Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 142]

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REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF INSTRUCTION.

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plans selected from the architectural periodicals. Students are encouraged to improve these originals by suitable changes, so that advanced students often obtain good practice in original design in this study. The history of architecture is taught by lectures, no suitable text-books existing in English, excepting at a price usually beyond the means of students. Instruction is imparted by daily recitations on blue-print lectures, by verbal explanations of interesting points, using the collection of illustrations, and by requiring students to make tracings of details of the principal styles. The collection of engravings and plates made during the past two years is found to be of great service to this class, and the lectures furnish the student with the classification and characteristics of the styles, descriptions of buildings, etc., properly arranged. A different mode of instruction would probably be more beneficial to the abler students. Use the best attainable text-book, enforcing carefnl study of this by daily recitations; instead of tracings of details, require each student to make out his classification and synopsis of the leading peculiarities of each style on a proper form of blank, these blanks then forming a condensed classification or manual of the various styles, and being retained by the student. But it has not yet been found possible to carry out this plan, as there is now no suitable text-book in English covering the entire ground, and I have not yet found time to make a condensed translation of a good foreign work, several of which are available in German. There would also necessarily be considerable difficulty and expense in placing such a translation in the hands of students, after it was completed. I have therefore used blue-print lectures, postponing this improvement until the more urgent requirements of other classes are satisfied. During the present term, the first volume of these lectures has been revised and rewritten, obtaining much better copies than was possible with the former negatives, and giving the lectures an improved form. The esthetics of architecture comprises the laws of the production of beautiful and harmonious results in architecture and their applications. My translation of Redtenbacher's Architektonik is still used as a text-book, being the work best suited to the purpose that I have found. But the most valuable part of this study is the making of fifteen to twenty designs for various decorative 'purposes, which really makes this a term of designing, fully appreciated by the student. Architectural perspective was taught as a part of the regular course of study for the first time this year. Professor Ware's Modern Perspective was used as a text-book, and several problems were worked out by each student, mostly original designs, producing very satisfactory results. This study is most essential, as architects advertising for draughtsmen now almost invariably require a knowledge of perspective and of details of construction as. their chief qualifications.