This imagery was elicited by the Friedrichstrasse railroad station built in 1884 that was situated right opposite the site planned for the glass skyscraper. But Endell's description was not of the actual railroad building. What attracted his glance, desirous of visual poetry, was "the enclosing panel that was suspended laterally over the tracks, the large "glass apron." "Wonderful this Friedrich-Strasse railroad station, when one stands on the outer track above the Spree where one cannot see any of its architecture except the large expanse of the glass apron and the contrast to the maze of petty houses all about. Particularly beautiful when dusk conceals with it shadows this confused environment and then the many small panels begin to reflect the sunset and the entire plane assumes a colorful, shimmering life.

This play of light reflections, raised by Mies to a criterion of form-giving, was thematized as a new way of seeing by Endell. In his poetics of space and in Mies's glass visions, buildings were transposed into abstract, silent volumes that were called to life only by the effects of "fortuitous illumination, a beautiful distribution of shadows." 182-183, the artless word