metrical treatment of the axial approach to the building from 

 the southwest. The strip of land occupied by this approach, 

 with its four rows of fine tulip trees, is in considerable fill all 

 along its northwestern edge and this fill drops off abruptly and 

 rather skimpily to what appears to be the original natural sur- 

 face of the ground just outside the outermost row of trees; whereas 

 the facade of the building extends far beyond this line. 



The result is to divide the landscape opposite the long facade 

 of the building into three distinct parts, of three totally different 

 characters, the combined relations of which to the building seem 

 to us most unfortunate. 



The formal treatment on the axis is too narrow to furnish 

 in itself an adequate setting for the frontage of so wide a building, 

 and yet is so massive that, instead of seeming a mere incident 

 within a unified open space relating as a whole to the whole 

 facade, it almost completely divides the open space. This effect 

 is exaggerated by the marked lack of symmetry between the 

 two resulting pieces of open space on opposite sides of the axis, 

 both as to levels and as to the presence and absence of trees. 



In relation to so big a building, emphatically symmetrical in 

 design, the formal treatment on the axis seems to us, therefore, 

 an unfortunate compromise between two alternative schemes 

 either of which might be good. 



In one of these possible schemes the building would face upon 

 a broad park-like space of more or less undulating topography, 

 not rigidly symmetrical about the axis of the building, but not 

 so markedly unsymmetrical as to the grades in immediate contact 

 with the walls of the building or its terraces as to produce a 

 limping effect. In such a scheme, not predicated upon extending 

 the perfect symmetry of the building far beyond its walls, the 

 approach road, instead of being straight and axial for a distance of 

 some 400 feet (or about half-way across the topographic unit 

 in front of the building) and there breaking into asymmetry, 

 would probably sweep up on curving lines from right and left 

 to a formal forecourt in immediate contact with the building. 



The other scheme would be to formalize the treatment of 

 the land on which the building fronts to a width comparable 

 with that of the facade itself, and would probably extend this 

 formal treatment out along the axis of the building (although 

 not necessarily at the same width throughout) to the opposite 

 side of the topographical unit over which the eve sweeps as one 

 looks out from the building; in other words, to the opposite side 

 of the valley. 



The first scheme could originally have been carried out success- 



i33l 



