The City of Domes Part 5

Between the houses on the hill we could catch glimpses of the South Gardens between the gla.s.s dome of the Horticultural Palace and Festival Hall. The architects rightly felt that in general appearance they had to be French to harmonize with the French architecture on either side. In the distance the Fountain of Energy stood out, like a weird skeleton that did not wholly explain itself. Stirling Calder, the sculptor, must have forgotten that the outline of those little symbolic figures perched on the shoulder of his horseman would not carry their meaning.

Now, before our eyes, the Exposition revealed itself as a picture, with all the arts contributing. It suggested the earlier periods of art, when the art-worker was architect, painter and sculptor all in one.

II

The Approach

"You see," said the architect as we started down the hill, "when the Exposition builders began their work they found the setting of the Mediterranean here. It justified them in reproducing the art of the Orient and of Greece and Rome which was a.s.sociated with it, modified of course to meet the special requirements. Besides, they didn't want to be tied down to the severe type of architecture in vogue in this country."

First of all, he went on to explain, they had created a playground.

There they appealed to the color sense, strong in the Italians and the Orientals, and weak among the people in this country, decidedly in need of fostering, and the appeal was not merely to the intellect, but to the emotions as well. Color was as much a part of architecture as of painting. So, in applying the color, Guerin worked with the architects.

He never made a plan without taking them into consultation. Then, too, Calder, acting head of the Department of Sculpture, and Denneville, the inventor of the particular kind of imitation Travertine marble used on the grounds, were active in all the planning. In fact, very little was done without the co-operation of Guerin, Calder, Denneville and Kelham, chief of the Architectural Board. In getting the Exposition from paper to reality, they had succeeded in making it seem to be the expression of one mind. Even in the development of the planting the architects had their say. Here landscape gardening was actually a part of the architecture. Faville's wall, for example, was built with the understanding that its bareness was to be relieved with ma.s.ses of foliage, creating shadows.

Before the Scott Street entrance we paused to admire the high hedge of John McLaren. We went close to examine the texture. The leaves of the African dewplant were so thick that they were beginning to hide the lines between the boxes.

"Faville realized the importance of separating the city from the rest of the world, making it sequestered. He knew that a fence wouldn't be the right sort of thing. So he conceived the idea of having a high, thick wall, modeled after an old English wall, overgrown with moss and ivy. As those walls were generations in growing, he saw that to produce one in a few months or even a few years required some ingenuity. He set to work on the problem and he devised a scheme for making an imitation hedge by planting ivy in deep boxes and piling the boxes on one another. When he submitted it to McLaren he was told that it was good except for the use of the ivy. It would be better to use African dew plant. Later McLaren improved on the scheme by using shallow boxes.

"Faville designed a magnificent entrance here," the architect went on, glancing up at the three modest arches that McLaren had tried to make as attractive as possible with his hedge. "It would have been very appropriate. But the need of keeping down expenses caused the idea to be sacrificed. However, the loss was not serious. As a matter of fact, in spite of the efforts of the Exposition to persuade visitors to come in here, a great many preferred to enter by the Fillmore Street gate.

During the day this approach is decidedly the more attractive on account of leading directly into the gardens and into the approach to the court.

The Fillmore Street entrance, with the Zone shrieking at you at one side, hardly puts you in the mood for the beauty in the courts. At night the situation is somewhat different. The flaring lights of the Zone make the dimness of the court all the more attractive."

III

In the South Gardens

Though the arrangement of the landscape might be French, these flowers were unmistakably Californian. The two pools, ornamented with the Arthur Putnam fountain of the mermaid, in duplicate, decidedly French in feeling, were brilliant with the reflected coloring from both the flowers and the buildings.

The intention at first had been to make a sunken garden here; but the underground construction had interfered. Now one might catch a suggestion of Versailles, except for those lamp posts. "Joseph Pennell, the American etcher, who has traveled all over Europe making drawings, finds a suggestion of two great Spanish gardens here, one connected with the royal palace of La Granga, near Madrid, and the other with the royal palace of Aranjuez, near Toledo. They've allowed the flowers to be the most conspicuous feature, the dominating note, which is as it should be.

Ma.s.ses of flowers are always beautiful and they are never more beautiful than when they are of one color."

"And ma.s.ses of shrubbery are always beautiful, too,", I said, nodding in the direction of the Palace of Horticulture, where McLaren had done some of his best work.

"There's no color in the world like green, particularly dark green, for richness and poetry and mystery. It's intimately related to shadow, which does so much for beauty in the world."

"The Fountain of Energy almost hits you in the face, doesn't it?" I said.

