The Jewel City Part 4

(a) Panel at center of attic, west side of the Arch, facing the Court:

The Moon Sinks Yonder in the West While in the East the Glorius Sun Behind the Dawn Appears. Thus Rise and Set In Constant Change Those Shining Orbs and Regulate the Very Life of this Our World.

--Kalidasa, India.

(b) Small panel at right of center, facing the Court:

Our Eyes and Hearts Uplifted Seem to Gaze on Heavens' Radiance.

--Hitomaro, j.a.pan.

(c) Small panel at left of center, facing the Court:

They Who Know the Truth are Not Equal to Those Who Love It.

--Confucius, China.

(d) Panel at center of attic, east side of the Arch:

The Balmy Air Diffuses Health and Fragrance. So Tempered is the Genial Glow That We Know Neither Heat Nor Cold. Tulips and Hyacinths Abound. Fostered by A Delicious Clime the Earth Blooms Like A Garden.--Firdausi, Persia.

(e) Small panel at right of center:

A Wise Man Teaches Be Not Angry. From Untrodden Ways Turn Aside.

--Phra Ruang, Siam.

(f) Small panel at left of center:

He That Honors Not Himself Lacks Honor Wheresoe'er He Goes.

--Zuhayr, Arabia.

II. Arch of the Setting Sun, west side of the Court.

(a) Panel at center of attic, east side of the Arch, facing the Court:

Facing West From California's Sh.o.r.es--Inquiring Tireless Seeking What is Yet Unfound--I A Child Very Old Over Waves Toward the House of Maternity the Land of Migrations Look Afar--Look Off the Sh.o.r.es of My Western Sea the Circle Almost Circled.

--Whitman, America.

(b) Small panel at right of center:

Truth--Witness of the Past Councilor of the Present Guide of the Future.--Cervantes, Spain.

(c) Small panel at left of center:

In Nature's Infinite Book of Secrecy A Little I Can Read.

--Shakespeare, England.

(d) Panel at center of attic, west side of the Arch:

It is Absolutely Indispensable For the United States to Effect A Pa.s.sage From the Mexican Gulf to the Pacific Ocean And I Am Certain That They Will Do It--Would That I Might Live to See it But I Shall Not.--Goethe, Germany.

(e) Small panel at right of center:

The Universe--An Infinite Sphere the Center Everywhere the Circ.u.mference Nowhere.--Pascal, France.

(f) Small panel at left of center:

The World is in its Most Excellent State When Justice is Supreme.

--Dante, Italy.

VII.

The Court of the Ages (Officially called "The Court of Abundance.")

An artist's dream in romantic Orientalism--Mullgardt's own t.i.tle for it - His great "Tower of the Ages"--Mullgardt interprets his architectural masterpiece--Brangwyn's splendid murals, "Earth," "Air," "Fire" and "Water"--The "Fountain of Earth," by Robert Aitken, realism set amidst the romantic.

The Court of the Universe is not Oriental, the Court of the Ages is. Not in architecture, but in feeling, in the atmosphere with which the architect has invested it, this court brings to mind those brilliant lands of the Mediterranean touched by the East through the Moors. You pa.s.s under its arcades and walk out into a region of the Sun, warm, bright, dazzling. The architect, Louis Christian Mullgardt, has caught the feeling of the South,--not the rank, jungle South of the tropics; nor the mild, rich South of our own Gulf states; but the hard, brilliant, arid South of the desert. This court expresses Arizona, New Mexico, Spain, Algiers,--lands of the Sun. The very flowers of its first gardens were desert blooms, brilliant in hue, on leafless stalks.

There are orange trees, but they, also, are trees of the Sun, smooth of leaf, to retain moisture.

It is a court, too, of romance. It might be a garden of Allah, with a plaintive Arab flute singing, among the orange trees, of the wars and the hot pa.s.sions of the desert. It might be a court in Seville or Granada, with guitars tinkling and lace gleaming among the cool arcades.

It is a place for dreams.

The architecture has been called Spanish Gothic, but, according to the architect, it "has not been accredited to any established style." We may well be content to call it simply Mullgardt. The court is an artist's dream, rather than a formal study in historic architecture; and it is the more interesting, as it is the more original, for that. Except for the central fountain, which, fine though it is as a sculptured story, is out of harmony with the filigreed arcades around it, all the sculpture in the court is, in feeling, an intimate part of the romantic architecture. This portion of the art of the court is best considered as decoration, finding its justification in the beauty it imparts to the whole. It has genuine meaning, but what that is remains inscrutable so long as the court is called that of Abundance.

