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The Cyclorama, erected in 1884, is the signature building of the Boston Center for the Arts. A unique structure architecturally, it is also a Victorian social document. The events that took place under its grand dome are a reflection of the tastes and lifestyle of the era. The land it stands on was purchased from the Boston Water Power Co. by John L. Gardner in 1867. The Gardner estate finally sold the Cyclorama building to the Commercial Flower Exchange in 1922 for the sum of $150,000. The new proprietors changed the facade to its present aspect, put the skylight into the dome without destroying the interior and occupied the building until 1969.

The Cyclorama building was erected in 1884 by Charles P. Willoughby, a wealthy Chicago merchant, for the express purpose of housing a huge circular painting - The Battle of Gettysburg. This distinctive method of painting in the grand manner was enormously popular in the 19th-century. A cyclorama is defined as a pictorial representation of the whole view from one point by an observer who in turning around looks successively to all points of the horizon. The artist supposes himself surrounded by a cylindrical surface in whose center he stands, and he projects the landscape from this position onto the cylinder. The observer stands on a platform, which might represent the flat roof of a house or the top of a hill, for example, and the space between this platform and the picture contains real objects which gradually blend into the picture itself.

Lighting effects were ingenious, and, to heighten the drama of the whole spectacle, passages leading to the platform were kept dark. These panoramas, suggest by a German architectural painter named Breisig, were first executed by Robert Barker, an Edinburgh artist, who exhibited one in Edinburgh in 1788 showing a view of the city. A view of London and scenes of sea battles during the Napoleonic wars followed. Panoramas gained much favor on the continent after the Franco-German War, when a huge cycloramic painting of the Siege of Paris was exhibited in Paris. This panorama, executed by Henri Philippoteaux, eventually found its way to Boston and was shown in a temporary iron building on the corner of Columbus Avenue and Ferdinand (Arlington) Street, near the Mechanics Fair Building.

It was the largest oil painting ever exhibited in this country and was opened on September 16, 1878, coming here from Philadelphia, where it was shown to huge crowds for 26 months. The canvas, covering an area of 20,000 square feet, was 400 feet long and 50 feet high. The observer stationed himself on a raised platform disguised as the hill of Chatillon and viewed life-sized figures, hand-to-hand battles and the beautiful city itself in the background, the prominent buildings standing out boldly against the horizon. Descriptions were given every half-hour by a lecturer, and in the intervals appropriate martial music was played. In a side room, a companion picture represented the Execution of the Bishop of Paris by the Commune, painted by M. Desbrosses.

Numerous organized groups visited the exhibition - among them the National Lancers in full uniform, the Friends of the Franklin Typographical Society and such unlikely visitors as the inmates of the Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind. On Sundays, concerts entertained the patrons, playing classical (Verdi, Mozart, Beethoven) as well as dance (Strauss) music. In order to keep the people coming, side shows were added, including illusionists, ventriloquists, performing mice and birds, Russian cats and "Herman the magician." The exhibition closed at the end of July 1879 and moved on to San Francisco.

Five years later, a second cyclorama - The Battle of Gettysburg - was exhibited in the present Cyclorama building, a steel-framed, iron and brick fireproof structure built by the architectural firm of Cummings and Sears. The feudal-looking turrets and battlements which decorated the facade are no longer standing, but as it originally appeared, it was an impressive structure. The interior has not been changed significantly, except the 50 foot high, newly cleaned salmon-pink rotunda is now topped by a magnificent 127 foot diameter glass dome which replaced the original tin structure in 1922.

The Battle of Gettysburg Cyclorama

After the great fire of 1872, which devastated a large part of Boston's business section, the firm was active in reconstruction work. Independently, he designed a number of churches, for example, the New Old South on Boylston Street (1876), First Universalist Church, Lynn; Library and Chapel, Phillips Exeter Academy, Andover; Hotel Kempton on Berkeley Street (c. 1877); Hotel Boylston on the corner of Tremont Street, site of the later Touraine Hotel; and the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury (1876). With Russell Sturgis, he collaborated in the preparation of a standard textbook, the "Dictionary of Architecture and Building," which was published in 1901. He was the author of several books on Italian architecture and a charter member of the Boston Society of Architects in 1867. He was elected its President in 1896 and served in that office for five years.

