Artistic Effects of the Pan-American Exposition
Ernest Knaufft
Article from "The American Monthly Review
of Reviews" June 1901
Nocturnal architecture! Not in the textbooks; no chair devoted to it in the universities, but it is a department of architecture that the twentieth century will see developed, and the Pan-American Exposition is responsible for it. The promulgators of the exposition have builded better than they knew. While, of course, it was planned that the electrical power from Niagara be utilized, while electrical illumination was to be an adjunct to the general architectural scheme, we doubt if it was realized that the elecrical illumination would dominate the whole exposition. But it has done so, and he who would visit the exposition at the most opportune time would do well to behold it first at night, and his station point should be not at the Propylaea entrance, but at the southern end of the grounds. where, standing near French's "Washington," he may look northward over the Triumphal Causeway between the great pylons toward the Electrical Tower. Here he, will see a unique and imposing sight, that outdoes Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Omaha, -- a sight the world has never seen before. At 8 o'clock the ivory city lies half- veiled in the dusk, when suddenly, but gradually, on every cornice, every column, every dome, break forth tiny pink buds of light as though some eastern magician were commanding a Sultan's garden to bloom. A moment more, and the pink lights grow larger and take on a saffron hue, and the whole exposition lies before us illumined by 500,000 electric flames (the eight-candle power incandescent light which Mr. Edison, who developed it, has proclaimed his pet) -and these delicate lights, some single, some bunched, bring out a thousand delicate tints, now playing hide and seek amid many cartouches, terminals, and arabesques, now Rembrandting the stucco reliefs, and delicately toning down the color, till the effect is strikingly allegro.
At one of the early nights of the exposition, a shall boy (having evidently made a day's tour of the grounds till he was tired out and ready to go home. was suddenly surprised, at 8 o'clock, to witness the turning on of the lights, when, to the amusement of the spectators, he cried, " Gee whizz! I I'm not going home to-night." This will be the verdict of more than the majority of the spectators, and doubtless many an early evening train will he missed from a desire to stay till the last moment under the magic spell of this vision of supreme beauty.
A Consectuive Story In Sculpture
Not only should the visitor at night catch his first glimpse of the exposition from below the Grand Causeway, but the day visitor as well should begin his tour of inspection from that point, for it is here that the sculpture and the color schemes begin. It was Mr. Bitter's idea that the ornamental sculpture which was to be a special feature of the exposition should have close relation to the buildings it flanked, and that it should tell a consecutive story; this story is man's fight with, and conquering of, the elements, and on one side (the right, or east) of the spectator, the buildings devoted to man are erected, and on that. side the sculptor celebrates his doings; while on the left side we find the elements; here are the Mines and Horticulture buildings, and groups representing man's conquering of the elements, while the culmination of the drama is found at the northern end of the grounds, where, at the Electrical Tower, we find the groups, by George Grey Barnard, "The Great Waters in the Days of the Indian" to the left, and to the right "The Great Waters in the Days of the White Man," and "The Human Emotions," by Paul Bartlett.
In an article in the REVIEW of REVIEWS for last February were reproduced most of these sculpture groups ; but the public must be warned that they cannot be understood through photographic reproduction, nor in the plaster models which have been shown during the past season at our art exhibits; they must be seen in their environment. They form perhaps part of a fountain, and are white. seen through a rainbow mist of the mounting spray, or they are heavily gilded, and form the apex of a dome, or act as finials above a pediment, or they are ivory-colored in a golden-hued niche, or they are polychromatic; but, unlike any previous sculpture the world has ever seen, they are well illuminated by electric lights, and, like the architecture, present new effects at night. Indeed, all the sculpture, like the buildings, has a twofold beauty, of which the nocturnal effect is the most charming.
As a cornice height of forty-five feet was used as a unit of measurement (or module) in the buildings, which all the architects followed, so in the sculpture groups harmony is obtained by demanding in every case a height of nine feet for all figures, and just as a certain amount of chance has entered into the nocturnal effect, so a certain element of the unpremeditated has favored the effect of the sculpture groups. For the most part the artists' original models, some three feet high, have been transmuted by the journeymen molders in Mr. Bitter's studio in Hoboken, under a certain tension of haste, into the colossal staff-groups; and while they lose thereby much delicacy of modeling and frequently their equilibrium of pose, there is a certain rough-and-ready style, a dash and vim which runs throughout them all, that excludes any clashing of styles, and feigns, at least, a virility of touch that hints at titanic tasks performed over night.
"The Marble Faun" in Proper Place
It has ever been the task of the lecturer and writer upon Greek and Renaissance sculpture to emphasize the fact that the sculptors of the past designed their works for given positions, most frequently out-of-doors; but years of lecturing and volumes of writing could never convince the public of the beauty of out-of-door sculpture as will this single experiment at Buffalo. Even the plaster reproductions from the antique, " The Marble Faun," " The Praying Boy," The Discobolus," and other familiar figures, set in the pergola of the Propylaea and in the different courts, have a new charm under the varying sunlight, relieved by cypress and bay, or under the delicate electric light, that they do not have in our museums and art schools. We realize, on seeing them here, with what forethought they were originally designed for the embellishment of formal gardens. Thus the architect has, bee-like, gathered his honey from many sources and filled the grounds as Napoleon filled the Louvre -- with art treasures from many nations.
