imposing granite pile is the Philadelphia post-office. The facades on three sides are in the regular palatial style, broken up somewhat into pavilions, but with the ordinary correctly conventional regularity of pilaster superposed upon pilaster and window succeeding window. The entrances are upon the east front, and the central pavilion, capped by a square dome, is one of the most conspicuous objects in any view of the city. There is considerable variety in the outline of the New York City post-office. The style is Renaissance, but it differs from most American structures in that style by the abundance of square blocks which at regular intervals intersect pilasters and columns. These, of course, destroy the continuity of the vertical lines, so that the shafts of the orders can scarcely be recognized; yet even this variation is a relief from the monotony of the orders, and, coupled with the irregular shape of the pile, produces a good effect.
Some post-offices recently erected depart widely from the classical tra ditions that previously ruled in government buildings. This is the case with that at Lexington, Kentucky, where rectangular, segmental, and semicircular-headed openings occur without a trace of the orders; with the one at Marquette, Michigan, which leans to the Romanesque; and with the post-office at Rochester, New York, which has a decidedly Roman esque angle-tower. One of the most picturesque of these recent buildings is the United States post-office and court-house at Augusta, Maine, which adds to the triple-arched portico—present also at Marquette—a tower more original and more graceful than that at Rochester. The upper part of this tower is a circle of larger diameter than the square on which it rests, and to which it is joined by a series of splays, and is pierced by four triple lights. The post-office at Quincy, Illinois, is decidedly " Queen Anne " above, while that at Frankfort, Kentucky, has a picturesque tower ending in an octagon and an elegant gable with an elliptic arch encased between flat pilasters, and with a free rendering of a Doric entablature above; this entablature is also carried across the smaller gables. Another fine post office and court-honse is that at Atlanta, Georgia, a pleasing and symmet rical piece of modern Gothic, consisting of a centre and two wings, the first with two series of five arches, forming two superimposed loggias and surmounted by five large windows; the latter with smaller openings dis tributed in groups.
Stale and Alanicifial capitols and which were erected in the earlier decades of the century followed the Greek manner patronized by the government, and, as the Capitol of the country had a dome, the dome—or, at least, a domical tower—came to be con sidered the correct terminal for all large public buildings; so that few have escaped its presence.
The State Capitol at Albany, New York (pl. 59, fig. 2), as originally designed, was an immense rectangular Renaissance block in which an order was given to each storey, much after the style practised at Venice by Sansovino and Sanmicheli, and was crowned by a domical tower of grand proportions. Magnificent though strictly conventional in its treat ment, this marble pile proved too costly to reach completion, and thus it came about that a building commenced in one style was finished in another, since the design for which Richardson—at least, in part—was responsible was accepted, and the upper portions of the edifice were completed according to it. There is great beauty in the newer portion, but it cannot be said that there is congruity. The accepted design showed on the north front a Romanesque upper storey boldly placed above Corinth ian pilasters and disregarding their centres, but in execution this was modified. The apostle of the round-arched style here condescended to take his motives from the French Renaissance—from the châteaux of Blois and Chambord rather than from Speyer or Gelnhansen. Yet the towers are Romanesque, while the cornice of the order below is changed to a Gothic string-course. Parts of the interior, as the Hall of Assembly, the work of Eidlitz, are Gothic of the most beautiful and most thorough kind—vaulted medieval halls enshrined in a classical exterior.
The Capitol at Hartford, Connecticut (pl. 6o, fig. 1), although it has a dome like so many other capitols, is far from being an ordinary structure, and may, indeed, be reckoned one of the finest public buildings in the United States. The style is Gothic, and the regular facade is broken into a centre, curtains, and wings. The centre has two low towers in every way subordinate to the tall tambour and dome which rise behind them. This cupola-crowned tower is dodecagonal in plan and decidedly Gothic in the sentiment of its details. A series of low openings in triplets separated by buttresses runs around the base, and above this is a range of tall pointed arched windows separated by clustered columns with foliaged capitals. The anterior shaft of each cluster is continued higher and corbelled out by a second capital into a small turret. The twelve turrets thus formed are connected by arches with pierced spandrels, above which is another arcade, consisting of three arches in each of the twelve divisions. The terminal finial is not happy.