PRIVATE ARCHITECTURE. 



These improvements, however, are confined, for the most part, to the dwellings of per- 

 sons in easy circumstances. Under the present system of extravagance, credit, and no 

 homestead exemption, the poor are tenants — and landlords build houses with reference to 

 the percentage of probable profits, and not to the convenience, health, or economy of 

 living of the occupants. Mean dwellings yield the highest rents in proportion to their 

 cost. Hence they abound. Their walls are thin as the lips of Avafice. How tenderly 

 the mason treats them until the joists are laid, which he hopes will hold them up! How 

 carefully the carpenter draws up his beams and rafters ! he fears to dash the shell of the 

 frail structure. How happy are both to finish up and have the bills settled before the 

 walls settle and crack! The tenant moves in. Luckless man ! he is an unwilling witness 

 to the family affairs of his neighbor, on either side of him. He hears all the loud tones, 

 noisy children, squeaking beds, and creaking shoes. If he could spare money, he would 

 present each of them with a carpet. He is afraid the walls are not solid, for they crack 

 at the partitions, and over the windows. He would fear to invite many friends into the 

 upper story. Foreigners find our family circles dull : they would have more dancing and 

 lively games. But, we ask, is this reasonable, when a Polka Redowa makes the house 

 shake, and an old-fashioned contra dance might land the whole family in the streets, 

 under an indefinite quantity of shivered household gods, lath and plaster, and roof- 

 timbers? There is not one tenant house in five that stands two years without cracked 

 walls. In conflagrations, they come crashing down, as soon as joists and rafters are 

 burnt through ; sometimes sooner. How many valuable lives have been lost in our city 

 owing to this cause! As we write, the loved and honored dead pass in solemn review 

 before our mind's eye. The hands we pressed, and the forms we admired, were crushed 

 under the smouldering masses of brick and mortar. We have aided in digging their dis- 

 figured remains from heaps of rubbish. Why should our laws give the right to set man 

 traps on every lot ? 



Our style of building is fairly open to the charge of monotony. The German emigrant 

 as he leaves Antwerp or Havre, takes a lingering look at their slated roofs meeting at 

 every angle, shooting up into pinnacles, or sloping to the lower story, their steep sides 

 relieved by dormer windows — at their irregular buildings, with the lights and shadows 

 playing about their angles — the arched gateways — the niched and sculptured facades, 

 with their mullioned window^, arched at every angle, trefoil, eliptical, round or oblong, 

 in rich variety, and running up into gable ends or turrets, as the taste of the architect 

 may have dictated. He will not see such a sight when he lands at New York, nor when 

 he reaches Philadelphia. View Market street, from the Schuylkill Bridge, and each side 

 looks like a block of buildings, its straght top line broken only by the rising at intervals 

 of an additional story. All the houses are oblong squares ; the visible section of each 

 roof is of the same shape ; each presents the same dripping eave ; doors, windows, sills 

 and shutters are all square. They are almost as uniform as a row of brick* set up on 

 end. We say " almost," for there are a few, of recent construction, upon which the eye 

 reposes with pleasure. These owe their attractiveness to the variety of form exhibited 

 in windows, doors and front, and to the relief of the facade, by columns and other 

 ornamentation. The streets devoted to private residences are scarcely more varied. 

 There is an endless repetition of the square window, door and front, and the " three-story 

 front and two-stoi-y back." Unless you know a street well, it is ten to one that you mis- 

 take it for another. There are whole blocks in which the houses resemble each other as 

 closely as pigeon holes. A tenant of one shall enter another, hang up his hat, make him- 

 home in the parlor, ring for tea, scold the hired girl, and not discover his mistake 

 he asks why his wife don't come to kiss him 



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