In Oceania
p. 21 · Read in the full issue
New Architectural Horror
Papeete, Nov. 30.
THE new cement wall which encloses the yard of Paofai Church, in Papeete, deserves a place among the world’s most hideous masterpieces— which include the Albert Memorial, at London; the row of marble Hohen zollerns, at Berlin; the Victor Emmanuel Monument, at Rome; the Lincoln Statue, at New York; the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge; that Taj Mahal, of hideous ecclesiastical architecture.
Paofai Church was not designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Hitherto,, how ever, its austere lines have been softened and shadowed by a circle of majestic, flamboyant trees, whose gloriously blossomed branches sheltered its roof in
a gesture of benediction, and filtered over its structure a rosy glow that transfigured it to a gracious temple.
Alas, to some eyes, the colours scarlet and rose are flaunting banners of sin; so the trees have been chopped down.
To-day, Paofai Church stands, in the full glare of the tropical sun, stark, grim, fprbidding. About the periphery of the compound stands the wall, already reviled as hideous.
Cement crosses —equally spaced, one from the other —crown the wall. To the observer, these crosses seem as though held by a dark-clad guard of stern visaged inquisitors, in hands raised, not in benediction, but in anathema.
“That wall,” quoth a friend of this writer, “is designed to repel the devil from the sanctuary—and everyone else,
as well.”