The City of Domes [15]
the warmth of the color in the paths. The pink effect is made by burning the sand. Only a man like Guerin, a painter, would have thought of that detail. I wonder how many visitors down there know that the very sand they walk on has been colored."
Around the Tower pigeons were flying, somehow relieving the mechanical outlines. Was the disproportion between the great arch, forming a kind of pedestal, and the outlines above due to mathematical miscalculation or to the interference of the ornamentation? We finally decided that the proportions had probably been right in the first place. But they had been changed by the Exposition authorities' cutting the Tower down one hundred feet, thereby saving $100,000. A matter of this kind could be reduced almost to an exact science. Besides, though the ornamentation interfered with the upward sweep of line, the effect of flatness was made by those horizontal blocks which seemed to be piled up to the top. If the outline had been clean, it would have achieved the soaring effect so essential to an inspiring tower, creating the sense of reaching up to the sky, like an invocation.
Thomas Hastings had a sound idea when he made that design. He wanted to do something Expositional, exactly as Guerin did when he applied the coloring. Now there were critics who said that the coloring was too pronounced. It reminded them of the theater. Well, that was just what it ought to remind them of. It had life, gaiety, abandon. The critic who said that the orange domes provided just the right tone, and that this tone ought to have been followed throughout, didn't make sufficient allowance for public taste. He wanted the Exposition to be an impressionistic picture in one key. But one key was exactly what Guerin didn't want. His purpose was to catch the excitement in variety of color as well as the warmth, to stimulate the mind. He succeeded in adapting his color scheme to architecture that had breadth and dignity. At first he expected to use orange, blue, and gold, carefully avoiding white. He did avoid white; but he expanded his color scheme and included brown and yellow and green. But, in that tower, Hastings did something out of harmony with the architecture, something barbaric and crude.
Here and there the bits of Austrian cut glass were sparkling on the tower like huge diamonds. "At times the thing is wonderfully impressive. There's always something impressive about a mass if it has any kind of uniformity, and here you can detect an intention on the part of the architect. There are certain lights that have a way of dressing up the tower as a whole, giving it unity and hiding its ugliness. And at all times it has a kind of barbaric splendor. It might have come out of an Aztec mind, rather childish in expression, and seeking for beauty in an elemental way. I can imagine Aztecs living up there in a barbaric fashion, their houses piled, one above another, like our uncivilized apartment houses."
In studying the Tower of Jewels in detail, we decided that it was not really so crude as it seemed on first sight. Much might be done even now by a process of elimination. And the arch was magnificent. "In its present condition the tower unquestionably provides a strong accent. It has already become a dominating influence here. But it's an influence that teaches people to feel and to think in the wrong way. It encourages a liking for what I call messy art, instead of developing a taste for the simplicity that always characterizes the best kind of beauty, the kind that develops naturally out of a central idea."
From the Tower of Jewels we turned our attention to those other towers, the four so charming in design and in proportion, Renaissance in feeling, their simplicity seeming all the more graceful on account of the contrast with the other tower's over-ornamentation. "I wonder what the world would have done without the Giralda Tower in Seville? It has inspired many of the most beautiful towers in the world. It helped to inspire McKim, Mead and White when they built the Madison Square Tower, and the Madison
Around the Tower pigeons were flying, somehow relieving the mechanical outlines. Was the disproportion between the great arch, forming a kind of pedestal, and the outlines above due to mathematical miscalculation or to the interference of the ornamentation? We finally decided that the proportions had probably been right in the first place. But they had been changed by the Exposition authorities' cutting the Tower down one hundred feet, thereby saving $100,000. A matter of this kind could be reduced almost to an exact science. Besides, though the ornamentation interfered with the upward sweep of line, the effect of flatness was made by those horizontal blocks which seemed to be piled up to the top. If the outline had been clean, it would have achieved the soaring effect so essential to an inspiring tower, creating the sense of reaching up to the sky, like an invocation.
Thomas Hastings had a sound idea when he made that design. He wanted to do something Expositional, exactly as Guerin did when he applied the coloring. Now there were critics who said that the coloring was too pronounced. It reminded them of the theater. Well, that was just what it ought to remind them of. It had life, gaiety, abandon. The critic who said that the orange domes provided just the right tone, and that this tone ought to have been followed throughout, didn't make sufficient allowance for public taste. He wanted the Exposition to be an impressionistic picture in one key. But one key was exactly what Guerin didn't want. His purpose was to catch the excitement in variety of color as well as the warmth, to stimulate the mind. He succeeded in adapting his color scheme to architecture that had breadth and dignity. At first he expected to use orange, blue, and gold, carefully avoiding white. He did avoid white; but he expanded his color scheme and included brown and yellow and green. But, in that tower, Hastings did something out of harmony with the architecture, something barbaric and crude.
Here and there the bits of Austrian cut glass were sparkling on the tower like huge diamonds. "At times the thing is wonderfully impressive. There's always something impressive about a mass if it has any kind of uniformity, and here you can detect an intention on the part of the architect. There are certain lights that have a way of dressing up the tower as a whole, giving it unity and hiding its ugliness. And at all times it has a kind of barbaric splendor. It might have come out of an Aztec mind, rather childish in expression, and seeking for beauty in an elemental way. I can imagine Aztecs living up there in a barbaric fashion, their houses piled, one above another, like our uncivilized apartment houses."
In studying the Tower of Jewels in detail, we decided that it was not really so crude as it seemed on first sight. Much might be done even now by a process of elimination. And the arch was magnificent. "In its present condition the tower unquestionably provides a strong accent. It has already become a dominating influence here. But it's an influence that teaches people to feel and to think in the wrong way. It encourages a liking for what I call messy art, instead of developing a taste for the simplicity that always characterizes the best kind of beauty, the kind that develops naturally out of a central idea."
From the Tower of Jewels we turned our attention to those other towers, the four so charming in design and in proportion, Renaissance in feeling, their simplicity seeming all the more graceful on account of the contrast with the other tower's over-ornamentation. "I wonder what the world would have done without the Giralda Tower in Seville? It has inspired many of the most beautiful towers in the world. It helped to inspire McKim, Mead and White when they built the Madison Square Tower, and the Madison