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a glazed semicircular roof without columns, supported by arched steel trusses of 387 feet clear span, 50 feet apart, and with a radius of 190 feet, giving an extreme height of 210 feet. This roof was arranged to be hipped at the ends. The much admired truss of Machinery Hall in the last Paris Exposition (the largest constructed for roofing purposes up to that time) is inferior to this in span and is 58 feet lower. It has been proposed to equip this vast hall, containing nearly 500,000 square feet of clear floor-space inside the enveloping building, with seats and a stage for the ceremonies of the inauguration, before adjusting it to its legitimate objects. It was sufficiently evident that the mountainous roof which covered the hall could not fail, from the mere power and weight of its enormous structural mass, to impose upon the scheme of the building, as a work of art, an element unknown in the precedents of monumental architecture.

In studying the most effective architectural treatment of a symmetrical building more than a third of a mile long and almost a sixth of a mile wide, with a height of cornice limited to 60 feet, the architect was confronted by conditions of composition such as perhaps had not occurred before. The natural dispositions of any extended building, which is to be adapted, not to various and different services, like a royal château, with its halls of ceremony, its wings for household convenience, its chapels and galleries, its provisions for dignity and its provisions for comfort, but to a single and well-understood purpose, must be guided by the most convenient and economical structure, and show a distinct unity of thought throughout. This unity is expressed by a mutual dependence of parts. We must at least have some feature of emphasis on the corners, against which the long fronts may stop-a period, as it were, and place of rest; and there is even

greater necessity for pavilions of sufficient importance to give dignity to the entrances. The natural place for these is in the middle of each front, where the visitors may be introduced most conveniently to the great interior space, and receive their first impressions of its grandeur. We have seen how the architects of the Agricultural Building on the opposite side of the court, where it was understood that everything must be in full dress and on parade, so to speak,― in adopting this natural treatment in their façade, found it necessary, for the sake of variety and movement, to provide between the center and the ends certain regularly disposed, intermediate accentuations, which the eye, in surveying the whole façade, could readily grasp and justify by an instinctive balancing of the masses on each side of the center line. The mind of the observer is flattered by this evidence of art.

Architecture, as compared with nature, has been called a creation of the second order; but this secondary creation must be fundamentally controlled by conditions of structure which, to a greater or less degree, must impose regularity or repetition of parts, as contrasted with the irregularity or picturesqueness which results from the infinite resources and the accidental conditions in nature. Medieval art, though often picturesque in its effects, is subject to these human conditions no less than classic art.

On the one hand the author of these almost interminable façades felt that he could not treat them picturesquely or accidentally without sacrifice of truth and dignity, and, on the other hand, that to break them with frequent pavilions, however subordinate to a preeminent central feature, would fail to procure for them all the advantages of symmetry; because, in a length so great, the mind could not readily discover and, at a glance, compare that corre spondence of parts on each side of the center which is essential to effects of this sort. The rule of composition which properly governs a building 500 to 800 feet long and 60 feet high cannot be applied successfully to one two or three times as long and no higher. The architect, therefore, remembering the imposing effects of certain long porticos and aqueducts of Roman structure, had the courage, in this case, to withstand the temptations furnished by the customs of the Renaissance architects in their palaces and other public monuments, and to leave his sky-line and his frontage unbroken by any competition of pavilions save the one in the center and that on each angle of each front. By this severe measure he hoped to make the unity of his design clear to the most casual observer. The module or unit of measurement, of 25 feet, with which the architect found it convenient to lay out his plan, communicated to his

elevations a corresponding division of bays, of which 29 occur on each half of the long fronts and 11 on each half of the short fronts. These bays are treated with arches, springing from piers, and each archway embraces two stories. It was anticipated that these long, monotonous, and mechanical perspectives of equal and similar arches would affect the eye like the arcades of the Campagna, and would rather increase than diminish the apparent length of the building; for repetition, even if mechanical, is, humanly speaking, a suggestion of the infinite, and the architect who has the opportunity and self-denial to adopt it frankly, and on a scale so vast, would give even to the most thoughtless and most uncritical minds a memorable impression of architectural majesty and repose.

