Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 September 1886 — PICTURE OF AN IDEAL CITY. [ARTICLE]

PICTURE OF AN IDEAL CITY.

The Houses of a “City Beautiful” A Higher Mode of Living. “It is a very pleasant picture,” I remarked as my guide paused; “but I am surprised to see no grand private mansions. Where do your wealthy reside?” “What matters it where they reside?" answered my guide; “are not the wealthy sumptuously housed in all cities and in all lands ? lam not asking you to lovk at ostentation and splendor, for these things are everywhere, but on the beauty that may come to the poor man’s door and be enjoyed by every citizen, however little he may be endowed with riches. “Now look and tell me what you see,” said my guide, pausing on one of the wide avennes of the city. “A long stretch of embowered cottages,” I answered. “In what do they differ,” I asked, “from similar homes in all American cities?” “In little,” replied my guide, “except that in our City Beautiful these charming homes are not in one avenue alone, for the occupancy of a fortunate few, but they are everywhere, some less spacious than others, but always there is a neat, tasteful, healthy and charming cottage for every man who is not an idler and a vagabond. There are no slums in our city. There is no squalor. “The aspects of our city encourage a higher mode of living, and by requiring that the poorest man’s house shall have requisite space, that he shall have an abundance of fresh air and pure water, and by insisting that his public acts shall be cleanly and with a regard to decency and the rights of others, we set him, as it were, on the road to self-respect and seemly living. “ You will observe,” said my guide, “that the architecture of these long rows of cottages and villas is almost severe. The lines are very good, the proportions harmonious, the colors agreeable, and the general effect eminently pleasing; but mere ornamentation is excluded almost altogether. The characteristic of most modern houses, especially of suburban houses, is a great deal of cheap and vulgar ostentation. Filigree work is the rule of these houses. The cornices are supported by fancy scroll-work brackets, thercofs of the piazzas and the porches are decorated with scalloped attachments, and wherever there is an opportunity some cheap device of the carver is nailed on. There is no beauty in pretense of any kind, and when the pretense is transparently false, when it consists of meaningless and vulgar display, it excites simply feelings of repulsion. “It has been necessary to persistently enforce this elementary principle upon our people, and now it is rarely that one sees those displays of toy-house architecture that are to be found elsewhere in our country. Look at those chimneys, single or in clusters, that stretch far down the vista; each of them is of brick and stone, gracefully broken by skillful and artistic uses of their material. They are ornamental, but the ornament is a durable part of themselves and the effect is good. Look at the pointed gables, at the charmingly curved roof lines. We have not imported hideous imitations of the mansard roof, and we know very well that a long row of flat roofs, with a straight, unbroken cornice line, is a monstrosity that could only have birth in a mind whose opaque darkness no ray of artistic light had ever entered. — O. B. Bunce, in Chicago Times.