Art: Pacific Pageant

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A self-made architect who got his schooling in offices, Timothy Pflueger is all for "Pacific Architecture" as a reality, believes "it's too damned bad we didn't have the Oriental influence on the coast instead of the European.'' As President of the San Francisco Art Association, he staged, from 1934 to 1937, the hugest. most exotic super-de Mille costume balls in San Francisco's history. For the Federal Building, however, he produced a fine, occidental job of economy, stateliness and rational planning.

At its centre in an open court, a colonnade of 48 timberwork columns, four abreast and twelve in a row, rises 100 feet to symbolize the States of the Union. At once simple, honest, impressive and cheap, this stunt utilizes the sky and water of the Bay. On each side of the columns Architect Pflueger designed other open courts, surrounded by a light and trimly built structure of four-by-eight-foot plywood panels, a strong, beautiful surface, more native than stucco to forested California. About 20 nations of the Pacific, from Peru to Japan, are building more or less authentic pavilions along the Pacific lagoon. None is a saner expression of national character than Pflueger's for the U. S. A.