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to support groups of typical statuary. The end entrances may be constructed with low, squaretopped, projecting pavilions, highly enriched, and flanked by terraces and staircases as in the front. In the center of the nave provision is made for a competitive exhibition of transportation by elevators. These are arranged in a group around a cylindrical core, and give access, by bridges across the nave, to the second floor and to a great terrace over the central portal, and connect with observatory balconies which surround a central lantern. This is the culminating feature of the design; it is highly decorated, and completes the exterior.

We have already stated that the decoration concentrated at various points on the Trans

DRAWN BY H. G. RIPLEY.

in the history of the world-the new birth of the mind, the revival of learning, the reformation in religious, political, and social life, which made modern civilization possible. These conventionalities, based upon ancient example, and highly organized by the discipline of the schools, are the symbols of this civilization. Such work as we see in the architectural system of the building which we have just been studying in outline may, in comparison, be considered romantic or barbaric (using the term in no derogatory sense, but as defining a condition of design outside the pale of classic authority), a product hardly less of invention than of convention, developing from within outward, and taking forms less consciously affected by his

CENTRAL DOME AND PORCH OF HORTICULTURAL HALL.

portation Building is composed of arabesques. These are mostly foliations, more or less based upon regularly recurring geometrical systems, but following nature in varieties of form and principles of growth. At certain important points these arabesques are frames to figuresubjects in relief, illustrating in allegorical fashion the objects of the building. Properly to complement what we have here supposed the architects themselves might say regarding the genesis of this design, it seems desirable to add a few words of general statement and wider application.

The exact and scholarly conventionalities of Fourt buildings recall the most brilliant era

torical prece

dent. This assumption

of

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freedom in the hands of uned

ucated men becomes license and disorder; in the hands of men of training, but without principles, it becomes insubordination, and results in clever work of mere swagger and audacity, a manifestation of personal idiosyncrasy, more or less brilliant

amusing

and

perhaps, but

corrupting and unfruitful. With knowledge, but without genius or imagination, becomes

it

merely archæological: but under favorable circumstances this romanticism may rise into a region of purity, sobriety, and elegance hardly inferior to that occupied for more than twenty centuries (allowing for the medieval interruption) by classic art. Into this region of difficult access the accomplished architects of the Transportation Building are seeking to enter with a fine, courageous spirit of duty, and the evidences of their work, not only on the Exhibition grounds, but more conspicuously in the Auditorium of Chicago, and elsewhere, are sufficient to indicate that somewhere perhaps in this dangerous field there may be a regeneration for the art of our time and country-not a re

vival of forms, but an establishing of principles, instructed rather than controlled by a spirit out of the inexhaustible past.

It is eminently fitting that in this exposition of national thought in architecture, our characteristic spirit of eager inquiry, of independent and intelligent experiment, should

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have the fullest illustration. If our late studies in Byzantine Romanesque and Saracenic art may seem to the foreign critic merely empirical, we may be able to show that in some instances they have been carried far enough to exercise a fructifying influence in the development of style in this country, and to infuse new blood into an art which, in the hands of the graduates of our schools of design, may be in danger of becoming scholastic or exotic, and of developing forms far removed from the uses and sympathies of modern life. In fact, it is not from loyalty to ancient formulas of beauty, not from revivals or correct archæological repetitions, that the true regeneration of modern architecture must come, but from the application to modern necessities and modern structure of the principles which controlled the evolution of the pure historical styles.

LOREDO TAFT, SCULPTOR.

SLEEP OF THE FLOWERS, HORTICULTURAL HALL.

MESSRS. W. L. B. Jenney & W. B. Mundie of Chicago, architects of the Horticultural Building, have been able to occupy the beautiful site at their disposal with a magnificent frontage of 1000 feet, facing the Lagoon, the ornamental gardens and parterres of the floral department

stretching broadly between this long façade and the waterside. The extreme depth of their building-site is about 250 feet. It was evident to the architects that a building for the cultivation and exposition of growing plants must be based upon what has been found by experience to be the best form for a garden greenhouse or conservatory. The architecture of such a structure must therefore include, as a fundamental feature of design, a series of light onestoried galleries with glazed roofs, from 50 to 70 feet wide, so arranged upon the site as to

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ends, where they approach nearest to their neighbors, and where comparisons must be instinctively forced upon the beholder, and that these pavilions should hardly be less than 50 feet high. Of course this height suggested two stories, in which could be accommodated not only collections and models illustrative of botany and horticulture, but spacious and attractive restaurants overlooking the gardens. Upon the first story of 21% feet, therefore, there is constructed in these pavilions another still higher. Thus we have an outline of a building composed of two-storied pavilions at each end of the site, connected by two long, low ranges of one-storied glazed galleries, with an open court between them. But for practical as well as for architectural reasons it is necessary to break this interminable stretch of low galleries with an important and highly decorated central feature. The architects had to accommodate under cover not growing shrubs only, but full tropical tree-growths with grotto effects and fountains. This suggested a much higher but still characteristic feature of greenhouse architecture-a glazed, wide-spreading dome, made as large as the available space would permit, but not so high as to overwhelm the onestoried galleries. This dome naturally took its place in the center, and, as it was to constitute the imposing feature, interior as well as it had to be entered as directly as

dome which architectural considerations would permit must not exceed 180 feet in diameter. They placed, therefore, a glazed domical hall of these dimensions in the center of a two-storied substructure of square plan, of about nine modules, with a projecting frontispiece toward the Lagoon in three parts, of which the central is the portal, the others being crowned by low domes occupying the corners of the square and buttressing the larger central dome.

