and not merely being fastened to the walls as it is now invariably the case.
A building without any exterior decoration may look prosaic and monoto-
nous to us , and yet I must confess that the rear view of sky-scrapers has
always appealed to me more than the faҫade, whose ornamentation, particu-
larly of the upper tiers, produces only a general effect. In the rear view
the laws of proportion, the comparative relations of large flat surfaces,
broken by rows of windows, create the esthetical impression.
“The simpler, the better” has always been the motto of art. The Doric
style is grander than the ornate Corinthian. Why should not a simple
truss , as used in the construction of bridges and roofs, be considered as
beautiful as Hogarth’s“curve of beauty”? Surely the boundary lines of
girders, the trestlework of viaducts, and all the skeleton constructions with
their manifold but invariably scientific methods of connections (in simple
buildings like the tower on lower Broadway, the Western Union Building,
the Navarro Flats, etc.) contain a variety of geometrical forms similar to
those which have created the arches and vaultings of the pointed style.
And why can not the Eiffel Tower and the Brooklyn Bridge be compared
to the architectural masterpieces of any age or clime? They show a beauty
of lines and curves, simple as in the pyramids, bold as in the cathedral
spires of flamboyant churches, and — far-sweeping, as if to embrace the entire
universe, a quality which no other style has ever approached.
* * *
Have you ever sailed up New York Harbor early in the morning? As
your steamer creeps along the shore, and you first see the city tower
through the mist, is it not as if you had come at last to the castles in the air
you built and lost so many years ago ? Do you not imagine you already see
the hanging-gardens, the fountains, the men and women with strange
garments and strange eyes? But, after all, it is not the materialization of a
dream, but the idealization of a fact that you find.
Beauty in America is no longer an instinct, but a realization mirrored in
the entire country. And it is from the bridge, that hammock swung
between the pillars of life, that New York seems to become intimate to you.
The bridge gives back the thrill and swing to thought and step that nature
gives in youth. Who can delineate in words the monstrous cobweb of wire,
that clings to the turrets, rose-colored in the setting sun, or the steel lines
linking the shores, that hover like the wings of a dragon-fly above the
stream? The huge office-buildings of lower New York make one think of
the vision of some modern Cathay caught up in the air, or become in one's
imagination the strongholds of strange genii whose fevered breath pants out
in gusts of steam. And as the night descends, catching a last glimpse of
the bridge glinting like a fairy tiara above the waters of the East River, you
feel that the City of the Sea has put on her diamonds—and then you notice
the words “Uneeda Cracker.”
As yet everything is saturated with the pernicious habit of industry, yelling
and writhing before the juggernaut-car of commerce. In France things
are shod with velvet, but on Broadway they are not. It would make a

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