Construcción de los inductores L1 y L2.

42 Talcott Williams, “A Brief Object-Lesson in Springfield Architecture,” The American Architect and Building News, vol. 10 (12 November 1881), pp. 229-30.

separate and independent ideas, that we remember to have

43

seen.

Within the basement, rooms intended for minor municipal functions were located to either side of a 24-foot wide corridor that ran the length of the building. The ceiling height was 10 feet and finishes within the areas were said to be “plain and substantial.” The first floor was similarly arranged with a ceiling height o f 15 feet. It is likely that floor construction throughout the building relied on iron beams and brick arches because of the spans involved and an absence of partitions that aligned from floor to floor. Newspaper accounts noted that iron beams exposed in portions o f the first floor ceilings spanned from the sidewalls to the corridor walls.

While the first floor contained the primary municipal offices, a library, and substantial examples o f decorative painting, the second floor held the building’s most expansive and impressive space: “the hall,” a room said to be able to hold as many as 7,000 people.

No description that we find ourselves able to give can do justice to the hall proper. In the first place, we are not sufficiently acquainted with the architectural terms to describe it in appropriate language, and the language would not be popularly understood if it were. In the second place, there is no hall in New England with which to compare it, and we can therefore convey no idea by comparison.44

With the exception of two full-width ante-rooms located at the north and south ends, the area contained no partitions, however, galleries located above the ante-rooms extended into the main space above raised seating areas, and a large raised platform adjoined the south gallery. Galleries also ran the length o f the building along the sidewalls. They could seat 500 and were supported on wood columns and brackets whose appearance was said to “contribute essentially to the finish of the room.” Perhaps most unusual of all was the use o f clear-span iron trusses to support the roof.

Rising to the ceiling, composed of a second or internal roof, the central part o f which is 44 feet from the floor, the eye is greeted with a style of finish entirely without example in this part of the country. Iron girders extend entirely across the building, which have their offices in supporting this internal roof, and are united in a frame-work and pendants in so graceful a manner that they soon become familiar, and their slender lines cease to give offense to the eye, what ever may be their first effect.45

This rare use o f exposed iron by Eidlitz may reflect a familiarity gained with the material in his contemporary entry in the New York Crystal Place competition. His aversion to it in subsequent projects may signal his response to the rapid destruction o f both buildings by fire.

In addition to size and structural exhibitionism, the hall relied on painted decoration for effect. Its windows were painted a soft red said to exclude direct sunlight and fill the space with a soft, rose light. The ceiling was frescoed in rectangular panels and featured “a delicate comice, fancifully colored” while the sidewalls contained painted arches and “columns o f color” that extended to the ceiling. Behind the stage, large frescoed representations o f George Washington and the Goddess o f Liberty were present. The gallery woodwork and portions of the ceiling were painted in red and blue lines and the area was illuminated by 180 gas burners located within fourteen chandeliers and three rows o f bracket fixtures. Thackeray was said to have pronounced the result “the most beautiful hall he had thus far been in America, and the equal o f any, save one, that he had seen in England.”46 The building was destroyed by fire on 7 January 1905, an event said to have been caused by a monkey who overturned an oil lamp during a fair held in the hall.47 It was replaced by the Springfield Municipal Group (1912-13, Harvey Wiley Corbett and Francis

44 “History and Description o f the Building,” p. 33. 45 “History and Description o f the Building,” p. 34. 46 “History and Description o f the Building,” p. 34.

Livingston Pell48), an ensemble that consisted of a paired neoclassical city hall and municipal auditorium situated to either side of a freestanding campanile.

St. P eter’s, Westchester

Although St. George’s was an Episcopal church, its appearance was based on Romanesque forms rather then the Gothic. The notion o f Eidlitz as a Gothic architect for an Episcopal congregation was first explored at St. Peter’s, Westchester, (1853-55, 2500 Westchester Avenue, Bronx, NY). The circumstances o f the construction and subsequent history o f St. Peter’s were unfortunate. The project was contested before it began when members of the congregation filed a lawsuit to prevent disturbance of existing graves. When work resumed in 1854, careless laborers burned down an existing church that was built in 1794 and the congregation was forced to worship elsewhere until the new building was completed 49 During its design, Eidlitz was also working on the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the Eighty-fourth Street Presbyterian Church, and the Springfield, Massachusetts, City Hall. The workload may have caused him to place a classified advertisement for “three expert draughtsman” and “ ...two boys, 16 or 17 years old to learn the profession, one as a draughtsman the other as a clerk. Those who passed the examination at the Free Academy preferred.”50

48 Corbett (1873-1954) studied at the University o f California and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Despite his