Learning Chinese: Walter A. Taylor, an American Architect in China (1923–27)

Abstract

The American architect Walter A. Taylor, who was an Episcopal missionary in China from 1923 to 1927, intended to ‘desig[n] churches and other buildings that were Chinese and belonged to China’.² Taylor found himself at a crossroads, between Christian architecture in his home country, the USA, which was experiencing a time of transition, and the birth of the Chinese Republic and its strong rejection of Western hegemony. This article investigates how Taylor tried to undertake his task, where he found inspiration and what this indigenized architecture looked like. I argue that, although his work aimed at participating in the shift towards indigenization, it bore the signs of Chinese culture as seen through the eyes of a Westerner and imperialism.

When the American architect Walter Andrews Taylor arrived in China in 1923 as an Episcopal missionary in order to design, mostly, schools and religious buildings, the architectural and political contexts were experiencing a profound transformation. In the West, the relevance of the new Gothic style for the church of the twentieth century – widely illustrated in the USA by Ralph Adams Cram (1863–1942) – was debated. ³ While arguments over what constitutes appropriate religious architecture to build for the colonies of the British Empire had been going on in the Anglican church for almost two-thirds of a century, the relevance of the new Gothic ‘overseas’ had become questionable. ⁴ The wish to adapt Christian architecture to the climates and cultures of non-Western parts of the world implied the necessity to study the techniques, materials (with the rationale behind their uses), and symbols favoured by indigenous architects.

Chinese architecture was no exception; it was still regarded as exotic and largely unknown to Westerners though a few, such as the German architect Ernst Boerschmann (1873–1949), were beginning to make it known in Europe. ⁵ Meanwhile, for the Roman Catholic Church (whose presence in China, through Jesuit missionaries, dated back to the sixteenth century), two papal encyclical letters, Maximum Illud (1919) and Rerum Ecclesiae (1926), highlighted the importance of integrating the Christian faith with specific culture (what we would now call ‘inculturation’ or ‘indigenization’). Along these lines, the Archbishop Celso Constantini, Apostolic Delegate to China from 1922 to 1933, strongly condemned Gothic and other Western styles, advocating instead for a Christian architecture rooted in Chinese art and culture. ⁶

Furthermore, Taylor arrived at a turning point in Chinese history. The last imperial dynasty, Qing, established in 1636, had come to an end in 1912, and was being succeeded by the Republic of China. Meanwhile, the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) had made a strong anti-imperialist, anti-foreign and anti-Christian statement, ultimately resulting in putting a halt to Europeans’ ambitions to colonize China. The following years were marked by two revolutions and the Chinese civil war, at the beginning of which (1927) Taylor and his wife were evacuated. ⁷ That both the political climate and the architectural context were in transition is a major sign of a changing relationship to power within the country; Taylor found himself at the intersection of it all. Bearing this in mind helps us appreciate the complexity he had to navigate.

The Ruth Marie and Walter Taylor papers at Yale contain mostly personal letters, documents, articles, that Walter Taylor sent to his family and to his future wife, Ruth Marie, during his time in China between 1923 and 1927. ⁸ While there, Taylor worked for the American Church Mission Architects based in Hankow, with John Van Wie Bergamini. ⁹ He learnt Chinese and travelled around to study Chinese architecture and, in particular, the relationship between religious buildings and worship.

To be an American of English ancestry sent by the Episcopal Church to China was particularly charged in that period and Taylor was aware of it. ¹⁰ The (occasionally self-reflective) writings of Walter Taylor demonstrate his sense of responsibility, particularly when China was going through turbulent times (1925–1927). ¹¹ As this study shows, Taylor’s and his colleagues’ ambition was to design buildings that would not replicate Western Christian architecture but would fit in with Chinese aesthetics and be appropriate for Chinese Christians’ life and worship. This paper investigates how Taylor tried to rethink Christian architecture, by comparing his reflections and missionary work in China with his later writings in the United States, when he was an architect and instructor. I argue that his is a practical example of a Westerner who, participating in indigenization, reinforced the imperialistic attitude instead of transforming it. ¹² Taylor kept looking at the indigenous architecture through a Western lens, something that led him to make rather paradoxical decisions, even contradicting the rationale behind his strong criticism of the new Gothic architecture in the United States.

Who? Where? Why?

