Puslapio vaizdai
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longitudinal aisles, each covered with a double-pitched roof so devised that, by a system of skylights and clearstories, abundant light should be provided for the area beneath. These three aisles are also in two stories, with an opening in the second story under the center aisle to admit light to the main floor beneath. Thus the entire space of nine acres and a half is covered and lighted, and the galleries furnish about five additional acres of floor space.

This adjustment of the plan is entirely in the interests of the agricultural exposition, with no unnecessary concessions to interior architectural effect. But this effect has nevertheless been obtained by the wide and lofty central naves, which invite the visitors to proceed on the axial lines of the building for a general survey of its contents, without distractions, and by the system of aisles on each hand, which enables them to pursue their investigations in detail with the least possible chance of confusion. The arrangement also facilitates the work of classification, and the whole presents

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A mighty maze, but not without a plan.

The corps du bâtiment inclosing the area is 96 feet wide on the long sides and 48 feet wide on the shorter sides. Where these come together at the angles of the building they naturally constitute corner pavilions, 48 feet wide on the long fronts and 96 on the short fronts; and where the naves, 95 feet wide, with their attendant aisles, 23% feet wide, encounter the center of each façade, a central pavilion of about 118 feet results, which, from its connection with the axial line or main avenue, becomes the main porch of that side.

The architects thus found imposed upon each of their four façades the conventional arrangement of a central pavilion and corner pavilions of certain specified dimensions, with curtain-walls between. Under the agreement of the architects of the court structures, a continuous covered ambulatory or portico was required inside the building line, and there was prescribed a height of 60 feet for the main cornice. They considered that the dignity of their theme would be best expressed by the use of

a colossal Corinthian order, very richly Key Cox -1892 - from a photograph form original plastesty P. Marting.

embellished, as the principal vehicle of architectural expression in their design.

ONE OF TWELVE FIGURES HOLDING SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC

(AGRICULTURAL BUILDING).

Accordingly they determined to occupy the whole required height with columns or pilasters 50 feet high, without pedestals, and supporting an entablature 10 feet high, the whole resting directly upon the terrace, 40 feet wide, on which their building stands. But the north front, as viewed from the opposite side of the basin, is provided with an effective and majestic stylobate in the face-walls of the two terraces which run parallel with it, the lower one being washed by the waters of the great basin, and the upper being crowned by a balustrade with vases and statues, a rostral column standing at each end. To emphasize this relation of the terraces to the façade, a broad staircase, corresponding in width to the projecting columnar portico of the central pavilion, descends to the water's edge, after the manner of the landings in front of the palaces of Venice. Now it was evident that to extend a colossal order along the whole front, without interruption, would be monotonous and mechanical. It would force a formula-noble and majestic, indeed, but still a formula-into predominance over the more important subject matter of the composition. Therefore they concluded to group their great pilasters at points where the main divisions of the plan would be best illustrated. The central pavilion admitted eight pilasters, and each of the corner pavilions four, on the main front. But this concentration of the order at three points on the long façades, the middle and the ends, gave such long intervals between that the composition became disjointed and straggling. It was clear that the necessary unity could be obtained only by some sort of repetition of the order in these intermediate curtain-walls. The plan was devised with forethought for this emergency, for it provided for a series of subordinate transverse passages, or aisles, across the building, ending in secondary doorways, or vomitories, on the façades, occurring three times in each curtain-wall at equal intervals. These doorways furnish a motive for repetition of the order in two pilasters for each, thus forming smaller pavilions, or, more properly, piers; so that the pilasters occur discontinuously along the frontage in a manner to satisfy at once the practical and the esthetic considerations involved in the problem. This repetition is like the recurrence of a leading motive or theme in a fugue, which is set forth in full at one point and repeated at others by hints of various emphasis. In the architectural composition the main statement, with eight pilasters, occurs very properly in the center; the secondary statement, with four pilasters, at the ends; and the third, of minor importance, with two pilasters, at three intermediate points. Thus, also, the various points of ingress and egress along the façades are illustrated with a varying emphasis proportioned to their varying importance.

But the equal spaces of curtain-wall between these great pilastered pavilions and piers still constitute, in the aggregate, the larger part of the frontage. The spacing of structural interior supports generates a corresponding division of each of these wall-spaces into three equal bays; the necessity of obtaining for the interior as much light as possible suggests the piercing of each bay with a great arch, framed with bronzed grilles for windows; the two-storied division of the interior imposes a horizontal division of these arches by a subordinate entablature on a line with the gallery floors; and to provide, as agreed, for an outside ambulatory within the building lines, the space underneath must be left open, and this entablature is supported in each bay by an open screen of two subordinate columns, behind which the portico required traverses the whole length of each front. In fact, this inferior order of columns constitutes a closely set open colonnade, practically continuous between the greater order of pilasters and columns in the pavilions, giving to the vertical elements of the composition a delicate and refined contrast of harmony and scale hardly possible in a style less highly organized. But these vertical elements are always carefully subordinated to the horizontal lines of the entablatures. In this way the plans and elevations developed together with mutual concessions, and, at the same time, the whole arrangement, with its detail of buttress-like engaged columns, continuous with those of the ambulatory and supporting statues between the arches, follows the conventions of imperial Roman architecture.

