History of Architecture From the Earliest Times

Its Present Condition in Europe and the United States; with a Biography of Eminent Architects, and a Glossary of Architectural Terms

L. C. Tuthill

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367179953
• eBook ISBN: 9780429602634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture générale

Originally published in 1848, according to the author, 'every person has an individual interest in Architecture as a useful art, and all who cultivate a taste of the Fine Arts must give it a high place among them.' The chapters include examinations of many types of architecture such as Egyptian, Persian and Chinese, as well as considering the principles of architectre, the qualifications for an architect and the conteporary state of the art in America.

HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF ARCHITECTURE.

ARCHITECTURE is both an essential, and an ornamental art. While society is in its infancy, and strength and convenience alone are regarded, it ranks with other mechanic arts necessary to the comfort of man; but, when it adds to these, beauty of design, or a regard for effect, it becomes an ornamental or fine art, taking its place beside the sister arts, poetry, painting, and sculpture.

The art of building, in its widest signification, includes naval, military, and civil architecture.

Civil architecture, comprehending all edifices constructed for the use of man in civil life, forms the topic of the present work.

In that advanced condition of society, to which moral and intellectual culture has given form and order, buildings are required for religion, education, legislation, public exercises, amusements, commerce, manufactures, for perpetuating heroic deeds and historical events, and for domestic life.

Respecting the origin and early practice of this art, historical testimony affords no aid; some shelter, however, has been necessary for the comfort and protection of man ever since his creation.

In the bland and healthful air of Paradise, Milton imagined “a blissful bower,” as the dwelling-place of our first parents.

“It was a place

Chosen by the Sovran Planter, when he framed

All things to man’s delightful use; the roof

Of thickest covert and interwoven shade,

Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew

Of firm and fragrant leaf; on either side

Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub

Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous flower,

Iris all hues, roses and jessamine

Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought

Mosaic; underfoot the violet,

Crocus and hyacinth with rich inlay,

Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone

Of costliest emblem; other creature here,

Bird, beast, insect, or worm, durst enter none,

Such was their awe of man.”

Alas! how soon fallen Adam and Eve needed a more substantial shelter! Expelled from lovely Eden, the first man probably laboured “in the sweat of his brow,” to build the first habitation.

Every invention has its origin in the wants of man.

As the human mind increases in power, the whole material world is brought under its dominion and made to minister to physical comfort and pleasure. Man advances by slow degrees to this proud elevation. It matters not, in this connexion, indeed it is out of our province, to discuss the vexed question of man’s progress. Art is progressive.

Before man exercised the faculty of invention as an architect, he may have crept into hollow trees, or inhabited caves, as tenant in common with the beasts of the earth. Trees, with their wide-spreading branches, offered a natural shelter; by twining them together at the top, where they grew at a convenient distance apart, and filling in the sides with branches, something like a house would be formed. The wigwams of our North American Indians are only one step in advance of this kind of shelter. They cut down the trees, place them in a circular form, fasten them together at the top, interweave branches “to fence up the verdant wall,” and fill the interstices with clay.

These miserable huts do not equal in their mechanical construction, the nest of the oriole. The primitive huts of the Caffres, advance one step farther. They are regular domes, covered with mud, which hardens in the sun. The doors, or holes for entrance, are only two or three feet high, and the king himself is obliged to enter his regal residence “on all four.” The mud structures of the beaver are superior to them; but, as Dr. Johnson says, “the beaver of the present day can build no better than could the beaver, four thousand years ago.”

Tents were among the earliest habitations. They were made at first of the skins of animals, afterwards of felt and various kinds of cloth.

The Patriarchs of the Old Testament dwelt in tents,

“While on from plain to plain they led their flocks,

In search of clearer spring and fresher field.”

On each green and chosen spot, these portable habitations could be spread in a moment, and as readily removed.

The Israelites, during their wanderings in the wilderness, dwelt in tents. Their Tabernacle for religious worship was a spacious and magnificent tent, divided into three parts. Coverings of skins, rendered it impervious to rain and dampness. The first or inner covering, was of “fine twined linen,” wrought with needlework in various colours; the second covering was of goat’s hair; the third, “of skins dyed red,” and the fourth, of “skins dyed blue.”

Even at the present day,

“The Arab band

Across the sand,

Still bear their dwellings light,

And neath the skies

Their tents arise,

Like spirits of the night;

While near at hand

The camels stand,

And drink the waters bright.”

It was a mighty step in the art of building when trees were smoothed into posts and placed in a rectangular form, with a covering or roof over them. Simple as this invention now appears, the inventor ought to have been “known to fame,” for houses have continued nearly of the same form ever since. The most splendid Grecian temple is only an ornamented copy of the oblong house with its upright posts.

Log cabins were used, thousands of years before they were built by American backwoodsmen.

In the rude navigation of savages, the advance from paddles and oars to sails, was not greater than this stride from wigwams and mud huts, to a regular log house.

The employment of stones for buildings, was another important onward step in the art. The want of stones in some places, and the difficulty of shaping them into the forms desired, led to the manufacture of bricks, by reducing a mass of clay to a regular form, and hardening it in the sun, or burning it with fire. A convenient and enduring material was thus obtained, which has continued to be used ever since. From the only authentic record of this period—the Bible—we learn, that the city and tower of Babel were built of brick. The ambitious daring of some mighty leader projected this tower.

“Go to,” said he, “let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”

This presumptuous undertaking was arrested, after the walls had been raised to a great height, by one of the most striking miracles recorded in Holy Writ.

“Among the builders, each to other calls,

Not understood, till hoarse and all in rage;

.….Thus was the building left

Ridiculous, and the work Confusion named.”

BABYLON.

