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the grounds. From this statue an avenue leads over the Triumphal Bridge into the main court and to the Electric Tower.

Starting at the statue of Washington, the avenue leads northward up a gentle incline, between rows of columns and between the four great towers of the bridge. These towers are crowned with equestrian figures of a standard bearer, and are ornamented with symbolical groups of statuary. One great pillar by its sculpture and its inscription stands for Patriotism, another for Liberty, and so on.

The canal on either side of the bridge broadens into a lake, and symbolical figures of great beauty by Mr. Martiny represent the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. By this approach over the bridge to the main court a single view takes in the whole scene, and the unity and simplicity of the ground plan become obvious. There is one long court running from south to north from the Triumphal Bridge to the Electric Tower. With its approach, and with the plaza behind the tower, this court is very much longer than the central court of any preceding exposition. Its width. admits the lakes and fountains in the centre, and broad ways on either side, which give the buildings and the tower room enough for effective display.

The transverse court (east and west) intersects the main court just north of the bridge. Their intersection makes the great area of the esplanade, which will hold a quarter of a million spectators. The transverse courts end in curved groups of buildings, the Government group on the east, and on the west the buildings given to Horticulture, Mines and the Graphic Arts; and at each curved end of this transverse court are a lake, a sunken garden and groups of statuary.

Along the main court towards the tower are the six other principal buildings-first the two octagonal domed buildings, the Temple of Music, and facing it the Ethnology building; then facing each other across the main court, the building for Machinery and Manufactures and the Liberal Arts building; next the Electricity building, and facing it the Agricultural building. The great Electric Tower stands in the space between these. Beyond and on either side are restaurant buildings, and back of all the great gates and the connecting colonnade.

This is the general plan. And you can see it all from one point in front of the Triumphal

Bridge. Outside these courts lie many buildings and the greater part of the area covered by the Exposition. But it were better at first to ignore these; for standing anywhere in the court the buildings outside it are properly shut from view. You are aware only of this one spectacle, and all the buildings and all their accessories-lakes, fountains, statuary, colonnades are a unit. They have been treated as a unit by engineers, architects, sculptors, decorators, electricians.

And it is necessary to realize how large this area is which has had this unified treatment. The space in the Court of Honor at Chicago was 563,000 square feet; the court area at

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Paris was 720,000; and the court space at Buffalo is 1,400,000-nearly three times as great as the Court of Honor at Chicago. By daylight it seems smaller than it is; and by the electric light it seems very much larger.

A connection is made between the buildings in ways that add wonderfully to the beauty of the whole group. Starting again at the bridge, and going northward on the right side (east) a colonnade, a long row of highly colored columns supporting a roof (the pergola) makes a curved passage to the first

Government building. The group of Government buildings makes a curved end of the east and west court, and in front of it are a lake and fountains and groups of statuary.

The octagonal domed Ethnology building stands at the eastern corner of the two courts as a sort of pillar. Beyond it and connecting it with the Liberal Arts building is a screen of columns with a garden behind it. Between the Liberal Arts building and the Agricultural building is the sunken garden of the Mall, which seems to connect the two buildings on either side rather than to separate them. The restaurant building which comes next extends to the propylæa. The colonnade extends in a graceful curve behind the tower. The buildings on the other (the west) side are connected in the same way.

Now it is this group of buildings and their accessories that make the spectacle. The most noteworthy aspects of it are, of course, the landscape, the architecture, the color and the illumination.

PREDOMINANCE OF THE SPECTACULAR

T is the generous and even lavish way in

been provided that gives this Exposition distinction over every preceding one. Those who recall the Centennial at Philadelphia in 1876 will recall also the absence of any spectacle. It was the note of instruction that the builders and managers of that fair struck, but not the note of beauty. But at Chicago in 1893 the Court of Honor was a thing of such beauty that nobody who saw it will ever forget it, and since then the spectacular part of every fair has had emphasis. It is hardly too much to say that it is likely to overshadow every other aspect of the Buffalo fair. The decorative effect is heightened even by the shrubs and trees and flowers. There is green everywhere that it is possible to have it, and there is a succession of very beautiful floral effects which will please the visitor all summer long. Wherever trees could add pleasure to the view they have been placed, either in the soil or in

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NORTHWARD VIEW OF THE ELECTRIC TOWER OVER THE TRIUMPHAL BRIDGE

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huge tubes, and lawns make green all untrodden places.

Organ recitals in the Temple of Music and outdoor music by bands, three at a time, indicate the determination to let every art contribute its full share to the people's enjoyment. Thus it has come to pass that the idea of "a good show" has been developed to the utmost. If there were no exhibits inside the buildings, the exterior views would make the Exposition noteworthy.

THE ARCHITECTURE

HE architects, carrying out the same purpose to make a worthy spectacle having both unity and beauty, undertook the task not of building an exposition, but of building a PanAmerican Exposition. The buildings must express the nature and the purpose of this particular enterprise. They naturally chose a Spanish Renaissance style, which fit in with

the Central and South American suggestion, and permitted a free play to the individual architects; and the general festal result that they aimed at has been achieved with great success. After you pass the bridge you find nothing severe, nothing that is even stately in the architecture, except the Electric Tower. Every building is suggestive of a holiday and of a play-place. Such a style lends itself, too, best to brilliant results in color and illumination. The greatest possible effects have been achieved in playfulness and in variety--not at the expense of a proper dignity; but there is nothing of the severely classic or monumental effects that were worked out in the Court of Honor at Chicago. The result is panoramic, festal, even gay. And the general arrangement is good-the scheme that includes the landscape work. The avenue approaches the bridge at a gentle incline; when you have crossed the bridge you see straight before

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Copyright, 1901, by Doubleday, Page & Co.
Photographed by A. R. Dugmore
THE HORTICULTURAL BUILDING, BY ELECTRIC LIGHT

The Fountain of Nature in front

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