The Bazaar Building

On Exposition Grounds

Exterior View

Situated beyond the Canal at the junction of the Mall and the Midway, and fronting on the Midway, was the only large building outside the main scheme which was built by the Exposition Company. Destined for the exhibit and sale of all sorts of bijoux and souvenirs, the character of the design was studied to express a gaiety and "laisser aller" spirit consistent with the uses of the building. To express this spirit no style in the history of architecture is so well adapted as that of the French trellis-decorated buildings of the epoch of Louis XV, though it is dangerous when not used with restraint, being the expression of a generation renowned for moral decadence. When used as in this instance, where it is merely applied as surface decoration to a building composed with strong structural masses of wall surfaces in their relation to openings and great simplicity of architectural line and silhouette, it has great charm. The groups of children surmounting the balustrade, as well as the decorative bronzed figures in the niches between the windows, are the work of the sculptor Isidore Konti.

Photo caption: Bazaar Building. - The style of the Bazaar building comports with its purpose, that of a building designed for the exhibit and sale of all sorts of souvenirs. The architect, William Welles Bosworth, found in the French architecture of the Louis XV period many ideas which he embodied in the decoration of this building with most successful results. Isidore Konti modeled the groups of children surmounting the balustrade and the bronzed figures in the niches between the windows.

Bosworth, William Welles, 1869-1966

Text quoted directly from the Art Hand-Book, Official Handbook of Architecture and Sculpture and Art Catalogue to the Pan-American Exposition. Ed. David Gray. Buffalo, N.Y.: David Gray, 1901. (http://bit.ly/JKxGuD)

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Bazaar Building

Illuminations: Revisiting the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition of 1901

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