The entablature was the whole horizontal band that sat on top of the columns. Three parts. Architrave on the bottom. Frieze in the middle. Cornice on top. The entablature was the sentence that the columns held up. The columns were the verbs. The entablature was the noun. The columns did something. The entablature was something. Together they made a complete statement about standing and spanning and sheltering and the statement has not changed in twenty-five hundred years.

The proportions were law. The entablature height was supposed to be one-quarter the column height. A twenty-foot column carried a five-foot entablature. The ratio was not negotiable. Vitruvius wrote it down and the Renaissance architects read Vitruvius and the Beaux-Arts architects read the Renaissance architects and the brownstone builders read the Beaux-Arts architects. The ratio traveled from Rome to Paris to Brooklyn on paper. The paper outlived the buildings. The buildings outlived the architects. The ratio outlived everything.

The entablature was heavy. Stone on top of stone on top of stone. The weight pushed straight down through the columns and the columns pushed straight down through the foundation and the foundation pushed straight down into the earth. The load path was honest. You could trace the weight from the cornice to the ground with your finger and your finger would follow a straight vertical line. The building did not hide where the weight went. The building showed you. The entablature was the beginning of the story and the foundation was the ending and the story was gravity.

The entablature divided the building into earth and sky. Below the entablature was the wall. Above the entablature was the roof. The entablature was the horizon line of the building. The line where the building stopped reaching up and started reaching out. The line where the vertical ambition met the horizontal shelter. The entablature said this is as high as we go. This is where we stop climbing and start covering. The entablature was the building making peace with its own height.

The modern building has no entablature. The glass wall rises from the ground to the sky and there is no horizontal line that says stop. The glass building does not stop. The glass building continues until the budget runs out and the budget is not a proportion. The budget is a number. The Greek entablature was a proportion. The proportion was a philosophy. The philosophy said a building should know when to stop. The glass building does not know when to stop because the glass building has no entablature to tell it. The horizontal line is gone and the building is a question with no period at the end.

See also: Architrave, Cornice