successful effort to solve a purely technical problem has often led to
an ennobling enlargement of the original suggestion, with which the
artist might have rested content if he had not been forced to the
struggle. From the history of sculpture and of architecture here in the
United States during the last years of the nineteenth century, it is
easy to select two instances of this enrichment of the fundamental idea,
as the direct consequence of an unexpected obstacle which the artist
refused to consider a stumbling-block, preferring to make it a
stepping-stone to a loftier achievement.

When the city of New York was making ready to welcome the men of the
navy on their return from Manila and Santiago, the Architectural League
offered to design a triumphal arch. The site assigned, in front of
Madison Square, just where Broadway slants across Fifth Avenue, forced
the architect to face a difficulty seemingly unsurmountable. The line of
march was to be along Fifth Avenue, and, therefore, the stately monument
was set astride that street. But the line of approach, for most of the
multitude certain to come to gaze on the temporary addition to civic
beauty, was along Broadway; and the arch built squarely across the
avenue would seem askew to all who first caught sight of it from the
other street. To avoid this unfortunate effect the designer devised a
colonnade, extending north and south, up and down the avenue. Thus he
corrected the apparent slant by emphasizing the fact that it was the
avenue in which the arch was placed and not the more popular highway
that chanced to cut across it. But this colonnade, invented solely to
solve a difficulty, lent itself readily to rich adornment. It became at
once an integral element of the architectural scheme, to which it gave
breadth as well as variety. It was accepted instantly as a welcome
modification of the tradition,--as an amplification not to be wantonly
disregarded by any architect hereafter called upon to design a triumphal