By a mutual adjustment of the parts thus outlined a definite architectural scheme was obtained, composed of two two-storied end pavilions, 118 feet wide and 250 feet deep, connected in the rear by a continuous one-storied glazed gallery, 50 feet wide and 759% feet long, against the center of which was placed a great domical pavilion, about 220 feet square, faced with a highly enriched pylon. A second and more important longitudinal gallery, with glazed arched roofs, parallel with the first and 73 feet wide, forming the curtain-walls of the main façade, connected the center with the end pavilions, thus inclosing two garden-courts, 90 feet wide and 270 feet long.

As for the exterior, the architects are committed to a long, low façade, of which the curtainwalls are only 221⁄2 feet high, crowned with a 3-foot balustrade. The expression of their central dome, therefore, must be correspondingly low in proportion to its height; considerations

of architectural conformity must be forced into harmony with considerations of practical convenience and use. The vertical section of this dome is accordingly made semicircular, and the center from which the semicircle is struck is on a level with the gallery or second story surrounding the dome, and thus only about 24 feet from the floor, giving a total height of only 114 feet to a dome 180 feet in diameter. So far as the interior is concerned, this proportion is admirable; but the depressed exterior effect of this great glazed dome is partly remedied by a drum or podium, which is established above the flat roof of the square substructure forming the base of the dome, and which is high enough to be seen from ordinary points of view, and also by a highly enriched crown or lantern which surmounts the dome itself. The lower glazed domes, which crowd against its base on the corners, effectually support its outlines, and assist them to spring from the façade with grace and elegance, and without too sudden transitions. The curved sky-lines are also aided by the segmental form of the glazed roofs of the galleries on each hand. The transparent character of this immense ball and the airy lightness of its structure remove it from comparison with the substantial fabrics of the domes that elsewhere in the fields of the Exposition rise with more monumental aspiration. It has a quality of fleeting and iridescent beauty, and seems to be blown like a bubble. In their decorative scheme the architects preferred to follow Venetian Renaissance models, and they applied to the curtain-walls of their long front galleries a correct Ionic order with pilasters, dividing the frontage into bays corresponding to those of the interior, each being occupied by a glazed arched window, reducing the wall-surfaces to the smallest areas consistent with classic traditions, as in the orangeries of Versailles. This order is continued around the end pavilions; but as the architects were compelled to erect upon this a second story 3 feet higher than that upon which it was placed, to enable their building to compare properly with its neighbors in regard to height, they treated their upper order, which is also Ionic, with an exaggerated frieze 6 feet high, giving an area for decoration, which they richly filled with Cupids, garlands, and festoons, abundantly testifying to the joyous and gentle character of the objects to which the building is dedicated. In these pavilions they were wisely led by the example of Sansovino in the Library of St. Mark on the Piazzetta, Venice, and the arrangement also of crowning balustrades and finials, characteristic of this elegant monument, evidently had a strong influence on the present composition.

The portal is a lofty triumphal arch with a reVOL. XLIV.-95.

cessed vestibule, decorated with statuary, and in the character of its profuse embellishments of sculpture recalling the work of modern Paris; but in the two square pavilions, crowned with their subordinate domes, flanking the portal, the Venetian motives are again taken up. The Ionic order again appears here, but is on a larger scale than that of the long curtain-walls, and its entablature has a frieze broader even than that of the corner pavilions, and it is enriched with the exuberant but elegant playfulness which the Italian masters knew so well how to employ in the service of their paganized princes.

Seen from whatever point of view, no one can doubt the purposes of this building, and though its architecture has been gaily attuned to a much lighter mood than would be proper to its more serious companions, it does not forget the dignity and grace which belong to it as a work of art.

The decorative modeling and sculpture of this building are the work of Mr. Loredo Taft of Chicago.

