coast. Mr. Parris died in 1852.

Asher Benjamin is less remembered for his buildings than for his books. His first work, long the sheet-anchor of house-builders throughout New England, was published as early as 1806 by Etheridge & Bliss in Boston, with this title: The American Builders Companion ; the five orders of Architec¬ ture, zuith great alterations both in size and expense , etc., etc., by Asher Benjamin, Architect and Carpenter, and Daniel Rayner, Architect and Stucco- building, when the present structure was erected, 2 [See the chapter on " Canals and Railwas floated on a raft to Braintree, where it roads " in the present volume. - Ed.] became the place of worship of the Rev. Dr. 8 [See Vol.III. p. 228, for a perspective view Storrs's society. - Ed.] of this structure. - Ed.]

worker. This work ran through many editions, and was succeeded by the Rudiments of Architecture, the Practice of Architecture, the Builder's Guide, and last of all, in 1840, the Architect ; or, Practical House Carpenter. These were what their titles implied, - practical guides to the builder who under¬ took the duties both of carpenter and architect; and from the faithful study of them grew the classic house-fronts and interior details of a generation to which systematic architectural education was as yet unknown.

Isaiah Rogers, a contemporary of Willard and Parris, was the architect of the Tremont House in 1828, and of the Merchants' Exchange in State Street a few years later, as of many less conspicuous buildings. It will be observed that this was the age in Boston of a sort of Greek revival, when not only churches like St. Paul's, and public buildings like the Court House, the Bank, and the Tremont House, but even dwelling-houses must be fitted out with a portico of columns in the severest cast of Doric. Often, as in the case of the Court House, this was the only attempt at architecture in the whole building; often, as in the case of innumerable suburban houses, the great wooden columns, three or four feet in diameter, were backed by a front wall pierced by three stories of parlor and bed-room windows. Perhaps no absurdity of fashion in architecture was ever more preposterous than this. Its foolishness had not yet been appreciated even as late as 1838, when the Boston Custom House, the most costly building at that time in the city, was begun. Its architect was Ammi B. Young, a man of much professional experience and ability, who was yet unable to perceive the incongruity of encumbering a building for the transaction of public business, requiring constant writing and constant perusal of papers, with such shadowy ob¬ structions as porticos in the Grecian Doric style.

The Greek period was followed, as was natural, by the Gothic period. The Gothic spire of Federal Street, Bulfinch's only attempt in that direc¬ tion, was not provocative of emulation, and remained long the solitary ex¬ ample ; but about the year 1835 the Masonic Temple on Tremont Street, now the United States Court House, and Trinity Church in Summer Street, a massive structure of rough-hewn granite, with a low, square tower in the middle of the front,1 opened the way for this new Gothic invasion. The results were rather more serious than in the case of the Greek revival, inas¬ much as then the architects could conscientiously go to their books, and in¬ sure themselves against any too frightful solecisms by following the rules and proportions there laid down ; but in the Gothic style there are no rules, and the untutored architects found themselves afloat on an uncertain sea without chart or compass. In an evil hour the fashion caught the suburban builders, and little boxes began to spring up all over Roxbury, Dorchester, and Brookline, in which the wooden skeletons were clothed with the most extravagant details into which wood could be tortured. This was believed to be the romantic style ; but it was a style which, free from the restraint of knowledge and training on the part of the architects, had neither con¬ venience, beauty, economy, nor durability to recommend it, and it proved ephemeral.

The next style to obtain popular favor was what was commonly known as the " French roof" style. In country houses, where for some years it re¬ tained undisputed sway, it took the form of a cubical mass covered with a steep roof violently concave, hipped on all sides, and with a flat on top nearly as large as the area of the house. The French roof, so called, had at least convenience and economy on its side, since it afforded an upper story of rooms with upright walls, and nearly as large as those below. These were strong claims, and proved for many years irresistible. The great exemplar of this style was the Deacon House, built on Washington Street, about 1850, from the designs of a French architect, M. Lemoulnier. It was a villa of the deuxiime classe, as the French would say, built of brick and set in an ample enclosure bounded by three streets, with square entrance-lodge, stable, and other accessories, carried out in a style of great completeness. Its plan was admirable, the disposition of rooms being generous and noble, and on a scale very unusual in this country, and its exterior was marked by great simplicity and breadth. But the examples of the French roof style which for twenty years multiplied so rapidly in all the suburban towns had for the most part a very small infusion of these qualities; clumsy in mass and unpicturesque in outline, their details were generally execrable, - the facility with which pine wood can be tortured into forms of "ornament" being a temptation too strong to be often resisted.

