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thereby creating new principles of construction, and, further, how the practical operations of one race and period were carried on, modified, or developed by other races, under different conditions and in response to differences of needs and ideals.

And, while thus studying architecture as the gradual solution of practical problems of construction we will also keep constantly in mind the stages by which as man’s skill in building progressed, so also did his desire to make his structures more and more expressive of his higher consciousness of human dignity. How age after age built not only to meet the needs of living but also to embody its ideals of the present and the future life; how hand in hand with growing skill in workmanship was evolved superior achievement in artistic beauty.

Our methods of study shall follow, as far as possible, the architect’s order of procedure. Given a site and the commission of erecting thereon a building for a specific purpose, the architect first concerns himself with the plans: the ground plan, and, if the building be of more than one story, the several floor plans. He lays out in the form of a diagram the lines that enclose the building and those that mark the divisions and subdivisions; indicating by breaks in the lines the openings of doors and windows and by isolated figures the position of columns or piers which he may be going to use for support of ceilings and roofs. The disposition of all these particulars will be determined not only by the purpose of the building, but also by the character of the site and by the nature of the materials and method of construction that the architect purposes to employ.

Then, having acquired the habit of thinking of a building as having originated in a plan, we will follow the building as it grows up out of the plan, taking vertical form in what the architect calls the elevation, or, when he is speaking specifically of the outside of the building, the façades. Sometimes we shall study one of the diagrams, which he calls a section, when he imagines his building intersected by a vertical plane that cuts the structure into two parts. The one between the spectator and the cutting plane is supposed to be removed, and thus is laid bare the system of the interior construction-work.

In studying the exterior of a building, therefore, we shall keep in mind the interior disposition, arising out of the planning, and acquire the habit of looking on the outside of a building as logically related to the interior. The design of a building will come to mean to us not a mere pattern of façade, arbitrarily invented, but an arrangement of vertical and horizontal features, of solid surfaces and open spaces, that has grown out of the interior conditions and proclaims them.

In a word, we shall regard a work of architecture as an organic growth; rooted in the plan, springing up in accordance with constructive principles; each part having its separate function, and all co-ordinated in harmonious relation to the unity of the whole. For we shall find that unity of design is a special element of excellence in architecture; a unity secured by the relations of proportion, harmony and rhythm established between the several parts and between the parts and the whole. And, since architecture is primarily an art of practical utility, all these relations are equally determined by the principle of fitness; in order that each and every part may perform most efficiently its respective function in the combined purpose of the whole edifice. For this is the first and final criterion of organic composition.

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STONEHENGE. SALISBURY PLAIN, ENGLAND

Primitive Use of Post and Beam Construction. Pp. 8, 16

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SECTION AND PLAN OF “TREASURY OF ATREUS”

At Mycenæ. Example of “Tholos” or Bee-Hive Construction. P. 14

TEOCALLI OR “HOUSE OF GOD”

At Guatusco, Costa Rica. P. 20

CHAPTER II

PRIMITIVE STRUCTURES

The various remains that exist of prehistoric structures, though scattered widely over different parts of the world, present a general similarity of purpose and design.

The earliest examples of domestic buildings are the lake-dwellings which have been discovered at the bottom of some of the Swiss lakes, as well as in other countries both in the Eastern and Western hemispheres. They consist of huts, rudely constructed of timber, erected on piles, sometimes in such numbers as to form a fair-sized village. Their purpose was apparently to afford security against sudden attacks of enemies, the danger of wild beasts and snakes and the malaria and fever of the swampy shores, while bringing the inhabitants nearer to their food supply and offering a crude but ready means of sanitation. The system still survives among the natives of many tropical countries and has its analogy in the boat-houses that throng the Canton River in China.

More important, however, archæologically as well as in relation to the subsequent story of building, as it gradually developed into the art of architecture are: the single huge stone, known as a Menhir; the Galgal or Cairn of stones piled in a heap; the Tumulus or Barrow, composed of a mound of earth and the Cromlech.

The single stone seems to have been regarded as an object of veneration and a fetish to ward off evil spirits. It may have been the primitive origin of the Egyptian obelisk, the Greek stele and the modern tombstone. From the galgal and barrow may have been developed the pyramids of Egypt and the truncated pyramid which we shall find to be the foundation platforms of temples in various parts of the world while the cromlech is the prototype of temples.

