International studio (41.1910)

The Pennsylvania Railroad Station

PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD STATION RESTAURANT

exteriorly and from afar, with its three-gabled clere-
story, something very different from the austerity of
the enclosing walls. The indication is more than
carried out. One finds the pomp and circumstance
of the Roman imperial architecture, in all its grand-
iosity and sumptuosity, on a scale of which there is
hardly any other American example. Its virtues
and its vices are both in full evidence in this great
apartment, far surpassing its original in scale. The
tepidarium of the Baths of Caracalla measures 170
by 82 feet, the waiting room of the station 277 by
103, and 150 feet in height. There is no denying
its effectiveness. There is also no concealing the
contradiction between the structure and its decora-
tion, which was the weakness of the prototype. The
vaulted ceiling, which accrues from the intersection
of the longitudinal tunnel vault by the transverse
tunnels, that convert the windows into lunettes, is
incrusted with a quite meaningless coffering. The
columns which receive the pendentives of the vault-
ing carry the fragment of entablature, significant as

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the development of a lintel, the irrationality of
which over a column employed as an isolated point
of support for a spreading superincumbent mass
Viollet-le-Duc has exposed, and of which Fergusson
has plausibly remarked that it would be more to the
purpose of its new employment if it were turned
upside down. But this interior is a public posses-
sion, all the same, like the exterior, though so alien
and even opposite to the spirit of that exterior that
it is manifest that it not only will bear but invites any
degree of sumptuosity in its enrichment through
color and gilding, while there are spaces in the cor-
ridors which seem to have been reserved for more
pretentious mural decoration.

One finds in passing from the waiting room to
the "Concourse" the same contradiction between
two interiors that was found at Chicago, in the plas-
ter palaces this waiting room recalls, between ex-
teriors and interiors. It is the contradiction that
always occurs when the modern architect and the
modern engineer work in conjunction, unless, as in

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