Ernest Flagg Quotes

From time to time a square has been opened here, a park there, a street cut through in one place or widened in another, but these improvements have been entirely local in their effect, and have failed to change the general appearance of the city. Even the greatest of all these changes, the laying out of Central Park, was unfortunate, to say the least, for it serves to aggravate one of the worst features of the original plan, viz., the failure to provide a central artery of communication worthy of the coming city.

Instead of the dormers, skylights... are easier to make and operate, need no double sash, cost less, and some may prefer their appearance.

When the true principles of design are forgotten; when, in art, the bizarre and novel is the aim rather than the beautiful; when complication and mystery take the place of what should be as simple and clear as the atmosphere, design runs amuck, and becomes so helplessly involved in difficulties that such manifestations as cubism, impressionism, futurism, and art nouveau shoe their ugly heads and pose as art.

The most perfectly constructed object in nature, and also the most beautiful object in nature, is the human form as it approaches perfection. This, then, is the criterion of construction as it is of design. The study of its beauties is the veritable key to art...

Ridge-dormers have many other advantages. In winter, when closed... it is nature's own method of lighting. Ridge-dormers greatly reduce the height of the building; because bringing into use space heretofore wasted, the eaves may be correspondingly lowered.

Style... the very hall-mark of great art... there is little use in trying to define style.

Beauty is largely dependent on fitness, and fitting methods are usually the most convenient and economical; therein, indeed, to a great extent, lies their very fitness.

When the necessity for shelter is great and the means for obtaining it scant, flimsy and makeshift methods of building find ready acceptance; and once introduced are hard to eradicate. Such habits, formed here in early times, still influence construction; as abundantly proved by our inordinate fire loss...

There have always seemed to the writer sound reasons for using the module system in architectural design.

The chief difficulty in designing small houses is to avoid an excessive appearance of height. ...the ridge-dormer or its equivalent, the ridge skylight, would open a whole new field of opportunity...

With dignity and simplicity come repose... the natural state of one at home in his surroundings and sure of his ground. Repose is a distinguished characteristic of Greek art.

New York ought to have such an avenue like the Champs Elysées of Paris, Unter den Linden of Berlin, or the Ring Strasse of Vienna, but more ample than any of them; for here, of all places, owing to the shape of the island, there is the most need of such a thing.

To the Greek harmony was of supreme importance, and if the triglyphs represented the harmonic scale... their meaning and use is abundantly explained. ...The universal admiration which Greek proportions have always excited proves that the method of obtaining them was correct.

Economy in building consists in the aggregate of a great number of savings, which when considered separately may seem trivial, but when combined are important. The list of those here provided for... may be divided into classes as follows:

The best art, and the only art which will ever lead to great results, must have for its basis the interpretation of beauty in nature.