The Jewel City | Page 8

the tall finials suggesting minarets. Here the
Oriental influence of the architectural form, the mosque, becomes most
pronounced, changing to French again in the caryatid porches.
Altogether, the Palace of Horticulture is a beautiful building, but rather
hard to see properly from the ground. From an elevation, where it
appears more as a whole, it is far more effective. Curiously, it
photographs better than any other building here, save the Fine Arts
Palace, but in actual view it hardly lives up to the pictures. Perhaps this
is because the comparatively small portions of the structure seen
between the trees near-by are dwarfed by the huge dome, while in
photographs the camera emphasizes the lower and nearer sections and
reduces the proportions of the dome.
The exhibit housed under the great dome should not be passed by. A
vivid bit of the tropics is the Cuban display. Here, in an atmosphere
artificially heated and moistened to reproduce the steaming jungle, is
massed a splendid exhibit of those island trees and flowers that most of
us know only through pictures and stories of southern seas. Around the
central source of light, which is hidden under tropic vines, stands a
circle of royal palms; and planted thickly over the remaining space are
jungle trees, vivid enough to our imagination, but many of which have
never before been seen in this country.
Boys who feel pirate blood in their veins will revel in this reproduction
of the scenes of imagined adventure. Any reasonable pirate could be

quite happy here. For here is the breadfruit tree, read of in many a tale
of castaways; also the cocoanut palm, with the fruits hanging among
the fronds, waiting for the legendary monkey to scamper up the trunk
and hurl the great balls at the heads of the beholders. Here, too, are the
mango, and many sorts of bananas, and the cabbage palm, another
favorite resource of starving adventurers. With these there are other
jungle denizens,--the bamboo palm, the paperleaf palm, splendid
specimens of the world-old cycad family, the guanabana, and a Tom
Thumb palm, which, full grown, is no more than a handbreadth high.
Ancient among trees are the two specimens of microcycas from the
swamps of Cuba. These Methuselahs of the forest are at least 1,000
years old, according to the botanists. They are among the slowest
growing of living things, and neither of them is much taller than a man.
They were seedlings when Alfred the Great ruled England, and perhaps
four feet high when Columbus first broke through the western seas. In
the four centuries of Cuban history they have not grown so much again.
These venerable trees belong to the bluest-blooded aristocracy of the
vegetable world. Ages ago they inhabited our northern states. Their
family has come down practically unchanged from the steaming days
of the Carboniferous period, when ferns grew one hundred feet high,
and thronged with other rank tropical growths in matted masses to form
the coal measures. The fossil remains of cycads in the rocks of that
period prove that they once flourished in the tropic swamps where now
are the hills of Wyoming and Dakota.
Scattered among the trees is a host of flowering vines, of huge crotons
with variegated leaves, giant gardenias and tropical lilies. When these
bloom, the air of this transplanted jungle is heavy with the perfume of
their own island habitat.
The Horticultural Gardens south of the Palace belong to it, and contain
a large part of the horticultural exhibits. As they were planted for
competitive exhibition purposes, they will not show the constant beauty
that appears in the South Gardens. Here we must wait for the flowers in
their season, and not expect to have them changed overnight for us by
the gardeners' magic.
Back of this horticultural garden is the House of Hoo Hoo, in Forestry
Court, flanked by the Pine and Redwood Bungalows. It needs but a
glance at its beguiling loveliness to know that here is another lesson in

art and architecture by Bernard Maybeck. Here again is poetry in
architecture, of a different order from the noble theme of Maybeck's
Fine Arts Palace, but none the less poetry. This is a sylvan idyll, telling
of lofty trees, cool shades, and secret bowers of fern and vine and wild
flower, in the moist and tangled redwood forests. There is little used
but rough-barked tree trunks, but what delicate harmony of
arrangement!
This lumbermen's lodge is one building outside the Exposition palaces
that should not be missed, even though almost hidden away against the
south wall. It is worth pondering over. No one may want to build a
house like it, but it proclaims how beauty can be attained with simple
materials and just proportions.
Festival Hall, Robert Farquhar, architect, balances the Palace of