Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
In the smaller panel to the left, Labor is crowned and all who served
with toil are acclaimed. Its companion picture on the right represents
Achievement. The Mind that conceived the work is throned, the Sciences
stand at one side, while a figure crouching before the bearer of rewards
points to Labor as equally worthy.
On the west side of the arch, the central panel portrays the meeting of
Atlantic and Pacific, with Labor joining the hands of the nations of
east and west. In the panel to the left, enlightened Europe discovers
the new land, with the savage sitting on the ruins of a forgotten
civilization, the Aztec once more. On the right America, with her
workmen ready to pick up their tools and begin, buys the Canal from
France, whose labor has been baffled.
The two lovely fountains in the wings of the Tower draw their
inspiration from the days of the conquistadors. Mrs. Harry Payne
Whitney's Fountain of El Dorado is a dramatic representation of the
Aztec myth of The Gilded One, which the followers of Cortez, in their
greed for gold, mistook for a fact instead of a fable. (p. 54.) The
Fountain of Youth by Edith Woodman Burroughs finds its justification as
a part of the historical significance of the Tower in the legend of that
Fountain of Eternal Youth sought by Ponce de Leon. (p. 53.) The
interpretation of these sculptures is set forth in the chapter on
Fountains.
The Tower of Jewels epitomizes the Exposition's art. The glories of its
architecture, color, sculpture, painting, and landscape gardening all
find an expression here. In architecture it reflects something of almost
all of the orders found in the Exposition. In the main it is Italian
Renaissance, which means that the basic characters are Roman and Greek,
enriched with borrowings from the Orient and Byzantium. In column and
capital, in wall and arch and vaulted ceiling, it represents the
architecture of the whole Exposition, and so harmoniously as to form a
singular testimony to the unity of the palace scheme.
In color, from the dull soft gold of the columns of the colonnades on
either wing, through the vivid hues of Dodge's allegorical murals under
the arch, and the golden orange and deep cerulean blue in the vaulted
recesses, up to the striking green of columns on the upper rounds of the
Tower, the structure summarizes all the pigments which the master of
color, Guerin, has laid upon the Exposition.
In sculpture, the conquistadors in front, the hooded Franciscans and the
Spanish warriors who stand around the cornice, the corner figures on the
Tower above, and, finally, the great globe on top, repeat in varied form
the themes of palace, court, facade, and entrance. It has its own
fountains in its own little courts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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