The Lenox Library, New York City, is a massive and reposeful round arched Italian Renaissance structure with a recessed centre and two wings. The flanks have three great arched windows, while the centre has also three large arches separated by polished columns of gray granite. Above this is an attic of coupled square-headed windows divided by columns. The lower floor has segment-headed windows of the same width as those above. The effect of the whole is one of solidity and breadth.
Riclgzc'ay is deficient in libraries, yet has one fine library building, known as the Ridgway Library. This is a solidly-built Grecian structure of granite with a Doric portico, and is finished through out in the most substantial manner. The Philadelphia Library is a mod est structure of red brick, of moderate size, but well adapted for its purpose.
The Library, Dayton, Ohio, is an attractive and effective structure with a picturesque outline, and with a loggia of three arches above its entrance. The materials—blue-gray limestone relieved by rich red sandstone—add much to the general effect.
Boston Public will soon add to its architectural riches a fine public library, for the erection of which the city has appropriated four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It will be located close to Trin ity Church and to the Museum of Fine Arts, and will have a frontage of 224 feet.
American Theatres possess little architectural beauty. Unlike the great theatres of the European continent, they are erected, not by the government, but by private enterprise, and thought is bestowed rather upon comfort and convenience than upon an architectural exterior. As a rule, the entrances are wider, the interiors are lighter and more commo dious, and the auditorium is better arranged for seeing the stage, than in English theatres; but there is in many cases no façade to the street, only an entrance with stores on each side. Among the exceptions may be cited the opera-house at San Francisco, that of Duluth, Holyoke Opera house—which forms one of a group of buildings Gothic in sentiment, though its outline strikingly suggests a Byzantine church and its interior is Renaissance—and Booth's Theatre, at New York City, a rather free translation of Renaissance, with a well-contrived interior.
Academy of one Philadelphia theatre which calls for notice on account of its architecture is the Academy of Music, a large brick structure standing free all round. It is severely plain, a huge mass of red brick with a succession of arched openings, but it is imposing from sheer dimensions. Its interior is well planned, with a seating capacity of twenty-nine hundred, and the entrances are numerous and large.
Casino.--One of the prettiest of American theatres is the Casino, in New York City (pl. 62, fig. 1). It is a Moorish structure with effect ively-grouped openings, a picturesque outline, and an open gallery with kiosks around the roof, which is flat and forms a summer-garden. The facades are rich with arabesque ornamentation, but the dark-red brick renders this less effective than it might have been made by the use of variously-colored materials. The interior is pleasing with its Arabian fancifulness.
The Metropolitan York City, can boast of the largest auditorium in the world, measuring feet by feet, while that of La Scala, at Milan—which was previously the largest—is only S5/ feet by feet, and that of the Paris opera-house 79 feet by Sr feet. The stage measures 90 feet by tot feet and is 15o feet high, and the entire block of building is 200 feet by 26o feet. Thus the largest theatre in the world may with truth be said to be located upon the American continent. It is idle to compare this edifice with such theatres as the opera-house at Paris or with Covent Garden Theatre, at London. It is a huge fireproof pile economically built. The east front suffers from the lowness of the centre, which is overtopped by the wings, containing stores, ballrooms, and apartments. The bricks are light yellow, and the sparsely introduced terra-cotta so neatly matches it that color lends no aid to the ensemble. The north side is less conventional, yet less important, but the rear, plain though it is, has all the grandeur of the great mass of the stage, which towers high above the low side-wings. The cost of the building alone was about a million of dollars.
itfuscums and public museums and picture-gal leries of the United States have not as yet obtained an importance equal to that of similar buildings in Western Europe. There every small town has its local museum; here only large centres boast of such institutions. The Smithsonian Institution, at Washington, is a building little fitted for museum purposes, and architecturally is an imitation of a Norman •church. The National Museum is a formal pile of brickwork, one storey high, covering a space 327 feet square; it is without much architectural pretension, though it is well fitted for the purpose it has to fulfil. The interior has the form of a Greek cross, with a central cupola of no great height. The United States Army Medical Museum is an extensive struc ture of brick and terra-cotta with wings whose upper portions are without windows, and a centre with segmental-headed openings.