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Show His mac~i~~~sthe,~~bol,~,~h which-:`his ,orjportunity lfes,!can ~,only~mmder the~.traditional forms of ,other peoples\, and earlier times; """", He must find new -forms, ,new `industrial ideals; or stultifyboth'opportunity and forms.4 But underneath forms in all -ages were certain condi- tions which determined them. .In them.,all was-a human spiritin accord with which they came to be; and where the forms were true forms, they will be found to be organic forms,-- an outgrowth, in other words, of conditions of life,and work, they arose to express. They are beautiful and significant,. studied in .this relation. They are ,dead to us,! borrowed as they, stand. I have called this feeling for the organic character of form and treatment the Gothic spirit, for it was more completely realized in the forms of that architecture, perhaps, than any other. At least the infinitely varied forms of that architecture are more obviously and literally organic than any other, and the spirit in which they were conceived and wrought was one of absolute integrity of means to ends. In this spirit America will find the forms best suited to her opportunities, her aims and her life. All the great styles, approached from within, are spiritual treasure houses to archi- tects, Transplanted as forms, they are tombs of a life that has been lived. HIS `d 1 f ' d' `d l'ty has already ruthlessly worked its way with the lifeless car- i ea 0 m ivi ua 1 casses of the foreign forms it has hawked and flung about in reckless revel that in East, as well as West, amounts to positive riot. Brown calls loudly for Renaissance, Smith for a French chateau, Jones for an English manor house, McCarthy for an Italian villa, Robinson for Hanseatic, and Hammer- stein for Rococo, while the sedately conservative families cling to """"old colonial"""" wedding cakes with demurely conscious superiority+ In all this is found the last word of the inof-,varzic. The Renaissance ended in this,-- a thing absolutely removed from time, place or people; borrowed finery put on hastily, with no more conception of its meaning or character than Titania had of the donkey she caressed. """"All a matter of taste,"""" like the hats on the cornice. A reaction was inevitable. T is of this reaction that I feel qualified to speak: for the work illustrated in this volume, with the exception of the work of Louis Sullivan, is the first consistent protest in bricks and mortar against this pitiful waste. It is a serious attempt to formulate some indus- trial and aesthetic ideals that in a quiet, rational way will help to make a lovely thing of an American's home environment, produced without abuse by his own tools, and dedi- cated in spirit and letter to him. The ideals of Ruskin and Morris and the teaching of the Beaux Arts have hitherto prevailed in America, steadily confusing, as well as in some respects revealing to us our opportunities. The American, too, of some old-world culture, disgusted by this state of affairs, and having the beautiful harmony in the architecture of an English village, European rural |