at Washington measures 680 feet by 280.) Attached to this building on the west is an annex 550 feet long, covering about 64 additional acres, for the exhibition of the rougher sorts of machinery. Messrs. Peabody and Stearns of Boston, in adjusting the constructional scheme. of their main building to this fixed area, were governed by the necessity of providing large unencumbered spaces of considerable height for exhibits, so disposed as to facilitate classification and to avoid confusion; and by the fact, imposed equally upon all the other architects, that, so far as possible, the form of structure should be such that its material would be marketable after the conclusion of the Fair. These considerations led to the adoption of a typical railway-shed 130 feet wide, covered by a barrel-shaped roof 100 feet high, sup clear, large, and simple as, in great measure, to counterbalance, with their effect of spacious harmony and noble proportion, the inevitable perplexity and confusion of a display of miscellaneous running machinery. In this way Messrs. Peabody and Stearns proposed to satisfy the principal structural and practical requirements of their problem. But the more difficult task remained to give to the prosaic and unimaginative mass an exterior aspect of beauty and fitness, which, so far as possible, should reconcile the spirit of materialism, here, in the very central place of its power, with the spirit of organized "rest, grace, and harmony." The architectural formulas by which this new and apparently ill-assorted marriage of Hephaestus and Aphrodite was to be attempted had already been established, as we have seen, ported on iron arched trusses 50 feet apart, as a convenient basis for their plan. They placed three of these sheds side by side. But the site of the building was such that its main entrance had to be placed in the center of the long court-frontage, opposite the south doorway of the great vestibule of the Exposition, thus establishing a clear architectural relationship with its nearest and most important neighbor. This condition suggested the crossing of the triple hall in the center by a great transept, which, being of the same width as each of the three naves, developed a noble main hall composed of three bays 130 feet square, from each of which, to the right and left, the naves opened in long perspectives of six 50-foot bays on each side. In order still further to distinguish this main avenue, giving access to these minor naves, each of its three square divisions was covered with a conical glazed roof, giving an interior effect of a succession of domes. The architects thus secured a vast covered area composed of three parallel naves with glazed roofs, crossed by a central main transept, the combination giving a total width of 390 feet and a length of 730, affording every desirable condition of practical convenience, with structural divisions so by the agreement among the architects of the court to confine themselves to a style strictly classic, and to a definite height of 60 feet to the cornice. By this limitation of effort they proposed to secure for the great quadrangle a harmonious aspect of stately ceremony; but in so doing they sacrificed invention to convention, and were constrained, in designing their exteriors, to confine themselves to the composition of a series of architectural masks or screens, as we have already explained. These, though in general arrangement suggested by the divisions of the plan in each case and by the uses of the building, were intended to be expressive rather of possible than actual structure. In fact, so far as the exterior envelop was concerned, they were to be merely plastic models of buildings, designed so as to be capable of construction in permanent materials. The whole, therefore, may be considered as little more than a pageant of practicable stage scenery on a vast scale. The architects of Machinery Hall, in studying the problem of their architectural screen, reserved for this purpose an enveloping area, about 50 feet wide, extending entirely around their central hall. This area they occupied with external and internal galleries of two stories. These galleries naturally develop pavilions 50 feet square where they intersect at the corners, and they are interrupted, in the center of the two principal façades, by main-entrance pavilions; that on the north facing the Administration Building, and that on the east facing the corresponding side porch of the Agricultural Building. It has already been noted that the architects of the court considered that it was necessary to establish sheltered ambulatories along their fronts. In accordance with this agreement, the long intermediate stretches of façade or curtain-walls of this building, between the pavilions, are faced with porticos; but in this case the porticos are arranged in two stories to correspond with the interior, treated somewhat after the manner of Claude Perrault in the east front of the Louvre, each division having Corinthian colonnades of 23 columns 272 feet high on the long façades, and of 9 columns on the end façades, the spacing of these columns being multiples of the structural divisions of the great interior bays. Unlike the famous Paris example, however, the basement upon which these colonnades are placed is pierced with an open arcade to form the lower ambulatory, the ceiling of the latter being treated with a dome in each bay, and that of the former with richly embellished panels. To relieve