Willard T. Sears (1837-1920), who with Cummings designed the Cyclorama building, was born and educated in New Bedford, and who, after moving to Boston, worked in the office of Gridley J.F. Bryant. He formed the partnership with Charles A. Cummings in the early 1860s and became a charter member of the Boston Society of Architects in 1870. After Mr. Cummings' retirement, he maintained his own office and designed Mrs. Jack Gardner's Italian palace, Fenway Court. After her death, he adapted it - according to her wishes - for its present use as a museum exhibiting her splendid art collection to the public.

The huge circular painting - 400 feet in circumference and 50 feet high, the same size as the "Siege of Paris" - was executed by French artist Paul Philippoteaux, a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux Arts and son of Henri, the artists of the aforementioned "Siege of Paris." Besides collaborating with his father on the latter, he gained a reputation as the artist of other cycloramic paintings, including "Cruxifixion," exhibited at St. Anne de Beaupre; "La derniere sortie," exhibited at the Crystal Palace; "The Taking of Plevna," show in St. Petersburg; and numerous other oversized works of art.

He was commissioned to paint "The Battle of Gettysburg" at a contract price of $50,000 and came to this country to make sketches, plans and drawings of the battlefield, study official war maps in Washington and interview officers of both armies. With this documentary information, he returned to Paris where the great work was begun and completed in two years. The exhibition opened in Boston on December 22, 1884. The raised platform in this instance represented Cemetery Ridge, and the observer found himself in the midst of a raging battle with Pickett's confederate troops charging towards him.

The immediate foreground was built up of fences, stone walls and muskets blending skillfully into the painted background, giving the spectator an eerie sensation of immediacy and realism. The artist not only painted the portraits of the officers true to life, but tried as well to show the heterogeneous ethnic background of the American people: near a face distinctly Irish, the form and unmistakable carriage of the Frenchman, the German or the Italian. When the spectators were leaving the main exhibit, their route led through the basement of the building where another grand painting, the "Uprising of the North," by the same artist was on view.

The Gettysburg Cyclorama was a tremendous popular success for several years, so much so that it stimulated competition in the form of "The Battle of Bunker Hill" cyclorama. In 1888, a special building was erected to exhibit the latter on Castle Square, near the present site of the Animal Rescue League. The painting was created by L. Kowalsky and several collaborating artists, all graduates of the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris. The spectator was supposed to be standing on the summit of Bunker Hill, on the spot where the monument now stands, and be looking down on the scene below. In conjunction with this cyclorama, a diorama of "The Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773" was also on exhibit. This temporary building was torn down in 1894 to make way for the Castle Square Theater.

Meanwhile, back at the Gettysburg Cyclorama, the exhibition was drawing to a close and Philippoteaux' huge canvas was withdrawn. On March 22, 1889, the building was reopened with the showing of "The Battle of Little Big Horn," depicting the unhappy affair in which General Custer and nearly three thousand of his regiment were massacred by the Sioux Indians in June 1876. This cycloramic painting was from the brush of E. Pierpoint, a New York artist, assisted by several other painters. Although the landscape was well executed, the figures were without character and individuality, and were badly drawn. The composition was poor, there was no central action - only a series of disconnected melees.

The museum of Indian objects connected with this show were interesting. Besides containing a large number of arms, articles of apparel and photographs of Indian chiefs, its most interesting object was General Custer's sword - a Toledo blade - which he captured from a Confederate officer in hand-to-hand combat in Virginia. The fate of Custer's Last Fight is unknown. The Gettysburg painting was lost for twenty years and then was found by chance on a vacant lot in Roxbury rolled up in a wooden box and only slightly damaged. Further exhibitions in this country and Europe followed and it was finally acquired by the National Park Service in 1924 and found a permanent home at Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. The next cyclorama shown in the building opened on February 6, 1891, on the subject of "Jerusalem, The Holy City at the time of Christ." A Grand Oriental Museum was connected with this exhibition. The "Ben Hurish" realism of the foreground, poor perspective and lack of historical accuracy were just a few of the criticisms leveled against this picture. It closed after a short run.

