The Napa Lunatic Asylum, California, situated in a beautiful valley at the northern end of San Francisco Bay, affords to the lunatics of the State a Gothic residence of solid brick and stone which is among the finest structures of California.
Penitentiaries and Jails, though intended for the vicious instead of for the incapable, have features similar to those of hospitals and asylums, since the approved plan—adopted from considerations both of health and of safety—is to divide them into wards. The guard-room is now usually placed in the centre, enabling the guards to see all points at once. It is seldom that these structures possess much architectural interest, though in many cases they recall the fortified walls of an ancient city. The " Tombs," at New York City, an essay in Egyptian, is unique among prisons.
Educational buildings composing a university can hardly be said to form a separate class, since they include structures of several classes—lecture-halls, laboratories, museums, chapels, libraries, and dormitories.
Harvard—time-honored in this young country, though it would be young in the Old World—marks in its various structures all the phases through which American architecture has passed; yet its finest buildings are undoubtedly its most modern ones. These are the Memorial Hall, a fine Gothic edifice, the gymnasium, the law-school, and Sever Hall, the last three of which are the work of Richardson.
At Yale the art-school is " revived " Gothic, but is of heavy outline, and its tower is without sufficient prominence. Most of the newer Yale buildings are in this style, including the Peabody Museum, which is per haps the best. Princeton has a good Gothic dormitory, and the lecture hall of the theological seminary, with its groups of cusped windows, is effective.
The University of Pennsylvania is a group of Gothic structures built of green serpentine, with dressings of Ohio stone. There is little orna ment, but the grouping is effective and the general effect satisfactory. The buildings of the Veterinary Department, recently added, admirably express their purpose.
Slone Hall, rUellesley College, Massachusetts, is a fine structure in what may be called Free Classic, but in its stepped gables and in the lines of its central pavilion approaches Flemish Renaissance. The entrance is well accentuated, contrasting admirably with the curtain-walls which intervene between it and the tower-like blocks which mark the intersec tion of the centre with the wings.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of Boston's good buildings, as well as one of its most useful institutions. It was in this
institute that the first school of Architecture in the United States was established.
Columbia College, New York City, like Harvard and Yale, has written the history of its expansion and the history of American architecture in its buildings, albeit the latest is not Queen Anne, but is a fine irreg ular Tudor-Gothic pile with a circular angle-turret, a rich oriel, and a chimney the flues of which, externally expressed, resemble a series of organ-pipes.
The University of Toronto, Canada, is considered one of the finest specimens of Norman in America, and has numerous denominational colleges affiliated with it.
Girard of Greece it would be difficult to find a struc ture more Grecian than the Corinthian temple which was the first building erected within the large enclosure devoted to the purposes of Girard Col lege, Philadelphia. It is of white marble, roofed with marble tiles, and is perhaps the most truly monumental structure in the Grecian style pos sessed by the Western continent. But here, as in Europe, the Greek tem ple with its simple lines and surrounding peristyle proves its unfitness for modern use, since it permits of no enlargement. The necessary college buildings have been erected from time to time as the growth of the college demanded, and the original temple stands like a stranger in their midst. The order is a large one, since each column is 6 feet in diameter and 55 feet high.
Public the desiderata of a schoolhouse are the arrangement of the schoolrooms so that the light shall be admitted to the left and rear of the pupils; ample size of windows, which should extend as close as possible to the ceilings; roomy porches and entrances; stair cases of stone or iron, covered with terra-cotta or tiles; conveniently-sit uated and well-ventilated hat-and-cloak rooms; and, above all, but most of all neglected, the best of sanitary arrangements. These things are essentials: architectural display is a non-essential; yet there is no reason why the outline of a schoolhouse should not be as picturesque as that of a dwelling, or even of a church. The porches, the turret for the bell, the projections and recesses often necessary to admit light, are all features sus ceptible of fine architectural treatment, while the staircases may with advantage be carried up in open loggias, thus adding greatly to the exter nal effect. Unfortunately, the esthetic has hitherto been almost com pletely left out of such structures.