SOUTH FRONT OF THE MANUFACTURES BUILDING.—While not its greatest frontage, the south end of the Manufactures Building was most familiar to Exposition visitors, facing as it did to the Court of Honor and affording between it and the Grand Basin a vantage point for seeing the fountains at play and the illumination of the buildings at night. The illustration above shows this frontage as well as that on the west, adjacent to the canal and the East Lagoon. The point of view is from near the northeast corner of Machinery Hall with one of the Electric Fountains in the immediate foreground and the Columbian Fountain to the left. The effect of the Manufactures Building seen from this position was curious. It was far enough away to allow something like an idea of its vast proportions to obtain in the mind, but, somehow, it did not appear so much like a structure raised by human hands as upon a nearer view. Its dimensions were so great as to make it seem a part of nature, and the brown dome, rising away in the distance above the surrounding plateau made by the regular stories, suggested rather a mountain than anything else. The haunting impression remained that if the building were really the work of men they must have had the assistance of giants or fairies or some similar force in the construction. That men alone could raise such a pile was absurd. Such a thing had never been done before. Such fancies would come to those at all imaginative who looked at the Manufactures Building from the vantage ground designated. it was, to a certainty, one of the greatest material wonders of the Fair.

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