From the Introduction: In these pages I have attempted to enunciate an architectural principle which I believe to be basic; to analyze the forms in which the animating spirit has in the past found satisfying embodiment; and in the light of this analysis to study analytically and synthetically certain aspects of present-day expression.

I have studied the past that I might the more clearly detect the bearing and direction of the present. The earlier chapters of this book present the results of that study. In the later chapters there is an analysis of modern conditions in the light which this study of the past sheds upon them. In the final chapter is presented my own individual application to modern conditions, of my theory of life and art as deduced from my study of past and present. I am diffident about setting down in cold type the record of this individual effort at architectural interpretation. It has been given a more or less consistent expression in many of the works of my firm during these past years. The past has revealed many beautiful forms; but we have not adopted one or another of those forms just because we have loved it nor because we have seen it amid pleasant surroundings. However, when a form, new or old, has justified itself under new or changed conditions we have not shunned but have welcomed it. In my final chapter I have attempted, though, as I say, with great diffidence, to extend the theory, and I do so because it is my belief that every artist owes it to himself and to his time to develop to the fullest his individual expression of the best of his time and place; for only so, and especially so in a democracy, shall the race reach the full aesthetic expression of its own idealism.