In the autumn of 1893, Bostonians perusing their Sunday papers could choose among varied types of entertainment. Austin & Stone's Museum presented "A living man with two heads," Music Hall advertised concerts by Mmes. Lillian Nordica and Emma Eames, Boston Symphony announced their Cambridge Series at Sanders Theater under the baton of Mr. Emil Paur, the Globe Theater starred DeWolf Hopper in "Panjandrum." One could also attend the New England Roller Polo championship games at the Casino (nee Cyclorama) Building.

The most intriguing Sunday entertainment was no doubt provided by Dr. Landis, who in his medical parlors at 593 Tremont Street gave free illustrated lectures on the subject: "Single Life Injures the Vital Organs and the Brain. Solo singing." This was an era of relative peace; the newspapers carried accounts on the trial of Emma Goldman, the anarchist just sentenced to two years in prison, on striking woolen mill workers in Providence and on how women's suffrage was struck down again in Congress by a large majority.

A cyclorama returned to the building once again in 1895, representing the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea with all its lakes of burning lava, blow holes and fiery chasms. This was a tremendous canvas - 55 feet high and 420 feet long - executed by Walter Burrage, a well-known Chicago scenic artist who spent four months at the volcano studying the topography. The point of view selected for the visitor was the center of the crater. After ascending to the observation platform through a passageway made in imitation of lava tubes, the visitor gazed upward and around him upon seething pools and lakes of fire, jagged crags, toppling masses of rock and fierce flames.

The foreground melted imperceptibly into the painting, providing a very realistic scene enhanced by pyrotechnic displays, colored electric lights and other mechanical aids. The educational value of this exhibit was also appreciated: Professor Shaler of Harvard brought a hundred or more of his geological students to make the expedition to Kilauea, spending an afternoon studying the volcano formations accurately depicted in this cycloramic production. Musical entertainment was provided by four native Hawaiian singers, splendid specimens of their race who spoke English fluently and who after having completed a four-hour walk through Boston's crooked streets were most impressed by Union Station, principally because of its cleanness!

The Hawaiian exhibit accompanying the spectacle contained many interesting objects, among them a royal feather cape loaned by Mr. B.B. Bardwell, a resident of Boston. Made from the feathers of the Oo, a bird about the size of a canary, it was presented to Mr. Bardwell's grandparents in 1834 by the ruling king of the Hawaiian islands and marked two important events: the birth of a daughter to them (Mr. Bardwell's mother) who was the first white child born on the Sandwich Islands and the birth of an heir to the royal throne on the same day.

For the next several years, roller skaters and dancers returned to the Casino (Cyclorama) Building, gyrating to the beat of a full military band. In the spring of 1898, the Cyclorama Building was hot to an exhibition of Rough Riding and Artillery Drill by the Light Battery "A" M.V.M. The opening night of April 3 attracted a brilliant gathering of "swell Boston." In the many boxes which surrounded the arena were seated representatives of the oldest and most wealthy families of the Back Bay. The building was specially modified for these drills: the center space was surrounded by a high fence, at each end a score of boxes was installed and a balcony was erected on the sides.

The program opened with a mounted drill by a squad under the command of Lieutenant Butler Ames, in which the following members of the battery participated: Corporal Beverly Rantoul, G. Edward Atherton, Lucian S. Thayer, Sidney M. Williams, Bardley W. Palmer, Charles W. Dabney, William S. Patten, W.J. Batchelder, Corporal Arthur Blake, Charles S. Sturgis, Grafton Whiting, Harry G. Brooks, J.H. Sherburn, Jr., Dudley P. Rogers, Corporal William Amory II, R.P. Blake, Sergeant H.H. Sawyer, R.H. Weld, Jr., Corporal W.L. Senborn, C.K. Cummings, R.S. Hale and Gustavus Hay, Jr. The ladies particularly enjoyed the rough riding and bareback exercises with which Lieutenant Ames' squad closed the exhibition.

