Architecture and Democracy | Page 9

constituting what is known as the Community Center. By the
payment of a dollar any soldier is free to entertain his relatives and
friends there, and it is open to all the soldiers at all times. Because the

iron discipline of the army is relaxed as soon as the limits of the camp
are overpassed, the atmosphere is favourable to social life.
The building occupies its acre of ground invitingly, though exteriorly
of no particular distinction. It is the interior that entitles it to
consideration as a contribution to an architecture of that new-born
democracy of which our army camps have been the cradle. The plan of
this interior is cruciform, two hundred feet in each dimension. Built by
the Red Cross of the state of Ohio, and dedicated to the larger uses of
that organization, the symbolic appropriateness of this particular
geometrical figure should not pass unremarked. The cross is divided
into side aisles, nave, and crossing, with galleries and mezzanines so
arranged as to shorten the arms of the cross in its upper stages, leaving
the clear-story surrounding the crossing unimpeded and well defined.
The light comes for the most part from high windows, filtering down,
in tempered brightness to the floor. The bones of the structure are
everywhere in evidence, and an element of its beauty, by reason of the
admirably direct and logical arrangement of posts and trusses. The
vertical walls are covered with plaster-board of a light buff color,
converted into good sized panels by means of wooden strips finished
with a thin grey stain. The structural wood work is stained in similar
fashion, the iron rods, straps, and bolts being painted black. This color
scheme is completed and a little enlivened by red stripes and crosses
placed at appropriate intervals in the general design.
The building attained its final synthesis through the collaboration of a
Cleveland architect and a National Army captain of engineers. It is so
single in its appeal that one does not care to inquire too closely into the
part of each in the performance; both are in evidence, for an architect
seldom succeeds in being so direct and simple, while an engineer
seldom succeeds in being so gracious and altogether suave.
Entirely aside from its æsthetic interest--based as this is on beauty of
organism almost alone--the building is notable for the success with
which it fulfils and co-ordinates its manifold functions: those of a
dormitory, a restaurant, a ballroom, a theatre, and a lounge. The arm of
the cross containing the principal entrance accommodates the office,
coat room, telephones, news and cigar stand, while leaving the central
nave unimpeded, so that from the door one gets the unusual effect of an
interior vista two hundred feet long. The restaurant occupies the entire

left transept, with a great brick fireplace at the far end. There is another
fireplace in the centre of the side of the arm beyond the crossing; that
part which would correspond in a cathedral to the choir and apse being
given over to the uses of a reading and writing room. The right transept
forms a theatre, on occasion, terminating as it does with a stage. The
central floor spaces are kept everywhere free except in the restaurant,
the sides and angles being filled in with leather-covered sofas, wicker
and wooden chairs and tables, arranged in groups favourable to comfort
and conversation. Two stairways, at the right and left of the restaurant,
give access to the ample balcony and to the bedrooms, which occupy
three of the four ends of the arms of the cross at this level.
The appearance and atmosphere of this great interior is inspiring;
particularly of an evening, when it is thronged with soldiers, and
civilian guests. The strains of music, the hum of many voices, the
rhythmic shuffle on the waxed floor of the feet of the dancers--these
eminently social sounds mingle and lose themselves in the spaces of
the roof, like the voice of many waters. Tobacco smoke ascends like
incense, blue above the prevailing green-brown of the crowd, shot here
and there with brighter colors from the women's hats and dresses, in the
kaleidoscopic shifting of the dance. Long parallel rows of orange lights,
grouped low down on the lofty pillars, reflect themselves on the
polished floor, and like the patina of time on painted canvas impart to
the entire animated picture an incomparable tone. For the lighting,
either by accident or by inspiration, is an achievement of the happiest,
an example of the friendliness of fate to him who attempts a free
solution of his problem. The brackets consist merely of a cruciform
arrangement of planed pine boards about each column, with the end
grain painted red. On the under side of each arm of the cross is a single
electric