Walter Andrews Taylor was born on 16 February 1899 in North Canton, Ohio and died on 25 November 1963 (see Figure 1). He earned a Master’s degree in Architecture from Ohio State University in 1921, studied (Chinese) language in Peking (1923–26), and became a Bachelor of Architecture at Columbia University in 1929. ¹³ This American Episcopal architect was sent by the Episcopal Church to China, more precisely to Hankow, Hubei, in the Yangtze Valley, in 1923. ¹⁴ He was based at Boone University (as the heading of the paper he used for his correspondence indicates), named after the first Episcopal Bishop in China, Bishop William Jones Boone. ¹⁵

Figure 1. Walter A. Taylor, likely in his office at Boone University (undated).

Source: RG251, box 2, f. 29, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

Taylor worked as a missionary there between 1923 and 1927 (from the age of 24 to 28). ¹⁶ In the first letter he wrote to his father, dated 28 May 1923, he explained that he had been sent to China because of a cut to the personnel of the acoustic department, where he was working:

It may be that they have been contemplating this and find in this China proposition a convenient occasion to dispense with me, although Mr Rankin said that that had no bearing. ¹⁷

In a subsequent letter, to his mother, he writes: ‘Apparently I am only the second architect to be sent to China by the Church. The other American engineers referred to by Mr. Bergamini were those with all the other missions.’ ¹⁸ And a year and a half later, he tells her ‘I am here for four years anyway’, as he was encountering a period of doubt, not really knowing if all the work he was doing, especially at night – because days were long and the warm and humid weather was particularly difficult for him – was of any worth. ¹⁹

At a time when he was more confident, reflecting back on his work, Taylor wrote in 1954: ‘When I practiced in China for the Episcopal Church, I refused to do allegedly Gothic Churches. We designed churches and other buildings that were Chinese and belonged to China.’ ²⁰ At the time he wrote this, Taylor was back in the USA, encouraging people to imagine a religious architecture appropriate for his own time, instead of a ‘regurgitated Gothic’ which, on top of being a ‘great financial extravagance,’ demonstrated ‘a high degree of absurdity resulting from backward looking romanticism’. ²¹

In China, the context was different and yet his considerations were similar. In an article in The Chinese Recorder, published in October 1924, he wrote:

We cannot carry on in the foreign ‘rut’ and we cannot go over into the Chinese ‘ditch’. We must travel the rough and uncertain but pleasant and interesting ‘middle of the road’. ²²

In his words, Taylor aimed at ‘combining foreign construction and facilities with Chinese in modern buildings in China’. ²³ Aware of the several factors that shape any period or style of architecture (geographical, geological, climatic, religious, social, political and historical), he knew that China’s architecture was shifting because of the particular context of the early twentieth century. He stated that he refused to export Western architecture, however ‘splendid’, to be set as an example to the Chinese, as he had witnessed it in foreign concessions and mission compounds. ²⁴ On the contrary, he thought that the duty of the missionary architect was to study the indigenous architecture (in terms of materials, techniques and symbols), and try and understand its meaning and purpose, and to explore new possibilities. To those who objected that Chinese architecture was pagan – and therefore unsuitable for religious (i.e., Christian) buildings – he replied that, apart from Gothic architecture, pagan Greek and Roman temples had largely influenced religious architecture in Europe and America. ²⁵ What he advocated for, instead, was a sort of translation of religious symbolism to make it understandable in the specific culture and context of China:

Missionaries try in many ways to adapt themselves to Chinese customs and put themselves to great trouble in order to be able to present their message in the Chinese language, yet many of them insist upon using architectural language which the Chinese cannot be expected to understand, and ignoring the possibilities of the beautiful and facile medium of expression close at hand. These same people fill their homes with all manner of things Chinese, and go into ecstasies over Chinese designs on vases, bronzes and tapestries, and yet ornament the outside of their buildings with poor copies of details ten generations removed from Europe, and ‘milk bottle’ columns which would make Vignola turn in his grave. ²⁶

In that sense, Taylor intended to participate in the process of inculturation, which he considered as a bilateral action: if missionary architects had to study Chinese architectural symbolism, it was not only because of the necessity to adapt the design of their buildings and ornaments to a particular culture and place, but also in order to understand its specific meaning. By doing so, they would open themselves to a new ‘system of symbolism giving expression to fundamental ideas and spiritual conceptions’ – which they had seen expressed by other systems of symbolism – that would influence in return the design of their future buildings. ²⁷

