The Dream City, Paul V. Galvin 
Digital History Collection
 
 
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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.
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Page created: August 26, 1998