In 1930 Philadelphia's Board of Education wanted something fancy yet dignified in the way of sculpture to go over the doors and windows of its new $3,000,000 building at 21st Street and the Parkway. Its Superintendent of Buildings Irwin Thornton Catharine straightway declared an open competition for sketches and full-sized models. An architect himself, he chose the sketches and models of able French Sculptor Jules Andre Meliodon, awarded him the $45,000 contract.
Meliodon's models represented "Education Through the Ages," in 24 figures and groups. Competently done, they closely resembled the classical imitations on most of the world's public buildings. A variation showed men in classical robes holding such modern devices as a submarine, a ship, an electric light bulb. Prominent among them was a figure modeled after Superintendent Catharine, wearing an academic gown instead of a robe, his trouser bottoms showing underneath. He wore glasses and held a telephone.
But when Sculptor Meliodon set about translating his clay models into stone he met trouble. His contract gave Superintendent Catharine power to hire all help. For chief stonecutter Catharine hired one Harry Liva whose pay ($20,000 for labor, $11,000 for stone) came out of M. Meliodon's pocket. Sculptor Meliodon protested that Liva had picked stone whose size and quality would force the masons to enlarge the figures, crowd them in the compositions. The stone stayed. M. Meliodon watched while the masons produced squat, bulb-headed figures that had a strange air of paralysis. One of the masons was a competent man but he squinted in a way that got on Superintendent Catharine's nerves. He was discharged. Sculptor Meliodon got so rattled that he resigned his instructorship in modeling at the University of Pennsylvania to give all his time to the contract.
Meanwhile Superintendent Catharine began to brood about that model of himself. He objected to the glasses and the trousers under the robe. But what bothered Mr. Catharine most was the telephone. It seemed to imply that all he did was telephone. Finally he gave the stonemasons his own orders. When they had finished the model had no glasses, no telephone. Instead it held an hour glass and a magnifying glass, devices whose symbolism nobody understood.
When all 24 groups were finished, Manhattan Architect John Russell Pope who had liked the original sketches, called the carvings "abominable." Sculptor Meliodon's University of Pennsylvania friends told him he had been disgraced. He entered sketches of sculpture for Philadelphia's new Post Office and Customs House, won neither. Last week he announced he would sue the Board of Education for $500,000 damages to his reputation, caused by the "colossal atrocities" the stonemasons had made of his designs. He picked as No. 1 Atrocity not the Catharine figure but a figure in the group "Education Before the Christian Era."
Only Meliodon work unspoiled by masons were the massive front doors which had been cast directly into bronze from the clay models. Last week Superintendent Catharine agreed with Sculptor Meliodon that his own portrait was "the worst thing I ever saw."