A controversy has lately grown out of the changes of plan which have been adopted for the new capitol of this state in the heat, haste and confusion of which we apprehend that there is danger that a too prevalent impression may with some be confirmed and strengthened. For this reason rather than because we wish to appear as partisans of either of the plans in dispute we think that while the public mind is more than usually awake to the matter, a word of caution may be timely.

The impression referred to is of this nature.

That the essence of architecture lies in overlaying the substantial structure of a building with what are termed architectural forms applied in certain combinations suggested by personal fancy, these having no necessary relation to the uses, purposes, or materials of the building but selected and used with this single qualification, that they have been taken from the store house of history and all belong to a given period of time, or if belonging to two or more periods that they have heretofore been joined together by someone who has himself by the lapse of time become historical.

This impression is a false and a pernicious one. Architecture is the Art [316] of building, not merely of ornamenting nor in any way of veiling or covering up of a building. It is a living art; an art which deals always directly with its special problems as they arise, seeking first of all to use its materials in the best mechanical way for the particular purpose in hand; looking to the past not for forms but for the cause of forms, and avoiding all useless construction, uncalled for ornament and especially all imitation in one situation or in one material of forms appropriate to another situation and another material.

It is only in this way that architectural monuments have ever been produced, the merits of which are recognized at all times, by men of all degrees of culture, under all changes of fashion. The unity of style which distinguishes such structures is never due simply to the reproduction or imitation of forms first designed in adaptation to conditions of an earlier age or to the needs and customs of a different people and which are for the time in which they are built without meaning or life, but to the direct rational and logical process by which they have been built.

But let us give the question a practical form, a form in which if it does not come before us today it may tomorrow.

Supposing a great and costly building to have been already partly erected which under the rule we have laid down is not a work of true architecture, its plain rude exterior walls having been superficially overlaid with copies of parts of old buildings all possibly in one style but which as to that which is within have no meaning. Suppose that it cannot be taken down, one question is whether it is the duty of an architect always to carry it on as it has been begun?

We answer unhesitatingly that it is not. It is the duty of the architect as soon as possible to deal with it rationally and frankly for what it is; to make outside as far as it is in his power expressive of that which is within, to give it outwardly as well as inwardly a life and a character of its own. Then also if he is allowed it is his duty to touch carefully what has already been done, bringing it as far as may be into an essential harmony with that which is built upon it. {It is his duty to adjust that which is bad to that which is good, not that which is unformed to that which is bad.}

Not all of us have had an opportunity of examining the capitol at Albany and it is not our duty to pronounce whether it is or is not a case in point.

We simply would not, on any account, have it supposed that if it had been so, if its exterior had at any stage in its progress been found by an architect called in consultation by the state, to be inappropriate, insignificant, meaningless with reference to its purpose, its interior arrangment and its construction, that there is any rule or established understanding in our profession that would require him to pursue purity of style at the expense of purity or truth or dignity of expression, still less at the expense of integrity of material or soundness of construction.