Art and Handcraft in the Woman's Building
of the World's Columbian Exposition

28 ART AND HANDICRAFT Comfort, directly adjacent to the Sixtieth Street entrance of the Fair. The nearest station of the suburban railway may be reached in a two minutes’ walk. Nothing is more significant of the difference in woman’s posi- tion in the first and the latter half of our century than the fact that none of the eminent writers who have commented upon Miss Hay- den’s work have thought to praise it by saying that it looks like a man’s work. Marian Evans and Aurore Dupin found it necessary to cloak their womanhood under the noms de plume of George Eliot and George Sand. Rosa Bonheur found it convenient to wear man’s attire while visiting the Parisian stock-yards in order to study the animals for her great pictures. At that time the highest praise that could be given to any woman’s work was the criticism that it was so good that it might be easily mistaken for a man’s. To-day we recognize that the more womanly a woman’s work is the stronger it is. In Mr. Henry Van Brunt’s appreciative account of Miss Hayden’s work, the writer points out that it is essentially femi- nine in quality, as it should be. If sweetness and light were ever expressed in architecture, we find them in Miss Hayden's building. Every line expresses elegance, grace, harmony. The building is in the style of the villas of the Italian Renais- sance. It is 388 feet long, 199 feet wide, and 70 feet high. It is divided into two stories, which are clearly indicated by the lines of the exterior. The most important feature required of the architect was the Hall of Honor, which forms the middle of the structure. This is a noble apartment, rising to the full height of the building, surrounded by a lower two-story structure forming the four facades, and containing the minor halls and offices required for committee and exhibition rooms. At the second story a corridor surrounds the hall, treated in the way of a cloister, with graceful arches springing from well-proportioned columns. Looking at the build- ing from the water side, we have a central entrance and a pavilion at each end connected by an arcade. The main entrance has three arches and is surmounted by a loggia inclosed by a colonnade, over which rises the pediment. The loggia connects with a balcony, which runs from the central entrance to the pavilions and is enriched with pilasters of the Corinthian order. Over the pavilions are roof-gardens, surrounded by an open screen of light Ionic columns, with caryatides over the loggia below. The ornamenta- tion which outlines the arches and enriches the exterior is most appropriate. The finely modeled pediment and the eight typical groups of sculpture surmounting the open screen around the roof-