Mullgardt called his creation the "Court of the Ages." He was overruled because the officials deemed the name not in accord with the contemporaneous spirit of the Exposition. They called it the "Court of Abundance." In spite of the name, however, it is not the Court of Abundance. Mullgardt's t.i.tle gives a key to the cipher of the statues.

Read by it, the groups on the altar of the Tower become three successive Ages of Civilization. (See p. 70.)

Tower of the Ages.--This is the most admired of all the Exposition towers, and with reason. The originality, strength and beauty of its design set it above anything else of the sort yet seen in America; and the symbolism of its sculptures, which are the work of Chester Beach, is of almost equal interest with the tower itself. At the base, on the gable above the arch, rude of face and form, with beasts low in the scale, are the people of the Stone Age. Above them is a mediaeval group, the Crusader, the Priest, the Peasant Soldier armed with a cross-bow, with similar figures on the side altars. Enthroned over all, with a crown on her brow, is Modern Civilization, expressed as Intelligence. At her feet are two children, one with an open book, symbolizing Learning; the other, a boy with a part of a machine, representing Industry. The supporting figures on the sides are the Man and Woman of the Present, sprung from the earlier types. The delicate finials rising from the summit of the tower express Aspiration.

The two shafts at the head of the court, each surmounted by a huntress with bended bow, symbolize Earth and Air. Originally they were intended as finials to the double cascade which was to have swept down to the court from the Altar of the Ages on the tower. The cascade was not built, much to the benefit of the beauty of the court, but the ornaments were suffered to remain. The giddy females who support each shaft are sufficiently romantic to be in keeping with the decoration of the court.

The three figures repeated around the top of the arcade are of a hunter dragging a deer, a woman with her offspring on her shoulder, and a primitive man feeding a pelican, all so happily expressed that they are an intimate part of the arcade on which they stand. They seem almost to have grown from their supports. These figures alone, unless we add the florid ladies of the ornamental shafts, with the rich filigree of the arcades and the tower, are all that express in any way the idea of Abundance carried in the present name of the court.

Mullgardt conceived this court as a sermon in stone. Its significance as a whole is best explained by the architect himself. He interprets the court as rising in four horizontal strata:

"The court is an historical expression of the successive Ages of the world's growth. The central fountain symbolizes the nebulous world, with its innate human pa.s.sions. Out of a chaotic condition came Water (the basin), and Land (the fountain), and Light (the Sun, supported by Helios, and the electroliers). The braziers and cauldrons symbolize Fire. The two sentinel columns to the right and left of the tower symbolize Earth and Air. The eight paintings of the four corners of the ambulatory symbolize the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The central figure in the North Avenue symbolizes 'Modern Time Listening to the Story of the Ages.'

"The decorative motifs employed on the surrounding arcade are sea-plant life and its animal evolution. The piers, arches, reeds and columns bear legendary decorative motifs of the transition of plant to animal life in the forms of tortoise and other sh.e.l.l motifs;--kelp and its a.n.a.logy to the prehistoric lobster, skate, crab and sea urchin. The water-bubble motif is carried through all vertical members which symbolize the Crustacean Period, which is the second stratum of the court.

"The third stratum, the prehistoric figures, surmounting the piers of the arcade, also the first group over the tower entrance, show earliest forms of human, animal, reptile and bird life, symbolizing the Stone Age Period.

"The fourth stratum, the second group in the altar tower, symbolizes human struggle for emanc.i.p.ation from ignorance and superst.i.tion, in which Religion and War are dominating factors. The kneeling figures on the side altar are similarly expressive. The torches above these mediaeval groups symbolize the Dawn of Understanding. The chanticleers on the finials surrounding the court symbolize the Christian Era. The topmost figure of the altar symbolizes Intelligence, 'Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards All,' the symbols of Learning and Industry at her feet. The topmost figure surmounting the side altar symbolizes Thought.

The arched opening forming the enclosure of the altar contains alternating masks expressing Intelligence and Ignorance in equal measure, symbolizing the Peoples of the World. A gradual development to the higher forms of plant life is expressed upward in the altar tower, the conventionalized lily petal being the highest form."

This, then, is the lesson, the deepest and most spiritual attempted in any of the Exposition structures, and surely ent.i.tling the court to be called, as its creator wished, the Court of the Ages.