IV - Ecclesiastes 3:3
 

In the Bible's book of Ecclesiastes, the 1^st verse of its 3^rd chapter begins with these words: "There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens." Its 3^rd verse adds that this also includes "a time to tear down and a time to build." This final section of the exhibition looks at examples of the architect's awareness and response.
 

In the first two prints, Reynold Weidenaar's "Demolition in the Plaza del Toro," and Job Nixon's "Demolition of Devonshire House," we see the hand of man in the process of tearing down the art of architects. In the 3^rd print, Louis Rosenberg's "Temple of Minerva Medica," we are confronted with more tearing down, but in this case it is time and the elements which have taken their toll on Rome's once splendid 3^rd century A.D. edifice, reducing it to a picturesque ruin with the final collapse of its cupola in 1828.
 

The 4^th print, "Devil's Bridge - St. Gothard's Pass" in the Swiss Alps, is a color woodcut in the Japanese manner by M. Y. Urushibara after a watercolor by Frank Brangwyn. The crumbling old bridge is in the foreground. Fable has it that the devil built it to assist hordes of long-forgotten marauders through the Pass intent on reaching Northern Italy to ravage its lands. In the background we find their shades racing across the bridge that might have been theirs, if only the devil had read Vitruvius on firmitas, utilitas, and venustas too.
 

Below it is Seymour Haden's "Breaking up of the Agamemnon," Britain's once proud 91-gun flagship launched in 1852, now delivered in 1870 to the breakers for demolition. Contrast this with the etching of "Battle Wagon: USS Alabama" by John Taylor Arms as it was delivered in 1943 for outfitting in #12, Section II above--both were achievements of the naval architects of their day.
 

The next two prints are by Gerald Geerlings, noted architect and printmaker. The first is "Today and Tomorrow," a 1930 parade of Chicago's lakeside skyscrapers with sketches of a future Chicago riding high above it in the sky. His 2^nd print, "Olympus," is of a New York skyscraper nearing completion in 1929.
 

The final print is Joseph Pennell's "Caissons on Vesey Street," an outstanding example of his printmaking skills. Note the clouds of steam, smoke and dust rising up amid the clangor raised in sinking 22 caissons down 75 feet to reach bedrock in 1924 for the foundations of the New York Telephone Company's new skyscraper as the Woolworth tower serenely takes it all in from the safety of its vantage point several blocks away.