COLLEGE ARCHITECTURE.

In the May number of "Scribner's Monthly" is a most interesting article on Recent Architecture in America, by Mrs. Van Rensselaer; and among the comparatively few public buildings praised and held up for imitation Harvard College has the honor of owning three, the Medical School, Sever Hall, and Austin Hall, the new Law School building. It is the belief of the authoress that these buildings are not to be praised so much for any peculiarity or eccentricity of style, nor yet for any particular beauty, but for the quiet and harmonious designs of the whole, and she maintains that the buildings look what they are intended for, namely, for study and recitation rooms, and, plain and sombre as they may be, are fine examples of useful architecture. This is the keynote of all criticisms on our new buildings. It was quite possible for Mr. Richardson, the architect of Sever and Austin Halls, to have erected pretentious structures, complex with designs, overloaded with ornamentation and bewildering in turrets and corners; yet with a true artistic instinct he has accomplished a happy mean between a brick box of four sides and a palace. Mrs. Van Rensselaer says of the new Medical School building, that "the task was to build a great square box, wholly of brick, with no ornamentation and with the necessity for floods of light in the interior. Yet there is beauty in the result-architectural beauty of the strictest kind, though no atom of that 'picturesqueness' which popular criticism falsely considers its equivalent." Of Sever Hall, the writer remarks, "that there is much more originality in its quiet success than in many more striking works, and that the introduction of the great round-arched doorway gives a grateful touch of piquancy to the whole. Moreover, Sever Hall is especially instructive, because, though it is excellent, admirable and beautiful, it is not picturesque."

The writer of the article says of the law school building, that it is "much more ambitious, if not so simply perfect," and though she does not approve of dark ground and light trimmings, confesses that Mr. Richardson has admirably accomplished the task set for him. The whole article is charmingly written, and it will amply repay one to read it; also it is gratifying to read good sound criticism approving buildings which are a part of the life and surroundings of Harvard students.

G. A. M., '87.