In the city, the street architecture of Bulfinch - as seen in the banking and insurance buildings of State Street still standing, and in the dwellinghouses of Franklin Place and Colonnade Row which have now disappeared

- was invariably characterized by good taste and absence of ambition which make it easy to forgive a certain timidity and tameness which were the in¬ evitable result of the slender resources at his command. For many years after his active practice in Boston came to an end, few examples of street architecture of conspicuous size or importance were erected. Somewhere about 1840 the pleasant streets to the eastward of Washington Street, which had been occupied by the old mansions and gardens of the past generations, began to be invaded by great blocks of warehouses, - massive but uninter¬ esting piles of Quincy granite, of which the cold monotony was unrelieved except by an order of Greekish pilasters here and there carrying a flat entablature. The greater part of these buildings were swept away by the fire of 1872, but a few of them still remain near the head of Milk Street, which serve to show what the prevailing taste was forty years ago. Toward the year 1850, however, two buildings of nearly equal frontage were built,

- the Boston Museum on Tremont Street and the Boston Athenaeum on Beacon Street, which may be said to be the first since the days of Bulfinch to show a hopeful growth of architectural knowledge and capacity. The Boston Museum is built of granite, with three similar stories of round arched windows, separated by strong belt-courses and crowned by a vigo¬ rous Italian cornicione. The Athenaeum, of brown freestone, is a more pro¬ nounced example of a Palladian palace-front, with a high basement of rusticated piers and round arches carrying an order of Corinthian pilasters, with lofty windows between, embellished with pedimented caps. Both these buildings, though widely different in style, showed the adaptability of the Italian renaissance to the conditions and uses of modern life, and its effec¬ tiveness even on the smaller scale which those conditions permit.

Those were days when few costly private buildings were erected. The profession of architecture was as yet practically unrecognized, and the handful of young men who undertook to practise it had to contend against formidable obstacles, - an entire lack of confidence on the part both of clients and of builders, the absence of illustrative examples in design and construction, the want of elementary training and the stimulus of enlight¬ ened and generous competition. These depressing conditions were, how¬ ever, soon to be greatly modified. Various influences conspired to produce a rapid amelioration in the position of architects as towards the general public. Of these influences none was probably more effective than the writings of Ruskin, which, as in the case of Carlyle twenty years earlier, were perhaps more promptly appreciated in America than in England. Making all due allowance for their exaggerated moral tone, their arrogance, their partial judgments, it must yet be admitted that the extraordinary vivacity, earnestness, and force of these writings stimulated to a remarkable degree the public interest in the subjects of which they treated, and brought about a corresponding increase of artistic perception, while often leaving the reader too much in the attitude of a partisan to admit of dispassionate judgment and criticism. The introduction of photography just at this time (or rather the rapid perfecting of its processes), and the great extension of foreign travel helped forward the artistic education of architects and the artistic cultivation of great numbers of those upon whom they must de¬ pend for encouragement and support.

The change first made itself felt in the architecture of the stores and warehouses which were the first visible results of the growing mercantile prosperity of the city. These were now characterized by greater ambition and a more apparent striving for effect. The well studied volumes which had for generations furnished the easily contented architects with the correct delineations of the Greek and Roman orders were now thrust aside. Photo¬ graphy had brought to our hand the examples of Rome and Florence, of Venice and Verona, of Paris and London. Northern Gothic, Southern Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance, - the happy architect could "expatiate free o'er all this scene of man," confident that an appreciative community would salute each new monument as a new triumph.

The limited space afforded by the territory of the peninsula had become by this time covered with close built streets,' in the newer of which the prosaic and uninteresting type of city dwellings devised by tasteless buildvol. iv. - 61.