In all likelihood, Taylor found in his chief and supervisor, Bergamini, a like-minded collaborator. In the same issue of The Chinese Recorder, Bergamini wrote an article entitled ‘Architectural Meditation’ in which he introduced his views on his mission as an American architect in China: ‘In building always keep the thought in mind: Is it appropriate? And when in China: IS IT APPROPRIATE FOR THE CHINESE SURROUNDINGS? We are guests in China.’ ²⁸ Going further on, he explained what he meant by ‘guests’:

People who at least should be considerate of the likes and dislikes of their hosts and yet we have built mission stations of grey brick, unpainted iron roofs and red woodwork some two or three stories high, sticking up like sore thumbs about the Chinese landscape[.] ²⁹

The carelessness Bergamini points out may remind us of Taylor’s observations on the necessity of paying attention to the indigenous architecture. Yet, in the following comparison and comment, one wonders what Bergamini considered to be the role of missionary architects:

[D]ue consideration of the architecture of the surrounding building is necessary when determining the design of a new building. Good architecture, like a well dressed man, does not consist of loudness or freakishness but of a quiet harmony with its surroundings. The ideal mission building is one which is attractive, harmonizes with its surroundings and looks as little foreign as possible. The architecture of China is at the present day in a state of transition and time alone can show the ultimate outcome, but we can place good examples of what we consider appropriate architecture before the Chinese people. They are the ones who will decide and their taste is good. ³⁰

If the colonial attitude of Bergamini (to ‘place good examples of what we consider appropriate architecture before the Chinese people’) is obvious in this passage, the comparison with a ‘well dressed man’ may directly echo the attitude of the first Christian missionaries in China, such as the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci who wore the habit of a Buddhist monk to blend in with the crowd or, more accurately, be in ‘quiet harmony with [his] surroundings’ as Bergamini puts it, a Western chameleon trying to fit into the landscape. ³¹ Therefore, what could be here described as the process of accommodation implies that the new architectural style would incorporate – and therefore would be transformed by – its surroundings. ³² Again, the influence was meant to go both ways. Bergamini thus recommended that a missionary architect start with a study of Chinese temple architecture and symbols of Christian art in order to develop ‘an architecture for the Christian church which is indigenous to the country’. ³³ That is precisely what Taylor intended to do.

Studying Chinese and Chinese Architecture

Taylor’s intention to immerse himself in the Chinese culture began with his learning of Chinese along with visits to and studies of Chinese monuments and buildings.

Soon after his arrival in China, he wrote that he was about to go to Peking in order to attend a language school for about six months and learn Chinese. ³⁴ If learning Chinese was necessary for his work and interactions with Chinese colleagues and employees, exposure to and study of Chinese architecture were equally important and led Taylor to explore various places around the country. His particular interest was the history of the buildings, their characteristics insofar as they were related to practical aspects of the site and to weather, as well as the symbols and their meaning. In 1925 he wrote to his family:

I got eleven good pictures and some interesting sketches in Yochow, but I have by no means exhausted the archaeological possibilities of the place. It seems to have a much larger percentage of elaborate or monumental buildings, such as guild halls and temples, than does Wuchang. Wuchang has so often in the past been overrun by riots and rebellions that most of its buildings are comparatively new, and it also shows the effect of industrial development. ³⁵

If the willingness to study Chinese architecture in order to build appropriate buildings sounds very commendable, what is interesting and can be striking is how Taylor and his colleagues carried out their studies and what they deemed worth studying. He demonstrated a particular interest in ‘archaeological possibilities’ and turned away from the new buildings that resulted from industrial development. Though elaborate and monumental buildings would present finer examples and be thus more attractive to Taylor, especially for his religious architectural projects, this already shows some criteria which helped him filter the broad and varied Chinese architecture he was encountering.

What Taylor (and Bergamini too) understood by indigenous architecture mainly referred to the imperial period – before industrial development could be perceived in architecture – or what they could consider ancient enough to represent, through their Western lens, traditional (exotic) architecture. In search of the roots of what he would regard as authentic Chinese architecture, Taylor therefore had to move away from Wuchang (in Hubei province), something that is surprising for somebody who was so aware of the surroundings and landscapes in which he would erect new buildings.

Taylor’s archive preserves many photographs of the places he visited. Carefully organized and displayed on plates, they testify to his willingness to become familiar with style(s) he likely had no particular acquaintance with before arriving in China.

