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The New Opera Director

Mr. Heinrich Conried, who has just been elected Director of the Metropolitan OperaHouse, New York City, is one of the most prominent and picturesque personalities in the dramatic world. His genius for stage direction is so great that his own theater (the Irving Place, New York City) may be said to be the only American playhouse preserving the classic traditions of the Comédie Française at Paris or the Burg Theater at Vienna. The guiding principle of each of these three theaters is to seek for excellence in performance rather than of performer. At each, leading actors are often invited to assume minor rôles. Theater-goers thus have the comfortable assurance that every character will receive adequate representation, and that the resultant whole will be consistently artistic. The emphasis of this principle should be characteristic of next year's performances at the Metropolitan Opera-House under Mr. Conried's direction. The audience will then have an opportunity to hear, not merely singers, but operas.

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PENNSYLVANIA INSTITUTION FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF THE BLIND, AT OVERBROOK, PA.

By R. Clipston Sturgis

Believing that the architect has a distinct place in the development of the higher civilization through æsthetics, and that the general good of a community receives a constant if silent stimulus by reason of rational and lofty ideas in building construction and ornamentation, we are glad to print this appreciation of one distinguished architect by another. Though young in years, Walter Cope achieved a genuine fame and a permanent place in the history of American architecture. He was a Philadelphia boy; he was born there in 1860, and there he died in 1902. He was the pupil of no particular school of architecture, nor had he other training than that of his own industry and enthusiasm. The happiest hours of his early boyhood were spent in a little workshop which his father gave him. Walter Cope was the kind of boy who generally had a finger tied up with a rag, and at least one black nail, but he was not long in mastering all kinds of carpenter's tools, even doing creditable metal work. He was, however, always drawing, and more and more as he grew older his love of beauty gained on his taste for practical mechanics. At nineteen years of age he became draughtsman to a builder, and later to an architect. At twenty-four he went abroad to study; he was all alone and worked very hard, drawing a great deal of detail, especially of French Gothic, which made a lasting impression on his mind.. When he returned to Philadelphia he went into partnership with the late John Stewardson, and it was not long before the now well-known firm of Cope and Stewardson achieved enviable repute.-THE EDITORS.

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IT is impossible for one who knew him to write of the work of Walter Cope without having his judgment influenced by the strong individuality of the man himself. It is right that it should be so, for all his work was imbued with his own characteristic personality. At the time of his death he was a young man, but he was at the head of a large office, was engaged in large undertakings, and was. necessarily debarred from doing much with his own hand. Yet, notwithstanding this, the work executed by his office was as instinct with his spirit and thought as if his own hand had put on paper and his own mind had directed the execution of the buildings erected by the firm.

No one could come in contact with him without feeling the strong influence of a master mind; yet withal he was modest and unassuming, appreciative and sympathetic. His mind was always actively at work. There were no off days; but it was not always nor only architecture. The last time I was with him we tramped the woods one late autumn day, and he opened my eyes to so many unnoticed beauties of wood and meadow that I felt as if I must have often walked before blindfold. He gathered a winter bouquet-goldenrod and various grasses gone to seed-almost as lovely in their gray and silver feathers as in their more gorgeous summer colors. He

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BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE NEW WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS

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and they break out again with sharp up curves, making the line of the cusp with the main branch.

These little things, to my mind, show the thought of the man; and that joyous, appreciative observance of all that was beautiful expressed itself in all his work. To what thing soever he put his hand he did it with his whole heart. Personality was then the keynote of his work, but he was too faithful a student and too learned to fall into the common error of striving for originality. His work was all based on good precedent, modified wisely to meet the occasion, and ever touched with his own individuality, so that none could ever say, This is Tudor and that Georgian, except with the reservation that it was neither the work of the copyist nor of the purist, but rather of the student who knew the terms of that language and used them freely to express modern ideas.

Perhaps his best-known works are his

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collegiate buildings-for the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, for Bryn Mawr College, for Princeton, and for Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. In all of these he has shown very clearly the qualities above referred to, and in some of them another and very valuable quality-just common sense. appeared as if he approached a problem, large or small, with a view to reach a clear understanding of the needs, and then to present a solution of those needs, and finally to clothe them in beautiful forms. I was one of those who judged the competition for Washington University; and if there was one thing more than another which determined the jury in favor of the design eventually selected, it was the evidence of thought and study which showed in the block plan, with its changing and yet associated axes following the marked contours of the land, and the intelligent understanding of the needs of each group

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