Artistic Effects With Brush and Paint-Pot
Mr. Turner, in mapping out his color scheme, adhered to Mr.
Bitter's idea of the evolution of man, and one who takes his first glimpse from
the south will notice that the coloring upon the buildings at that point begins
with the cruder colors, the
strong reds, yellows, greens, and blues which the barbarian selects, and it
gradually melts into orange reds, gray blues, buffs, and violets, until it culminates
at the Electric Tower in ivory yellow, with a setting of the delicate green
which repeats the chromatic note of Niagara Falls.
The student of American architecture will find much suggestiveness in the chromatic treatment of these buildings, especially in the details, for it is not to be overlooked that Mr. Turner's success has been achieved entirely through the use of house paint. The moral is that in our commercial life the ordinary materials at the disposal of the average citizen are capable of producing most artistic results if they are applied under the guidance of artistic experience.
One of the happiest effects, we blink, is where, in the entrance to several of the buildings, the ceramic productions of the past -- Luca della Robbia effects -- are imitated in fruit and flower garlands, relieved against deep backgrounds of blue and orange. One regrets, of course, that these compositions were not actually executed in faience, so rich in clays is our country, and so rapid has been her ceramic development in recent years, but the faience worker will not be slow, we fancy, to take the hint, and we can expect in the St. Louis Exposition to see a more permanent development of chromatic embellishment.
Permanency must be the chief desideratum in architectural embellishment, and gesso, terra-cotta, and tile decorations will, of course, be the fruit of Mr. Turner's more transitory pigment decorations, some of which had already faded ere the exposition opened, and had to be renewed.
Walter Cook, writing of the exposition in Scribner's for this month, says, "The brush and palette are every where in evidence." The word palette is hardly descriptive. The mural paintings which were a feature of the Chicago Exposition, and literally the product of the palette, are nowhere present. Colored stucco takes its place. Mr. Turner has accomplished his task with the brush and paint-pot. He himself wishes it to be understood that the color he has employed is only meant to be suggestive of possible translation into permanent material, the roofs into tiles, the walls into bricks, buff or gray, the medallions into faience.
Freedom in Restraint
Because we have emphasized the night effect of the exposition and asserted that the electrical effect was the paramount achievement, it must not be surmised that the original plan of the architect is not responsible for the final beauty of the ensemble, for had not the plan of the exposition been in the hands of architects, who, like Mr. Carrere, and his trained assistant, Mr. Bosworth, have been vigilant in seeing that every detail was properly measured and became a harmonious part of the premeditated whole, the final structure would have been a melange, instead of an ensemble. We note this particularly in regard to the sky line, as it is marked against its azure background like an army of plumed knights. Though thousands of minarets are seen, and half-a-dozen domes, the work of a score of architects, there is nowhere a disturbing note or an aggravating hiatus. So, too, in so small a detail as the rows of electric lampposts (which, instead of being the tall electric pole of our large cities, is but a twelve-foot post) - they have been so placed, and so designed, that they accentuate the longitudinal direction of the Court of Fountains, and introduce a rigid note into the midst of much Baroque, licensed ornament.
Spanish Renaissance is by no means a pure form of architecture, and many of the details are not above criticism. We do not think that the bossage (the horizontal members that project beyond the main plane of pillars or the side walls) in the foundation of the Government Building, nor the compressed form of its pierced openings in the frieze are satisfactory, nor are all the doorways as beautiful as it is possible to make them under the circumstances. The richness of the doorways of the Agricultural Building and the Temple of Music (though the latter is not too workmanlike in execution) show that in the plainer doorways of some of the other buildings a splendid chance for enrichment has been lost. But here and there are exquisite pieces of detail, as, for instance, the windowframes in the pylons on the Triumphal Causeway.
The Propylaea, being at the northern end of the grounds, is more delicate in coloring than the more southern buildings. The arches, the gateways proper, are rich and or nate, and are not so satisfactory in their lines and proportions as the two wings (which serve as a restaurant) with their colonnades, but are more like the confection of German toy building- blocks. The wings, however, quite perfect in their proportions, are evidently very exact copies of some Spanish Renaissance cathedral (the ecclesiastical details have been preserved even to the extent of duplicating the crosses in the windows). Of all the facades, we like these wings the best. They are of a cool gray, picked out with a light green repeated from the Tower. The architect is Walter Cook, of the firm of Babb, Cook & Willard, of New York, the architects of the Carnegie mansion in this city. The Stadium was also designed by Mr. Cook.
Next to the facade of the Propylaea, E. B. Green's Electricity
Building seems to us to present some nice lines and proroportions. The projecting
eaves, the angles of the roofs of the towers, the ample pillars with their handsome
green bronzed capitals, make a structure that might be rebuilt for permanency
without any considerable alterations.