Moreover, he reported on his expeditions in several articles (see Figure 2). One that I have already mentioned was published in The Chinese Recorder, in October 1924. In that issue, Taylor was advocating for a ‘middle of the road’ between the foreign ‘rut’ and the Chinese ‘ditch’. ³⁶ He therefore presented what he regarded as characteristic features of Chinese architecture, which he incorporated into the ‘blended’ architecture he was envisioning. One example of a characteristic feature is the ‘wide projecting eaves of Chinese roofs, developed as a result of the intense sunlight and heavy rainfall’. ³⁷ This remark may seem minor, but it actually underlines how he saw the necessity of paying attention to the meaning behind certain shapes, which led to a proper imitation in further buildings made by Westerners. It was not only a matter of shape; there was a practical rationale behind it. Understanding it should prevent from overaccentuating the curve for example. By advocating for such considerations, Taylor was actually putting into practice what debates in the Anglican church of the nineteenth century had been putting forward for a ‘successful transmission [of the Anglican church] abroad’. ³⁸

Figure 2. ‘Walter and his chariot and four on the way down the mountain from Kuling’ (Ruth Marie [Smith] Taylor’s handwriting at the back, undated).

Source: RG251, box 2, f. 30, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

In a later article, published in The American Architect in 1929, Taylor pushed his investigations much further and reported on ‘[a]n Architectural Pilgrimage in China’, as its title put it. His pilgrimage was made to ‘Tung Ling, or Eastern Tombs of the Manchu Emperors’. ³⁹ Illustrating his analysis with many photographs, Taylor put a particular emphasis on how carved ornaments, their decorative effect, along with symbols, symmetrical construction and Chinese characters (if any) related to the purpose of the building or monument. ⁴⁰ For example, he observed:

The major tomb groups are all similar in parts and plan arrangement. We may choose as a good and typical example Ching Ling, the Tomb of K’ang Hsi.

In accordance with the two inviolable canons of Chinese monumental architecture, the whole group is arranged almost exactly symmetrically about a north and south axis, around a series of courts, with the principal buildings facing south. Before the first gate are two symmetrically placed tablet halls almost exactly alike, each one flanked by elaborately carved or marble pillars of conventionalized clouds. ⁴¹

In order to visit the Eastern Tombs of the Qing dynasty, Taylor had to travel more than 800 miles north from Hankow (Wuhan), which was a lengthy journey (mostly by train) at that time. Furthermore, it is interesting that he chose to get inspiration from royal tombs for the religious architecture he wanted to create. More specifically, though the Qing dynasty lasted until 1912, the monuments he reported on (related to emperor K’ang Hsi) dated back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ⁴² Instead of choosing more modern buildings and having the new ones be in line with them, Taylor considered a previous stage of architectural development.

To talk about ‘two inviolable canons of Chinese monumental architecture’ potentially conveyed to the Western reader, who was very unfamiliar with Chinese architecture, the impression that it was monolithic. Though the continuity in it is quite remarkable, Chinese architecture as rendered by Taylor’s reports may have seemed a more harmonized picture than it really was. ⁴³ He created this sense of harmony and continuity through what he selected, which rather (and interestingly enough) corresponded to the period Europeans had become aware of Chinese art, and which led to the chinoiserie trend and Orientalism current in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Moving to the tomb group of K’ang Hsi’s grandson, Chien Lung, Taylor noticed the following distinctive attributes, which, for him, summed up ‘all the characteristics’ he was looking for:

Here are exhibited all the characteristics and details of Chinese monumental architecture. Uniformity, the outstanding characteristic, is to be observed in every part. There are the dragon-embossed ends of the tiles, so formal in contrast to the haphazard abruptness of Spanish and Italian tiles. The bronze animals and incense urns, the blue and white eyes on the closely spaced show rafters, and the procession of little beasts riding the hips of the roofs vary but little from the same details of many other buildings. ⁴⁴

After describing some other tombs and monuments, including the Spirit Hall, and their architectural characteristics, Taylor conveniently ended his article with illustrations of St Andrew’s Church (Wu Chang, China) attributed to Bergamini, with this caption: ‘Modern adaptation of Chinese Temple Architecture for a Christian Church Edifice’ (see Figures 3–6).