"Of course. That's exactly what Calder meant to do. In a way he was right. He wanted to express in sculpture the idea of tremendous force.

Now his work is an ideal example of what is expositional. It has a sensational appeal. One objection to it is that it suggests too much energy, too much effort on the part, not only of the subject, but of the sculptor. The artist ought never to seem to try. His work ought to make you feel that it was easy for him to do. But here you feel that the sculptor clenched his teeth and worked with might and main. As a matter of fact, he did this piece when he must have been tired out from managing all the sculpture on the grounds. He made two designs. The first one, which was not used, seemed to me better because it was simpler in the treatment of the base. Even the figures at the base here are over-energized, the human figures I mean. Still, in their sportiveness and in the sportiveness of Roth's animals, they have a certain charm. And with the streams spouting, the work as a whole makes an impression of liveliness. But it's a nervous liveliness, characteristically American, not altogether healthy."

The Fountain of Energy and the Tower of Jewels, we decided, both expressed the same kind of imagination. Like the fountain, the tower gave the sense of overstrain. "It's pretty hard to see any architectural relation between those figures up there on the tower and the tower itself. See how the ma.s.s tries to dominate Kelham's four Italian towers, but without showing any real superiority."

The heraldic s.h.i.+elds on the lamp posts near by attracted us both by their color and by the variety and grace of their designs. How many visitors stopped to consider their historic character? They went back to the early history of the Pacific Coast. For this contribution alone Walter D'Arcy Ryan deserved the highest recognition. Only an artist could have worked out this scheme in just this sensitive and appropriate way.

We stopped at the vigorous equestrian statue of Cortez by Charles Niehaus at our right, close to the tower. "I always liked Cortez for his nerve. He didn't get much grat.i.tude from his Emperor for conquering Mexico and annexing it to Spain. And what he got in glory and in money probably did not compensate him for his disappointment at the end. When he couldn't reach Charles V in any other way, he jumped up on the royal carriage. Charles didn't recognize him and asked who he was. 'I'm the man,' said Cortez, 'that gave you more provinces than your forebears left you cities.' Naturally Charles was annoyed. We don't like to be reminded of ingrat.i.tude, do we, especially by the people who think we ought to be grateful to them? So Cortez quit the court and spent the rest of his life in the country."

At our right we met another of the many Spanish adventurers drawn to the Americas by the discovery of Columbus, Pizarro, who presented his country with the rich land of Peru. It was doubtless placed here on account of the relation between Spain and California. "Civilization is a development through blood and spoilation," the architect remarked. "If Pizarro hadn't been lured by the gold of the Incas we might not be here at this moment."

The figures on the tower, insignificant when viewed from a distance, at close range took on vigor: the philosopher in his robes, the bearer of European culture of the sixteenth century to these sh.o.r.es; the Spanish priest, typical of the early friars; the adventurer, so closely related to Columbus; and the Spanish soldier. The armored horseman, by Tonetti, in a row all by himself, suffering from being rather absurdly out of place, might have won applause if he had been brought on a pedestal close to the ground. His being repeated so often up there made an effect almost comic. The vases and the triremes, the pieces of armor, with the battle-axe designs on either side, the Cleopatra's needles, and the richly-girdled globe on top, sustained on the shoulders of three figures, were all well done. The only trouble was that they had not been made to blend into one lightly soaring ma.s.s.

"It's curious that Hastings should have gone astray in the treatment of the tower. He must have known the psychological effect of parallel horizontal lines. When skysc.r.a.pers were first built in New York a few years ago they were considered unsightly on account of their great height. So the architects were careful to use parallel horizontal lines in order to diminish the apparent height as far as possible. Then people began to say that there was beauty in the sky-sc.r.a.pers, and the architects changed their policy. They built in straight parallel lines that shot up to the sky. In this way they increased the apparent height."

The inscriptions on the south side of the tower's base reminded us of the Exposition's meaning, Conspicuously and properly emphasized here.

The pagan note in the architecture was indicated in the ornamentation by the use in the design of the head of the sacred bull. And Triumphant America was celebrated in the group of eagles.

The dark stains on the yellow columns made us see how clever Guerin had been in his application of the coloring. In most places he had applied one coat only, trusting to nature to do the rest. Most of all, he wished to avoid the appearance of newness and to secure a look of age. On these columns the smoke from the steam rollers had helped out. One might imagine that they had been here for generations.

Here the builders had used the Corinthian column, with the acanthus leaves varied with fruit-designs and with the human figure. "It was a lucky day for architecture when the column came into use. It doubtless got its start from a single beam used for support. Then the notion developed of making it ornamental by fluting it and decorating the top.

