A mighty hall is the Palace of Machinery. (See p. 105, 106.) Beachey
flew in it. The Olympic might rest in its center aisle with clear space
at both bow and stern, and room in the side aisles for two ocean
greyhounds as large as the Mauretania. Vastness is the note of the
architecture which Clarence Ward has employed to give body to this
enormous space. It is an architecture of straight lines in all the outer
structure, lending itself admirably to the expression of enormous
proportions. In general ground plans the palace is a simple rectangular
hall. Think, then, of the task the architect had before him to avoid
making the palace a huge barn. His work succeeded, as any great work
succeeds, because he used simple means.

First of all, a Roman model was well chosen for so vast a building. The
Greeks built no large roofed structures. Their great assemblages were
held in open-air theaters and stadia. The Greek masterpiece, the
incomparable Parthenon at Athens, was considerably smaller than Oregon's
timbered imitation at the Exposition. On the other hand, the solid Roman
style lends itself to bulk. The models followed in the Machinery Palace
were the Roman Baths, particularly the Baths of Caracalla. They have
been used once before as a model in this country, in the building of the
Pennsylvania Railway station in New York. There, too, travertine was
first successfully imitated by Paul Deniville. Looking at the Palace of
Machinery, indeed, it is not difficult to imagine it as the noble
metropolitan terminal of a great railway system. It would hold many long
passenger trains, and an army of travelers. The distinctive feature of
the perspective is the triple gable at the ends of the palace and over
the great main entrance. By thus breaking up the long roof lines, as
well as by lowering the flanks of the building to flat-roofed wings, a