Figure 3. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Note: The caption says: ‘Spirit Hall, or Worship Chamber, Tomb of K’ang Hsi. Terraces and marble balustrades, which form the base for monumental buildings, are important elements of the composition and add much to the decorative effect. They are used with much more freedom than are any other elements of Chinese design, showing great variety in plan, height, number of stages, scale and detail.’

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 707, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

Figure 4. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Note: The caption says: ‘Bases of free-standing shafts or obelisks, Eastern tombs. The finely carved ornament is distinctly Chinese. Yet, some of the motifs and the general feeling are not unlike our manufactured “modern” ornament’.

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 708, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

Figure 5. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Note: Caption says: (left) ‘Base of free-standing shaft or obelisk, Eastern tomb’. (Right) ‘Detail of balustrade. Tomb of Empress Dowager.’ [Empress Dowager Cixi (1861-1908)]

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 709, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

Figure 6. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Note: Caption says: ‘Illustrations of St. Andrew’s Church Wu Chang, China – J.V.W. Bergamini, architect. Modern adaptation of Chinese temple architecture for a Christian church edifice’.

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 710, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

That Taylor took so much notice of the ornamentation was another trait he shared with Anglicans in the nineteenth century. As the prominent Victorian art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) put it in The Stones of Venice: ‘[…] all noble ornament […] is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work.’ ⁴⁵ Ruskin’s interpretation of nature presenting underlying moral lessons ‘transformed the meaning and intent of ornamentation in ecclesiastical architecture’. ⁴⁶ A church building could thus be regarded as a ‘sermon in stone’, and the concern for symbolism in church architecture ‘was explicitly associated with identity in the High Anglican mind’. ⁴⁷ The task of both clergy and architects was thus to adapt Christian symbols to the particular contexts they were transferred to or ‘accommodated’. ⁴⁸

The symbols Taylor could find among the Eastern Qing Tombs were connected to the Emperors’ power. If he and Bergamini included some in the buildings they created, none of the photographs in his personal papers or articles testifies to it. However, if we look more closely at the photographs he took of his work, we can notice how he mostly imitated designs and what Christian symbols he incorporated. The following two pictures are close-ups from St Andrew’s Church pictured above:

In Figure 7, one can recognize on the moulded baluster the Greek letter Chi, the first letter of the word Christós (Xριστóς); Christ in English. The following picture (Figure 8) shows the other symbol on the opposite baluster: a lamb with vexillum, or banner. Christ is described as ‘the Lamb of God’ in Jn 1.24 and the vexillum is a sign of the resurrection, a statement that, through his death and resurrection, Christ has taken away the sins of the world. The two symbols, almost side by side, respond to each other. Finally, on the third picture (Figure 9), one can notice in the background a cross enclosed in a circle. It contains a circle itself, and its four branches end with a square, which echoes another one at its centre. The poor quality of the photograph makes the identification of the design rather difficult, though it seems to replicate some of the designs photographed by Taylor. Based on these few elements, it looks like for Taylor (and Bergamini) the new and ‘blended’ architecture was the result of combining Chinese designs with fairly conventional Christian symbols (dating back to the Roman Empire).

Figure 7. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 710, detail, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

Figure 8. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 710, detail, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

Figure 9. The American Architect, 5 June 1929.

Source: RG251, box. 2, f. 24, p. 710 (detail in the background), Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

If his purpose was to teach his readers what he identified as some characteristic features of Chinese architecture, Taylor was also aiming at demonstrating how Bergamini managed to create a modern building inspired by what he considered to be indigenous architecture. ⁴⁹ By paying significant attention to the inherited culture, Taylor believed that missionary architects could create buildings that would honour the Chinese tradition, while attending to the needs of their particular time and context. Furthermore, as he had noted in The Chinese Recorder: ‘the foreign architect who is really a designer can design in the Chinese style if […] he will use judiciously the taste and talents of native artisans.’ ⁵⁰ Taylor did not comment very often in his letters on his work with local artisans and one can wonder what he meant by ‘judiciously’. As we have seen, Taylor targeted a particular period for his selection of Chinese architectural features and it would certainly have made sense to him to select also native artisans that would help him replicate this particular style. In a letter to his family he reported on how he participated in the realization of the ornaments for St Andrew’s Church built by Bergamini:

We ran out of funds on St. Andrew’s Church, but before the good mason contractor returned to Tientsin, I got most of his work out of him, work which could not be done by the stupid Huhpeh masons. I enjoyed very much doing some nice things in molded concrete, adaptations of Chinese ornaments to Christian symbolism, which everyone seems to like. My only concern is whether or not Bergamini will like what I have done to his biggest and finest job. I do not like to have to do so much on what another man considers his masterpiece, but still I am glad to be able to claim some of the credit which we think will be due. ⁵¹

Figure 10. Walter A. Taylor on the construction site of St. Andrew’s Church, Wuchang, China.

