The Stadium¹

BY WALTER COOK
of Babb, Cook & Willard

IN the mass of this amphitheater a great simplicity of style has been followed. The exterior is a series of columns with arches between; the seats in the interior back up against this arcade, and are terminated by a sort of attic, forming a promenade around the entire building, covered with gaily colored awnings and decorated with flags.

On the east the Colonnade becomes an open screen, giving a view through it to the fields beyond, and with openings, each of which is provided with a portcullis. When these are open they afford entrance to the various cavalcades or processions which are to give representations during the Exposition.

On the west end is the main entrance, and above this the tribune, in which the seats are covered by a roof. This feature contains the festal part of the Stadium; the forms are light, representing in part bronze (while those in the Stadium proper are stone forms), and here the greatest amount of color and decoration has been used, the general idea being to accent this motive and make it contrast by its gaiety with the comparative simplicity of the rest of the building.

The dimensions of the Stadium are, length, about 680 feet, and width, 450 feet. The arena has been laid out to obtain a quarter-mile running-track. Its extreme dimensions are about 569 feet in length and 260 feet in width. The seating capacity is about 12,000. It is intended to reproduce the spirit of the Pan-Athenaic Stadium cut in the side of Mount Pentelicus, near Athens.

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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