Word: beaux
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...much maligned John Hancock tower, most famous for its history of falling windowpanes (which have now been completely replaced by stronger glass at a cost of $7 million). The other is the Christian Science Center, which consists of starkly sculptural buildings grouped around Mary Baker Eddy's domed Beaux-Arts Mother Church. Both projects are especially noteworthy for their careful blending of the new into old surroundings...
...capital, laissez-faire idealism and academic talent. He also shows how the desire for emblematic icons of American history- realized by such grand-scale performers of the period as Augustus Saint-Gaudens-eventually made an accommodation with modern style through art deco. In the studios of beaux-arts figures like Saint-Gaudens and Karl Bitter, as well as those of decorators like Paul Manship and protomodernists like Gaston Lachaise, John Storrs and Elie Nadelman, sculpture made its last pub lic stand before the museum became its sole arena...
...buildings were symbols of official ego, but also were intended as public dis play. They were designed for a self-confident bourgeoisie convinced it had inherited the earth. The decorations, the swags and massive vaults, the palatial baroque of the Beaux-Arts - all conspired to suggest to those who used the buildings that, in Drexler's words, "they were the reason for the Republic...
...Beaux-Arts design was various. Its major works run from the quiet classicism of Charles Percier's arcades along the Rue de Rivoli - one of the stateliest parade grounds in the world - to the exuberance of Garnier's Opera. But there was always a concern (surprising as it must sound after the years of propaganda) for functional clarity, and it shows in the superbly detailed drawings that make up the show at MOMA...
processional axes, broken by sudden revelations of mass and space. The pub lic, pronounced one Beaux-Arts professor, "need never ask the way in a good plan." Ideally, one was carried forward by the logic of the plan as, at a play, one was swept along by the plot. The buildings were meant to unfold. This feeling for ritual movement, the promenade, would almost disappear from architecture in the 20th century; and yet it was functional. Gamier was one of the last to recognize that fantasy and ceremonial had valid roles in secular architecture. People did not just...