ITIES, viewed as works of art, need central points as pivots for the motive and effect. A long flat line, or series of lines, embracing some miles of rectangular buildings, is not a pleasing or exhilarating spectacle in itself. In only a few cases is anything gained by inequalities of the ground, hills of ordinary height being lost in such an expanse, and themselves requiring the emphasis of crowning structures. Modern cities especially, to be pictorial, demand the feature of which we speak. Military considerations, based on a state of continual warfare, do not drive them to the hills. Born of trade and the handicrafts, they take to the water-side and spread themselves freely over the plain. They become panoramas rather than landscapes, and must be lifted to the eye by some commanding object that swells from the vale and more than midway leaves the storm of traffic. What would the view of Rome be without the dome of St. Peter's, of Vienna without St. Stephen's, Antwerp without its cathedral spire, or London without the "huge dun canopy" of St. Paul's?

Each of these far-seen heralds of the coming and as yet undetected city is of

VOL. VII. N. 8.-1

religious origin. It represents only one of the great interests which actuate the multitudes below, and that, it must be added, not the controlling interest, for nobody will say that public worship brought together, or could keep together, without the aid of worldly motives, the people of either of these capitals. Much less could it be said of an American town, with its population of many creeds united in no cult but that of the almighty dollar.

It is fit everyway that the most conspicuous erection should express the political life of the city, the organism which makes it a unit. The city was the first free State, as the etymology of our word "politics" shows. The love and pride of the Flemish burghers, the champions of medieval liberty, were lavished on the decorations of the townhalls which still proclaim the power of the civic virtues. Yet these buildings are rarely those which first greet the eye of the approaching traveller. The city does not, as it were, rise to welcome him in her own proper person. In her new city-hall, with its tower overtopping everything nearer than the instep of the Alleghanies, Philadelphia does herself and her visitor that honor. Not springing from the sea, it will not hail the mariner like the campanile of St. Mark's, but it will be a landmark far along a great river that bears a commerce comparable to that of Venice in her best

9

day, an estuary broader than the Bays of Salamis and Lepanto, longer than the Thames or the Scheldt, and capacious enough to be the stage of any history, for peace or war.

The site of Philadelphia's capitol was fixed before the town had an existence except on paper. Penn may, without disrespect, be named as the first of a long line of Scadders yet to be. We may fancy him solemnly setting his toothpick, with that fine deliberation which became his character and his creed, upon the central point between the two rivers, that nearest to the twin curves which gently approached and as softly receded. This point, however, did not occupy the ridge of the water-shed, which ran nearer the Schuylkill than the Delaware. Broad Street was originally, as we find it marked upon Holme's map of 1682, the twelfth from the Delaware, with eleven squares on each side of it. This left it on the slope of the barely-perceptible swell that breaks the broad plain of the peninsula. To reach the summit it travelled two squares westward within two years, and there ranged itself upon the line which, after exactly two centuries of gradual transition from notched trees to marble fronts and electric lamps, it follows now. At its intersection with the other main avenue, High afterward Market Street, was laid off the reservation, rectangular, like everything else in the city, which is at length employed for its designated purpose. The city has at length grown up to its centre and to the founder's bold idea,-whether sooner or later than he expected, who shall say? Washington City, not half so old, is already growing away from the Capitol, while Philadelphia's political coincides more and more nearly with her geographical

centre.

This established site, however, proved oddly difficult to establish. Its vicissitudes were by no means over when the street and the intersection of streets whereupon it was located finally came to anchor. Should the proposed hall bestride the crossing, or should its disjecta membra be quartered, like those of

a malefactor, and distributed, literally, as it would have been, in terrorem, over the four surrounding squarelets? This became one of the adjourned questions. There was no need of hurry in deciding it.

The government of the little city found plenty of elbow-room on Independence Square, nearly a mile to the eastward, and still, till long after the Revolution, well to the westward of the business centre. Multiplying thousands were content, day after day, for generations, to circumnavigate this solid square that blocked the way between the four points of the compass, each person as he passed contributing silently or vocally his share of mental labor to the solution of the great problem, more and more incited thereto in proportion to the frequency with which the quadrangular tour was performed, by the gratuitous expenditure it entailed in the way of time, shoeleather, and muscular force. Not until 1828 did the popular mind practically revolt at this succession of flank marches, enlivened as they were by the contemplation from successive points of view of a Quaker meeting-house and a little Grecian temple devoted to the supply of the city proper with water. the flood of long-pent passengers broke through, and the two principal avenues mingled into one, shouldering to right and left, behind a modest border of board fence, the four corners of the old square. Save that the boards, after a long gestation, blossomed into iron, peace and the school-boys were left in possession of the locality for the better part of half a century. The Greek fane and the meeting-house, oddly-assorted pair, had passed hand in hand to oblivion, leaving no sign but the columns of the former, which-queerest thing of allnow sustain the roof of a Unitarian church, when the dawning of another change, doubtless the final one, began to be visible.

Then

Agitation in 1868, legislation in 1870, and excavation in 1871 marked the new movement. It must not be supposed, however, that perfect harmony, or even wholly dispassionate discussion, attended the operation of the municipal mind.

