Some Artists at the Fair

John Stuart Mill · en

The grand style, the perfect proportions, and the magnificent dimensions
of the buildings of the World’s Columbian Exposition, excite a twofold
sentiment in the mind of the visitor--wonder and admiration at the
beauties of the edifices, and regret and disappointment that they are
not to remain as monuments to the good taste, knowledge, and skill of
the men who built them, and as a permanent memorial of the event which
the Exposition is intended to celebrate. This complex feeling is a
natural one, and is perfectly comprehensible in the presence of the
noble porticos and colonnades, the graceful towers, superb domes, and
imposing façades. Previous exhibitions, with the possible exception of
that in Vienna in 1873, have been confessedly ephemeral in the character
of their construction, and have shown a distinctly playful and festal
style of architecture, with little attempt at seriousness or dignity of
design. The monumental character of the group of Exposition buildings in
Chicago is not the result of accident, but of deliberate forethought and
wise judgment.

In the heat of the fever of construction, which has spread like a
contagion from the rocks of Mount Desert to the white sands of the
Pacific coast, a new race of architects has sprung up, fertile in
resources and clever in execution, but with little well-grounded
knowledge of the real principles of their art. Beginning with the
bulbous conglomerations of material which have been forced upon a
long-suffering public by the Government architects, and ending with
consciously picturesque structures that hint more of the terrors of
mediæval dungeons than of the comforts of domestic life, and bear the
title of villa but the aspect of military strongholds, the architecture
of the past two decades has, with some

[Illustration: FIGURE EMBLEMATIC OF THE TEXTILE ARTS, BY ROBERT REID, IN
ONE OF THE DOMES OF THE MANUFACTURES BUILDING.]