the scrupulously scholastic accuracy of the main order, and to recall the days of Columbus and of Ferdinand and Isabella, the apertures in the rear walls of the upper porticos are treated with the picturesque freedom of the Span DESIGNED BY MAX BACHMANN. FIGURE IN WINDOW-FRAME OF MACHINERY HALL. ish Renaissance, and the arms of Spain and the portrait of Columbus are frequently repeated about them. It became evident to the architects, in the evolution of their design, that the light and open character of these long twostoried porticos needed some strongly contrasting form of relief and support, to be obtained by transition to an expression of solidity and massiveness in the corner and middle pavilions. For this reason they were led to treat the latter very boldly as plain wall-surfaces abruptly interrupting all the horizontal lines of the orders of the curtain-walls, and carried 35 feet higher, there finishing with a level cornice. On each front this plain wall-surface they divided in three pavilions, of which the outer, 29 feet wide, are treated as towers, the wider intermediate part being slightly recessed between them. Upon these towers, which contain staircases, they placed open octagonal lanterns, in three diminishing stories, rising to the height of 102 feet, like spires enriched with balustrades and finials, somewhat Romantic in character, and following suggestions contained in Spanish or Mexican examples. On the north pavilion toward the court, and opposite the south entrance of the Administration Building, the architects embedded in this central division a temple-like portico 75 feet wide and 90 feet deep, the portion developed outside the pavilion, and forming the exterior, being apsidal or semicircular in plan. This portico they treated with a colossal Corinthian order 60 feet high, crowning the apsidal projection with a low half-dome behind a balustrade, with a pedestal and statue over each column somewhat like the ornate Renaissance of Spain. Enriched pro fusely with sculpture and emblematic statues and with effects of decorative color behind th open screen of the porticos, this composition if it does not succeed in revealing the myster ous relationships between machinery and ar may at least stand as a beautiful model o highly organized academic design adjusted t modern uses. famous circular porch of the calidarium in the seen, in parts by motives suggested by the highl Baths of Caracalla. The east portico practically received the same treatment, the temple-portico, however, in this case being 75 feet square in plan, two fifths of it projecting outside the pavilion and finishing with a pediment, and the remainder being embedded, as it were, in the interior. It would be difficult to conceive of a more majestic welcome to this department of the Exposition. With the object of keeping the corner pavilions subordinate to those in the center, and to establish unity of design on the adjacent sides, the two-storied orders of the long colonnades are continued around them, but emphasized by a slightly projecting loggia on each face. The interior of each of these pavilions contains a grand double staircase inclosed in a circular cage of columns supporting a dome. This domical treatment is expressed externally by a much higher dome, raised upon a circular arcaded drum or podium supported on the corners by small circular pavilions and finishing with a lantern. The long level sky-lines of these great façades, thus broadly accentuated at the corners by domes, and in the center by the aspiring lines of twin towers nearly 200 feet high, were devised to form an engrossing foreground to the long higher roofs of the triple naves behind, broken by masses of decorative skylights with clearstories, and by the three low conical roofs of the main central transept. On the shorter fronts these naves present their glazed circular ends behind and above the façade in the manner used in the great Roman baths. In this way every principal feature of the main structure is made to play a noble and expressive part in the decorative scheme. The details of this design have been kept in rigid conformity with classical and scholarly traditions, relieved, as we have The iconographic scheme of this building en braces statues representing the Sciences and th Elements, and figures bearing escutcheons in scribed with the names of famous inventors. I the great east pediment Chicago presents America, and to the judges of the nations, va ous inventors and mechanics submitting the handiwork. The windows are surmounted groups of infants bearing mechanical tools, an holding festoons composed of chains of m chanical implements instead of the conve tional fruit and flowers. Before proceeding to the consideration of t Agricultural Building, which lies east of M chinery Hall, and, with its noble façade, com pletes the southern closure of the great cou it is necessary to consider the treatment of minor court, which, with the southern extensi of the main canal from the basin, lies betwe these two buildings. The terraces in front them are connected by a bridge thrown acr the canal, and the southern closure of this nor court forms a connecting link of two-s ried corridors between the two buildings, so below and open above, and repeats the ord of the curtain-walls of the Machinery Bui ing, which, in their turn, are not unlike the of the façade of the Museo of Madrid. T light construction is flanked at each end by solid pavilion, still of marked Spanish acce |