Monastery at Large

Category: The Southern Architect

  • “Impressions of An Architect at the Fair” (1893) by E.G. Lind

    Louis Sullivan. Pediment on the Bayard Building (1899). New York.
    Louis Sullivan. Pediment on the Bayard Building (1899). New York.

    The Background

    The following letter was originally published in the October 1893 edition of The Southern Architect, and was written by Edmund George Lind (1829-1909), professionally known as E.G. Lind, a British-born architect who spent most of his life and career in Baltimore but practiced in Atlanta from 1883 to 1893.

    Here, Lind reported on his visit to the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects in Chicago, held in July 1893, when the city was also hosting the massive World’s Columbian Exposition.

    Chicago was then emerging as the epicenter for modern architecture in the United States—led by Burnham & Root, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright—and the exposition became a watershed moment for the industry, ushering in the classically inspired Beaux-Arts style that dominated American architecture for decades.

    As Lind noted, the exposition was largely planned by John Wellborn Root, an architect who was born and raised in rural Georgia and practiced in Chicago with D.H. Burnham.

    Root pioneered the modern steel-framed skyscraper, and his only work in Georgia was the eight-story Equitable Building, Atlanta’s first “skyscraper” when it opened in 1892.

    In the early 1890s, architecture in the Southeast was still embarrassingly behind the rest of the country, and of the dozen or so architects then based in Atlanta, only Lind and G.L. Norrman are known to have visited the Chicago exposition.

    Lind retired shortly after his Chicago visit, but Norrman immediately began incorporating elements of Chicago architecture into his designs and produced several strikingly modern buildings directly inspired by the Beaux Arts style and the works of Louis Sullivan and Burnham & Root.

    Coming from the overgrown backwater of Atlanta, Lind was clearly dazzled by the bustling city of Chicago, then the second-largest in the United States.

    Here he references his visit to Burnham & Root’s 21-story Masonic Temple—then the tallest building in Chicago—and Sullivan’s Auditorium Building, then the largest building in the United States.

    For a man of the 19th century, Lind took a surprisingly progressive attitude toward women, praising the unnamed “lady architectress” of the Women’s Building (Sophia Hayden), at a time when the first wave of female architects prompted fierce opposition in the industry.

    Lind also noted that the women of Chicago were as “pushing and independent as the men”, concluding rather cheekily: “I like them.”

    And just to prove that some things never change: Lind marveled that Chicago actually buried its “unsightly” telegraph lines—Atlanta still refuses to bury its utility lines.

    Impressions of An Architect at the Fair

    The Editor of Southern Architect:

    When I left Atlanta for Chicago I fully intended transmitting you a prompt and faithful report of the proceedings of twenty seventh annual Convention of the A.I.A. and the World’s Congress of Architects, as well as some particulars of the World’s Fair and the city itself, but I have been in such a constant state of wonderment and weariment since my arrival, that I have felt equal to nothing except resting and getting nothing of that.

    The fact is, anyone coming to Chicago and expecting to live on in the old fashioned way will be surprised to find he has got to do two days’ work in one all the year round or he will soon be nobody and nowhere. Everything here goes with a rush. It is worse than New York. Even the women go ahead as no other women can, if they do have big feet, which I have failed to notice; they make use of them, and are quite as pushing and independent as the men if not more so. I like them.

    About the convention. I was greatly disappointed in finding so small an attendance of architects. I had expected hundreds where tens only were visible, and felt sure the great fair would bring such an abundance of architects from all parts of the world that a chance would be given of meeting many old friends, but the attendance was really slimmer than usual, while the foreign element was almost entirely wanting. One Englishman alone representing Great Britain, and a Japanese, Japan. France and Germany had representatives somewhere, but did not come within my ken. Many papers had been forwarded for reading to the convention which will be published with the proceedings in due course of time.

    Monday, the 31st of July, President Edward H. Kendall of New York, opened the convention with an address. General business was transacted, and at an adjournment the members were lunched by the Illinois Chapter, and afterwards carried around the city in four splendid tallyho coaches. With a short stop for lunch on the return trip, this outing consumed a good four hours which were enjoyed immensely, as a good opportunity was afforded of viewing the best part of the city and boulevards. These latter are as beautiful as they are abundant, no expense being spared in the decoration and maintenance. I have never seen anywhere landscape gardening in such beauty and perfection.

    Tuesday, 1st of August, at 10 a.m., another meeting of the institute was held and business closed. At 2 p.m., same day, the formal opening of the Congress of Architects took place, Mr. D.H. Burnham, chairman, reading a paper, “The Organization of the World’s Exposition,” in which he gave his deceased partner, Mr. Root, all the credit for the conception and arrangement of the buildings and general plan of the whole. More than once Mr. Root’s name was mentioned during the congress, and each time with the greatest of praise.

