The City of Domes [35]
a liquid celluloid to soften them into their present ivory hue. The change shows how important detail is, and how carefully Guerin's department has worked. While the construction was going on there was one remark that often used to be heard, 'It will never be noticed,' and a most foolish remark it was. It showed that the people who made it were lacking in imagination. Millions of eyes have been watching the details of this Exposition and very little has escaped notice."
A great crowd was pouring out of the afternoon concert in Festival Hall. The architect, as he looked on, remarked: "It's like being in Paris, isn't it? Or, perhaps, it's more like being in a lovely old French provincial city, where the theater is the chief architectural monument. It's hard for me to understand why the French have encouraged that kind of architecture for their theaters and opera houses. It seems so unrelated to sound, which ought to give the clue to the building. The use of the word festival here is a little old-fashioned and misleading. It doesn't mean what we usually consider festivity. It is essentially a concert hall, and the architecture ought to suggest concentration of sound by being built in a way that shall make such concentration inevitable. But this kind of building is obviously related to dissipation of sound. No wonder the acoustics turned out bad and the interior had to be remodeled."
XII
The Half Courts
In front of the Court of Palms we stopped to admire James Earl Fraser's "End of the Trail," the most popular group of sculpture in the Exposition. "It deserves all its popularity, doesn't it? It's finely imagined and splendidly worked out. The pony is excellent in its modeling and the Indian is wonderfully life-like."
At our side a man and a woman were standing, the man more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a face that had evidently seen a good deal of weather. "I've known fellers just like that Indian," we heard him say, "up in Minnesota. He might be a Blackfoot after a couple of days' tusselling with the wind and the rain in the mountains. I've seen 'em come into town all beat out. The man that made that statue knew his business. An' I guess he knew what he was doing when he called it 'The End of the Trail."'
When the visitor had passed, the architect said: "The symbolism gets them all, doesn't it; and the realism, too? But Fraser couldn't have expressed so much if he hadn't put a lot of heart into his 'Work. He really felt all that the Indian represented, as a human being and as a representative of a dying race."
"The Court of Palms" captured us both, by its shape, by the splendor of the Ionic columns, by the loveliness of its detail, by its coloring and by that charm of its sunken garden. "You can feel here the mind that developed those four Italian towers. It shows the same balanced judgment, and skill and taste. The two towers here, though they stand at either end of the court, and make a beautiful ornamentation, are really a part of the wall. They help to give it dignity and variety. And how artistically the palms have been used here. They can be among the least graceful of plants; but here they are really decorative. And those laurel trees at the side of the main doorway make fine ornamental notes. The sculptured vases, too, are wonderfully graceful."
Above the doorways we found the three murals that gave further distinction to this court and enriched the coloring. In "Fruits and Flowers" Childe Hassam had done one of his purely decorative pictures, without a story, contenting himself with graceful pictures and delicate color scheme. Charles Holloway made "The Pursuit of Pleasure" frankly allegorical, the floating figure of the woman pursued by admiring youths. Over the main doorway Arthur Mathews had also painted an allegory, "Victorious Spirit," the Angel of Light, with wide-spread wings of gold, standing in the center and keeping back the spirit of materialism, represented by a fiery horse driven by his rider with brutal energy. "Observe how successfully Mathews has chosen
A great crowd was pouring out of the afternoon concert in Festival Hall. The architect, as he looked on, remarked: "It's like being in Paris, isn't it? Or, perhaps, it's more like being in a lovely old French provincial city, where the theater is the chief architectural monument. It's hard for me to understand why the French have encouraged that kind of architecture for their theaters and opera houses. It seems so unrelated to sound, which ought to give the clue to the building. The use of the word festival here is a little old-fashioned and misleading. It doesn't mean what we usually consider festivity. It is essentially a concert hall, and the architecture ought to suggest concentration of sound by being built in a way that shall make such concentration inevitable. But this kind of building is obviously related to dissipation of sound. No wonder the acoustics turned out bad and the interior had to be remodeled."
XII
The Half Courts
In front of the Court of Palms we stopped to admire James Earl Fraser's "End of the Trail," the most popular group of sculpture in the Exposition. "It deserves all its popularity, doesn't it? It's finely imagined and splendidly worked out. The pony is excellent in its modeling and the Indian is wonderfully life-like."
At our side a man and a woman were standing, the man more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a face that had evidently seen a good deal of weather. "I've known fellers just like that Indian," we heard him say, "up in Minnesota. He might be a Blackfoot after a couple of days' tusselling with the wind and the rain in the mountains. I've seen 'em come into town all beat out. The man that made that statue knew his business. An' I guess he knew what he was doing when he called it 'The End of the Trail."'
When the visitor had passed, the architect said: "The symbolism gets them all, doesn't it; and the realism, too? But Fraser couldn't have expressed so much if he hadn't put a lot of heart into his 'Work. He really felt all that the Indian represented, as a human being and as a representative of a dying race."
"The Court of Palms" captured us both, by its shape, by the splendor of the Ionic columns, by the loveliness of its detail, by its coloring and by that charm of its sunken garden. "You can feel here the mind that developed those four Italian towers. It shows the same balanced judgment, and skill and taste. The two towers here, though they stand at either end of the court, and make a beautiful ornamentation, are really a part of the wall. They help to give it dignity and variety. And how artistically the palms have been used here. They can be among the least graceful of plants; but here they are really decorative. And those laurel trees at the side of the main doorway make fine ornamental notes. The sculptured vases, too, are wonderfully graceful."
Above the doorways we found the three murals that gave further distinction to this court and enriched the coloring. In "Fruits and Flowers" Childe Hassam had done one of his purely decorative pictures, without a story, contenting himself with graceful pictures and delicate color scheme. Charles Holloway made "The Pursuit of Pleasure" frankly allegorical, the floating figure of the woman pursued by admiring youths. Over the main doorway Arthur Mathews had also painted an allegory, "Victorious Spirit," the Angel of Light, with wide-spread wings of gold, standing in the center and keeping back the spirit of materialism, represented by a fiery horse driven by his rider with brutal energy. "Observe how successfully Mathews has chosen