The Court of the AgesAs we turned from the Avenue of Progress toward the Court of the Ages the architect said: "The workmen about here call this inner court 'Pink Alley,' not a bad name for it, though its real name is the Court of Mines.Throughout the Exposition Guerin shows that he is very fond of pink, probably on account of its warmth.He has been criticised for using it so much on the imitation Travertine for the reason that there is no stone of exactly this color.And yet there is pink marble.But even if there weren't any pink stone in the world, Guerin would be justified in his use of the color for purely decorative purposes, just as he was justified in using it on his four towers."Inside the Court of the Ages the architect drew a long breath.
"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.""The usual process is very different.As soon as an architect decides to design a building.he first chooses a certain type of architecture; then he saturates his mind with designs that have already been done along that line.Out of the mass of suggestions that he receives he is lucky if he evolves something more or less new.Often he merely re-echoes or he actually reproduces something that he is fond of or that has happened to catch his fancy.The chances are that Mullgardt will go down into history for his daring here.It isn't often that a man takes a big biological conception and works it out in architecture with such picturesqueness.It's never intrusive and yet it's there, plain enough for anyone to see who looks close.It represented a magnificent opportunity and Mullgardt was big enough to get away with it."Then the architect told me the human story behind all this beauty as we wandered back into the center of the court and stood there."Notice the incline," he said, "from the entrances? It reminds me that Mullgardt had originally intended to have the floor of the court like a sunken garden.
And remember that the name expresses the original idea.The Court of Abundance, that it is wrongly called, would have applied much better to the Court of Four Seasons.Well, after the notion came to Mullgardt to suggest in the court the development of man from the life of the sea to his present state as a thinking being, less physical than spiritual, he planned to build a court that should be the center of the pageants for the Exposition, where art should have its living representation in the form of processions and of plays, some of them written for the purpose.