THE first point of interest connected with the Women's Pavilion resides in the fact that it is the product of a national competition of designs among women. An architectural composition, like any other work of art, is always more or less sensitive to the personal qualities of the designer. Consequently, in examining the works of the successful competitor in this case, there is an irresistible impulse to look for the distinctive characteristics in which the feminine instinct may have betrayed itself. Miss Sophia G. Hayden of Boston is a graduate of the architectural school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in that city, and the composition by which she was fortunate enough to win this coveted prize has all the marks of a first-class school problem, intelligently studied according to academical methods, and may fairly stand in this national exposition of architecture as a good example of the sort of training given in our best professional schools. As such, it is proper that it should take its place. with the other architectural works in Jackson Park, and it is eminently proper that the exposition of woman's work should be housed in a building in which a certain delicacy and elegance of general treatment, a smaller limit of dimension, a finer scale of detail, and a certain quality of sentiment, which might be designated, in no derogatory sense, as graceful timidity or gentleness, combined however with evident technical knowledge, at once differentiate it from its colossal neighbors, and reveal the sex of its author.

The manner in which the plan of the Women's Pavilion has been conceived and laid out requires but little concession of criticism in favor

of inexperience. In this structure it was intended to accommodate a general exposition of woman's work, whether industrial, artistic, educational, or social. It was to include departments for reform work and charity organizations, a model hospital and kindergarten, a retrospective exhibition, one or more assemblyrooms of various sizes, with libraries, parlors, committee-rooms, and offices. These various services were to be provided for within an area 400 feet long northward by 200 feet wide, lying next north of the Horticultural Building, and in the axis of the Midway Pleasance. These general dimensions, and the comparatively small scale of the building, suggested 10 feet as a module of proportion, and upon this basis it was found convenient to develop the plan and organize the elevations.

The differing and somewhat undefined uses to which the building was to be devoted seemed to require a series of connected rooms of various sizes, all subordinated to a great hall or salle des pas perdus of architectural character. Certainly, enough of these subordinate apartments were required to make at least two stories necessary. With reference to lighting, circulation, and economy of space, evidently the most convenient and the simplest way of adjusting the plan was to place the great hall in the middle, to free it from columns, to build it high enough to receive light through clearstory windows, and to envelop it with a lower two-storied structure forming the four façades of the building. From the floor of this hall a convenient communication could be established with the minor halls and offices around it, so that the whole first story could be utilized. In the second story it was apparent that the necessary intercommunication could be effectively provided by surrounding the open central area of the hall by a system of corridors, which should also serve as galleries overlooking the hall, after the manner of an arcade or cloister around an Italian cortile. In order to obtain adequate area for them, this enveloping series of rooms should not exceed 80 feet in depth, and should borrow all the light possible to be obtained from the central hall, or their illumination by daylight would be seriously imperiled.

The exterior expression is evolved from these conditions. The other buildings of the Exposition covering much more extensive areas without any great superiority of mass vertically, their architects have generally found it necessary to emphasize the vertical lines as offsets to the horizontal, and to include two or more stories in one colossal order, thus bringing the architectural scheme into scale with the vastness of the structure. On account of the comparatively small extent and scale of this building, it did not seem to require any such emphasis of ver

tical lines, and therefore it was proper to permit the two stories to be frankly expressed in its architecture. The architect found that the strong horizontal lines thus created in the façades could be adjusted harmoniously by making the firststory order 21 feet, and the second 23 feet high, the whole resting on a continuous 5-foot stylobate or basement, thus giving about 50 feet as the height of the outer walls. In establishing the general vertical divisions of the main front, Miss Hayden naturally followed the conventional system of a central frontispiece with a pavilion at each end, connected by recessed curtain-walls. The depth of the suites of rooms on the north and south fronts conferred on the end pavilions a width of 80 feet, or eight modules. Over the low roofs of the enveloping suites the clearstory and roof of the lofty central hall should assert themselves as essential features of the exterior. We thus have a frontage fairly blocked out.

In this way the building is massed after the manner of the villas of the Italian Renaissance, and to this school the design is naturally indebted for those details on which the character of the design as a work of art must largely depend. From this point the architect probably developed the work somewhat as follows:

The first story of the curtain-walls between the central and end pavilions must be brought forward nearly to the face of the pavilions to form an exterior portico or ambulatory, its roof serving as a balcony or terrace to the recessed second story. This first story of the curtainwalls she treated as an Italian arcade in 10-foot bays without columns or pilasters, surmounted by a balustrade, while upon the second she imposed a full order of pilasters rather suggested by, than strictly following, Corinthian precedents, with windows between, all adjusted in scale to the almost domestic proportions of the rooms within. The central entrance should take not less than three arches similar to those of the arcade, and should be surmounted by a colonnade of the order adopted for the second story, inclosing a loggia connected with the balcony or terrace to which we have referred, the whole being flanked on each side by a space of solid wall decorated with coupled pilasters on each story, and surmounted by a pediment developed from the main cornice. Practically the same treatment may be repeated on the front face of the two end pavilions, but without the pediment, and also on the side entrances, which, however, should not have a pediment, as that would bring them into competition with the main entrance, and cannot have a loggia, because of the interior conditions of plan. The colonnade must therefore be replaced by a corresponding range of pilasters. But these side entrances may be distinguished by a low

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