Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/659

 ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES. 6oi The abnormal progress of American industries during the last 25 years, the general use of lifts and fireproof construction, and the cost of land has caused the erection of many important town buildings of great height. In some the walls have been constructed of a framework of steel, svipporting masonry brick or terra-cotta inclosing walls Such buildings are essentially modern in character, but are not necessarily ugly in design. Among the most important are the Gavvick (ScJiilicr) Theatre, Chicago (No. 264), by Messrs. Adler and Sullivan, a most successful and chaste design as applied to a high building, which is in reality a tower, The Monadnock Building and the Masonic Temple at Chicago, by Messrs. Burnham and Root. The Ames Building and Tremoiit Temple in Boston; Madison Square Theatre in New York, and the enormous buildings of the leading newspapers, insurance offices and trusts are notable. Domestic Architecture. — The houses of small type have been very successfully treated, wood being largely employed in the country districts. The plan of these houses often shows great originality, the staircase, sitting-hall, piazza, and a picturesque grouping of steep roofs being main features. Among later buildings of note are 5. John the Divine, New York ; President Granfs Tomb, Riverside Drive, New York ; Chicago Public Library, by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge ; Congressional Library at Washington, by Petz, Smithmeyer and Green ; Neic York Public Library, by Carrere and Hastings ; the State House, Providence, by McKim, Mead and White ; University of Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia (various buildings), by Cope and Stewardson ; Libraries at Wash- ington and Atlantic City, by Ross and Ackermann ; the Ponce de Leon Hotel at Florida, in the Spanish Renaissance style, by Carrere and Hastings, and the Boston Public Library, a modern Renaissance design by McKim, Mead and White, which has had a good deal of influence in the designing of recent library buildings. The same architects have erected very scholarly and refined buildings at the Columbia University at New York. The designs of the various buildings for the Chicago Exposi- tion (1893) differed largely from expectation. Many looked for some new development in either iron or terra-cotta, or perhaps wood alone, being in a country which is the centre of the lumber market ; but " extremes meet," and an exposition of architecture on the wilds of the western prairie turned out to be a collection of well-studied Parisian designs. It is to be hoped that the initiative element will not cause these great Classic designs to be reproduced elsewhere for town halls, museums and other buildings, but that iVmerican architects, already advancing so rapidly along certain new lines of departure, will value the lessons they teach without copying their exact