Now the covered ambulatory, or stoa, which is made a feature of all the court fronts, should, on account of the great length of these long façades, where there is no other natural refuge from the sun, be extended all around the building, but within its lines. The lintel course or decorated belt, which is the exterior development of the floor of the second story in each bay, is supported by an open, flat, segmental arch springing from pier to pier; behind these arches this continuous ambulatory obtains spacious shade. Frequent doors open upon it from the interior. No subordinate architectural order of columns was placed under this lintel course, as was done with singularly happy results in the Agricultural Building, because it was apparent that such an order would not have been in scale with the rest of the design, and would have introduced an element which would have complicated with unnecessary details the careful simplicity of its lines and the studied breadth of its general treatment.

The adoption of a severe classical formula for the building naturally led to the adoption of a common motif for the four central pavilions, and another, adapted to its situation, for each of the corner pavilions. These repetitions were encouraged by the fact that all the façades were of equal importance. As these pavilions. must be distinctly recognized as the main porches, they must break the monotony with emphasis, or they will not be adequate. Consequently at these points there should be a sudden change in the architectural scheme of the fronts. But the strictly classic ideal does not seem to be favorable to the absolute interruption of all the horizontal lines of frontage by the pavilions; there must be some connection by continuity of lines between them.1 The Greek

1 The solution of this continuity, boldly attempted central towers, which, as we have noted, interrupt all by the architects of the Machinery Building in their

the lines, constitutes the most remarkable feature of their design. This, as we have said, is contrary to the

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PART OF GROUP ABOVE MAIN ENTRANCE OF MANUFACTURES AND LIBERAL ARTS BUILDING.

idea of a monumental entrance is a columned propylæum; that of the Romans, who better understood pomp and ceremony, is an arch. The former would be appropriate if the general architectural character of the façades were based upon an order of columns or pilasters; in the present case the latter would more naturally follow.

Thus the architect, by logical process, encountered the idea of inserting in the midst of his arcades the triple triumphal arches of Constantine or Septimius Severus, and of stopping his arcade at the corners with the single arch of Titus or Trajan, the motif in both cases being very greatly enlarged from the original in order to fit the greater scale of the building. The architectural connection of the central pavilions with the mass of the structure is established by bringing their two side arches into the same scale as those of the curtain-walls, and by causing the main cornice line to be continued across the central pavilion or pylon as a stringstrict classic idea, but in so far as this interruption does not destroy the unity of the composition, it is the suc

course over its two side arches, and as an impost, from which springs its great central arch. Over the whole is carried a horizontal entablature with a high attic, and in front of the four piers are lofty pedestaled columns, after the manner of buttresses, supporting figures against the attic, thus closely following the characteristics of the Roman prototypes. The order employed for these columns is the sumptuous Corinthian of the temple of Jupiter Stator, the columns being 65 feet high with a lower diameter of more than 6 feet. We have already intimated that the architect turned the four corners of this building with a single arch on each adjacent face of the angles; these also are decorated with magnificent coupled Corinthian columns, as in some of the Roman examples. The width of the corner pavilions is adjusted to the width of the ambulatory which enters them on each side. The esthetic function of these boldly accentuated buttress-columns, which are clearly cessful stroke of one who dares to put his fate to the touch, "to gain or lose it all."

ARCHITEC
ARCHITECTURE AT THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION. 399

detached from the mass of the building, is suffi-
ciently evident in the perspective views of the
long fronts. They furnish the only strongly
marked vertical lines in the composition, and
by contrast suffice to relieve the design from the
excessive predominance of its horizontal lines.
It is to be noted that as yet the architectural
expression of this building, the development
of which we have been following in the natural
order of design, has been confined to the exte-
rior closure of a vast interior space. Before it
had been happily determined to cover the in-
terior court with a great glazed roof, it was the
professional instinct of Mr. Post to indicate ex-
ternally that the area enveloped by his façades
was not empty, but had a magnificent interior
central feature in his original circular hall. To
this end, and in order that this feature might be
come evident from afar as an essential element
of design, it became necessary to cover it with a
dome sufficiently lofty to be seen over the sky-
lines of the inclosing galleries from usual points
of view, and to form a crown and finish to the
long, low mass of his building. This feature, if
executed, would have exceeded any similar
structure yet erected; but as it challenged
comparison with the dome of the porch of the
Exposition, the preeminence of which it was
considered desirable to maintain, it was reluc-
tantly abandoned. But the final treatment of
the central court as a hall, 1287 x 387 feet in
floor area, covered with a semicircular roof,
whose longitudinal ridge rises far above the
cornice of the façades, at once suggested an
entirely different architectural aspect for the
building. By the upward succession of cor-
nice-line, 60 feet high, and clearstory-line, 108
feet high, culminating in a central ridge-line,
210 feet high, a pyramidal effect was secured;
the low-lying mass at once obtained adequate
height; its vast extent was condoned and ex-
plained; a dominant expression of unity was
conferred upon the composition; the upper out-
lines of the façades were projected against a
colossal roof instead of the empty sky; and the
roof itself, wisely left to the majesty of its di-
mensions and to the simplicity of its structure
for architectural effect, enhanced the refinement
and purity of the architectural screens below.
Indeed, this design as a whole admirably
illustrates the fact that reservation rather than
expenditure of force is the secret of noble art.
The modern architectural mind is an archæo-
logical chaos of ideas inherited from Egypt, from
the far East, from Greece and Rome, from the
middle ages, and from the Renaissance. Under
these circumstances the highest virtue which
can be exercised by the educated architect of

