of the floor into blocks or squares, with spacious avenues entirely around them. The principal nave and its parallel aisles were likewise intersected by the main and two subordinate transepts, dividing the central space of the ground-floor into nine great squares, free from columnar support, and embracing an area of over a hundred and seventy-three thousand square feet. The entire area of the groundfloor was eight hundred and seventy-two thousand three hundred. and twenty square feet; of the floors in the projections, thirtyseven thousand three hundred and forty-four feet; of the tower floors, twenty-six thousand three hundred and forty-four feet;-making an aggregate area of nine hundred and thirty-six thousand and eight square feet, or twenty-one and forty-seven hundredths acres! The ground-floor proper covered a space of a little more than twenty acres.*

The building was chiefly of iron and glass, and contained a mass of material unprecedented in the history of architecture. The outer walls were carried up in brick-work to the height of seven feet from the foundations, which consisted of stone piers of the most substantial masonry. Above the brick-work the panels between the columns of support were occupied with glazed sash, sections of which were movable for purposes of ventilation. The roof was of tin, laid solidly on boards of pine; and the exterior ornaments-abounding on all the corners, angles, and towers-were of galvanized iron. The columns of interior support―numbering six hundred and seventy-two, and ranging from twenty-three to one hundred and twenty-five feet in length-were of rolled iron, and had an aggregate weight of two million two hundred thousand pounds. The roof trusses and girders were of the same material, and weighed about five million pounds. No less than seven million feet of lumber were used in the construction of the building. * A comparison of the leading Centennial buildings (in respect of dimensions) with other famous edifices may prove of interest.

The water and drainage pipes-laid for the most part underneath the floor-were four miles in length. Light-whether streaming through acres of stained and fretted glass by day, or blazing from thousands of gas-jets and burnished reflectors by night-was equally and abundantly distributed. Hydrants-everywhere and ever full-promised security against the destroyer.

Such were the principal features of the largest, if not the most imposing, edifice in the world. The general effect, notwithstanding the immense size of the building, was especially airy and pleasing. Happy proportions and the regularity of irregularity reduced the apparent dimensions of the mammoth pavilion till the vision was nowhere oppressed with a sense of cumbrous outlines or heaviness of structure. In practical adaptation to the purposes for which it was designed, the building was all that could be desired; and in its effect upon that sense-call it by what name you will-which takes cognizance of the sublime and beautiful, there was small room for caviling and criticism. From the great towers and observatories, rising grandly above the roof, the eye of the beholder, sweeping around the horizon, drank in without fatigue the historic outline of the surrounding country and the midsummer glories of Fairmount Park. Here wound the Schuylkill. Yonder was Laurel Hill, where Elisha Kent Kane sleeps in an uninscribed grave on the rocky hillside. No need of epitaphs for such as him! Farther on there came a glimpse of Germantown, where through the fogs and desolations of that forbidding October day-dawn a hundred years ago the greatest man of all history, at the head of his ragged and half-starved army, struggled against the foe. Here to the east, spreading away from the very feet of the beholder to the distant rolling Delaware, and right and left to the skirts of the horizon, slumbered under the summer sun the old City of Penn, where in those same heroic days, now gliding dreamily into the shadows of the past, Adams and Jefferson and Franklin did the bravest deed in the civil history of the human race. Such were the thrilling associations which clustered around the great Centennial Building. Only one melancholy reflection arose to trouble the soul of the beholder: the grand edifice was designed only as a temporary structure-meant to subserve the fleeting purposes of the International Exhibition.

The building second in importance, though not in size, among the Centennial structures, was the Memorial Hall, or Art Gallery. It stands upon a broad terrace in the Lansdowne Plateau, at the distance of two hundred and fifty feet from the north projection of the

Main Building, and a hundred and sixteen feet above the level of the Schuylkill. The structure is of iron, granite, and glass, and is in that modern style of architecture called the Renaissance. The building is in the form of a rectangular parallelogram, and is three hundred and sixty-five feet in length, two hundred and ten feet wide, and fifty-nine feet in height above a twelve-foot basement of stone. The dome, also rectangular in form, rises a hundred and fifty feet above the terrace, and is surmounted with a colossal bell bearing a magnificent statue of the goddess America, cast in zinc, twenty-three and a half feet in height, and weighing six thousand pounds. At the four corners of the base of the dome are seated other statues representing the four quarters of the globe. The floor of the main hall below has an area of more than a half acre, and is capable of accommodating eight thousand spectators at one time. In its architectural elements the building embraces hints derived from many styles, some of which -as, for instance, the arcades-date back as far as the villas of Ancient Rome; but the general effect is that of unity, elegance, and grandeur.

The Centennial surroundings of Memorial Hall were appropriate and striking. Before the main entrance and on either hand were stationed two colossal bronze pegasi curbed by the Muses. On the southwest angle of the terrace a group of statuary, also in bronze, represented the firing of a mortar and the flight of the shell, watched by the men of the battery; while on the southeast angle a corresponding group depicted a dying lioness, surrounded by her whelps and guarded by her lord. Opposite the main entrances of the edifice the terrace was ascended by flights of stone steps, spacious and grand; and the beholder, when for the first time he reached the plateau, found himself face to face with an edifice among the most novel and beautiful in the New World. As he stood midway between the site of the Main Building and Memorial Hall, he saw, on the one hand, a mammoth structure designed for the exhibition of all things practical, utilitarian, and profitable among the products of thought and application; and, on the other, a temple fit for the repose and revelation of all things ideal, beautiful, and sublime among the trophies of human genius.

The Art Gallery was built at a cost of a million five hundred thousand dollars. The funds for this purpose were the joint contribution of Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania. The building was designed as a permanent structure, affording for present time a suitable gallery for the Fine Art display of the International Exhibition, and, in its final purpose, becoming a national memorial of the

After the close

Centennial year. of the Exposition, the edifice was converted, according to the purpose of its founders, into a receptacle for the Pennsylvania Museum of Industrial Art,-an institution similar to that of South Kensington, in London. When the other structures, many in purpose and fashion, which the Centennial celebration had caused to spring up in Fairmount Park, were struck from their foundations-disappearing even as they came, like an exhalation of the night,-Memorial Hall, with its higher purpose and destiny, was happily preserved for after ages as an enduring monument of the artistic taste and patriotism of the American people.

In its general plan and outline Machinery Hall was similar to the Main Exposition Building, and only second thereto in dimensions. The ground-plan was a rectangular parallelogram fourteen hundred and two feet in length, and three hundred and sixty feet in width. On the south side the central transept of the main hall projected into an Annex, two hundred and eight feet in depth by two hundred and ten feet in breadth. On the north the front of the principal structure was on a right line with the corresponding front of the Main Building, and the two edifices were separated by an intervening space or promenade of only five hundred and forty-two feet; so that, glancing from the east end