    Wednesday more papers and more entertaining, concluding with an excursion on the Lake to Lincoln Park. Returning later in the evening to the World’s Fair, we witnessed from the boat a grand display of fireworks, which, with the brilliant electric lighting of the Fair buildings and grounds, made a perfect fairyland of the place.

    By 10 o’clock we reached the wharf at the foot of Van Buren street, well filled for one day with lunches and sightseeing, and quite ready for rest till the morrow.

    The next three days were filled in with reading papers on various subjects relating to architecture, to very small, but appreciative audiences. Then the “World’s Congress of Architects” closed forever.

    Why is it architects display so little interest in the profession they practice and profess to love so well? Surely no other body of professional men would have manifested as much indifference as was displayed in this World’s Congress of Architects? To my mind it was both disheartening and humiliating.

    The Convention and Congress over, I felt at liberty to indulge in the World’s Fair to my heart’s content and indulged accordingly, winding up each evening by being thoroughly wound up, and retiring at night too weary even for dreams.

    It is not surprising one should become fatigued wandering about the Fair grounds, when we are reminded of the fact that Jackson Park and the Midway Plaisance, on which the buildings stand, contain over six hundred acres of land. This is no small surface to cover, and when you come to add to this the wandering in and out and up and down the various buildings, the fatigue encountered is immense.

    To attempt even a slight description of the grounds and various buildings composing the Fair would fill a volume and then fall short of conveying an adequate idea of the immensity and beauty of the whole. No expense or labor has been spared, and the results achieved probably surpass any effort ever before made in a like direction. It is fairyland, it is Aladdin’s Palace eclipsed, it is perfection, and America can afford to feel proud.

    The sight of the buildings alone was worth coming many miles to see, and I shall never feel sufficiently thankful that for once my bump of economy was overcome by my organ of extravagance, and I was led to visit this land of delectable delights, and spend time and money to so good a purpose.

    One cannot fail to be struck with the care and attention bestowed upon the grounds and shrubbery; they are kept in beautiful condition and the floral designs are splendid. I was told $4,000,000 had been laid out on these grounds previous to their selection for the Exposition, and altogether they had cost $5,000,000.

    The water front is about two miles in extent, beautifully adorned architecturally, presenting a magnificent appearance seen from Lake Michigan. In various parts throughout the grounds beautiful sheets of water are provided, symmetrically or naturally formed, adding greatly to the charm of the whole, and as some of these have boats and gondolas plying on them, the scene is bright and lively in the extreme.

    When it is considered how many architects were employed to design the various buildings composing the Exposition, it is remarkable that so much harmony should prevail as a whole. No less than ten architects (three from New York, one from Boston, one from Kansas, and five from Chicago) and architectress has fingers in this glorious architectural pie, the lady architectress being the author of the very beautiful Woman’s building, or rather ther very beautiful building for women. If any one had a doubt before of woman’s fitness for the calling of architecture, let him doubt no longer.

    On these buildings have been expended about $35,000,000. They cover twice the area of the Paris Exposition of 1889, and cost twice as much. The supply of electricity alone cost $1,000,000, furnishing 17,000 horse power for electric lighting. The supply of 24,000 horse power of steam is furnished by the largest and best arranged set of boilers ever seen, and one of the engines, the “Allis,” is twice the size of the celebrated Corliss engine used at the Centennial Exposition.

    In short, the Fair is a wonder of wonders. At every turn the eye and mind are kept going, and it only requires a sufficient number of visit for the eye and mind to be gone altogether. Just fancy, in the matter of fine art alone there are thousands and thousands of pictures, acres upon acres, which would take a connoisseur twelve months at least to examine, and yet a few days has to suffice to run them over; and here let me say while I think of it, that the United States comes out ahead in art as she has done in everything else. Only a few years ago America was nowhere from an artistic standpoint; now she is in it to stay. Some people think she will some day take the lead, I think she has already done so.

    It may be worthy of remark that more people are to be found outside the buildings than inside. The truth is the exhibits attract far less attention than the buildings and grounds. A bicyclist might ride up and down the corridors of all the buildings except the one devoted essentially to art, all day long, without inconveniencing the visitors, so few are there.

    The propriety of erecting such expensive temporary buildings for exhibition purposes may be justly subjected to criticism, since the very beauty of the former detracts from the worth of the latter; indeed it is doubtful whether in the near future exhibitions will be found in sufficient number, to furnish an exposition that will be worth visiting if this practice is adhered to. I think it is equally doubtful whether such institutions as the “Midway Plaisance” are at all helpful to the progress of arts and sciences.