to-day is self-denial in the use of his treasures. He who squanders them in his work betrays his trust, and depraves the art of his time. He who can be refined in the use of the splendid resources furnished by his knowledge of the past, who can be simple in the midst of the temptations to display his wealth, is rendering high service to a civilization which, in the midst of its complications and sophistications, needs the refreshment and chastisement of pure types.

It is evident that within his classic Roman frame Mr. Post has desired, in his detail of decoration, to bring his design into sympathy with modern civilizations; for we shall see that the luxury of Napoleon III. affects the sculpture of his spandrels and panels, and that nearly all the ornament bears traces of the influence of the latest French Renaissance and the last Paris Exposition. Moreover, in order to relieve his design from the serious expression imposed upon it by the grandeur of his leading motives, he makes a very proper concession to the festive and holiday aspect which should pervade the place by planting permanent standards and gonfalons on his triumphal arches, and by decorating his battlements with banner-staffs and bunting.

We have repeatedly stated that these papers do not embody either a description or a criticism, nor yet an apology, but constitute an attempt to explain the architectural development of the Exposition buildings. But it may be proper, before leaving the consideration of the largest of these buildings, to look back upon Mr. Post's immense façades, and to ask whether, if they had been treated with the variety, contrast, and balance of motives customary in the works of the Renaissance, if they had been broken by towers and campaniles, or tormented by gabled pavilions, they would not have presented a somewhat confused and incoherent aspect, wanting in apparent unity of thought, and resembling rather a combination of many buildings of various use than a single building of one use; and further, whether the simplicity of treatment which he has preferred (and which some, not considering its detail and the unusual difficulties of the problem, might call poverty) has not resulted in a composition having architectural qualities which, instead of confusing and puzzling the mind, can be read, understood, and remembered with pleasure. The civilization of our time owes a debt of gratitude to any architect, or to any writer, who, in the midst of the temptations which beset us to force effects of beauty by affectations and mannerisms, dares to make his work at once strong, simple, and elegant.

Henry Van Brunt.

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"HE TURNED HIS BACK ON THE TENIS AND STRUCK OUT ACROSS THE SAGE-BRUSH."

VII.

AD Alan only spoken on one of those two or three happy days before the London letter came! But a tendency to mischance of one sort or another was characteristic of the boy's headlong, sanguine temperament. The good moment passed, and a change in the household atmosphere created a new barrier between him and his father.

Dolly had ridden home at the top of Modoc's speed, to make up for all foolish delays; for Dunsmuir knew to a moment how long it took a rider to meet the stage, and was ever on the watch for its distant wheels and the messenger's return. She gave him the packet, and went to

her room to make herself neat for lessons. In the dining-room Alan joined her, loitering behind, his eyes still upon his half-learned task. They knew that something was amiss from the answer that their father gave to Dolly's

"Excused for to-day. I have some business to attend to."

His step was not heard on the porch at his usual hour for exercise. Dolly, watering her roses outside the study window when the house shadow fell that way, heard him tramping about the room, and pronouncing words to himself in a deep, perturbed voice. At dinner the young people stood waiting for him to take the head of the table.

"Margaret, will you ask him if he's coming? He never minds you," Dolly pleaded.

Margaret sighed, and smoothed her hair back from her flushed face, and laid aside her kitchen apron before knocking at the study door.

"Will the denner wait, sir, till you 're by wi' your writing?" she asked when he had shortly bidden her, "Come!"

"What! is it dinner? Let the children sit down without me. Margaret, which of the men go to town to-morrow?" It was the day before the Fourth.

"Why, sir, I think they 'll all be going but

Job."

1 Copyright, 1892, by Mary Hallock Foote.

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