George Browne Post Obituary

The death of George B. Post, following SO soon upon that of Daniel H. Burnham, who was his junior by a decade, points the same moral. It is that purely artistic sensibility is only one of the factors of an architect's equipment, and that a man may be a highly successful and conspicuous architect with only a moderate degree of it. Doubtless Mr. Post had more than Mr. Burnham. He was fond of sketching from nature in water color, not badly, and when he was seventy or near it, exhibited some of his work of that kind, done during a holiday in Italy. One cannot fancy Mr. Burnham beguiling his leisure in that way, nor even choosing rural Italy for his holiday. He once accurately described himself as "a business man with a knowledge of building." But the two men were alike in that the "architectonic" element in each was stronger than the picturesque. They personally fulfilled the function which Viollet le Duc assigns to the Roman engineer in the Roman monuments; that is to say, of the maker of the "parti," of the

"lay out," which he devised with a view not only to economy and convenience but also to dignity and impressiveness. The man who does that, call him what you will, is an architect, even though he should leave his buildings in the rough, or turn them over, as the French critic maintains that the Roman architect did, to a Greek decorator for their ornamentation. As planners, Burnham and Post were distinguished by the largeness and straightforwardness and simplicity of their works. The most notable of Mr. Burnham's works, and the most notable for these qualities, is doubtless the Union Station in Washington.

Following his service in and through the Civil War, in which he rose to the rank of colonel of volunteers, Mr. Post, who had already before the war taken a course in engineering, took a course of architecture in the "atelier R. M. Hunt," along with other pupils who subsequently became distinguished. Early in the '70's he was already in full professional swing. To these years belong the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, a square, simple and classical erection crowned with a dome, and fireproof throughout. A much more influential erection was the original building of the West

ern Union Company, since so built over as hardly to be recognizable, but the earliest of the "elevator buildings," excepting the original Tribune building, since doubled and more in capacity by vertical extension, which was at the same time under construction from the designs of Mr. Hunt. These at least were the first buildings in the design of which the elevator was distinctly recognized, for in the original Equitable building, with reference to the construction, though not to the design of which Mr. Post was employed in a consultative capacity, though elevators were contemplated, and the height was really of seven or eight stories, impracticable without them. Each architectural story included two actual stories and the fronts thus appeared as of the usual five-story office building, though at an unusual scale. But in the two newer buildings the number of stories was confessed. In the Tribune building, however, the story as the architectural unit was replaced by a group of stories, while in the Western Union the four stories of the "shaft," between a two-story base and a two-story capital, were separately and identically treated and the division attained which imposed itself upon subsequent designers and to which, after a few years of tentative and unsuccessful experimentation, they all returned. The old Western Union building had its capacity, as well as its architectural attractiveness increased by a steep wedge-roof.

The effect of this building upon the fortunes of the designer was immediate and marked. Nobody ever imitated the Tribune building, and its architect never did another tall building, except the pretty Marquand building in lower Broadway, but took off into "palaces" in New York, Rhode Island and North Carolina. On the other hand the architect of the Western Union building did far more than any other architect of the "elevator buildings" in which the elevator was the only novel factor of altitude, and in which the walls had still to carry themselves, before the steel frame came in to take away the previous limitation of height. Mr. Post always maintained that he himself had, as it were incidentally, invented the steel construction in the court of the Produce Exchange, which was, perhaps, the most noteworthy architecturally, as it was the most expensive, of his commercial buildings, although it reached only ten stories. It remains an impressive work, even though its one monumental feature, the earliest of the New York studies of the campanile of Giotto, had to be put behind the building of which it was meant to

be the crowning glory, and up an alley. Their name is legion. They are all straightforward and practical, and they are by no means wantonly ugly. Not one of them is a freak, though the St. Paul makes that effect by reason of what seems its intractable ground plan. Possibly some other architect might have made us forget the intractability. At all events, the treatment rather aggravated it in one respect, by the doubling of the stories so as to make one architectural out of two actual floors. This was assumed to be done in order to "give scale," but the architect explained that it was to avoid the square opening which resulted from the dispositions. Even so,

those who look at the square openings left untreated in the less conspicuous walls will be apt to hold that the more conspicuous wou'd have looked better if they had been left untreated there also. However that may be, the crowning feature of the threestory colonnade will be agreed to be a seemly and impressive piece of architecture.

