Bartel Pritchard Acanthus Columns

Stanford White's columns here on the border of Windsor Terrace and Park Slope are underrated, I think. I know I undervalued them. Now, the more I look, the more I love.

White designed them the year he died, shot by his lady friend's jealous lover. For some reason he left out the karyatids that appear in the Dancing Girl columns of Delphi from which he drew his inspiration. Maybe they were a cliche in his period? Maybe it was an issue of proportion and simplicity? Or maybe he was too busy chasing live skirt to bother with stone women. Life is short.

The metal bowls on top reference the cauldrons on which the oracle, or Pythia sat at the temple of Delphi. Why would you make a poor woman sit on a cauldron? Pythias had it rough, so rough that the wealthy families that at one time were proud to send their daughters off to serve Apollo decided better of it. Some of them were dragged off and raped by fortune seeking visitors while in service of the oracle, others poisoned by the ethylene gas that seeped up from the earth and induced euphoria and speech viewed as prophectic.

Maybe I've misunderstood what I've read. It just doesn't seem right to make someone sit on a cauldron, especially not when it's cooking. I like these verdigris bowls, though, because Prospect Park itself is kind of green bowl, a generous womb-like place that nurtures the spirit of regeneration and reconnection, a thing crucial for those of us who madly scramble for the barrels of cash required to live here.

I can't figure out if these cauldrons, or lanterns as people usually call them, were ever lit. Some sources say yes, others, no. People want to know. It's so easy to imagine fire shooting out of them that it may ultimately be impossible to determine the truth.

I also can't read the sky braille that perforated the view that day. That's right, my arms too short.