ARCHITECTURAL' NOTES
THE PANAMA CANAL
IT may reasonably be asked what connexion there can be between the Panama Canal and architecture. The answer is that, while, unfortunately, in this country there would have been no connexion, there exists at Panama the happiest possible marriage between the allied crafts of the engineer and the architect. In this country the attempts made to enter into such an alliance have not been happy. The engineer has been more successful when he has not had to .bother about the—to him—unessential flimflam with which the architect tries to cover his nakedness. The Forth Bridge shows the engineer at his best, and very good it is ; but who can defend the disorder and *wastefulness shown in the arrangement and lay-out of some of the vast engineering works to be found in our industrial districts ? But even worse is the pretentious ugliness of the railway bridge at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. And what can be said of the Tower Bridge ? How disastrous has been the irruption of the architect here. How much finer would have been steel or concrete towers than the present baronial erections which seem transported direct from some gloomy " hydro " in the Grampians.
The construction of the Panama Canal has been hailed as a triumph for the doctor and the engineer. The doctor comes first, as without his science the engineer could never have worked at all, and the former had finished the greater part of his share before the latter came on the scene. But to the final achievement, surely one of the greatest of the human spirit, the architect made a very conspicuous contribution.
As is well known, the Canal has not been completed as a sea-level channel, as originally planned by Lesseps. For the greater part of its length its level is eighty-five feet above the ocean. The problems, therefore, which faced the constructors, once the route had been decided on, were (1) the damming up of the valley of the Chagres river to form the greater part of the channel ; (2) the cutting through of the continental divide ; and (3) the locks to raise vessels from the oceans to the level of the lake mentioned in No. (1). I am concerned in this article only with No. (3), and will concentrate on the Gatun Locks at the Atlantic end.
We have probably all witnessed the manoeuvring of large ships in confined spaces. We have seen ropes thrown from the ship to the land and vice versa. Such ropes are very often missed the first time and fall with a splash into the water. There is a clanging of bells from the telegraph on the bridge to the engine room. Men rush about and lower fenders made of rope to protect the ship's side when she bumps or might bump the jetty. There is much shouting. No matter with what miraculous accuracy the great ship is moved, the general impression made on the uninitiated is one of noise and confusion. At the Gatun I.ock the human element is completely suppressed. In less than half an hour and in complete silence the ship is raised eighty-five feet. She is dragged through the locks by engines running on a cogged track. There are three locks, each about one thousand feet long. There is a short wait in each lock as the water rises, and then the huge gates open and the ship continues her silent progress. Beyond a few sightseers no human being appears and no machinery is visible. There are two series of parallel locks. The space between the two is covered with mown grass. Beyond the finely designed concrete lamp standards there is nothing to break the flatness. Broad flights of steps rise from the level of one lock to the next, and the vista is closed by the fine control house whence the lock gates are opened by pressing an electric button. There is a workmanlike stateliness about this broad vista, flanked with the tall electric light standards and terminating in the high control house with its wide caves, which, in spite of the modernity of the details, is infused with the imperial spirit of ancient Rome. The vast machinery which opens and closes the gates is disposed underground, decently invisible as are such things as livers and kidneys.
The impression made by the passage of a ship through the Gatun Lock is tremendous. It is an exhilarating sight to see a hive of human bees each accomplishing its set task, but it is far more wonderful to see the tasks accomplished without the bees. The same feeling is excited in a far lesser degree by the passage of a big ship beneath the Tower Bridge. But that structure entirely lacks the " neatness and propriety "if such a prim, Jane Austenish expression be permissible in such surroundings—of the Gatun Lock, and consequently the raising of the bascules seems a small and human affair. The opening of the Canal lock-gates appears by comparison to be due to the interposition of wise and benevolent Robots. It is this titanic, superhuman quality which the art-concealing art of the architect has imparted to a great engineering undertaking. The Americans have given proof at the Panama Canal of the imagination which has not considered the merely utilitarian solution of the problem as sufficient. The care taken to eliminate all that was unessential and to hide all that it was unnecessary to show has not only produced orderliness and beauty ; it has resulted in an efficiency which impresses the technician as much as the ignorant. The particular greatness of the American people, that largeness of vision which sees that it sometimes pays to spend money on material things that bring in no material return, can nowhere be better appreciated than in this stupendous triumph of man over the hostile forces of nature. If we had built the Panama Canal ships would no doubt have passed with equal safety from ocean to ocean, but would we have bothered about the design of the electric light standards, and would we have provided every neg,ro employee's dwelling with a
bathroom ? I wonder. GERALD WELLEK.E.y.
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