THE PARADOX OF James Bogardus has been that thus far his reputation for influencing the course of American architecture has been based on a misguided evaluation of his least significant accomplishment, the cast-iron front. He himself was responsible in large part for this misconception because he emphasized these facades in his advertising pamphlet of 1858, and because he failed to call attention to other works which led directly to an achievement of major importance. If Bogardus' contribution is to be properly judged, it is necessary to assess his whole production. One project which has achieved considerable renown was the proposal which Bogardus submitted in 1852 for New York's Crystal Palace (Fig. 11). The design called for a huge circular hall at least 400 feet in diameter which would have filled Reservoir Square (now Bryant Park), the western half of the two-block site facing Sixth Avenue between Fortieth and Forty-second Streets. In the center a cast-iron circular tower, about 75 feet in lower diameter, was to rise in thirteen open stories to a height of 300 feet. A four-story cast-iron front ringed the 1200-foot outer circumference. The resulting annular hall, with an internal span of about 150 feet, was to be covered by a sheet-iron roof hung from link chains slung radially between tower and outer wall.76 It was easily the boldest project offered in the competition.77 It is obvious that Bogardus' roof was inspired by current interest in suspension bridges. In 1845 John Roebling had built a suspended canal aqueduct over the Allegheny River near Pittsburgh. The following year he completed the Monongehela Bridge in the same city. By 1849 Roebling had erected four more canal aqueducts, and Charles Ellet had gained fame for a Niagara footbridge and his Ohio River span at Wheeling. In 1851 Roebling had begun the first successful railroad suspension bridge, that across the Niagara Gorge.78 No doubt Bogardus had also seen or read of earlier British and French examples. Was he the first to apply the suspension idea to a building? The answer is No, for by 1840, the year in which he had visited France, there was under construction at the Brittany naval base at Lorient a suspended iron roof, 140 feet in span, over the mast shop of the arsenal (Fig. 12). Moreover, in the same year this roof was illustrated in the fifth edition of Sganzin's Cours de Construction, a standard engineering text well known in the United States.79 It is significant that Bogardus did not contemplate hanging his roof on wire cables, already being marketed by Roebling, but proposed link-chains such as were common in British practice and actually used for the similar span of the Lorient atelier.80 Of the supporting elements, the outer wall obviously stemmed from Bogardus' experience with cast-iron fronts. Its greatest interest lay in the ingenious circular plan which, acting as a self-bracing ring, would, theoretically at least, not have required any guys or buttresses to resist the inward pull of the radial roof chains. It was, however, the 300-foot central tower which formed the most prophetic part of the design. Although framed towers in timber were certainly no novelty, and although Trevethick in 1832 and Buckingham in 1848 had proposed towers built of iron, Bogardus' cast-iron skeleton was more than an idle dream because it was based on his own practical experience during the previous year. The Crystal Palace project has been cited as evidence of Bogardus' inventive genius, primarily because of its suspended roof. Its true merit is now seen to lie, not in fundamental innovations, but rather in achieving an imaginative architectural synthesis of current structural ideas.