Main Street in Annapolis is a horizontal composition from the top at Church Circle, down the hill to the City dock. The vertical spire of St. Anne's terminates the horizontal line at the top; at City Dock, the diagonal turns to a perfectly horizontal line, racing across the Bay to the Eastern Shore. The outward flare of the street at the bottom accentuates both the spike of church steeple, and the broad horizon on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay.
The flared horizontal composition made from many individual vertical elements, a great vertical spike on one end, endless horizon at the other, all bent to a natural topography, creates a dramatic play of optic chicanery achieved only occasionally in the best of eighteenth-century French garden design. The great secret of Annapolis: is this a studied exercise in esoteric sophisticated design, or is Main Street just the cart path from harbor to farm, with a Church on top of the hill?
Main Street in Annapolis is a horizontal composition from the top at Church Circle, down the hill to the City dock. The vertical spire of St. Anne's terminates the horizontal line at the top; at City Dock, the diagonal turns to a perfectly horizontal line, racing across the Bay to the Eastern Shore. The outward flare of the street at the bottom accentuates both the spike of church steeple, and the broad horizon on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay.
The flared horizontal composition made from many individual vertical elements, a great vertical spike on one end, endless horizon at the other, all bent to a natural topography, creates a dramatic play of optic chicanery achieved only occasionally in the best of eighteenth-century French garden design. The great secret of Annapolis: is this a studied exercise in esoteric sophisticated design, or is Main Street just the cart path from harbor to farm, with a Church on top of the hill?
No comments:
Post a Comment