The Court of the Universe is not Oriental, the Court of the Ages is. Not
in architecture, but in feeling, in the atmosphere with which the
architect has invested it, this court brings to mind those brilliant
lands of the Mediterranean touched by the East through the Moors. You
pass under its arcades and walk out into a region of the Sun, warm,
bright, dazzling. The architect, Louis Christian Mullgardt, has caught
the feeling of the South,--not the rank, jungle South of the tropics;
nor the mild, rich South of our own Gulf states; but the hard,
brilliant, arid South of the desert. This court expresses Arizona, New
Mexico, Spain, Algiers,--lands of the Sun. The very flowers of its
first gardens were desert blooms, brilliant in hue, on leafless stalks.
There are orange trees, but they, also, are trees of the Sun, smooth of
leaf, to retain moisture.

It is a court, too, of romance. It might be a garden of Allah, with a
plaintive Arab flute singing, among the orange trees, of the wars and
the hot passions of the desert. It might be a court in Seville or
Granada, with guitars tinkling and lace gleaming among the cool arcades.
It is a place for dreams.

The architecture has been called Spanish Gothic, but, according to the
architect, it "has not been accredited to any established style." We may
well be content to call it simply Mullgardt. The court is an artist's
dream, rather than a formal study in historic architecture; and it is
the more interesting, as it is the more original, for that. Except for
the central fountain, which, fine though it is as a sculptured story, is
out of harmony with the filigreed arcades around it, all the sculpture
in the court is, in feeling, an intimate part of the romantic