That Wonderful Victorian

"Don't forget to speak scornfully of the Victorian Age, there will be time for meekness when you try to better it." With that challenging epigraph borrowed from James M. (Peter Pan) Barrie, a Philadelphia artist named John Maass has written a book (The Gingerbread Age; Rinehart; $7.95) defending--of all things --American Victorian architecture. "This was no mean age," says Author Maass. "In every field of human endeavor, the mid-19th century was a time of frenetic activity and massive achievement. Is it true that the generation which constructed the transatlantic cable and the transcontinental railroad was unable to build a decent house? The truth is that an enormously creative and progressive era produced an enormously creative and progressive architecture."

Hide-&-Seek. Serving up his own bold "antidote to long-entrenched cliches" about Victorian monstrosity, Author Maass says that the American architecture of the period was "distinguished by its pleasurable fancy and exuberant color." Some of the public buildings, e.g., Philadelphia's City Hall, were not in good taste, "but they had something more important--CHARACTER." As for the houses, they provided more comfort, light and air, and certainly had more vigor and imagination than the thin, nakedly simple, conformist boxes of today. "The broken 'picturesque' exterior made the most of the effect of sunlight, shade and foliage. These are good houses to walk around, to view at different times of day and year."

Inside the Victorian house, Maass finds "a happy, hide-and-seek quality of surprise." Stripped of its overgrowth of large-figured wallpaper, overstuffed chairs, marble-topped tables, potted plants, shellwork, beadwork, fringed cushions, petitpoint mottoes, bric-a-brac, fretwork brackets and tiered whatnots, "the Victorian parlor with its parquet floor, high ceiling, tall windows and ample fireplace emerges as a very handsome room."

Complete Harmony. Many of the sins attributed to the Victorian architectural era (1837-76), says Maass, were committed when the U.S. began to copy older forms of architecture rather than following the Victorian principle of developing a style with only inspiration from abroad. Among the best examples of real Victorian, Maass cites the famed Carson Mansion at Eureka, Calif, (see cut).

To Austrian-born John Maass, the American Victorian buildings "are perfect symbols of an era which was not given to understatement. They are in complete harmony with the heavy meals, strong drink, elaborate clothes, ornate furnishings, flamboyant art, melodramatic plays, loud music, flowery speeches and thundering sermons of mid-19th century America. Most of our own buildings stand on the shifting quicksand of insecurity--Victorian architecture was founded on the rock of superb confidence."

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