File:Tropical America (1893) (14595842488).jpg

Identifier: tropicalamerica00ford (find matches)
Title: Tropical America
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Ford, Isaac Nelson, 1848-1912
Subjects: Latin America -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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erful examples of ornatearchitecture, with fa9ades of intricate tracery and delicatecarving. In reality the churches are debased speci-mens of elaborately ornamented Renaissance architec-ture, with mud, bamboo, and plaster as the buildingmaterials, tricked out with innumerable images, statues,marble columns, and a meretricious blur of contrastingcolors. Possibly the cathedral may be reserved as pos-sessing some effective features, when one is some dis-tance away, so as to lose sight of the little statuettes,turrets, and red marble pillars, and to see only the sil-houette of its massive towers and broad Gothic naveprojected against a yellow sunset sky; but San Pedro,San Francisco, La Merced, and all the other adobechurches and convents, with their ostentatious plastercloisters, domes, and timber towers, and their compli-cated fronts of painted stucco work and fussy carving, areirredeemably bad from every point of view. Some ofthe interiors are imposing, as, for example, the nave of San
Text Appearing After Image:
LIMA IN CARNIVAL WEEK 199 Francisco, with its lofty arches; but the exteriors, withthe stucco fronts and the gaudily painted towers, in start-ling combinations of red, black, yellow, and blue, aresimply vile, venerable though the religious associationsconnected with them may be. Nothing could be moremisleading than a photograph of a Lima church; and onthis account the women of the city, who are really beau-tiful, are placed at a serious disadvantage when theirfaces are exhibited on the same walls with those spuri-ous samples of adobe Renaissance. With the numerous churches summarily dismissedfrom consideration, the general aspects of Lima callfor slight comment. The main plaza has the cathedraland Archbishops house on one side, on another thepalace of the Viceroys, painted a dull green, and arcadeswith small shops on the other two. In the centre thereis a brisk fountain, surrounded by ill-kept flower-bedsand ambitious statuary. The halls of the deputies andthe senate are ancient struc

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