Source: RG251, box 3, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.

We cannot be sure (although we might guess) that the picture he inserted in his article in The American Architect was showing part of his work for St Andrew’s Church. Nevertheless, the article was clearly illustrating how he understood his mission and what he identified as a good ‘adaptation of Chinese ornaments to Christian symbolism’. ⁵² And in this letter, we hear of his credit to a good mason contractor, whom he had selected because of his ability. Whether he received feedback on the ornaments he designed, from this local mason or Chinese people (who is ‘everyone’? Who are these people who seemed to like his adaptations?), we unfortunately do not know. However, we can venture to hypothesize that the way the Chinese perceived his own work did matter to him. One sign of this is how bothered he was by the attitude of some missionaries, or foreigners in general, whose lack of curiosity and interest in Chinese culture and people were blatant. In a letter to his family, he wrote about foreigners in Hankow:

It is really a crime to send people to China with the mental and spiritual equipment that some of these folks have. Of course missionaries are queer and biased, but they will never be able to understand the man who spends most of a life time in a treaty port in China and boasts that he does not know more than six words of Chinese, and does not know any Chinese people personally or socially, and who would not go beyond the limits of the concession except for urgent business reasons. Many of the women of the American Women’s Club are terrified at the idea of crossing the river to meet with Mrs. Miller or Mrs. Bliss, and think it is a great adventure when they come once or twice a year. ⁵³

Taylor admitted that he adopted a colonial attitude, which is also quite obvious in the pictures that show him supervising workers on construction sites with the distinctive British colonial outfit (white pith helmet, pale linen suit and trousers, smoking pipe). In the midst of riots in Hankow, he shared with his father his reflection on being a white man:

Bishop White has called off my side trip to Kaifeng, Honan. I don’t mind admitting that we were all pretty scared when we first heard about this affair yesterday, and I thought of how nice and peaceful it must be at home, etc., but still I do not have any feeling of being a pale martyr missionary. There must be something in my English blood which makes me feel like a British colonial, with this instinctive ‘white man’ complex which says that this is all part of the job of being a white man, and that Englishmen have been doing this sort of thing for years and years, and that I am not living up to the race if I allow myself to get panicky about a few hundred heathen coolies.

This idea of the superiority of the white man is very undesirable according to some people, but it is really largely racial antipathy, The Chinese have it just as much or more. The average Chinese would object just as strongly to his sister’s marrying a white man, as I would to the converse. ⁵⁴

The undisguised sense of superiority and racism expressed by Taylor in this passage strongly highlights how distant he felt from the Chinese people, which contrasts with the curiosity he expressed towards an architectural style with which he was not familiar but which he respected and was eager to understand. ⁵⁵ And this disconnection may have been problematic for what he wanted to create: churches fully integrated in the culture and life of Chinese people. The riots increased and, along with financial difficulties, they put his projects to an end. ⁵⁶ He was evacuated and went back to the USA in 1927. ⁵⁷

In the span of four years, Taylor contributed to thirteen buildings (including churches, dormitories, schools, and residences, etc.) in China and one in Japan, with The American Church Mission Architects, as he was based in Hankow, with Bergamini as his chief. He served there as an architect, associated architect and consultant. The buildings were situated mostly in Hankow, but also in Anking, Kaifeng, Wuchang, Yochow, Kuling, and Tokyo. ⁵⁸

Later Reflections on Architecture and Worship

Walter Taylor’s work in architecture and for the Church did not stop, however. Back in the USA, he lectured at Columbia University. He then became a professor in the Department of Architecture at Syracuse University, from 1936 to 1946, and Director of the Department of Education and Research at the American Institute of Architects (1946–1959). At the end of his career, he was Dean of the School of Architecture at Ohio University, from 1959 until 1963, when he died. ⁵⁹ Meanwhile, he also continued to give addresses and write articles. Two of his published addresses have been kept among the papers. The first was delivered ‘before the joint meeting of the department of Church building and Architecture of the National Council of Churches and the Church Architectural Guild’, meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 5 January 1954, while Taylor was working at the Institute of Architects and was Chairman of the Commission on Architecture of the Department of Worship and Arts of the National Council of Churches. ⁶⁰ The second was delivered ‘at the annual meeting of the Church Architectural Guild of America at Atlanta, Georgia in March, 1956’ while Taylor was occupying the same functions. ⁶¹