In this Exposition three kinds of columns are used, the Doric, which the Greeks favored, with the very simple top or capital; the Ionic, with the spiral scroll for the capital, and the Corinthian, with the acanthus flowing over the top, and the Composite which uses features from all the other three."

"Do you happen to know how the acanthus design was made? Well, Vitruvius tells the story. Anyone that wants to get a line on this Exposition ought to read that book, or, at any rate, to glance through it and to read parts of it pretty thoroughly. It is called 'The Architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio.' There's a good translation from the Latin by Joseph Gwilt. It has become the architect's bible. According to Vitruvius, the nurse of Corinthian girl who had died carried to the girl's tomb basket filled with the things that the girl had particularly liked. She left the basket on the ground near the tomb and covered it with a tile. It happened that it stood over the root of an acanthus plant. As the plant grew its foliage pressed up around the basket and when it reached the tile the leaves were forced to bang back in graceful curves. Callimachus, a Corinthian architect, noticed the effect and put it into use."

IV

Under the Tower of Jewels

When we entered the arch we looked up at the magnificent ceiling used by McKim, Mead & White, in panels, with a pictorial design beautifully colored by Guerin. "The blue up there blends into the deeper blue of the Dodge murals just beneath. Those murals are in exactly the right tone.

They give strength to the arch. But they are weakened by being in the midst of so much heavy architecture. Their subjects, however, are in harmony with the meaning of the tower. Guerin was right when he told the mural decorators that a good subject was an a.s.set. By studying these murals you can get a glimpse of all the history a.s.sociated with California and with the Panama Ca.n.a.l. Dodge has made drama out of Balboa's discovery of Panama and out of the union of the two oceans, a theme worthy of a great poet. And Dodge is one of the few men represented in the art on the grounds who have made pictorial use of machinery. There's the discovery by Balboa, the purchase by the United States, the presentation of the problem of uniting the two oceans, very imaginative and pictorial, the completion of the Ca.n.a.l, and the crowning of labor, with the symbolic representation of the resulting feats of commerce suggested by the want of the winged Mercury. Dodge is dramatic without being too individual. His murals don't call the attention away from their surroundings to themselves. They are a part of the architecture, as murals always should be."

On either side we found the columned niches designed by McKim, Mead and White, each ornamented with a fountain. The back wall made a splendid effect as it reached up toward the tower.

To the right we turned to view Mrs. Edith Woodman Burroughs' "Fountain of Youth," lovely in the girlish beauty of the central figure, and in the simplicity and the sincerity of the design as a whole. In some ways the figure reminded us of the celebrated painting by Ingres in the Louvre, "The Source," the nude girl bearing a jug on her shoulder, sending out a stream of water. There was no suggestion of imitation, however.

"The symbolism in the design," said the architect, "does not thrust itself on you, and yet it is plain enough. That woman and man pus.h.i.+ng up flowers at the feet of the girl make a beautiful conception. The whole fountain has an ingenuousness that is in key with the subject. Across the way," he went on, turning to view the Fountain of El Dorado, by Mrs.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, "there's a piece of work much more sophisticated and dramatic, fine in its conception and strong in handling. No one would say offhand that it was the work of a woman; and yet it shows none of the overstrain that sometimes characterizes a woman artist when she wishes her work to seem masculine."

In approaching the "El Dorado" we noted the skill shown in the details of the conception. "This fountain might have been called 'The Land of Gold,' in plain English, or 'The Struggle for Happiness,' or by any other name that suggested compet.i.tion for what people valued as the prizes of life. When Mrs. Whitney was asked to explain whether those trees in the background represented the tree of life, she said she didn't have any such idea in her mind. What she probably wanted to do was to present an imaginative scene that each observer could interpret for himself. These two Egyptian-looking guardians at the doors, with the figures kneeling by them, suggest plainly enough the futility that goes with so much of our struggling in the world. So often people reach the edge of their goal without really getting what they want."

V

The Court of the Universe

Through the arch we pa.s.sed into the neck of the Court of the Universe, which charmed us by the warmth of its coloring, by McLaren's treatment of the sunken garden, by its shape, by the use of the dark pointed cypress trees against the walls, and by the sweep of view across the great court to the Marina, broken, however, by the picturesque and inharmonious Arabic bandstand. We glanced at the inscriptions at the base of the tower carrying on the history of the Ca.n.a.l to its completion. Then we stopped before those graceful little elephants bearing Guerin's tall poles with their streamers. "That little fellow is a gem in his way. He comes from Rome. But the heavy pole on his back is almost too much for him. He's used pretty often on the grounds, but not too often. After the Exposition is over we ought to keep these figures for the Civic Center. They would be very ornamental in the heart of the city."