Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1887 — A PALACE OF CORN. [ARTICLE]

A PALACE OF CORN.

The Unique Structure at Sioux City Made of Products of the Field. [Sioux City (la.) special.] The grand attraction of the Harvest Jubilee at Sioux City, lowa, is the com palace, an allegorical temple of Ceres, designed by a skilled architect, and made of corn and the other cereals of the Northwest. Within the palace is exhibited all the grain grown in lowa, Nebraska, and Dakota and all the other products of the farm. The Com Palace, as it stands, is in troth a revelation. It fronts on Fifth street 210 feet and on Jackson street 100 feet. Rising from the center of the structure, as at first planned, 100 by 100 feet, is the dome or cupola, surmounted by a spire 100 feet high. Each of the four comers rises boldly into square pavilions. The extension now includes on the Fifth street front Armory Hall also, and beyond that two additional pavilions, companions in form to the four pavilions of the original plan, making, as before stated, a frontage on Fifth street of 210 feet. Imagine such magnificent proportions, broken by the pavilion towers, by projecting minarets, by

arched openings and immense panels; behind them rising in relief the great roof; above all the towering cupola and spire, connected in relief with the pavilions with flying buttresses—imagine these proportions clothed all about with the products of the cornfield and decked out with these in a profusion of beauty—one grand, harmonious whole, a stately witness of the bursting bounty of the empire of the Northwest, the reilm of King Com. It is a spectacle to enchain attention, to command admiration. Take the great fronts of the structure on Fifth and Jackson streets, and none who have not seen would believe that such magical effects could be wrought out of the materials of the cornfield. Take the 210 feet frontage on Fifth street, and every square inch of it is wrought into some cunning and representative form of the king of products. The walls rise one harmonious, though variegated, mass of the stalk and leaf; at the base, wicker work, green as the rushes of the Nile, and here and there, pendent, in rich contrast, are the golden ears. The double arches of the openings in the pavilions are faced with rows of ears, sometimes richly fringed with the husk, sometimes of one color and sometimes of another. Then, the great panels in the body of the wall and the columns rising high to the battlement—here is one of the special marvels of the unique creation, or rather scores of marvels. In each of a score of these panels oi divisions there is wrought some design—here a diamond and there a checker, here a motto and there some other insciption—wrought from com of a dozeu kinds and a dozen hues—golden yellow, pure white, blood red, violet and so on. Against these ingenious forms of beauty stands the quiet but none the less effective beauty of the corn-clad columns, broken by the columns around which are bound the russet blades of the com plant and a graceful combination of grains and grasses. Along the upper line of the front runs a shiny hem of oats, interspersed in places by the dark seeds of the sorghum plant, corn ears o£ flaming red or some other relieving color. Still above, rise the graceful minarets, raimented in rich colors of native grasses, and crowned with tufts of millet and flying banners. In the background rises the root, a seeming solid mass of com almost, and from it towers the cupola, its arches wrought like those below, and here and there panels of curious forms of com, red, white, violet, yellow and all colors under the sun, surrounded and interw ven with the plant itself and other products in every conceivable shape. Passing to the interior of the great structure, amazement finds fresh stimulus at every turn. There hangs a sunflower, perfect in form and color, yet every fiber from the com plant. Yonder are the tiger lilies, of the same element, illusion perfect—who would have believed it? Everywhere, bouquets, panels, ceilings, mottoes, draperies, pendants, stars, statues of Ceres, bells, latticework, beaded curtains, all forms of farmers’ implements—every last one made of the corn or of the plants that grow with it. As you enter the wida portal, above will be the seal official of the city—every bar and coloring made of corn; beyond, a great spider and his web will be spread out above; still higher hangs a mammoth bell; to the left there is a tableau of “The Golden Stair;” further on, the figure of an Indian and an eagle—all made and dressed with the blade and grain and stalk of corn. One great marvel of the scene will be a landscape, “The Setting Sun,” the great orb itself made all of corn, the beams shot with the brilliancy of the grain, and the perspective executed with such skill as to deceive the keenest eye. These are but samples. A hundred other curious shapes and fantasies would weary the onlooker if all were not so new, so strangely made out of material so long thought common and despised, yet now found to outblush the rose and shame the lily.— St. Louis Globe-Democrat.