STAIT',. In the United States municipal architecture has until reeent years had little to show if serious consideration. While the first fifty your, of independent national ex istenee it nessed the erection of ninny worthy Federal and municipal building:, ially enstom houses and Slate t'apitols, these were. for the most part, indifferently placed, with no auleupiate approach or surroundings. The pithli, of \ merican eities—town railway stations. -whoa's, ....ma houses. and ad minist rat ive offices— were ellean and or pretent ions and noly. Only randy, as at Wa,ilifittton. and f'harle-ton. has there been until recent years even the ,elill;trice of any reeognition of the art of municipal plan ning, or of the inplatrtance of artistic treatment alike in the design and setting of pnblie buthdings. The rectangular street-plan was universally accepted as the ideal arrangement. Of late, with the general awakening of the art instinct in the l'inted States, stimulated by the object les sons afforded by several great 'expositions' (Chi cago, I Mutha. Buffalo), there has begun a wide
spread reform in municipal architecture, of which the new plan for the improvement of Washington, the proposed adoption of the 'group system' for the public buildings of Cleveland. Ohio, the new park system of Boston. and the proposed re modeling of the Chicago lake front. are a few out of many evidences. Itecent town halls. ex changes, university buildings (Columbia, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University, Leland Stanford, Jr., and california universities and others), public li hraries, court-houses, and railway stations in the United States are excellent structures, architec turally, and give promise that the ugliness of American cities is to be greatly mitigated if not done away with in the near future.