ers whose idea of elegance was realized by what was commonly called the " swell-front," had been repeated with wearisome pertinacity. With the filling in of the Back Bay, which began about 1854, an opportunity was offered for breaking away from the old traditions. The new streets were occupied with considerable rapidity by a class of houses widely different for the most part from any heretofore built, and very generally under the charge of professional architects, who had now grown more numerous, and who had made good in great degree their claim to recognition and confi¬ dence. In the desire to give an aspect of luxury to the new buildings, brick, which had been until now generally used for the fronts of city dwellings, fell into disrepute, and the new houses were for the most part faced with one or another variety of freestone. The early houses of this territory were un¬ usually ample in point of size and accommodation. As the price of lots rose with the success of the enterprise, the houses became gradually nar¬ rower, and a modification of the interior plan was the result, by which the stairs were put in the middle of the house, and a large room at either end covered the whole width. The octagonal bay-window on the front was early adopted as a feature both of convenience and beauty, and speedily became as much a matter of course as the swell-front of other days. In the style of the new houses, or in their want of style, there was the same variety to be observed, the same hunger and thirst after novelty of effect, which has been alluded to as prevailing among the newer stores and ware¬ houses. It was much, however, that the interest of architects in their work could be seen to grow year by year more serious and intelligent, and that even while their preference for one or another style was variable, their use of all the styles grew more instructed, and their choice of motives and details more refined and chastened. It was difficult for the least mercurial designer to maintain, among the multiplicity of examples presented to him from every country and every age, and in view of the shifting tastes and practice of his fellows, the steady judgment, balance, and self-restraint which are indispensable to the production of the best work in design. Of sys¬ tematic architectural teaching there was at the time of which I am speaking none whatever. The practice of a young architect was determined by the more or less of artistic knowledge and feeling in the office from which he had come forth, and by the individual predilections which resulted from accidental connections and opportunities. On the one hand, those most deeply impressed by the teachings of Ruskin strove to give to their designs the character of the Italian Gothic which Ruskin so warmly expounded. On the other hand, those whose training and associations were strongly classic contemned with vehemence the Gothic fever, and followed the lead of the French architects of the Second Empire, whose works were illustrated with great minuteness in numberless published serials and monographs. The public buildings of the city were generally of the latter style. The new City Hall finished in 1865, the Post Office commenced about the same time and not yet finished, and the Horticultural Hall, also built in 1865, are imitations, as close as the slenderer resources would allow, of that ambitious and grandiose style, of orders superimposed and heavily loaded mansards, which reached its climax in the pavilions of the new Louvre.

To such a style, with its columns and entablatures, the granite, so much an object of local pride, was supposed to lend itself with peculiar fitness, on account of the. facility with which large stones could be quarried, and the safety with which, by reason of its great strength, large openings could be spanned. But, in truth, our native gray granite, admirable for works either of engineering or of architecture in which the chief expression desired is that of massiveness and strength, is one of the least admirable for any purposes of grace or luxury. Its color forbids any agreeable play of light and shade, and its texture scarcely admits of clean-cut ornament except at great expense ; and when all is done, the ornament is without effect. The most striking example of the right use of granite is the Beacon Hill Reservoir, perhaps the noblest piece of architecture in the city, abso¬ lutely adapted to its purpose and absolutely free from excess or effort or affectation, - its cyclopean masonry unvexed by details and unbroken save by the single order of round arches, of which the five on Derne Street are almost Roman in their grand depth of shadow. The Reservoir has stood but thirty-five years, and having been proved to be a useless portion of the system of water-works is now being taken down. It would probably be vain to plead for its preservation on the ground of its architectural merit; yet it is a perpetual reminder, to every thinking architect who passes be¬ neath its walls, of that quality in which our architecture, like our national character, is most deficient, - the quality of repose. But in buildings erected for the ordinary uses of life, such repose as this is of course unattainable. The reasonableness of leaving granite without ornament, and with its wall face untooled, was, however, at length generally recognized; and in many blocks of warehouses, notably those on Commercial Street and Long Wharf, in the new Jail for Suffolk County on Charles Street, and various other less conspicuous instances, this stone was used with right judgment and excel¬ lent effect.

During the period when brick was considered too common for use in fine buildings, the choice of materials at the command of the architects was practically limited to the granites of Quincy, Rockport, Concord, and other New England quarries, and the brown freestones of the Connecticut Valley or New Jersey. The effect of the latter stones when used by themselves is nearly as sombre as that of granite, as may be seen in the interminable succession of shadowy streets in the upper portion of New York; but about the time when building was commenced on the new lands of the Back Bay, other stones made their appearance one after another, until the variety now within the architect's reach is quite bewildering. The white and gray marbles of Vermont and New York were followed by the light sandstones of New Brunswick and Ohio, and the red granites of the Eastern coast. Brick was again admitted to the company of presentable materials, and its near relation, terra-cotta, of which the use had been growing more common in England, was here experimented on now and then, but with timidity, until the building of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1872, when the experi¬ ment was tried on a large scale. This building, of which the complete design embraces four long blocks of building surrounding a quadrangle, but of which at the present time but a single block has been undertaken, is in the modern Gothic style, with much elaboration of decorative detail, and the whole of the dressings above the water-table are executed in terra-cotta from an English manufactory. The walls being of red brick, while the terra-cotta is of two colors, the result is an effective example of the capa¬ cities of this excellent material, which has now advanced so far in favor among us that there are half-a-dozen establishments engaged in its manu¬ facture in as many different cities, and great improvement has been effected in the quality of the product.1