In the first address, he invited both clergy and lay people to think about a Church architecture appropriate for the twentieth century in the USA. Although there are perennial needs of Christian communities that affect Church architecture, he also underlined that there are particular ones related to specific times. What was he witnessing around him?

I believe that it is generally recognized that we are at a period of crisis in the moral and ethical life of the nation in terms of our relationships to each other and to the rest of the world. There is something like a mass turning to religion. The percentage of church membership is increasing at double the rate of increase of the population. […] This new, surging impulse as it moves into the organized churches or results in the formation of new congregations may require new types of programs, methods and facilities. ⁶²

What role could architecture play in that period of crisis? Quoting Von Ogden Vogt (Art and Religion, 1921), he emphasized the relationship between the arts and religion: ‘Art needs religion to universalize its perceptions and relate its concepts.’ In return, ‘Religion needs the arts to be impressive, to be enjoyable, to vivify its ancient faiths, to kindle new outlooks and to quicken resolves.’ ⁶³ The pitfall is to try and reproduce the architecture of another era as if it could respond to the particular needs of a new period. In his view, that is what the Gothic revival was doing and he was advocating against it. ⁶⁴ Although he acknowledged that the miracle that happened in the thirteenth century was inspiring and could be re-enacted (given what he analysed as an analogous situation between the birth period of Gothic architecture and his contemporary time), it was not to be imitated in the twentieth century. What was at stake, according to Taylor, was what the Anglican priest and liturgist Percy Dearmer (1867–1936) had identified thirty years earlier: ‘the problem of our time is no longer the reconciliation of religion with science, but the reconciliation of religion with art’. ⁶⁵

If this was perhaps more obvious for Taylor in the USA, his work in China had meant to deal with this problem as well: his art (architecture) made him particularly sensitive to the place and context in which (Chinese) people were to worship. Art reconciled with religion meant an art in which ‘the transcendent meaning of reality [would] shin[e] through completely realistic and concrete forms’. ⁶⁶ As such, architecture was a language and, as a language, needed to be understandable for people to whom it was addressed. Christian architecture was to be understandable for Christians. More specifically, Christian architecture in the West had to be understood by Westerners, and that particular language had to be translated into a Chinese Christian architecture. The pitfall was to try and translate Western Christian architecture into Chinese Christian architecture. The real translation at stake was from Christian architecture into Chinese Christian architecture. Yet, that translation was done by Westerners whose conception of Christian architecture was influenced primarily by Western Christian architecture. Moreover, as we have seen in Taylor’s case, the very selection of what constituted ‘Chinese’ features to be incorporated into the Chinese-Christian buildings was problematic, if done by a Westerner. What Taylor chose was primarily what he could see as typically Chinese through his Western lens. However, Taylor consistently challenged the idea that Western Christian architecture (especially the Gothic style) was (if not the only and true way) the best way of expressing the transcendent. Not every people, every culture, would apprehend the transcendent through the same forms.

So, what did Taylor consider as good twentieth-century American church architecture? It is in his address of 1956 that he gave a few examples of successful constructions. St Thomas’s on Fifth Avenue in New York (built by the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson), or St Bartholomew’s on Park Avenue (built by Bertram Goodhue) were, among a few others, exceptions (something surprising, at least concerning St Thomas’s, given Taylor’s opinion on the new Gothic). But, in general, he said: ‘we have failed in both the so-called traditional or eclectic and in the contemporary or non-traditional’. ⁶⁷

Drawing on Dearmer’s observation, Taylor argued that this was due to a divorce between art and people: architects were not focusing on architecture as a religious expression. Instead, they were doing ‘architecture qua architecture’. ⁶⁸ And (Protestant) clergy were also responsible for this discrepancy. He agreed with Tillich’s statement that Protestantism seemed to have lost or to be losing the sense of the sacramental, and that disconnection was visible, according to Taylor, in contemporary church architecture. If innovations taken by the clergy were not liturgically or scripturally sound, that would become visible in the new buildings. In short, Taylor considered that architecture, influenced by and mirroring the culture in which it had emerged, was reflecting back to the clergy a disconnection between practices, meaning and purpose. What was ‘the raison d’être’ of the Church and ‘the church’s relation to society’? ⁶⁹

