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aces of Agriculture and Machinery. This minor court will be closed toward the south by an architectural screen in the form of an arcade on the first story and a colonnade on the second, with a triumphal arch in the center, through which the visitor will enter the Department of Live Stock, which constitutes the southernmost feature of the Exposition. Opposite this canal, on the same axis, is another of similar character, running northward between the Departments of Flectricity and the Liberal Arts, and connectng as we have already seen, with the waters of the lagoon.

ts brief description, aided by the topographical views which we present, may serve üz ve in outline the general architectural e of the Exposition-grounds. The relapositions of the buildings being understood, way now devote ourselves to a consideraof the architectural motives which underhe the designs of the buildings, and confer upon cm character and significance as works of art. other words, we do not attempt a descripof these buildings, still less a criticism, which would be premature, but an analyses of the principles according to which they have been severally developed. We purpose, in fact, to put ourselves in the position of the architect when first confronted by his problem, and, as far as possible, to outline some of the processes of investigation and study through which his work gradually grew into its final form. Of course it would be impracticable to indicate the numerous false starts, the erasures, the studies tried and abandoned, and all the long tentative processes which must in every case be labored through before the scheme of a building takes its ultimate shape. The main object of these papers will have been attained at they may serve to show how a work of architecture, ake any other work of art, is the result of logical processes studiously followed, and not a mere matter of taste, a following of fashion, or an accident of invention more or

less fort couS.

Test claim which can be made for marlar ecture must rest on those charsangha ornamented or ordered structure whol keve grown out of the unprecedented exodern buildings. Wherever these na have been met in such a spirit that gouding development of style has been ustly differentiated from all other Contemporary styles not by caprice, town, there exists a living and prowhich, like all other living arts in Stand as the exponent of the civiliwhich it obtained its definite form,

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condition of architecture in this country will be looked for by foreign critics on the grounds of the World's Columbian Exposition; but they will find it rather in the latest commercial, educational, and domestic structures in and near our larger cities. By these our architecture should be judged. It is true that the industrial palaces of our Exposition will be larger in area than any which have preceded them, and will surpass in this respect even the imperial villas and baths of the ancient Romans. But they will be an unsubstantial pageant of which the concrete elements will be a series of vast covered inclosures, adjusted on architectural plans to the most lucid classification and the most effective arrangement of the materials of the Exposition, and faced with a decorative mask of plaster composition on frames of timber and iron, as the Romans of the Empire clothed their rough structures of cement and brick with magnificent architectural veneers of marbles, bronze, and sculpture. Mr. Burnham, the Chief of Construction, rubs his wonderful lamp of Aladdin in his office at Chicago, and the sudden result is an exhalation, a vast phantasm of architecture, glittering with domes, towers, and banners, like the vision of Norumbega, which presently will fade and leave no trace behind. But these shapes do not make themselves. There is, it is true, a creative energy, followed by an apparition of palaces and pavilions; but between the energy and the apparition are the consultations, the experiments, the studies of a very palpable board of representative architects of the nation, who have learned that this great architectural improvisation requires as much of their zeal, labor, knowledge, and professional experience as if they were planning to build with monumental stone and marble. However temporary the buildings, the formative motives behind them will be on trial before the world; for these motives, disembarrassed as they have been, to a great extent, of the usual controlling considerations of structure and cost, and concentrated upon the evolution of purely decorative forms, have made demands upon our resources of art such, perhaps, as have been required by no previous emergency in architecture.

The liberality exhibited by the management and by the architects of Chicago toward their brethren summoned from other cities has been more than generous. To the latter were assigned all the buildings around the great court, a compliment which involved the most serious responsibilities, and of which the only adequate recognition could be an especial effort to justify it. In view of the fact that these buildings had a mutual dependence much more marked than

phableth Freest, the most deliberate, and any others on the grounds, and that the formal

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FROM THE PAINTING BY CHARLES GRAHAM.

Live-Steck Exhibit Building

Machinery Hall, 1712 Arves

Railway Approach

A Iministration Belling Assembly Hall and Anues to Agricultural Building

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SHOWING GROUNDS AND DESIGNS OF THE BUILDINGS-VIEW LOOKING NORTHWEST.