    ‘No visitor to the World’s Fair can fail to be struck with the immense crowds always to be found on the Plaisance, attracted by the numerous side shows and exhibitions with which that place abounds, most of them merely catch-penny “fakes,” and all making large draughts upon the time and purse of the sightseer. These international fairs were never intended to include such stuff, and it ought not to form any part of them, but they are there, people like it and pay for it; meanwhile the ambitious inventor and exhibitor is left out in the cold.

    I cannot close this letter without a word for the city of Chicago proper. It is a wonder, both on account of its size and the magnitude and costliness of its buildings; everything is on such a large and magnificent scale that one doesn’t begin to appreciate what he sees until he sees it in detail. After going over the floor and ascending to the top of a few such buildings as the Masonic Temple and Auditorium, he feels their bigness, and ceases to wonder that there are millions in ’em.

    Then the streets are straight and wide, and as a rule very clean for so large a city, while the principle ones are freed from those disfiguring telegraph poles so unsightly in most big cities, the telegraph wires being all put underground. The street car service is abundant and generally good, though to a Southerner, too little respect is paid to the comfort and safety of the passengers in the way of getting on and off, but one doesn’t expect everything. Then too, one is often puzzled to learn the names of the various streets for want of proper signs, which is a great evil in a city where people are in too great a hurry to stop and answer questions, and police are too invisible to be found when wanted, but will these drawbacks the visitor leaves the Windy City of the West with pleasant memories, and a thankful heart that he has escaped alive and whole, and with sufficient funds to carry him back home.

    E.G.L.

  • “Protection Against Fire” (1893) by E.G. Lind

    The Background

    The following article was originally published in the May 1893 edition of The Southern Architect, and was written by Edmund George Lind (1829-1909), professionally known as E.G. Lind, a British-born architect who spent most of his life and career in Baltimore, but practiced in Atlanta from 1883 to 1893.

    Here, Lind offered his ideas for preventing building fires, a chief concern for both architects and the general public in the late 19th century, when dangerous wood-burning fireplaces were the primary method of heating, and deadly fires were tragically common.

    Architects of the era were always eager to employ “fireproof” design solutions, and Lind specifically recommended using terra cotta flue liners in chimneys.

    Flue liners are now considered essential for fire prevention, yet as Lind noted, they were not in common use at the time and would not be widely adopted until mandated by national building codes in the 20th century.

    In early 1890s Atlanta, when construction was almost entirely unregulated, the city’s leading architects frequently called for greater government oversight of the building process, largely due to fire safety concerns.

    In 1890, Thomas H. Morgan, a partner of the architectural firm Bruce & Morgan, complained to a reporter of The Atlanta Constitution:

    “Why take the matter of defective flues. Chief Joyner [W.R. “Cap” Joyner, Atlanta’s first fire chief] reports that last year forty-two of the fires were caused by defective flues, and the loss was $18,000. This sort of thing would be stopped if we had the right kind of building law. There has hardly been a board of building inspectors in the last five years that has not recommended to the council some sort of building law, but none was ever adopted and the thing goes on in this careless fashion. Time and again in my work of supervision I have had to make them take joists out of chimneys.”1

    In the same news article, another Atlanta architect, G.L. Norrman, offered his own design solution for the construction of safer chimneys:

    “There should always be eight inches of brick around flues where the brick touches the woodwork. It takes more brick, but it is the only safe way to build a chimney, and I always put it in the specifications. Architects, as a rule, do not build chimneys large enough. Usually they only put four inches of brick between a flue and woodwork. That is not sufficient.”1

    In this article, Lind recommended that the local government hire a ramoneur to inspect and clean every chimney in the city annually.

    Appealing to Atlanta’s pathological need to compare itself to other municipalities, Lind noted: “The plan is in operation in other cities, and Atlanta cannot well afford to be ‘out of the swim.’”

    The city finally hired its first real building inspector in 1895 and began issuing construction permits that same year; it did not, however, hire a chimney inspector.

    Protection Against Fire

    It is worthy of remark that more fires occur at the commencement and close of the cold winter months than at any other period of the year. This may be accounted for from the fact that the accumulated soot of the preceding winter, having been driven by wind and rain into corners and crevices of the chimney flue conveniently left by the bricklayer, as if “on mischief bent,” readily takes fire upon the first warming up, ending ofttimes in widespread conflagration.

    A clean chimney flue would obviate all this, but how to clean it is the question.

