The Horticultural Group¹

DESIGNED BY R. S. PEABODY
of Peabody & Stearns

THE Horticultural Group, so called, including the Horticultural Building and the Graphic Arts and Mines pavilions, corresponds in plan to the Government Group, and was designed to balance with it on the west end of the Esplanade. Its type of architecture is more suggestive of the buildings of northern Italy than of Spanish America. The loggias of the Graphic Arts and Mines pavilions are reproductions of the Villa Madonna at Rome, one of the most graceful of the productions of the Italian Renaissance. The modeling of the vaulted ceilings of these loggias is remarkably fine for exposition work, and the color treatment here is especially successful. In general composition the main building is formed on the plan of a Greek cross, with four huge arches on the principal axes and small octagonal pavilions filling in the corners. Above the whole rises a cupola, surmounted by an airy lantern. The entrance from the Esplanade is framed under an ample pediment ornamented with rich decorations in relief, and, picked out in color like the majolica work of Italy, it forms a beautiful background to the Fountain of Nature. The extreme height of the building is 240 feet.

References

1.Text quoted directly from the Art Hand-Book, Official Handbook of Architecture and Sculpture and Art Catalogue to the Pan-American Exposition. Ed. David Gray. Buffalo, N.Y.: David Gray, 1901. Sources of the images are noted with each.

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