In the midst of the widely varying styles of private and public buildings the churches have, as by common consent, continued for forty years to be built in the Gothic style. A group of freestone churches was built about the years 1846-48 on Harrison Avenue, Chauncy Street, and Bedford Street, - all of which have now disappeared, and the last mentioned of which, built by a Unitarian Society from the designs of Hammatt Billings, was a graceful and effective composition whose destruction a few years since, to make room for a warehouse, was a real misfortune. Perhaps ten years later were the two churches still standing far up on Tremont Street, the one built of Roxbury rubble, with low walls and two spires ; the other of brick, high shouldered, round arched, and rigid in outline, with a tall campanile on the corner, which was the first fruit, so far as Bos¬ ton was concerned, of the teachings of Ruskin. Still a few years later, and the success of the Back Bay enterprise determined in that direction the movement of several of the wealthier congregations, whose churches had been successively swallowed up by the irresistible march of trade. The first society to build on the new territory was that of Federal Street. The Arlington Street Church, the successor of the first Gothic meeting¬ house in Boston, is the only recent exception to the prevalence of that style. It is built with general refinement of design after the manner of Wren, with a steeple such as our forefathers loved, - the exterior wholly of brown freestone, the interior cold and correct in white plaster, modelled, as we were told by the architect, as closely as possible upon the church of Sta. Annunziata at Genoa, but with such substantial differences as a pair of side galleries clogging the sides, and cutting ruthlessly across the great columns which divide the church into an apparent nave and aisles, the for¬ mer covered by a barrel vault. The columns are stately, but their stateli¬ ness is at the expense of the convenience and comfort of that portion of the congregation whose seats may happen to be in the side pews.

Berkeley and Newbury streets, and in the Emmanuel Church also on New¬ bury Street, the Gothic style is as conscientiously followed as the re¬ naissance was in the Arlington Street, and with the same adherence to the forms of past ages, without reference to their convenience or fitness for the uses of the present. The walls of both these churches are of the Roxbury pudding-stone, - an admirable material, with great variety and richness of color. The exterior of the Central Church is designed with dignity and knowledge, and is ennobled by a fine and very lofty spire. The interior is high in the walls, with an open high-pitched roof ; and although its plan is a rectangle, yet it is divided, by the arrangement of large piers of stone, into something like the nave, aisles, and transept of a mediaeval church. Such a compromise between ambition and convenience has probably never proved quite satisfactory, since the features which are so impressive and admirable on the scale and with the resources of mediaeval art are apt to lose their interest when copied on the reduced scale and with the limited resources of modern church building; while, on the other hand, they are

In the First Church, on the corner of Berke¬ ley and Marlboro' streets, built a year or two later than the Central Church, these principles were frankly recognized ; and while the Gothic spirit governed every feature of the design, and expressed tself with conspicuous grace and vigor of detail both within and without, yet the treatment was made to adapt itself to the uses for which the house was built. The walls are low, the space they en¬ close is unobstructed by columns, and the only possible inconvenience arises from the sombre¬ ness of the interior, the windows being filled with very dark glass.

The old church in Brattle Square was sold in 1871, and a new and costly edifice was built on the corner of Common¬ wealth Avenue and Clar¬ endon Street, of which the somewhat clumsy body is redeemed by a square tower of remarkable beauty, with the unusual decorative feature of a band of colossal figuresculpture girdling the tower between the belfry arches and the cornice. This church has the high walls, the low roof, and the round low arches which are characteristic features of the Southern Romanesque style. The decay of the society which built it, added to some acoustic defects which might doubtless have been overcome by persistent effort, have

Tower Of The New Brattle Square Church

In the new church of the Old South society, finished in 1874, the style is that of the Gothic of Northern Italy. In its high tower it was attempted to gain something of the expression of an Italian campanile with its simple shaft, its decorated belfry, and its short, pyramidal spire. The pitch of the roof is low, the princi¬ pal windows are grouped under bearing arches, and the surfaces as far as possible are broad and unbroken. In the interior the con¬ struction is empha¬ sized by allowing all the wall piers, which carry the main trusses of the roof, to appear and make an important fea¬ ture of the interior design. We touch here one of the points where both the New England climate and the New England habits of congregational worship are at odds with the traditions of European church building. As long as the churches were first of all monuments, and the services held within them were in the nature of spectacles addressed by a ruling priest¬ hood to the eyes and ears of a crowd of ignorant worshippers, so long the splendor of the monument was everything, - the comfort of the people was of small importance. The walls, floor, and commonly the roof of the Me¬ diaeval church were therefore of stone, treated with as much richness of material and decoration as the resources at the command of the builders would allow. In the climate of New England the warmth and general comfort of the congregation is enhanced by a carpeted floor and a plas¬ tered wall, - concessions harrowing to the ecclesiastical mind, but too strongly supported by common-sense to be generally resisted.