Art: Contest in Closet

Few of the thousands of bedaubed revelers who annually roister through Manhattan’s Beaux-Arts Ball realize that their patronage indirectly helps to raise money to send one architectural student to Paris for two-and-a-half years. Last week in Manhattan the beneficiary of last winter’s ball was announced. He was Paul Malcolm Heffernan, 26, of Ames, Iowa, who studied architecture at Harvard. Completely surprised, Winner Heffernan blushed, stammered:

“Well, I guess the way it turned out was very good. The competition was conducted with the utmost fairness. The meals and everything furnished us seemed to be the best that could be bought. I want to thank all you men for making me so lucky.”

Few prizewinners have had to survive more exhausting tests. In other years, preliminary competitions reduced the candidates to eight finalists at the most who were then assembled in Manhattan for a final problem. This year, however, instead of being allowed to finish that problem at home where instructors sometimes lent a helping hand, four finalists were put through a test which suggested the ancient Pa-ku-wen of Imperial China.* In the exhibition hall of the Beaux-Arts Building carpenters built four little cubicles of composition board. Each was furnished with a drawing board, reading light, stool, ash trays, sets of drawing instruments and water colors. Just outside stood four army cots. Then for three successive weekends the four contestants were shut in these closets for 36 hours straight, given three successive problems to work out. Food and sleep were optional. First problem was to design a model dairy. Second was an industrial arts museum. The third test called for the interior of an opera house.

Prizewinner Heffernan, attacking the last assignment, decided that the basic problem about an opera house is how to get out. His design, notably similar to Radio City Music Hall with its paraboloid acoustic ceiling, was so plentifully endowed with exits that any spectator could leave in any direction at any time.

* Before 1903 all candidates for Chinese goverment posts werebrought to Peking, locked for weeks at a time in long stable-like rows of little cellswith sealed doors where they were set in writing competitive essayson the classes.