THE WORK PRELIMINARY TO A WORLD'S FAIR

J. S. CRAWFORD

Due west from the very center of St. Louis, and six miles from the quay at the foot of Olive street, are the new buildings of Washington University. The university tract fronting east covers a hundred acres of land, lying on a plateau sufficiently elevated to command a magnificent view of Forest Park and a large portion of the best residential drives in the city.

The exposition company has leased the university grounds, with over a thousand acres of adjacent lands, lying mostly in Forest Park, upon which to erect palaces and pavilions for the next world's fair. Among these great structures, rich in towers, domes, color-work, statues, masques and statuettes, will be lagoons, meandering roadways, rustic bridges, cascades, fountains, music-stands, kiosks, plazas, flower-gardens, statue gardens, landscapes and water-scapes in the most exuberant extravagance.

In these buildings will be installed the best things which modern mechanism and free-hand art can produce. It may be that when the rich old firms of the old world bring hither their masterpieces of machinery and machinemade goods, our national pride will see the need of readjusting itself. At any rate, this is to be a world's fair, and every country on the globe will not only be welcome, but will be urgently requested to participate. The world's accomplishments in tangible things will be here. The world's synthesis in intellectual things will be represented. How is all this to be done? Who knows where all these things, superlative of their kind, are? Who knows how to have special exhibits created and to bring the whole together on two congressional sections of land? Who knows how to classify, house and install them so that profusion does not result in confusion? If few minds comprehend after it is done, how many apprehend before it is done?

Then, every world's fair must have a climax. Steel construction was the climax at Paris in 1889. The Tour Eifel and the truss roof of the galerie des machines impressed themselves upon the entire civilized world. In 1900 it was the retrospective, evolutionary and the historic, showing the progress of a century, which became the motif and master feature of the French exhibition. In no other way could the varied riches of the great libraries, galleries, academies and museums of Paris so effectually demonstrate their value to the public mind. Its antithesis was the Chateau d'Eau,

Company

apotheosizing the present. I doubt if the world has ever seen or ever will see a more beautiful view than the lake approach to our own Columbian fair in 1893; external beauty was the glorious climax of the Chicago exhibition.

Now, who is going to conceive and contrive a new climax-an epochal climax-for our new world's fair? Nothing is more insipid than imitation. If St. Louis merely washes her face for the sake of external beauty and makes a Tour Eifel 1,500 feet high, failure will be her doom. What is the new climax going to be? Who is going to design and construct it? Who is going to collect the exhibits?

Who is going to stimulate a popular desire to see them after collected? How is the money going to be raised for all this? How are the contracts going to be let and the accounts audited? Who is going to bear the loss, if any there be?-these things bring me directly to my subject: the business side of a world's fair.

Just now the busiest executive division of the fair is that of Mr. Isaac S. Taylor, director of works, a local architect of St. Louis. This division has supervision over shaping the grounds, designing the buildings, preparing drawings and specifications, letting contracts and supervising the construction. There will be no less than fifteen general exhibit buildings with a total floor space of nearly two hundred acres greatly in excess of that ever before used by a world's fair. At Chicago there was no varied industries building; at Paris no liberal arts building. In this executive division there is a board of architects made up of the most dstinguished builders in the United States. Some of the members of this board are actively engaged in preparing plans and supervising construction, while others. are called in for consultation only. The purpose is to engage the best functional talent in the country.

Moreover, M. Masqueray, who is a distinguished French designer and draftsman, has been retained by Mr. Taylor to promote variety and preserve harmony in the architecture of the various buildings. In this department no less than seventy-five draftsmen, several of whom are experts from France, have been employed. The drawings. are traced on paper four or five feet wide and twenty-six copies are made, so that after the official copy is filed' twenty-five remain available to bidding contractors. Thesecopies are made by transferring the pigment from the original tracings to a form of pipe-clay, and in turn all the copies desired are printed in the original colors from the clay. The process of compounding the clay seems to be a secret and has not been long in use. I have seen the plans. for one building make a roll so large that an ordinary man found it quite difficult to carry.

The topography of the grounds is such that most of these general exhibit buildings will front upon avenues tangent to a circle, the center of which will be the fine arts palace, a permanent structure, highly elevated on a natural hill and the architectural climax of the exposition. Other avenues will radiate from this center, cutting the tangent lines at right angles and opening into spaces for the lagoons, driveways, etc.

The south half of the grounds is forested with oak, elm and some hickory. This table-land is called the plateau of states. Here will be erected the state building, always one of the most interesting features of a world's fair in the United States. Here will be the colonial exhibits, the government building, flanked on the west by the structures of foreign countries and the space of the Filipinos. Taking account of all these, with their annexes, a festival hall, depots, midway concessions (known as the Skinker Road), barracks for the Jefferson guards, a power-house, woman's department, an emergency hospital, restaurants, fire-department stations, the special structures of firms wishing to make special exhibits, the administration buildings, with a gymnasium and structures for aquatic sports and aerial contests, it is easy to see that not less than a hundred buildings must be passed upon and supervised by the executive division of works.

The largest building will no doubt be that of agriculture, covering not less than twenty acres. Many of these buildings are different from any ever seen before in an American exposition, for they will contain courts after the French fashion. These courts will be largely decorated with designs in staff, contain flower-gardens, music-stands, promenades, twiggy shrubs, etc.

Perhaps not one man in a thousand who visits the fair will get an adequate idea of the amount of work necessary to shape and prepare the grounds for such an enterprise. More than a million cubic yards of dirt has to be moved to get levels for all the general exhibit buildings. Some of the largest grading firms in the United States have contracts, and perhaps some of the best machines ever constructed for taking out cuts and making fills are now in operation on the grounds.

Here may be seen steam-shovels, steam-plows and excavating-plows, propelled by a score of mules. Great trees have been cut down and the stumps blown out with dynamite. Over five hundred trees from eight to twelve inches in diameter have to be transplanted along the line of the lagoons and avenues. Many of the graders live in tents. on the higher grounds, giving this tract the appearance of a military camp.