The old Times Building in Park Row has been done much injustice to by the superposition of several stories and the substitution of a flat for the originally steeply Mansarded roof with which its author left it as completed. In this, however, he violated his own principle as exemplified in the earliest of his elevator buildings, by subdividing his "shaft." This error was retrieved in a restudy of the north front of the old Times building for the Broadway front of the Union Trust Company in which identity of treatment is resumed throughout. The result is not only its author's most successful work in the Romanesque inspired by Richardson-it is one of the half dozen "best" of those buildings of the transition from the old office building to the modern skyscraper, of which the height is still limited by the necessity of building actual and self-carrying walls of masonry or brickwork.

All these buildings show more or less their author's talent for simplification, which was shown also when he was employed to reconstruct the Equitable. But that talent was even better exemplified in smaller works, of which one is the building of the Long Island Historical Society. A still better one was Chickering Hall, at Fifth avenue and 18th street, a concert hall over a warehouse, which one is inclined to call the most artistic and satisfactory thing he ever did. Of his town houses there is not so much to be said in praise. The original Vanderbilt House at Fifth avenue and 57th street, completed in the early '80's was at

that time said to be "more successful and less interesting" than the other Vanderbilt house by Hunt five squares below. But when, a decade or so later, its author was invoked to carry it through the block, he destroyed the unity of the old edifice without substituting for it a larger unity, insomuch that the enlarged building degenerates into a miscellany. Of the Huntington house opposite there is even to be said, what can very seldom be said of any work of its author's that it lacks even a definite and intelligible architectural motive.

So far as New York is concerned, it is in his commercial and public or quasi-public buildings that Mr. Post's best work was done. And there is to be said that no architect has done more to promote the invocation by architecture of "the allied arts" to heighten its effects. The great corridor of the Equitable was a work of which the destruction was distinctly a civic loss. But perhaps in this as well as in its purely architectural aspect, his most noteworthy work in downtown New York is his latest. To see and seize the opportunity for the New York Stock Exchange in the multitude of "applied" orders and porticoes with which modern New York abounds, of bringing the classic order back to its original function of constituting the structure of the building, was an intuition one may say of genius. For there is no sacrifice here of practicality. The great order was as good an instrumentality as could possibly have been devised to secure the abundant illumination which is the chief requirement of the interior. The detail of design and decoration might be much worse than it is, in order to efface or obscure the success of the general scheme, and in fact it is not bad at all. This success is promoted by the provision of almost the only and by far the most impressive example New York has to show of the best architectural use of a classic pediment, that of a frame for sculpture. One could not find a better illustration of the author's large and truly "architectonic" way of looking at his architectural problems, or a fairer occasion of describing him as a great architect.

Montgomery Schuyler.

Mr. Post was born in this city December 15, 1837, and was consequently in his 76th year. He was educated at Churchill's Military School at Ossining, and was graduated as a civil engineer from the Scientific School of New York University in 1858. After studying architecture with the late Richard M. Hunt he formed a partnership in 1860 with Charles D. Gambrill, a fellow

student. The partnership with Mr. Gambrill was dissolved when Mr. Post resumed practice after the war. The present firm of George B. Post & Sons was formed in 1905.

Building for the American Institute

Building of the national headquarters of the American Institute of Architects, at Eighteenth and New York avenue northwest, was taken up when a convention of architects from all parts of the country was held at New Orleans December 2, 3 and 4. The meeting was called to discuss and raise $300,000 for the future structure, and was attended by representatives of every branch of the institute in the country, of which Washington has one of the most active Chapters.

The present plan which awaits ratification and money to carry it through, contemplates a large addition to the Octagon House at Eighteenth street and New York avenue, extending the structure in narrow crescent-shaped length from Eighteenth street to New York avenue. It will be built so as not to overshadow the Octagon House, to which is attached a great deal of sentiment and architectural significance.

Due to the odd figure which the Octagon House occupies, the addition is similar in its complicated lines. The main addition will be located a hundred feet north of the Octagon House, on Eighteenth street, and connected to it by a brick wall. Colonial architecture will be featured, the main front containing three apertures beneath colonnaded entrances communicating with the main auditorium designed to accommodate 500 people.

Three stories will be contained in the building. In the basement will be found the banquet hall, with space for the heating apparatus adjacent. Through the other two stories will be distributed the offices of the institute and numerous rooms representing the prominent architectural and art societies in the country, similar to the scheme adopted in the present building used as headquarters by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Sculptors' Society, the Painters' Society, the Mural Decorators' Society, the Federal Arts Society and the Archaeological Society will be represented, with other associations with a room each.

The building fronting on Eighteenth street will run in a form suggestive of a crescent, until it reaches the building line