Now each pier or buttress and pavilion must have its special treatment in respect to the skyline. From an academical point of view, a fitting culmination for the center of an architectural composition so heroic in size and so full of detail is some form of dome. From a poetical standpoint, an appropriate main vestibule to a structure devoted to an exhibition of agriculture is a temple to Ceres. The conditions of the plan made it possible to realize this idea in a circular domical chamber, 78 feet in diameter and 129 feet high within, treated with the order of the exterior in eight pairs of columns, which surround and enshrine the central statue of the goddess. Her benign and beautiful presence may serve in a brief interval of unconscious influence to bring the distracted minds of the visitors, as they hurry past, into some degree of sympathy with the agricultural collections within. To this vestibule, the design of which is completed and enriched by paintings, is applied a projecting exterior portico of four detached columns, flanked by solid wings, which are treated with pilasters; the whole being surmounted by an attic order, decorated with

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winged figures, somewhat like those known as the" Incantada" at Salonica, and a central pediment, peopled with symbolic sculpture, so disposed and grouped as to lead the eye upward to a circular podium or drum, supporting a low, spreading dome, the total effect being somewhat similar to that of the Roman Pantheon. Each buttress along the fronts is crowned with a colossal group, figurative of pastoral or agricultural life, and each of the corner pavilions is roofed with an attic or podium corresponding to that in the central pavilion, supporting a low-stepped pyramid, accompanied at its base by sculptured groups and eagles, and crowned above by a composition of figures holding aloft a globe.

The return walls on the east, toward the Lake, and on the west, toward the minor court between the Agriculture and Machinery buildings, grow without apparent effort from the conditions of the plan, as described. The corner pavilions are here made more important than those of the main front, and the central pavilion is much subordinated, while the intermediate curtain-walls are composed like those of the front, but with only one repetition of the triplearched bay on each side of the center. The west front responds to its neighbor on the opposite side of the canal with harmonious contrast, and with a certain high-bred courtesy, in which each seems to aid and to receive aid from the other.

In its various combinations, the exterior sculpture, which is the work of Mr. Philip Martiny of New York, is intended to symbolize bucolic labor: the central groups typifying human efforts in agriculture; those next the center showing the horse held in restraint by grooms; and those nearer the outward wings exhibiting the ox, urged forward, dragging the elementary beam-plow of Virgil.

The whole architectural mass may be traced rather to the Palatine Mount than to the influence of Palladio or Vignola, and it presents not only in scale and extent, but in its serious beauty, in its splendor of enrichment and refinement of detail, a model of imperial luxury and pomp, borrowed to adorn the peaceful triumph of the latest of civilizations.

THAT department of the Exposition classified as "Manufactures and the Liberal Arts" embraces so many and such varied industrial interests, that the building to accommodate it must be by far the most spacious in Jackson Park. The thirty acres which were assigned to it, though including an area much larger than that assigned to a single department in any previous Exposition, will need to be carefully husbanded to meet the requirements for space under this head. The site admitted of a building,

in exterior dimensions, 1687 feet long, north and south, and 787 feet in width. Its southern end, forming a part of the inclosure of the great court, was necessarily subjected to the same conditions regarding architectural style and scale as were agreed upon for the other structures around the quadrangle, and these conditions were extended so as to control the other façades. The interposition of an architectural wall nearly 1700 feet long, and but little over 60 feet high, between the lake and the flat district known as the lagoon would have the ef fect of transforming the whole aspect of the Park as viewed from any point on land or water. The importance of an adequate treatment of this vast scheme was obvious.

Mr. George B. Post of New York, the architect of the building, in considering its general plan, promptly fell upon the scheme of converting its area into a court by surrounding it with a continuous building, and of cutting this court in twain with a central circular structure; thus recalling, but on an immensely larger scale, a much admired disposition of Philibert Delorme in his first project for the palace of the Tuileries as a residence for Catherine de Médicis. But even with such subdivisions the scheme was still so heroic in dimension that no such correspondence as this could be of the slightest avail in furnishing him with types of architectural treatment. He found that he must work in regions quite removed from historical experience. With his assumed module of 25 feet, he found that he could carry around the four sides of his area of thirty acres a building composed of a nave 107 feet 9 inches wide and 114 feet high, covered with a pitched roof with clearstories, and supported on each side by twostoried aisles, or lean-tos, 45 feet wide. This arrangement of plan permitted ready illumination, easy classification, and convenient communication. It left an interior quadrangle 1237 feet long and 337 feet wide. The domical hall in the center of this space was planned to be 260 feet in clear diameter and 160 feet high, surrounded, like the other parts of the building, with two-storied aisles, or lean-tos, 45 feet wide. These circular aisles, compared with the seating space of the Roman Colosseum, would have inclosed an area largely in excess of that great arena. The two courts thus obtained Mr. Post proposed to treat as gardens with fountains and kiosks, or, if more space should be needed for exhibition purposes, to occupy them with a series of covered sheds.

But as the practical needs of this important and comprehensive part of the Exposition became more evident, it was finally concluded to abandon the central dome, and to convert the whole interior court into the largest unencumbered hall ever constructed, by covering it with

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GENERAL VIEW OF BUILDING FOR MANUFACTURES AND THE LIBERAL ARTS.

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