From pericles@astro.temple.edu Sun Nov 5 03:28:49 2000 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id DAA154962 for ; Sun, 5 Nov 2000 03:28:48 -0800 Received: from nimbus.ocis.temple.edu (root@nimbus.ocis.temple.edu [155.247.166.101]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id DAA17247 for ; Sun, 5 Nov 2000 03:28:47 -0800 Received: from smaug.ocis.temple.edu (smaug.ocis.temple.edu [155.247.166.78]) by nimbus.ocis.temple.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id GAA30826 for ; Sun, 5 Nov 2000 06:28:49 -0500 (EST) X-WebMail-UserID: pericles Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2000 06:28:45 -0500 Sender: pericles From: pericles To: classics@u.washington.edu X-EXP32-SerialNo: 00002713 Subject: Philadelphia Art Museum: a bundle of curves Message-ID: <3A13570A@smaug.ocis.temple.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: WebMail (Hydra) SMTP v3.61 We had dinner with an architect friend last night and got talking about entasis. Immediately after eating--at Xocala in Philadelphia, which is still celebrating the Day of the Dead--he bundled us up for our own eerie expedition to the Art Museum. We plunged into the brush around the building. Sure enough, every wall of this magnificient and seemingly rectilinear structure is curved: the long walls are concave, the short ones convex. The steps in the forecourt bow outward. The columns are spaced at irregular intervals and the outer ones lean in a bit; and they're tapered. It really is striking to walk 'round the bldg and sight along the walls. Inter alia, my source says the concave sides have a three mile radius, the convex ones something shorter. How much did this show up in the drawings from the late 1920s? How were the masons--who had to provide a slight curvature in every block of sandstone--trained? Do other structures do the same? Questions yet to be answered. But it does remind us of the older glorious days when architects were trained in classics and draftsmanship was paramount. A teachable building! Daniel P. Tompkins Director, Intellectual Heritage Program Temple University 214 Anderson Hall 1114 W Berks St, Philadelphia, PA 19122-6090 pericles@astro.temple.edu 215 204 4900 "Saddam may not be much of a leader of his people. But he's sure one hell of a currency trader." Don Luskin on the market effect of the Iraqi leader's insistence that Iraq be paid in euros for its oil. .