It is supposed that the City of Babylon and the Temple of Belus afterwards occupied the same site as the Tower of Babel upon the plains of Shinar, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. It was founded B.C. 2000, by Nimrod, and was rebuilt by Semiramis, B.C. 1200. Strengthened and beautified by succeeding sovereigns, it became one of the wonders of the world. Walls, three hundred and sixty feet high, eighty-seven feet in thickness, and sixty miles in length, surrounded this city. We are apt to be somewhat incredulous about these measurements, yet, when so many stupendous monuments remain, to demonstrate the power and skill of ancient nations, we know not where to fix the bounds of our belief.

Eastern writers, in their usual hyperbolical manner, describe the Temple of Belus, as twelve miles high, while St. Jerome more moderately asserts that it was only four miles in height! The geographer Strabo, who may perhaps be relied on, says it was six hundred and sixty feet high.

The city was laid out in regular squares, the streets of fifteen miles in length crossing each other at right angles. Its hundred gates of brass opened at the end of these streets. The hanging gardens of “the golden city” gave it the beauty of Paradise. But prophecy had spoken its doom, and Babylon the Great fell never to rise again. Travellers, as they wander over the desolate ruins, startle “the mole and the bat” from the prostrate temples of idolatry. The site of this stupendous city has been identified, and confirmation thus added to the truth of prophecy. Sir Robert Ker Porter, who visited these ruins, gives the following account of the present condition of the Temple of Belus:— “It is an immense pile of ruins; at its base it measures 3082 feet in circuit; it presents two stages, the first about sixty feet high, cloven into a deep ravine by the rain, and intersected by the furrows of ages; the second ascent is about two hundred feet; from thence to the top thirty-five feet. On the western side, the entire mass rises at once from the plain in one stupendous, though irregular pyramidal hill, broken in the slopes of its sweeping acclivities by time and violence. On the north side there are large piles of ruins of fine and solid brickwork, projecting from among immense masses of rubbish at the base. The remains of the masonry are furnace-burnt bricks, united by a calcareous cement. The base of the structure was not altered, but the piles of fine bricks thrown down were vitrified with the various colours. The consuming power appears to have acted from above, and the scattered ruins fell from a higher point than the summit of the present standing fragment. The heat of the fire which produced such amazing effects must have burned with the force of the strongest furnace. I should be inclined to attribute the catastrophe to lightning from heaven.”

NINEVEH.

Nineveh, the splendid capital of the Assyrian Empire, was sixty miles in circuit, and surrounded by high walls.

Recent discoveries have been made on the site of this ancient city, which promise to open a new volume of historical facts. A traveller thus writes to his friend in America

“The principal mound (of these lately discovered ruins) is very large, being about sixteen hundred feet in length. My first excavation brought me on walls with inscriptions of the cuneiform character. I soon found that I had got into a palace that had been buried for many centuries. I have cleared out several rooms, the walls of which are covered with figures. They are religious and historical. The former, the lion with the head of a man and the wings of a bird; the bull with similar head and the wings of the eagle. The historical subjects are chiefly interesting for the insight they afford into the manners and customs of the ancient Assyrians, their mode of warfare, the state of the arts, &c. From an examination of them, there results a conviction that this people had risen to the greatest power; that they were highly civilized, and had attained a very remarkable proficiency in the fine arts.”

The traveller who has made these interesting and invaluable discoveries, inclines to the opinion that the Greeks received their first knowledge of the arts from the Assyrians, instead of the Egyptians. There is, he thinks, more similarity between these remains of Ninehvite art and the Grecian, than between the Grecian and the Egyptian.

“Tyre and Sidon, cities of Phoenicia, probably excelled in the arts and sciences which were known in the more distant parts of Assyria. We know that the Tyrians and Sidonians were esteemed among the ancients for their skill in astronomy, arithmetic, commerce, and navigat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER II. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER III. HINDOO ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER IV. PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER V. JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER VI. CHINESE ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER VII. ABORIGINAL OR AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER VIII. CYCLOPEAN AND ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER IX. GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER X. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER XI. ARCHITECTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
• CHAPTER XII. THE ROMANESQUE OR LOMBARDIC, THE SAXON AND NORMAN.
• CHAPTER XIII. GOTHIC OR POINTED ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER XIV. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
• CHAPTER XV. REVIVAL OF GRECIAN AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
• CHAPTER XVI. PRESENT STATE OF ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE.
• CHAPTER XVII. PRINCIPLES OF ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER XVIII. QUALIFICATIONS FOR AN ARCHITECT.
• CHAPTER XIX. HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES.
• CHAPTER XX. CAUSES WHICH RETARDED THE PROGRESS OF THE ART IN THE UNITED STATES.
• CHAPTER XXI. MATERIALS FOR BUILDING IN THE UNITED STATES.
• CHAPTER XXII. PRESENT STATE OF THE ART IN AMERICA.
• CHAPTER XXIII. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES.
• CHAPTER XXIV. USE OF THE GRECIAN ORDERS AND GOTHIC STYLE IN PUBLIC BUILDINGS.
• CHAPTER XXV. USE OF THE GRECIAN ORDERS, GOTHIC AND ELIZABETHAN STYLES, IN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.
• CHAPTER XXVI. A RANDOM CHAPTER ON WALLS, CHIMNEYS, WINDOWS, ETC.
• CHAPTER XXVII. ARRANGEMENTS OF A CITY, AND BEAUTIFYING OF TOWNS AND VILLAGES.
• CHAPTER XXVIII. CEMETERIES
• CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL ARCHITECTS BEFORE AND SINCE THE CHRISTIAN ERA
• GLOSSARY OF ARCHITECTURAL TERMS