    It is perhaps not commonly known that zinc chips or scraps of zinc plate burned in a stove will readily cleanse the stove-pipe of all accumulated soot. The same cleansing process might be applied to ordinary fireplaces, but in the absence of all such precautionary measures, and as a valuable auxiliary, I would suggest the creation of a new officer to our city staff – that of chimney sweeper, or “Ramoneur,” which sounds better whose duty it shall be to examine every house and public building in the city during the summer months, and have each chimney flue properly swept and cleansed at a charge to the owner or tenant of say fifteen or twenty-five cents for each flue, the soot to be removed by the operator and used as a fertilizer on the neighboring farm lands, thus preventing fire consumption on the one hand and raising food for man’s consumption on the other.

    This plan is in operation in other cities, and Atlanta cannot well afford to be “out of the swim.”

    The sweeping can be readily effected by a round brush of whalebone or split rattan fitted to a bamboo rod three or four feet in length furnished with a screw joint, to which other rods may be attached, thus gradually forcing the brush up the whole length of the flue, first enclosing the fireplace opening after adding the second length of rod by means of close fitting canvas, in the center of which is a small hole for passing in the different sections of rod and operating the brush.

    When the top of the chimney is reached, which may be readily ascertained by the Ramoneur or his assistant watching outside, by working the brush well around the flue all loose soot will be detached and the brush may be gradually lowered, disjointed and packed away for future use. The soot brought down to be put into close canvas sack and removed from the premises with little or no inconvenience to the tenant.

    In some cities a wire brush is used, weighted with lead or iron, and let down from the top of the flue, instead of starting at the bottom as here recommended, but the great objection to this method is the roughness of the apparatus, which frequently detaches mortar from the sides of the flues, and opens the way for future mischief by exposing defective joints. In this connection we would remark that the best shape for all flues is a circle, and the best material for building them is vitrified clay or terra-cotta. These pipes may be made without collars or socks, should be glazed on the inside, and as they are put in place and enclosed with the brickwork they can be protected from falling mortar by a wooden mandrel or covered core, which may be removed as each fresh joint of pipe is fitted and then replaced.

    The use of terra-cotta pipe for smoke flues is no new thing. The writer, in common with many other architects, has availed himself of them for years, and it would be well if their adoption was as common as the reverse is now the case. Little or no soot can cling to a glazed surface, and the joints are so few – less than one-eighth the number in a brick flue – that risk of fire from defective work, as well as the certainty of avoiding a smoky chimney would be almost obliterated.

    E.G.L.

    References

    1. “Eight Millions More”, The Atlanta Constitution, April 13, 1890, p. 7.

  • “Coloring of Rooms” (1892) by E.G. Lind

    The Background

    The following article was originally published in the September 1892 edition of The Southern Architect and was written by Edmund George Lind (1829-1909), known professionally as E.G. Lind, a British-born architect who spent most of his life and career in Baltimore, but practiced in Atlanta from 1883 to 1893.

    Less an article than a few brief notes, here Lind offers guidance on selecting interior colors based on a room’s orientation to the sun.

    Synthetic pigments developed in the 19th century brought a dizzying array of bright new colors into existence, and in the age when the rule-breaking artists of Impressionism shocked the public with the bold and vivacious tones of their paintings, color was the subject of both intense scientific scrutiny and countless mystical theories.

    As de facto interior designers, architects had to possess a strong understanding of the relationship between light and color, and Lind took a special interest in color and its associations: in 1882, he presented his own mystical theory on “The Harmony Between Color and Music” to his colleagues in the American Institute of Architects.

    Lind’s suggestions here are more or less conventional wisdom for choosing interior colors and are perfectly applicable today. However, in a time when nearly all conventions are being actively dismantled and questioned, Lind’s insistence on adherence to a set of arbitrary rules feels amusingly antiquated. Rules, after all, are made to be broken.

    Coloring of Rooms

    If the aspect of a room be north, northeast, northwest, or due east, the general tone of the coloring should be positively warm. Blues, greens, etc., all shaded colors which involve any predominant use of blues, must be avoided.

    In such aspects the choice should tend towards reds and all their various combinations with yellow.

    As the aspect approaches east and west, so colors should verge towards yellow, rather than red tints. In an eastern aspect, tints of light yellows, lemon colors, etc., are always effective and cheerful.

    If the aspect is south or southwest or west, and opens to the sun, then we may venture on the use of cooler colors even on positive blue.

    Where the light is strong, unobscured and plentiful the tone of coloring may be full.

    Where the supply of light is small, the coloring should be light.

    It should be borne in mind that full toned colors lessen the apparent size of a room, while light coloring enlarges it.

    E.G. Lind
    Atlanta, Ga.