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| THE ORNAMENTAL GERMAN GATES - The most
beautiful piece of wrought-iron ever made fronted Columbia avenue for
a space of one hundred and sixty-one feet, serving as a facade and
disclosing the beauties of the Porcelain Porch within. When the
Armbruster Brothers, of Frankfort-on-the-Main, set up this work in
Berlin, its fame became so great that Emperor William II himself
viewed it, and joined with the general praise of its excellence. The
engraving practically describes the rococo and highly decorative
character of the gates, the central one being the largest piece of
artistic iron ever wrought. It stood forty feet high and twenty-two
feet wide, and the gates that swung under the arch weighed eighteen
tons. The side gates were thirty feet high and fifteen feet wide,
and each pair weighed thirteen tons. For six months, one hundred and
fifty of the most skillful workmen of the firm devoted all their time
to hammering these complex forms out of bar iron. The central gate,
of course, was the cynosure of all iron-workers, for they alone could
attest the marvelous nature of the display. Bars and gratings which
here look so delicate, were in themselves heavy and not easily moved.
Wrought about them were mouldings and wainscotings, and over them a
flowery arch. Fruit and leaves , geometrical scroll-work, and
oriental traceries ran confusingly together, only to give, at the
proper distance, a sense of perfect art and proportions. |