Happy "Label" Decorations
The detail of the Manufactures Building (George F. Shepley, of Boston, architect) has much the same charm as that of R. S. Peabody's Horticultural Building, though color here is not used so lavishly. Under the eaves is rich particolored floral ornamentation, and a row of men's figures, like gargoyles, in a horizontal position, serve as rafters. On the walls are staff reliefs, forming the escutcheons of South American countries, picked out in orange and red on backgrounds of green and blue. They make wonderfully attractive external ornaments, being less familiar than the Renaissance arabesques on the other buildings. These inorganic decorations, called by architects "labels," were used extensively in Spanish Renaissance work, as at Valencia and Valladolid, , and we are surprised that the exposition architects have not made greater use of them. Mr. Crowninshield has recommended exterior mural painting, and if it is to be employed at all, it is more satisfactory, we think, in flat, united with relief work, than when light and shade is employed.
John Galen Howard's Chef D'Oeuvre
The original plans of the Electric Tower designed by John
Galen Howard did not call for such a broad structure, but in the exigencies
of construction it was necessary to add two feet to the width. It is, therefore,
not Mr. Howard's fault that the tower is not more elegant in its lines. Seen
in the daytime, there is much, we think, to criticise in the details of the
building.
The conspicuous stairway in the circular colonnade on top is suggestive of utilitarian
rather than ornamental architecture, as though the building were a lighthouse
and the stairway were to protect the keeper from wind and storm. The finials
everywhere are heavy. The detached stars upon the top seem commonplace, and
the star patterns within the circle which forms the panel on the shaft are suggestive
of the spent pin-wheel of the fifth of July. It must be acknowledged, however,
that the night effect is remarkably imposing ; that the heavy details we have
spoken of vanish, and the whole tower is lightened a hundred-fold. The perpendicular
lines of electric lights, which bring out a pilaster on each side, seem to narrow
the building to a proper proportion, and our pin-wheels become veritable pyrotechnics
of greatest elegance. It was intended to throw flash-lights from the fambeau
of the "Goddess of Light." But it was later found that no one could
be obtained who would undertake the venturesome task of wiring the figure at
the dizzy height of some four hundred feet. We think that, artistically, there
is a gain in this change of plan, that the paramount beauty of the exhibition
consists of the reticent way in which the lighting has been accomplished. The
effect of the absence of the calcium, colored, and arc lights, and the limitation
to the delicate incandescent eight-candle power lamps, which shine like dew-drops
upon some night-blooming exotic, is far more charming without the trombone-note
of gigantic search-lights.
The tower is tinted an ivory yellow, picked out here and there with a light green, suggesting the color note of Niagara, Some of the panels, the top of the Corinthian columns, and the spandrel figures over the doorway at the back of the tower are gilded ; while the two niches in front, behind the figures, to the left of "Lake Huron," by Louis A. Gudebrod, and to the right, "Lake St. Clair, " by Henry Baerer, are colored yellow in imitation of gold, and make most satisfactory spots of color upon the two wings.
A Vast Sky-Line Area
The exposition in the actual area covered is small, indeed, in comparison to the World's Fair, but optically, it covers leagues and leagues, for it is so well planned that at every angle a new vista meets the eye, and though always a part of the whole, presents a novel aspect. So, too, in the sky-line the sense of volume is very great, because "Mission" architecture is rich in receding planes. Here are circular surfaces, conical surfaces, pyramidal surfaces, and hexagonal surfaces; here are large domes, there small domes with lantern turrets, finials, corbels, and medallions, so that within a small area the electric lights encircling these give the appearance of covering a large city.
Not only has electricity assisted our architects, but Nature, too, will contribute her share of enhancement. There are no high mountains to offset the buildings, it is true, no blue lake vistas as in Chicago; but the night sky will contribute a background that will be ever changing. Now misty and opaline, now intense and ultramarine, now studded with pale stars that seem to form one constellation with the electric lights below, now broken with cumulus clouds that mirage the forms of the massive domes, now dark and threatening with an approaching storm-how effective and various this background will be! We can imagine that in the profound purples of a thunderstorm, with the lightning flashing in the gaps between the minarets, the whole "Rainbow City" will loom up before the spectators as a vast fete-adorned Walhalla.
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To the expert judgment and rare executive
ability of Mr. Stieringer and Mr. Rustin the exposition owes its nocturnal
charm. Mr. Stieringer began his career at the Chicago exposition, where
he lighted the Court of Fountains; here, however, he merely outlined the
buildings with electricity. Later, at the Omaha Exposition he made an important
step toward painting his buildings in chiaroscuro, of which advance
the lighting of the Pan-American Exposition is the climax. Never before
has the world seen such delicate and adequate lighting of all, external
parts of a building, so that there is not a suggestion of skeleton structure,
but a realization of projecting and receding planes.
Mr. Rustin took a graduate and postgraduate course at Yale. He made a study of the street railway, changing the Omaha system from cable to electricity, and later doing the same work in Portland, Ore. He was Mr. Stieringer's assistant at the Omaha Exposition; at the Buffalo Exposition he has carried the greater part of the burden of the executive responsibility, and has shown indomitable energy, as well as good taste in translating the architect's plans into the language of luminosity. |