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Analysis of Historical Significance and Integrity by Resource Type
including McKim, his friend Robert Peabody, and Francis Chandler. 1368 McKim was the only
one of his firm's original partners to attend.
At the Ecole the first and most important step in design was the plan. The façade was to
follow on the plan; there was to be no "false front." . . . Another very important aspect of the
training, and it is surely the element that gave the Beaux-Arts its cachet, was the fact that the
student was made to design palaces, although they might take the form of a bank, a central
building for a spa, an ambassador's residence and chancellery. The emphasis was on large
projects . . . The key element that identifies what we call Beaux-Arts is not the rule of locking
façade to plan, the emphasis on symmetry in the plan, or the eclecticism, but the powerful
drive for embellishment. 1369
Beaux Arts features include coupled columns, monumental flights of steps, and arched and
linteled openings, often set between columns or pilasters [, and] combinations of columns
and arches that were the result of a theory that the Greek and Roman structural systems
should be synthesized. Figure sculpture, in the round or in relief, appears more frequently
than in any of the other classical styles. . . . The planning and massing of buildings are
strictly and sometimes elaborately symmetrical, with clearly articulated parts; in large
buildings a five-part composition, with a climactic central mass dominating the wings and
their terminal features, is typical. Fronts may be broken into advancing and receding planes,
and a general tendency to multiply re-entrant angles sometimes affects even the treatment of
quoins. . . . The approved convention of planning demanded clear articulation of functions
and a hierarchy of major and minor axes and cross axes; second, . . . classical pictorialism .
. . this pictorialism is what distinguishes Beaux-Arts Classicism from the other classical
styles of its time. 1370
McKim was not only influenced by his studies at the Ecole, but also by John Ruskin's
principles as put forth in his Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849). 1371 Ruskinian Gothicism
professed that "[a]rchitecture should be based on nature, solidly constructed, with no deceptive
use of materials or structural shams. Planning should be simple and straightforward, with boldly
irregular masses expressive of human use." 1372 Ruskin also believed that well-designed
architecture expressed "national life and character." 1373 Both Ruskin and the Ecole taught that
architecture of the past was important and should be studied. McKim attempted to synthesize
these principles while providing the best designs appropriate to the particular purpose and site:
The detailed study of plan relationships and forms in large masses, which was cardinal to
McKim, came from his study in Paris. Although McKim attached great importance to the
conceptual scheme, the parti, and gave commensurate importance to the development of the
plan, he was not as rigorous in this pursuit as his French teachers or counterparts. This is
why it is difficult to describe the work of McKim, Mead & White as typically "Beaux-Arts," if
this is taken to mean precisely representative of the thinking of the Ecole and completely
realizing its design principles. Many liberties were taken, especially in the relaxation of
absolute bilateral symmetry in formal plans, but the functional clarity, spatial progression,
conceptual order, and symbolic expression characteristic of Beaux-Arts design are
nonetheless present. . . .
1368
Roth, 19.
1369
Gillon and Reed,, vii-ix.
1370
Whiffen, 149-52.
1371
Roth, 357.
1372
Roth, 17.
1373
Roth, 18. From The Crown of Olive lecture of 1864.
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