The War on Architectural Ornament and the Emperor’s New Clothes

I have harbored subliminal, and usually negative, feelings about the great changes in architecture that were wrought between the mid-19^th and mid-20^th centuries – changes that have given us the field today. I could sum up this period by calling it a vast war on ornament fought with special fervor in Germany and France after the beginning of the 20^th century. This change was especially abrupt considering the length of time our species has ornamented the built environment. And not superfluously but organically – ornament growing from vast subterranean reservoirs of experience living in nature. We have all seen photos or have perhaps even visited the awesome frescos at Lascaux and Altamira; and the compelling Mother Goddess sculptures from Lespugue and Willendorf etc. This ornament derived from the senses as we dwelled in nature – internalized over millennia of shared experiences. Gradually these natural forms grew more abstract and only suggested the actual natural features, once captured in greater accuracy: a nautilus or a rams horn suggested the Ionic volute, wild herbs/vines growing in clusters became the acanthus motif and etc. Human sculptures were also incorporated illustrating our dominance over the world of form and our interplay with the Gods. For many centuries human ornament derived from the matrix in which we have been embedded: Nature, or this particular life raft we call Earth.[i]

I have always appreciated the natural sources of molding profiles and other architectural decoration – even as they are altered through time and different cultures, Persian, Greek, Roman, Norman etc. But all clearly derive from nature like the rinceau, guilloche, waterleaf, acanthus, anthemion (or honeysuckle) many others too numerous to list – and not just western culture. Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian and Indian decoration also derive from nature – just as directly (or in some cases more so). Witness the magnificence of Angkor Watt or the incredibly exuberant sculpture of a Viking long ship.

Historians trace the roots of the modern movement to Rationalist thought as interpreted at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris at the end of the 18^th century, when a simplification of detail and ornament was promoted – suggesting or expressing the structure.[ii] Later in the 19^th century Viollet le Duc formalized Structural Rationalism where the structure replaced or became the ornament.[iii] By the 1880’s this “style” had become quite widespread and attracted influential adherents in the US including the Supervising Architect of the Treasury who designed and built large government buildings in every state.[iv] This formula to “express” the structure influenced rapid changes in design and architecture including the curricula of the Bauhaus where buildings would now be stripped of all ornament to only expose the concrete, glass sheer surfaces and/or the steel structure. By 1936 Gropius exults in his total victory over centuries of more human design with: “The morphology of dead styles has been destroyed; and we are returning to honesty of thought and feeling”.

The hubris of the modernists (Ozymandius seemed demure by comparison) helped effect the immense destruction and loss of cultural icons like Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan – now replaced with the uber mundane glass box of Madison Square Garden. Influential designers like Frank Lloyd Wright, Gropius and Corbusier had only disdain and ridicule for historic architecture. These feelings were passed on to their students as they became the next generation of designers, architects and planners who without qualms began in earnest the destruction of our historic urban centers.

I failed to understand the broad sweep of this disdain for the past until I became the historic preservation representative and fine arts officer for the recent (2004-2013) renovations/restorations to the Old Executive Office Building – now the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB). Originally built as the State, War and Navy Building it was configured so that the administrative office suites for each department, where the Secretaries and staff sat, were located on the 2^nd floor, the piano nobile. The highly decorated granite exterior expressed the importance of the second floor. The interior decoration of these executive suites was especially noteworthy. The Secretary of War’s Suite – the last to be completed in 1877 was a particularly grandiose architectural vision and is well recorded at the National Archives in College Park, MD where all the extant records of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, including plans, photographs, letters, invoices and all correspondence are available for serious researchers or dilettantes like myself.

A Venetian architect, Richard von Ezdorf, employed by the SAT under Mullet became the prime government designer. Ezdorf had received his architectural training in Vienna and Prague when the most influential school of architecture in Europe (and hence America at that time) was the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.[v] Ezdorf supervised a team of decorators and craftsmen from a well-known New York decorating firm, Moeller and Sons. Most of the decorators and artists in this firm were recent immigrants to America and had also trained in Europe. Some had worked with Brumidi and Meigs to complete the Thomas U. Walter additions and dome at the US Capitol and were imminently qualified to install the original decorative program in the SOW suite.[vi] What remained of this original decoration: classical ceiling murals, gold and silver leaf, trompe l’oeil painted friezes, Santo Domingo mahogany woodwork (originally French-polished), had all been painted white many times, probably beginning in 1949 or shortly thereafter. Clearly the triumph of the modern movement (as stated by Gropius) rendered this virtuoso performance of the decorative arts an embarrassing extravagance without value, so that now instead of repairing and maintaining, it was painted over and disguised while much of the bas-relief hand cast plaster textured wall decoration was removed and discarded entirely – only black and white photos remain to record its existence. The brutality of this treatment was repeated across the US (in the historic buildings that remained standing). Oddly where the roots of the modern movement first appeared in France, Germany people never lost their admiration for cultural heritage. It would be hard to imagine the exuberant interior decoration and murals at Versailles or Caserta[vii] painted white? But American architects intoxicated with the stark vision of a Bauhaus future erasing a vainglorious past, government bureaucrats and related fields (all making decisions exceeding their expertise) scourged our historic built environment like barbarian hordes slashing and burning their way through irreplaceable works of art and architecture during the decades following WW2. As these losses accumulated an outcry rose up among those who recognized the waste for what it was and Congress was persuaded to effect the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 which protects all historic buildings owned by the US government or anywhere federal tax dollars may be used to renovate. This legislation continues to protect our most important buildings, artwork, burial sites etc from well-meaning but ignorant decision makers, property managers and contractors.[viii]

[i] Architectural Ornament, Banishment and Return by Brent C. Bolin, W. W. Norton and Company:

http://books.google.com/books/about/Architectural_Ornament.html?id=y7t9lDZASDoC