Seeing the Lights Fade
We went over to the South Gardens to see the lights change on the Tower of Jewels, passing the half-dome of Philosophy, the stained glass of the windows enveiling the background. They were still robing the tower in pure white, and the hundred thousand pieces of Austrian cut glass were shimmering. “They must have had a hard time getting those jewels fastened on the ornamentation of the upper tiers. The wind up there is very strong. Some of the men came near being blown off. It took pretty expert acrobatic work to hang the jewels out on the extreme edges.
Suddenly the lights on the tower glowed into red. The tower itself seemed to become thinner and finer in outline.
“There are people who don’t like this color,” said the architect. “It’s fashionable nowadays to feel a prejudice against red. But it is one of the most beautiful colors in nature and one of nature’s greatest favorites, associated with fire and with flowers. To me the tower is never so beautiful as it is when the red light seemed to burn from a fire inside. See how it tends to eliminate the superfluous ornamentation. It brings out the grace of line in the upper tiers, like folded wings. With just a few eliminations the improvement in that tower would be astonishing.”
Presently the lights in the tower went out altogether. The four Italian towers also grew dim. It was getting late. People were hurrying out. But we lingered. We wished to see this city of domes as it appeared without any lights at all, except for those that were kept burning to meet the requirements of the law.
For an hour we roamed about the deserted place. Here and there we would meet a belated visitor or a group of people from some indoor festivity.
The material had taken on a finer quality. It looked like stone. Wonderful as the Exposition was by day and in the evening, it was far more wonderful at this hour.
Now it was easy to imagine the scene as a city, with the inhabitants asleep in their beds. But just what kind of city it was I could not make up my mind. When I expressed this thought to the architect, he said:
“Have you ever seen David Roberts’ big illustrated volumes, ‘Travels in the Holy Land’? If you haven’t, look them up. Then you will see what kind of a city this city is. It’s a city of Palestine. It’s Jerusalem and Jaffa and Akka all over again.”