The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (5 page)

We had crossed the high and relatively level sands which form the base of the Fork, and were entering the labyrinth of detached banks which obstruct the funnel-shaped cavity between the upper and middle prongs. This I knew from the chart.

A geometric plan of Beaux-Arts derivation organized the main exhibit area into a
rond-point
system of radiating streets and fanlike segments. Symmetrical axes led to the Fair’s central theme building, the Trylon and Perisphere. The longitudinal central axis of Constitutional Mall extended from the Trylon and Perisphere eastward to the oval Lagoon of Nations and beyond, to the Court of Peace, which was flanked by foreign-sponsored pavilions and terminated by the symmetrical U.S. Government Building. Extending at 45° angles from either side of the Trylon and Perisphere were the Avenue of Patriots and the Avenue of Pioneers, both of which culminated in circular plazas—the former at Bowling Green, before the IRT and BMT entrances, and the latter at Lincoln Square.

For the structural supports Wright devised dendriform (tree-shaped) columns with elongated tapered shafts carrying broad flat disks. Forming the roof of the secretarial staff room is a forest of these columns, three stories high....

The towers are separated by six arciform gates, convex to the Mississippi, and hinged in trunnion blocks secured with steel to carom the force of the river into the core of the structure.

At the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to join on to a pyramid, formed of three rhombs.

To bring light into the center of the room, a portion of the roof was raised about 4 meters higher than the roof over the side sections; the columns supporting the two sections differed, with bundle papyriform columns used at the side and full-blooming open papyriform columns in a larger size standing along the central aisle.

Long slats of blue-black, plankton-straining baleen hung from the roof of its mouth in a U-shaped curtain, some of the blades nearly 15 feet long.

The reactor room was quite large. It had to be to accommodate the massive, barrel-shaped steel vessel.

They were much shorter than any animal he had yet seen on Malacandra, and he gathered that they were bipeds, though the lower limbs were so thick and sausage-like that he hesitated to call them legs. The bodies were a little narrower at the top than at the bottom so as to be very slightly pear-shaped, and the heads were neither round like those of
hrossa
nor long like those of
sorns,
but almost square.

The ball was there, but where the flame-like figure should have been, a deep depression of irregular shape had been cut as if to erase it.

The figure of each separate dwelling-house, being the segment of a circle, must spoil the symmetry of the rooms, by contracting them towards the street windows, and leaving a larger sweep in the space behind.

On shelves opposite Lapham’s desk were tin cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders, and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top, the same label borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom.