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| THE PERISTYLE FROM LAKE MICHIGAN - The
structure portrayed in the engraving was destroyed by fire on the
night of January 8th, 1894. In its appearance it was one of the
noblest colonnades ever erected, and its setting, between the waters
of the Grand Basin and the blue and
illimitable expanse of one of the
great American lakes, kept it nearly always at a dignified distance,
although the views between its columns also enlarged the sense of its
magnificence and beauty. This was the poetic gateway to the
dreamland of the Fair. To have secured the impressions sought to be
conveyed by the architects, this Brandenburg gate should have stood
landward, where the millions of people entered on the scene, and the
Administration Building should have defended
this marine end of the
Court of Honor; but all that was
impracticable, and it was left for
travelers by sea to enter the Exposition under visual auspices that
doubtless have not been surpassed by the cunning builders of the
earth. Aloft rides French and Potter's Columbus
chariot with its
four draft-horses and two attendant out-riders. We see two of the
four groups of statuary "The Genius of Navigation," by Bela G. Pratt,
and Theodore Bauer's many-time duplicated statues of Indian,
Fisherman, Music, Eloquence and Navigation. It may be noted that the
colonnade was protected by a breakwater. |