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Transportation Exhibit, 14 33 Acres Hall of Mines and Mining #34 Ar Flectrical Bailding. 34 Acres Agricultural Building, 15 A

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lutely required a perfect harmony of feeling among the five structures which inclose it, it became immediately evident to these gentlemen that they must adopt, not only a uniform and ceremonious style, a style evolved from, and expressive of, the highest civilizations in history, in which each one could express himself with fluency, but also a common module of dimension. These considerations seemed to forbid the use of medieval or any other form of romantic, archæological, or picturesque art. The style should be distinctly secular and pompous, restrained from license by historical authority, and organized by academical discipline. It was not difficult, therefore, to agree upon the use of Roman classic forms, correctly and loyally interpreted, but permitting variations suggested not only by the Italians, but by the other masters of the Renaissance. It was considered that a series of pure classic models, in each case contrasting in character according to the personal equation of the architect, and according to the practical conditions to be accommodated in each, but uniform in respect to scale and language of form, all set forth with the utmost amount of luxury and opulence of decoration permitted by the best usage, and on a theater of almost unprecedented magnitude, would present to the profession here an object-lesson so impressive of the practical value of architectural scholarship and of strict subordination to the formulas of the schools, that it would serve as a timely corrective to the national tendency to experiments in design. It is not desired or expected that this display, however successful it may prove to be in execution, should make a new revival or a new school in the architecture of our country, or interfere with any healthy advance on classic or romantic lines which may be evolving here. There are many uneducated and untrained men practising as architects, and still maintaining, especially in the remote regions of the country, an impure and unhealthy vernacular, incapable of progress; men who have never seen a pure classic monument executed on a great scale, and who are ignorant of the emotions which it must excite in any breast accessible to the influences of art. To such it is hoped that these great models, inspired as they have been by a profound respect for the masters of classic art, will prove such a revelation that they will learn at last that true architecture cannot be based on undisciplined invention, illiterate originality, or, indeed, upon any audacity of ignorance. It was further agreed by the architects of the court that the module of proportion for the composition of their façades should be a bay not exceeding twenty-five feet in width and sixty feet in height to the top of the main cornice, which is about the size of a five-storied

façade on an ordinary city lot. In all other respects each of these gentlemen, influenced of course by mutual criticism, and subject to the approval of the executive of the Exposition through its Committee on Grounds and Buildings, has been left perfectly free to develop, within the area prescribed in each case, the design of the building assigned to him, according to his own convictions as to general outlines and details of architectural expression. Under these circumstances, therefore, it may fairly be anticipated that the great palaces of the court will illustrate the vital principle of unity in variety on a scale never before attempted in modern times.

It must be borne in mind, however, that all this is not architecture in its highest sense, but rather a scenic display of architecture, composed (to use a theatrical term) of " practicable" models, executed on a colossal stage, and with a degree of apparent pomp and splendor which, if set forth in marbles and bronze, might recall the era of Augustus or Nero. We have not, it is true, the inexhaustible resources of the museums and schools and gardens of Paris to people this great industrial court with statues and vases, set against rich back grounds of exotic foliage; but the opportunity will possibly enable us to prove that whatever characteristics of audacious invention or adaptation are exhibited in the best buildings of modern America, it is not because our architects are untrained in the organization of structural forms, ignorant of historical precedent, or wanting in respect for the works of the masters, nor yet because they do not know how on occasion to express themselves in the language of the most venerable traditions of art. But these great Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite orders, with their arches, porticos, pavilions, attics, domes, and campaniles, do not express actual structure in any sense, as was the case with Paxton's apotheosis of the greenhouse in the great glass and iron building of the first London Exposition; they rather serve as architectural screens, of which only the main divisions and articulations have been suggested by the temporary framework of iron and timber which they mask, and which, in itself, is incapable of expression in any terms of monumental dignity. If each architect of the board had been permitted or encouraged to make his especial screen an unrestricted exhibition of his archæological knowledge or ingenuity in design, we should have had a curious, and in some respects perhaps an interesting and instructive, polyglot or confusion of tongues, such as in the early scriptural times on the plains of Shinar was so detrimental to architectural success. The show might have contained some elements of the great "American Style "; but as a whole it would have been

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a hazardous experiment, and it certainly would have perplexed the critics. In respect to the architecture of the great court, therefore, it seemed at least safer to proceed according to established formulas, and to let the special use and object of each building, and the personal equation of the architect employed on it, do what they properly could, within these limits, to secure variety and movement.