Two stones were set upright and a third was placed upon the top of them. This represents in rudimentary form the so-called “post and beam” principle of temple construction. Sometimes two or four uprights were surmounted by a large flat stone. It had the appearance of a gigantic table and is called a Dolmen. It is conjectured that this was a form of sepulchral-chamber, in which the corpse was laid, being thus protected from the earth that was heaped around the stones into a mound. If so, the Dolmen is the origin of the sepulchral chamber that was embedded in the Egyptian pyramid.

Meanwhile, an intermediary stage between the highly developed pyramids and the primitive dolmen is represented in the Altun-Obu Sepulchre, near Kertsch in the Crimea. Here the mound is faced with layers of shaped stones, with which also the chamber and the passage leading to it are lined. The ceilings of both are constructed of courses of stone, each of which projects a little beyond the one beneath it, until the diminishing space is capped by a single stone. In the angle of masonry thus formed is discoverable the rudimentary beginning of the arch.

It is also convenient here to note, though it anticipates our story, the more elaborate example of this principle of roofing which is shown in the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ in Greece. In this instance, moreover, there is a farther approximation toward the arch, since the projections of the stones have been cut so as to present a continuous line. And these contour lines are slightly concave and meet at the top in a point, for which reason this class of tomb is known as bee-hive.

Another form of this method of angular roofing is seen in an Arch at Delos, which is part of a system of masonry that is known as Cyclopean, after the name of the one-eyed giant whom Ulysses and his followers encountered in Sicily, during their return from Troy. For the masonry is composed of large blocks of unshaped stone, the interstices of which are filled in with smaller stones. Here, too, the actual arch is composed of a repetition of huge, upright monoliths, supporting a series of single blocks, set up one against the other at an angle.

While, however, these primitive forms of roof construction prefigure the later development of the true arch, the student is warned in advance that they represent rather a feeling of the need of some such method of construction than any approach to a solution of the problem. For the latter, as we shall find later, consisted in discovering how to counteract the thrust of the arch; its tendency, that is, to press outward and collapse; whereas in the primitive construction this danger was evaded by embedding the roof in a mass of masonry or earth that made lateral strains impossible. The system, in fact, was more like that employed in shoring up the excavations in modern tunnelling and mining.

Meanwhile, this rude method of spanning an opening with more than one piece of stone was the primitive germ of the later development of arch, vault, and dome construction, just as the placing of a single horizontal stone on two upright ones is the prototype of columns and entablature. Thus the instinct of man, in earliest times, reached out toward the two fundamental principles of architectural construction.

The most interesting examples of primitive structure are the so-called Cromlechs, of which that of Stonehenge, in England, is the best preserved. The unit of this and like remains is the “post and beam” formation, composed of a block of stone, supported on two uprights. In the case of Stonehenge this formation was repeated so as to form a continuous circle one hundred feet in diameter. Within this was a concentric circle, composed of smaller slabs, which enclosed a series of five separate post and beam structures on a horse-shoe plan. The latter is repeated by another series of slabs and in the centre stands the flat altar stone. Seventeen stones of the outer circle, varying from sixteen to eighteen feet in height, are still standing and in part connected by their beam slabs.

This impressive memorial stands on Salisbury Plain, eight miles north of the cathedral city of Salisbury, in the neighbourhood of which are many barrows. Was it then the temple of a burying place of mighty chieftains or was it erected in memory of some great victory in honour of the dead heroes and the nation’s god? According to Geoffrey of Monmouth (A.D. 1154) who is supposed to have compiled much of his history from Celtic legends, Stonehenge is a Celtic Memorial, erected to the glory of the Celtic Zeus.

Rhys, in his “Celtic Heathendom,” accepts the probability of this account and adds: “What sort of temple could have been more appropriate for the primary god of light and of the luminous heavens than a spacious open-air enclosure of a circular form like Stonehenge? Nor do I see any objection to the old idea that Stonehenge was the original of the famous temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, the stories about which were based in the first instance most likely on the journal of Pytheas’ travels.” Pytheas was a Greek navigator and astronomer of the second half of the fourth century B.C., who was a native of the Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles) and visited the coasts of Spain, Gaul, and Britain.

Situated some twenty miles to the north of Stonehenge is the Abury or Avebury monument. Its remains comprise two circles, formed of menhirs, which are enclosed within a large outer circle of monoliths, about 1250 feet in diameter. This was further surrounded by a moat and rampart, which suggest that the structure may have served at once the purposes of a place of assembly and a stronghold.

At Carnac, in the old territory of Brittany, in France, are the remains of about 1000 menhirs, some of which reach a height of 16 feet, disposed in parallel straight rows, forming avenues nearly two miles long. They are unworked blocks of granite, set

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