aaa
"A sort of sterilization of Richardson's early exuberance begins to be apparent in the Sard House...the composition as a whole is dry and over-refined...the masonry is arranged in alternate broad and narrow courses instead of the characteristic random ashlar, and thus the surfaces are poor and flat in quality...the monochrome of the stone gives the facade an impoverished look...[A] serious symptom of decline begins to be apparent at the Sard house..." which is ominous in its "dilute dullness." "The house would hardly be taken for Richardson's own work if it were not definitely documented."(6)
The stringency of Hitchcock's criteria and the bluntness of his judgments hammer into place certain aspects of Richardson's work, but ignores other integral circumstances. Absent from the discussion is how successfully Richardson and his design team handled situations with significant restrictions.
The above quote of Henry Russell Hitchcock makes clear how he felt about the Sard House, but would the ruggedness and monumentality of Richardson's style in earlier stone buildings be appropriate in this setting? Hitchcock is selective in his reference to regularly alternating courses of masonry in Richardson's work, and always negative. The limited use of alternating courses was chosen for other buildings Hitchcock lauded: Richardson's Glessner House and Marshall Field Warehouse (1885-87), both in Chicago, Illinois. This treatment may have been chosen for the Sard House to calm the inherent ruggedness of quarry-faced random ashlar. Hitchcock saw this as a harbinger of doom, knowing that the alternating masonry would become a hallmark of the so-called Richardson Romanesque as practiced by many architects and for many types of buildings.(17A) It was arguably dilute and dull in some instances such as the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, where random ashlar may have been a better choice on its expansive walls.
Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce
aaaHitchcock is also cryptic with regard to "monochrome" stone. This seems more to be a factor of color than multi-color, for he praises buildings with lighter monochrome stone.(17) In most of Hitchcock's lifetime the Sard house had a somber, blackish-brown appearance from years of accumulating coal soot. This highly accentuated the horizontality and other regulations of the masonry, since the joints caught far less of the grime. The actual color - a very rich, pinkish brown and a few strokes of gray - reappeared after a cleaning in the 1980s.
aaaHitchcock claims that "the house would hardly be taken for Richardson's own work" and that it is neither Romanesque nor Late Gothic, yet the Sard House was part of the general progression of Richardson's office work. The inspiration, if not all the solutions, for much of the house came from previous designs in the office, primarily Trinity Rectory, the proposed Higginson and Ames Houses and the N. L. Anderson House (1881-83) in Washington, DC.
Anderson House
In turn, some of the elements developed for the Sard house appeared again elsewhere. The most far-reaching was the alternating courses of quarry-faced stonework. The segmental entry porch arch and the decorative layout above it was used again in one of Richardson's office proposals for the John Hay house (1884-86) in Washington, DC. Of Richardson's buildings in their constructed form, the Benjamin H. Warder house (1885-88), Washington, D. C.; Union Passenger Station (1885-87), New London, Connectictu; the Bagley Memorial Armory (1885-87), Detroit, Michigan; and the William H. Gratwick house (1886-89), Buffalo, New York, have grouped, lintelled windows located under a gable much like the Sard house. Union Passenger Station and the Gratwick house also have a string course directly below these windows like the Sard house.
Hay House
Gratwick House
New London Station
aaaThe marriage of relatively novel, rough-faced stonework - a nod toward the Richardsonian - with the more derivative Late Gothic style in its lintels, turret and whimsical stone carvings gave the Sard house an essentially Victorian era appearance with an unusually organic texture, more so than any other type of urban house that came before it. The juxtaposition and curvature of the porch openings show an earthiness that was unusual in a time when designers, including Richardson, felt compelled to either regulate such spaces or to treat supports and piers as columns or colonettes. The effect is like that of a cave entrance. The irregular combination of the carved gargoyle panel, the section of hatch-work next to it and the porch archways below is quite inventive and perhaps reflects the influence of the English Aesthetic or Arts and Crafts Movement. The composition and craftsmanship throughout the entry area is exquisite.(20) With this said, the curvature there is so isolated that it contrasts with the sharp angles elsewhere, and its detail is more overt than anywhere else on the facade. These are good ideas by themselves, but are they well-integrated? The same problem occurs with the turret-like bay. It remained bold throughout the design process. The modified entry provides some visual balance, but there still remains an unrelieved flatness beyond that bay. The office used projecting bays for the Ames, Anderson and Higginson houses, but they appear more integral to the whole mass of the house.
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17. This is particularly true of Richardson's houses. Otherwise Hitchcock wavers on the subject, putting, for instance, the huge and light-colored Allegheny County Buildings in Pittsburgh and the relatively tiny and darker Sard house in the same "impoverished" category.
17A. See also Margaret Henderson Floyd, Architecture After Richardson, Regionalism After Modernism, etc (University of Chicago Press, Chicago:1994), 53-54.
18. A scalloped and dentilled cornice was clearly inspired by that on the N. L. Anderson house (1881-83) in Washington, D. C. The upper, scalloped portion is now covered by metal sheathing.
19. Periodicals that were available to American architects in the 1870s and 80s included England's Builder and American Architect & Building News.
20. Quality and humor in stone carving can be found elsewhere in the neighborhood, as well as at the New York State Capitol and Albany City Hall. The carving in general may be attributed to craftsmen moonlighting during the occasionally dormant Capitol construction.