"In this court we architects feel puzzled. We think we can read new architectural forms like a book, and find that they are saying things repeated down the ages. But we can't read much here. In that lovely round arch there are hints of Gothic, and yet it is not a Gothic arch. Throughout the treatment there are echoes of the Spanish, and yet the treatment is not Spanish. The more one studies the conception and the workmanship the more striking it grows in originality and daring. Mullgardt has succeeded in putting into architecture the spirit that inspired Langdon Smith's poem 'Evolution,' beginning 'When you were a tadpole and I was a fish.' In the chaotic feeling that the court gives there is a subtle suggestiveness. The whole evolution of man is intimated here from the time when he lived among the seaweed and the fish and the lobsters and the turtles and the crabs. Even the straight vertical lines used in the design suggest the dripping of water. When you study the meaning of the conception you find an excuse for Aitken in flinging his mighty fountain into the center of all this architectural iridescence. He caught the philosophy of Mullgardt without catching the lightness and gaiety of the execution. In that fountain he has brought out the pagan conception of the sun, and he has used the notion that the sun threw off the earth in a molten mass to steam and cool down here and to bring forth those competitions between human beings that reveal the working of the elemental passions. Aitken is material and hard, where Mullgardt is delicate and fine. How subtly Mullgardt has interwoven the feeling of spirituality with all the animal forces in man. That tower alone is a masterpiece. I know of no tower just like it in the world. From every side it is interesting. And at night it is particularly impressive from the Marina." The architect went on to explain something of the court's history. "When Mullgardt started to work out his plans he must have had in mind the transitional character of an exposition. He knew that he could afford to try an experiment that might have been impracticable if the court had been intended for permanency. He evidently was determined to cast tradition to the winds and to strike out for himself." "I should think most architects would like to work in that way."