The sculptural decoration of the staircase hall was entrusted to Philip Martiny, except the figures in the spandrils over the main arch which fronts you as you enter. These were executed by Olin L. Warner--whose work has been reviewed in another chapter--and in their Greek-like monumental simplicity and repose, their freedom from all accessory aids to decoration and their avowal of the decorative value of pure form they are in marked contrast to the French spirit of Martiny’s work. For the latter, a naturalised Frenchman, represents the French training, comparatively unaffected by the American environment. As a boy he was employed with his father in modelling and carving ornamental designs; thus gaining a familiarity with ornament before he proceeded to study it systematically as a designer, from which stage he passed on to the further studies of a sculptor of the figure. The feeling for decoration is with him an instinct, cultivated in the best of all schools, that of practical experience; his knowledge of historic forms a habit of memory, and his versatility in adapting, skill in device and manipulative facility, the product of habitual practice. For the newel posts of the staircase he executed the female figures holding a torch aloft; but these reveal mainly the results of good teaching. They are not a personal expression of himself. In a seated figure, however, designed as a Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial for Jersey City, he reached a very considerable degree of monumental dignity; yet it still appears to be true that his real bent is toward decoration. In this he displays creative fancy and a most charming faculty in the use of form. Witness this marble balustrade, divided into compartments by a series of plain posts, between which are suspended festoons of fruit and flowers, with baby forms astride them. Each in a vein of playful fancy personifies some occupation, art or science, and the emblems typifying them are introduced as accents of surprise in the composition. The whole is alive with graceful animation and yet preserves a rhythmical dignity, a variety in uniformity, like the play of notes in succeeding bars of music. Its freedom of fancy and rich effect recall the qualities shown in Lorado Taft’s decoration of the Horticultural Building at the World’s Fair; a decoration of rare distinction. Indeed the prime feature of this artist’s work at its best is the decorative character of the composition; as in “The Solitude of the Soul,” which involves an ideal motive, but is perhaps happiest in the grouping of the nude figures around the mass of unhewn rock.