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Detail, Spire Base
Palace of Horticulture |
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| The Palace of Horticulture, a combination of French Renaissance with the Byzantine, is consistently flowery in decoration. It has been given a carnival expression. The general sculptured adornments are heavy garlands and overflowing baskets, and profuse ornamentations of flowers. Large flower-decked jars stand in niches; the cartouches bear the flower motif. Suggestions of lattices and arbors appear in the low domes on the porches surrounding the great greenhouses, reminiscent of French garden architecture of the Great Age. The superb central glass dome that gives the building distinction is crowned by a huge flower basket and draped at its base by a long garland. At the foot of the sharply ascending spires - the slender shafts of which are carved with conventionalized vines and bear tapering flower urns as finials - stand graceful garlands of girls. These pleasing spire bases, the attendants of Flora, are by Ernest Louis Boutier, a Parisian. They carry small baskets of flowers on their heads, a chain of flowers binds them. The same feeling is continued in the caryatids on this building, by John Bateman. These, also flower-capped, are repeated on the Press and Y. W. C. A. buildings, smaller structures in the South Gardens adjoining the Horticultural Palace, thus unifying the buildings in the plaza. |
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