Clinton edifice also deserves notice on account of its size, great convenience, and the important objects to which it is appropriated. It was built in 1329. It is located in Beekman street, near the Park. It is 50 feet broad by 100 feet deep, and three stories high. independent of the basement. Clinton Hotel, erected in conjunction with it, pre sents Clinton Hall as a building nearly 100 feet square. The basement is let for stores. The second story contains a spacious lecture room and accommodations for the mercantile library and a reading room. The third story is appropriated to the occasional use of different public bodies. The fourth story is occupied by the national academy of design and exhibition gallery of painting, under the direction of Mr. Dunlap. painter.
Churches and Places of Public an enumeration recently made, it appear that there are in New York 123 places for public worship, many of which are very neat and commodious, and several of them present edifices that are fa vourable specimens of architectural taste and beauty. The following is believed to be an accu rate account of the various denominations of pro fessing christians, with the number of phces of worship belonging to each.
.qmerican Bible institution was founded in May 1816, and has most assiduously directed its energies to the objects of its formation. It has a board of thirty-six managers, all laymen, from several religious denominations. The society has -upwards of six hundred auxiliaries scattered through every state and territory in the union. The number of Bibles and Testaments issued from its formation to the anniversary in May 1830, was 1,084,980. In May 1329, the society resolved, in case means were furnished in season, to supply every destitute family in the United States with a copy of the Bible within two years. According to a report made to the society in 1831, there had been 242,267 Bibles and Testaments used during the past year, making an aggregate since the formation of the so ciety of 1,3'27,247.
.Inierican Tract Society.—Next in importance. the Tract Society is to be recorded. It is a recent foundation most liberally sustained. It is estimat ed that the average issue of tracts is about one hun dred thousand, or one million of pages weekly. It has numerous auxiliary societies. The whole num ber of the society's distinct publications is five hun dred and sixty-eight, many of them volumes of considerable size. The number of tracts published by this association during the year on the subject of temperance, was five hundred and sixteen thousand.
As connected with moral and religious instruc tion, many other institutions for the benefit of the rising generation flourish in this city. The names only of a part can be here enumerated. The Ame rican Sunday School Union; the New York Sunday School Union; the Bible and Common Prayer Book Society; the New York Protestant Episcopal Tract Society; the Colonization Society of the city of New York; the American Home Missionary Society; the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union Society; the New York Protestant Episcopal Press; the New York Protestant Episcopal Mis sionary Society; the New York, Manumission So ciety, and several Temperance Societies.
The of the Methodist Episcopal Church is located in the city of New-York with a branch at Cincinnati, Ohio. The business is conduct ed in a commodious building lately erected in Mul berry street, on a plan designed for extensive addi tions hereafter, which, when completed, will proba bly be the largest publishing establishment in the United States, as it now is in the city of its loca tion. There arc at present (1832), thirty presses in full operation, one of which being a power-press is equal to five common presses; and constant em ployment is furnished to above two hundred per sons in the various departments of printing, bind ing, folding, &c.
In connection with this book-concern, is transact ed the business of the Bible, Tract and Sunday School Union Societies of the Methodist Episcopal Church, auxiliaries and branches of which are nu merous throughout the United States and territo ries, and all supplied with books from this source, or from the branch at Cincinnati. From this press is issued weekly " the Christian Advocate and Jour nal, and Zion's Herald," a religious paper, having upwards of twenty-seven thousand subscribers.
Of the numerous works here issued, a large pro portion are stereotyped, and the profits of the esta blishment, after defraying the expenses of its man agement, are wholly devoted to religious and charitable uses.
Literary literary institutions of New York are numerous, but for the most part in their infancy. By far the most venerable and important is Columbia College, founded by char ter in 1754, under the name of King's College, partly by the munificence of the corporation of Trinity Church, and partly by the British Society for the Promotion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. During the interval which elapsed between the years 1776 and 1784, the business of instruction was necessarily suspended in consequence of the trials of the revolutionary contest, and the college edifice appropriated to the purpose of a military hos pital. Upon the restoration of public tranquillity certain individuals were appointed by an act of the legislature, dated May 1, 1784, to superintend the general interests of education throughout the state, under the title of Regents of the University, whose number was subsequently increased by an act pass ed 26th November in the same year. By this body the duties of trustees of the college were also dis charged, until the year 1787. On the 13th of April 1787, an act was passed by which the original char ter of the college was confirmed, the name of the iustitution altered to Columbia College, and its di rection confided to certain persons mentioned in said act, who were authorized by the provisions of the same to discharge the duties of trustees of the college, and were empowered, for the time to come, to fill all vacancies which might occur in this number by death, resignation or otherwise, after it should be diminished to twenty-four. The government of the college has continued to be exercised in confor mity with this act since that time.