It is a fashion of the times, following Mr. Ruskin, to stigmatize the marvelous multiplication of mechanical appliances to life in the nineteenth century as degrading to its higher. civilization and destructive of its art. Mr. Frederic Harrison agrees with these philosophers of discontent so far as to say that if machinery were really the last word of the century we should all be rushing violently down a steep place, like the herd of swine. But he says:

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To decry steam and electricity, inventions and products, is hardly more foolish than to deny the price which civilization itself has to pay for the use of them. There are forces at work now, forces more unwearied than steam, and brighter than the electric arc, to rehumanize the dehumanized members of society; to assert the old, immutable truths; forces yearning for rest, grace, and harmony; rallying all that is organic in men's social nature, and proclaiming the value of spiritual life over material life.

In order, therefore, to present a complete and symmetrical picture of modern civilization, it is necessary that the Columbian Exposition should not only bring together evidences of the amazing material productiveness which, within the century, has effected a complete transformation in the external aspects of life, but should force into equal prominence, if possible, corresponding evidences that the finer instincts of humanity have not suffered complete eclipse in this grosser prosperity, and that, in this headlong race, art has not been left entirely behind. The management of the Exposition is justified in placing machinery, agricultural appliances and products, manufactures and the liberal arts, the wonderful industrial results of scientific investigation, and the other evidences of practical progress, in the midst of a parallel display shaped entirely by sentiment and appealing to a fundamentally different set of emotions. It is the high function of architecture not only to adorn this triumph of materialism, but to condone, explain, and supplement it, so that some elements of "sweetness and light" may be brought forward to counterbalance the boastful Philistinism of our times. Each department of the Exposition must possess more or less capacity for architectural expression, if not by disposition of masses, by style, or by sympathetic treatment of technical detail, at least by the

suggestions of sculpture and characteristic decoration. It is true that the vast preponderance of human effort in these closing years of the century has been in favor of practical things; it remains to be seen whether this supreme test of the elastic powers of architecture to develop out of these practical things demonstrations of

DRAWING MADE BY F. E. WALLIS.

RICHARD M. HUNT, ARCHITECT. INTERIOR OF ADMINISTRATION BUILDING.

art will result in furnishing any of that "rest, grace, and harmony" which are needed as a compensation for materialism.

By a remarkable piece of fortune, the architects to whom the five buildings on the great court were assigned constituted a family, by reason of long-established personal relations and of unusually close professional sympathies. Of this family Mr. Hunt was the natural head; two of its members, Post and Van Brunt, were his professional children; Howe, Peabody, and Stearns, having been pupils and assistants of the latter, may be considered the grandchildren of the household; while McKim, who had been brought up under the same academical influences, was, with his partners, of the same blood by right of adoption and practice. Collaboration under such circumstances, and under a species of parental discipline so inspiring, so vigorous, and so affectionate, should hardly

fail to confer upon the work resulting from it some portion of the delightful harmony which prevailed in their councils.

By common consent the most monumental of these buildings-that devoted to the Administration—was undertaken by Mr. Hunt. Having all the elements of an academical project of the first class, it was eminently fitting that this important structure should fall into hands so admirably equipped by learning and experience to do it full justice. It was to Occupy the western or landward side of the great court, and to stand in its main central axis at the point where this axis was intersected by a transverse axis which ran north and south between the Mines and Electricity buildings. It was designed to be the loftiest and most purely monumental composition in the Park, and to serve not only for the accommodation of the various bureaus of administration, but, more conspicuously, as the great porch of the Exposition. The area assigned was a square measuring about 260 feet on each side, and it was necessary to divide it into four equal parts by two great avenues crossing at right angles on the axial lines which we have described. In fact, the building was in some way to stand on four legs astride this crossing of the ways, like one of the quadrilateral Janus-coaches of the Romans, but on a much greater scale. The whole system of railway communication was to be so connected on the west with this building, that the crowds of visitors, on arriving, should enter and cross this ceremonial vestibule; should there obtain their first impressions; and by the majesty and spacious repose of the interior, should be in a manner introduced into a new world, and forced into sympathy with the highest objects of this latest international exposition of arts. Its function, indeed, was that of an overture.

These conditions suggested to Mr. Hunt the idea of a civic temple based upon the model of the domical cathedrals of the Renaissance. Following this type, he projected, upon the crossing of the two axial lines, a hall of octagonal plan; but unlike the cathedrals, this hall was designed to form the fundamental basis, the leading motive, of the design, not only on the interior but on the exterior of the structure, there being neither nave nor transepts to interfere with the clear external development of this dominating feature from the ground to the summit. Thus, at the outset, he secured that expression of unity which is essential to the noblest monumental effect in architecture. The expression of repose, at once majestic and graceful, which is no less essential, was to be obtained, not only by a careful subordination of detail to the leading idea, but by such a disposition of masses as would impart an aspect

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