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| THE COLONNADE OF THE PERISTYLE - This majestic
view looks down the so-called Peristyle
toward the central arch and harbor-mouth, on the summit of which
stood the Quadriga. It was particularly
beautiful at night, when the electric bulbs in the panels of the
ceiling were aglow and the blemishes and artifice of the staff were
concealed from view. The scene vanished forever on the night of
January 8th, when the great Roman Corinthian columns bearing their
double file of statues above, leaped flaming into history, and thus
escaped a slow and sorrowful decay. These pillars stood on a clean
pavement of brick. They were made of lath and plaster. Their bases
and their capitals were adjusted after the colonade was in position.
Yet with this belittling fact before us, they still were stupendous,
and he who once looked upon their ornamental splendor would not be so
greatly moved by the columns of Seti at Karnak, or the ruins of
Baalbec. The vista here is three hundred feet long (which was
one-half of the spectacle), sixty feet wide and sixty feet high.
There were nearly one hundred of these vast columns. At this end was
the Music Hall; at the other, a similar structure called the Casino,
a restaurant. Both these terminal temples were one hundred and forty
by two hundred and sixty feet in area. It was by means of this gigantic screen that Lake Michigan was shut
away from the Grand Basin, and this was
the architecural portal of the World's Fair. |
