Architects

Architects, city-planners, landscape gardeners, sculptors, painters, decorators, homebuilders, plumbers, left their homes, last week, journeyed to Manhattan, where they assembled, 5,000 strong, at two splendid functions--one a conference on town, city and regional planning, led by the American City Planning Institute, the other the annual exhibition of the American Institute of Architects. They pinned debonair ribbons, blazoned with the word "Guest," upon their lapels; stone men cemented up their differences, iron men welded their friendships, plumbers soldered sound opinions with a friendly pipe, draughtsmen were seen slipping away, arm in arm, for a draught. At meals they listened to famed speakers: Harvey W. Corbe President of the Architectural League, Manhattan; D. Evert Waid, President of the American Institute of Architects; Robert W. DeForest, patron of the arts, Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, famed British designer of the Queen's Doll House, who arrived from Delhi, India, to be presented with the farm gold medal of the Institute. Many were the plans discussed, many the startling novelties proposed.

Cities shall no longer spring up like amorphous patches of skunk cabbage, misshapen, loutish, by every tuppeny estuary or frail river. The growth must be directed intelligently if the U. S. is to avoid such "atrocities" in city-planning as its present metropoleis. "New York," declaired Robert W. DeForest, "is the world most horrible example. . . ." Boston, planned like a squatter's settlement, cannot recover good form for less than $50,000,000. Washington and Philadelphia, braced in infancy are straighter And the city of the future?

"Its skyscrapers will be painted brilliant contrasting shades to relieve the drabness of stone, the depression of congested life," declared Decorator Helen Adler.

"There will be no automobiles in its streets. They will run in tubes underground. Passengers in subways will be shot about like merchandise at 90 miles an hour. To vertiginous elevators and escalators will be added rooms, suites that slide about horizontally," said Mr. H. W. Corbet.

Architect Harry Allen Jacobs outlined a plan for furnishing Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, with a double-decked sidewalk, supported by imposing columns, whereby the lower sidewalk could be narrowed to give more room to traffic. On elaborate charts hung here and there, the future of London, Manchester, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, the City of Mexico and wherenot were delineated.

Exhibition. At the Grand Central Palace opened the exhibition of "the Architectural and Allied Arts." Every conceivable material, furnishing utility for the construction or adornment of a covered structure was thei exhibited by its manufacturer. Lifted high on a dark altar, in a tapestried chamber still as the Sistine Chapel there stood, surrounded by soft lights, a radiator. Bungalows, batik vacuum-cleaners, stained-glass windows, Empire rooms, Renaissance rooms, furnaces, mosaics, copper leaders, shingles, door panels, floor-cement, player-pianos and bathrooms, everywhere bathrooms. Crystalline with sunken tubs, silver faucet eburnean wicker toilet seats, they met the eye at every turn--exquisite little chapels, deifying the modern frenzy for sanitation.