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| BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE AUSTRIAN SECTION - The
engraving offers an excellent study of a part of the interior of the
Greatest Building that Ever Was, and the reader should note that it
is only the inner hall of arches which responds to his eyesight.
Large as this hall seems, it was only about four hundred feet wide
out of eight hundred feet of floor width, and only about twelve
hundred feet long out of seventeen hundred feet of total length.
Beyond the arches were two hundred feet of space on each side of the
building, and two hundred and fifty feet at each end. It was within
this hall that the audience of one hundred and fifty thousand sat on
Dedication Day, October 21, 1892. There were twenty-six arches, of
which about eighteen are here in view, the rest being cut off at the
left of the picture. We stand in the western gallery, near the
Italian overflow exhibit, and gaze directly down on the Austrian
exhibit, which was, perhaps, the only one to be all ready on Opening
Day. The time is the last week in April, 1893. The first large
structure is the Austrian portal, illustrated in this volume; the
next is Germany's portal; the column is on Tiffany and Gorham's
pavilions; the largest monument is the clock-tower, and the
drab-colored steeple is over Denmark. All these projections are on
Columbia Avenue, in the center of the big building. At the left, the
elevators rise two hundred feet sheer - a perilous ride to the roof.
Here, below, was exhibited the finest glassware of the Exposition,
and the great number of exhibits is a testimony of the popularity of
Hungarian and Bohemian goods in this country. |