Two crucial elements were at stake for Taylor: liturgy and sacrament. After defining liturgy as the collective act of the people and sacrament as a ‘spiritual sign, seal, or bond; a covenant, especially one between God and man’, he suggested that the building of a church is a ‘liturgical act resulting in a physical structure which has sacramental character’. ⁷⁰ An architecture focusing on styles was analogous, in his view, to the worship of false gods.

Perhaps we see in these later considerations a fundamental element that was missing in his early years as an architect in China. By selecting seventeenth- and eighteenth-century monumental architecture, did not Taylor divorce the actual Chinese people with whom he was working from their contemporary architecture? Though what he ended up imitating from the much-elaborated monuments were some designs – while he imitated roofs for the climate – we do not have evidence of his interest in encountering Chinese architects per se.

As an art intrinsically marked by its purpose – that is, bearing in mind the use people would have of it – architecture could not be sensibly conceived apart from its context, surroundings and meaning. ⁷¹ Taylor was aware of it but it seems that, as a man of his own time, he still believed that he, a Westerner, could do it for the Chinese. That the Christian buildings he created were more ‘Chinese’ perhaps reflected, in this art form which is both a sign and witness of a people’s relationship to power, the transfer of power that was taking place while he was there. To find inspiration in the imperial monuments in the early years of the Chinese Republic, to create Christian buildings in China when one is an American of English ancestry at a time China fiercely rejects colonialism, foreign power and Christianity, must have placed Taylor in quite an odd situation. But back in the USA, he was confronted with another form of difficult translation: from the Gothic Christian art to something yet unknown.

Conclusion

We are as old as England and even Rome, in law and government, as old as any of Europe, even Rome and Greece in architecture, engineering, art and literature. In science we trace our inheritance to Egypt and Asia, as in religion. If I thought that I represented a civilization and culture which is only three hundred years old, I could not presume to come as a missionary and teacher to this ancient nation. ⁷²

This is how Taylor considered himself as an American in China. As we have seen in numerous examples, he tried to put things into perspective, considering the heritage of his own country and of the country where he was serving as a missionary, in order to reflect more accurately on the specific needs of his own time. Aware of the architectural transitions in both China and the USA, he was eager and committed to discern what kind of architecture would be best attuned with its particular period. Aesthetics was important insofar as it bore meaning and was meaningful indeed for the people for whom it was supposed to speak. Church architecture seemed therefore key in creating relationships, in embodying (making physical) the relational aspect of religion: it was a medium for the relationship of people with each other (its liturgical aspect) but also for the relationship of people with God (its sacramental aspect).

However, reservations may be expressed as to whether he practised in China what he communicated years later. One can be perplexed by the reasoning that led Taylor to mock those who saw in Gothic style the essence of Christian architecture and dismiss the (new) Gothic as ‘a high degree of absurdity resulting from backward looking romanticism’, though it did not impede him from looking into the Qing dynasty as the essence of Chinese architecture. ⁷³ His selection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century monumental Chinese buildings presented as typically Chinese, as ‘the’ Chinese style, may underline that Taylor was not so much in touch with the indigenous people, their contemporary architecture, or their political context – as it is also reflected in his colonialist and racist remarks. Rather, his eyes selected a style and historical period that his remote and foreign knowledge of Chinese architecture had identified as archetypal, through the exotic lens of colonialism.

For one thing, Taylor’s stay in China was rather brief, which may have limited his exposure to native Chinese architecture. Needless to say that the riots and the fact that certain sites were not easily accessible must have impeded him from exploring more of Chinese architectural styles over centuries and across a wide land. ⁷⁴ To choose 300-year-old buildings erected for imperial power while China was becoming a republic, and which are only indirectly connected to places of worship, may seem counter-intuitive. In short, he tried to learn Chinese, while still thinking in his native language. Yet, because he learned about aspects of Chinese architecture and imitated parts of it, while incorporating Christian symbols into it, Taylor participated in architectural accommodation. If these buildings were still showing the stamp of foreign power, they may also have been registering a shift.