That

On one point only did unanimity prevail. That was the proved impossibility of crowding the city government any longer into its ancient quarters. The affairs of six hundred thousand people could not be administered in two modest brick offices. They had overflowed into inconveniently scattered quarters. Should they hark back two hundred years and occupy the seat chopped out in the woods when the town was a hamlet of less than two thousand souls? This step was opposed by loud and persistent protest. The good citizens had tasted the sweets of open air and unobstructed transit, and their lungs and feet united in demurring to the sacrifice. breezy oasis in the desert of brick, lifted farthest skyward of all the plain, was not a luxury to be lightly given up, nor was a beaten path of traffic to be lightly obliterated. But, failing the selection of this situation, where should the new town - hall stand? A loss of breathing-space was inevitable somewhere. Should one of the other open squaresIndependence, Washington, Franklin, Logan, or Rittenhouse-be built up? With the usual conservatism of the official mind, Independence Square was in the first instance fixed upon by Councils. That body, ignoring the fact that the place had long ceased to be sufficiently central and that the people would never submit to the absorption of the historic Hall into a modern edifice, in 1868 adopted an ordinance for the construction there of the proposed building. Commissioners were named and plans invited, the design adopted, out of seventeen offered, being that of John McArthur, Jr., the present architect. It was in general character the same with that which its author is now engaged in carrying to completion. But the popular determination to keep the pickaxe out of the sacred ground was too intense to be defied. The State Legislature was appealed to. Its Act of August 5, 1870, created the Commission now in charge, and directed a de

cision by popular vote between Washington and Penn Squares. A very large majority voted in favor of the latter, leaving Washington and Independence, fitly joined in name and proximity, to remain the refreshment and delight of the region of the Revolution, and vindicating the foresight and falling into the footsteps of the Founder. Dissatisfaction, on one ground or another, showed

ARCH OF MEZZANINE STORY, SOUTH STAIR.

a wonderful ignorance of the certainty of its own demise. The courts were appealed to and injunctions sought, it being indispensable that the Philadelphia lawyers-whose acuteness, by the irony of fate, has become a chief distinction of a community "to prevent lawsuits," in which one of Penn's first ordinances established a system of arbitration-should have a say in the matter. Opposition had to be buried deep under tons of solid masonry before it would yield to repression. It actually made

itself heard from under the corner-stone. The original design, agreed upon in the end of 1870, contemplated a single structure. Eight months later, it was determined to have four separate buildings. Another interval of eight months brought about a return to more rational counsels, and unity was again the word. Work had meanwhile been going on,such plasticity having been thoughtfully conferred upon the artist's plan that these transmogrifications caused little more interruption to progress than those of the equestrian performer who dons and doffs half a dozen costumes while careering in the ring. All this is amusing, now that everybody is satisfied with the selection of the site and the general plan. Unity was secured to the great building, and the highways were left free, to pedestrians at least, to elevated railways also, should it ever be decided to have them, the four main archways affording ample space in their thirty-six feet of altitude. Even the open space for the preservation of which so sturdy a contest was waged is but moderately curtailed, only three and a fourth acres of the original ten being roofed over. The circulation of fresh air will be promoted rather than impeded, a perpetual current passing through the long vaults which open to the four winds of heaven and debouch into the high-walled court like the tuyères of a furnace. The ascending radiation from a hundred and fifty thousand square feet of roofing in summer, and the fires that keep a thousand men comfortable in winter, will convert the building into a vast ventilating apparatus,—not a bad substitute, as a sanitary contrivance, for a park of the same extent. An abundant store of plants and flowers is supplied, although they are of stone and absorb less carbonic acid gas than their prototypes; nor will a population of sparrows be wanting, in feathers not made with a chisel. This aspect of the uses of their new hall is not, however, apt to fasten upon the minds of the Philadelphia tax-payers. They will be satisfied to find the accounts of their officials adequately ventilated and no heat wasted on the

cooking of ledgers. The practical is very prominent, if not predominant, in their ideas at present, and they count not only with awe, but with something like dismay, the two millions of cubic feet of rubble, granite, marble, and sandstone, the four thousand tons of iron, the sixty millions of brick, and the ten millions of dollars already absorbed in the undertaking and invested, for the benefit of their children, in that patch of four acres. Such things must be. The cui bono question is certain to arise. Palaces, whether religious, imperial, or municipal, are tolerably sure to become factors in history even before they are finished. St. Peter's, for instance, split the Church by and for which it was erected, long before completion; and the Quaker City may be thankful should she set her capstone with nothing more to regret than some not altogether traceable extravagance and the rise or fall of some local statesmen.

So far, the behavior of the city legislature has been anything but niggardly. Few works of such magnitude were ever treated with financial magnanimity so marked. No limit was affixed to the cost; and, now that the expenditure is mounting up to that bestowed upon the Capitol of the United States, the flow of supplies from the public coffers continues free and steady. Fortunate indeed among architects is Mr. McArthur. The worry of ways and means, which never ought to press upon them, but which usually does, is in his case reduced to a minimum. His own design, modified from time to time as exigencies demand and experience suggests, he is left comparatively free to execute. Even on the score of time he has been at ease. There has been no undue hurry. The ten years allotted for completion from the day, August 10, 1871, when ground was first broken, have long elapsed. More than that interval has passed since, on the 12th of the same month, two years later, the first stone was laid. The close of a decade from the formal laying of the eight-ton corner-stone, July 4, 1874, will find the great tower still short of its destined elevation, with work still to

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