Page:The Academy Of the Fine Arts and Its Future, Edward Hornor Coates, 24 January 1890.djvu/8

 the blind forces of nature nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin," but Greece was in the architectural mind, and the buildings of the Girard Bank, the Custom House, formerly the Bank of the United States, the Exchange, and the United States Mint were the outcome. Later this idea culminated for the time in the building for Girard College, but to-day, after an interval of nearly fifty years, that splendid edifice stands, with the captiol at Washington, the finest flower of pure architecture on this continent.

The Academy building of 1806 was destroyed by fire in 1845, and was reconstructed by Richard A. Gilpin in 1846. As so restored we remember it as of yesterday, the severe and classic marble building, with its twin Ionic pillars, and its flight of white steps approached from Chestnut Street through the long Court paved with flags. The busts of Franklin by Ceracchi and of Napoleon after Canova are on either side as we near the entrance, and in the corner of the court yard, neglected and obscure, with the boughs of the great white hawthorn tree above it, is the antique and headless Ceres, with its dignified pose and exquisite lines of drapery, which now appeals to all lovers of the beautiful from the front of the Broad Street building.

In 1870 the building on Chestnut Street, in order to prepare for increased accommodation, was sold to the American Theatre, and the Chestnut Street Opera House now stands upon the site. The present Academy building, designed by Furness and Hewitt, and dedicated to noble uses in the first year of the Nation's second century, is one of the most commodious, as well as the best adapted for its purposes of art education and art exhibition, which has been constructed in the United States. 8