1898 was also the year of the Spanish-American War, and activities at the Cyclorama Building - now known as the Boston Auditorium - reflected the times. In the month of October, a War Exposition was held in the great rotunda. After entering through a structure resembling the gates of Santiago, the visitor saw a number of pictures. One represented Morro Castle, others showed Dewey's victory in Manila, the destruction of Cervera's fleet, daring attacks of the Rough Riders, the sinking of the Merrimack by Hobson, the raising of the American flag over the municipal building of Santiago and the surrender of General Toral to General Shafter. The floor was given over to numerous other attractions: photographic stalls, a gipsy camp and confectionery stores. Souvenir war spoons were given to the first five hundred ladies who visited the Exposition during the morning hours.

According to longtime South End residents, the building was used at times as a bicycle arena, for which purpose its cavernous rotunda was ideal, and also as a work-out ring for heavy-weight boxing champion John L. Sullivan. Yet another cycloramic painting is said to have made its appearance here, entitled "Napoleon in Hell."

With the dawning of the automobile age, the New England Vehicle Transportation Company leased the space from the Gardner estate and in 1899 the Cyclorama became a garage. An important chapter in automotive history was written in this building in the year 1907, when a brilliant young French bicycle racer named Albert Champion set up shop here. Starting as an errand boy in a Paris bicycle shop at the age of twelve, he became a millionaire automobile accessories manufacturer.

He came to this country in 1904 after winning a French bicycle race and took up motorcycle and later automobile racing. Living in Cambridge, he worked in a Waltham factory for a while, then found space in the Cyclorama Building and began to sell spark and ignition parts. Finally, he invented the A.C. sparkplug and founded the Champion Ignition Company of Detroit. AC Sparkplug is now part of General Motors Corporation. Throughout his life, he regarded his bicycle championships, and the fact that his sparkplug fired the motors that carried Lindbergh, Chamberlin and Byrd across the Atlantic, as his proudest achievements. He died in Paris in 1927.

The Gardner estate finally sold the Cyclorama building to the Commercial Flower Exchange in 1922 for the sum of $150,000. The new proprietors changed the facade to its present aspect, put the skylight into the dome without destroying the interior and occupied the building until 1969.

The first building erected on the cyclorama site was a large brick structure known as the Moody Sankey Tabernacle, which was dedicated on January 25, 1877, and was capable of seating six thousand people. A season of daily revival meetings began that continued without interruption from the beginning of February to the end of May 1877. The first meeting was attended by an overflow crowd, and special sessions had to be held at the Clarendon Street Baptist Church. Dwight L. Moody preached and Ira D. Sankey sang, supported by a vast choir under the direction of Dr. Eben Tourjee, who at this time was no longer a resident of the South End, having moved to Auburndale in 1871.

The benediction was pronounced by the Reverend Phillips Brooks. Although the revival meetings were visited by huge numbers, the enterprise did not do well financially. Out of the eight thousand envelopes which served as tickets to the dedicatory exercises at the Tabernacle, only 2,961 were returned. Of this number, 553 were empty. About $2,400 was raised from the remainder, donations ranging from one cent to twenty-five dollars. Those who opposed this method of fund raising took pains to express their opinion on slips of paper enclosed in the envelopes and tracts on "giving to the Lord." Among the contributions was a counterfeit two-dollar bill.

Following their Boston sojourn, Messr. Moody and Sankey transferred their evangelizing activities to Burlington, Vermont, and the vacant Tabernacle was used for a while by the Boston YMCA for Sunday services. The Handel and Haydn Society performed Mendelssohn's "Elijah" in the huge hall in October 1877 under the baton of Carl Zerrahn and with the participation of B.J. Lang organist. Later in the month, a Festival of Choral Societies was held at the Tabernacle with two grand choruses of 1,300 voices and an orchestra of 75 musicians. The program included the "best music - including gems of the great Musical Jubilees of 1869 and 1872." Some gospel meetings were held towards the end of the year and eventually the structure was taken down.

Source: http://bcaonline.org/netscape/aboutbca/cyclorama.htm