The west front of the Albany Cathedral is probably the purest and the most impressive example of exterior Gothic upon this continent. Three deeply-recessed portals rich with carving lead into the church, and above them the twin-towers rise with a plainness comparable to that of the towers of the great Mexican churches before described, though differ ing in style. Between these unadorned parts is a grand rose-window. The towers become lighter and more ornamental as they ascend, and their plan changes from square to octagon above the level of the triple light that surrounds the rose-window. The spires are the least admirable part of the composition. The entire facade is French in its treatment and outline.
Garden City Cathedral, at Garden City, founded by A. T. Stewart, on Long Island, twenty miles east of New York City, is a church which challenges notice both by its assumption of the name of " cathe dral " and by its great elaboration of detail. Every gable is pro fusely crocheted; every pinnacle on aisle and clere-storey is flanked with gargoyles; flying-buttresses spring from aisle to clere-storey; the windows are filled with marble tracery. Below the buttress and the nar row traceried windows of the seven-sided apse is the crypt—the mauso leum of its founder—a chamber richer than all above. The baptistery, roofed with stone slabs, and with slender ileche, is effective. The fault of the structure is over-ornamentation, and this is even more evident in the interior, where marble gives way to plaster in the vaulting.
Philadelphia has a few modern churches of sufficient importance to call for special mention. The Cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, a brown stone structure in the Italian style, with a dome at the intersection of the nave and transepts, is the largest. The First New Jerusalem Church is a graceful and most picturesque composition, and, with the adjacent schools, forms an attractive group when viewed from the south-west; it is of brownstone, in the Geometric phase of the Gothic style. The First Unitarian Church is a singular structure having an angle-porch carried upon short columns with carved capitals and surmounted by a high spire like roof; adjoining it is a low aisle the piers of which have sculptured capitals. The low porch tower and aisle, hacked by the higher part of the edifice, are in themselves highly picturesque, but the building as a whole loses importance through the small elevation of its principal fagade.
The Holy Communion Church (Lutheran) is a massive Romanesque structure with a cloistered porch which recalls Sta. Maria in Capitolo, Cologne. The tower, like so many others appended to modern churches,
is unfinished, but its base and the entire exterior are in thorough har mony with its sculptured inscription: A mighty fortress is our God.
The Tabernacle Church (Presbyterian), recently erected, is also a pic turesque Gothic composition, combined as it is with school and manse into a group of the most varied outline. The north front has a beau tiful traceried window and a well-formed tower of moderate height with a portal at its base, while a side-entrance and an arcade diversify the east façade.
The Church of SI. James the Greater (Catholic) is a far more preten tious structure. The west front is open to criticism on account of the conflicting lines of the portal' and window and of the inequality of the flanking-towers in a front which looks as though intended to be symmet rical, while the entire interior is roofed with vaulting in lath and plaster. Nevertheless, it must rank as one of the finest churches of Philadelphia, and certainly surpasses any other Catholic church of that city.
St. Mark's and St. Clenment's are also good examples of Gothic Episco palian churches, which certainly take the lead in the use of this style, followed closely, however, by Presbyterian churches.
SI. Ste:Abel?' s Church, at Lynn, Massachusetts, is a compo sition somewhat out of the common, since its tower ends above in a gable and ridged roof, and the non-apsidal part of the elianeel has a bell-turret placed at the end of the roof. The apse beyond this is very effective, as is the interior.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame at Ottawa, Canada, is a lofty and spa cious Gothieized stone structure with open-work twin-towers zoo feet high, and with a light interior. Next to the government buildings, it is the most important edifice in the city, and one of the handsomest churches in Canada.
Among the greatest singularities in church-architecture is the massive square tower, 176 feet high, of the Brattle Square Church, at Boston, designed by Richardson. Around its summit runs a frieze of colossal bas-reliefs representing the sacraments of baptism, communion, marriage, and burial. At each angle is a statue of an angel blowing a golden trumpet; above this is a machicolated parapet covered with a tiled roof. The columns that carry the arches of the porch are so short that their capitals are level with a man's head. Boston has two fine Unitarian churches, one of them a Roman Corinthian edifice, the interior of which was apparently suggested by the Annunziata Church at Genoa; the other, Gothic treated with some freedom.