ADDRESS 



Delivered at the Opening of the Twenty-second Annual Fair. 



By Hon. Henry Meios. 



One year ago, ladies and gentlemen, from this place, our amiable 

 and talented brother, the Rev. M. Choules, opened the Twenty-first 

 Annual Fair. He complimented our good city for its ^^goodly houses^ 

 but added " that the country's good demands an edifice in New- York 

 adapted to the American Institute ; it ought to arise promptly, proudly 

 in our city." Within a few months afterwards the good man's wish 

 ■was accomplished. The iVmerican Institute has become ©wner of 

 No. 351 Broadway, with rooms eighty-five feet long by twenty-five 

 ■wide, the lower floor let for $3,000 per annum for five years. The 

 Institute paid in cash sixty thousand of your quarter-dollars and has 

 a few years to pay the balance, at six per cent interest ; the whole 

 purchase money being fijrty-five thousand dollars. So that you now 

 have a noble building free to all men, with its library and reading- 

 room and repository, free of expense. If the Institute should be 

 dissolved, which is about as near as the end of the Republic, each 

 member will find his share of property about double the amount of 

 all his payments to it. These rooms are conveniently situated as to 

 all our people and to all strangers, and we can proudly call it the 

 House of all. 



No patronage but yours has eflfected this. When the State of 

 New- York gave a charter to the Institute, that it should encourage 

 Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, and the Arts, the first steps 

 were those of a child ; but by the volunteer labor and talents of a 

 few hundred citizens, it has attained manhood ia the same time that it 

 is reached by a young man. At twenty-one years of age it becatne 



lAssembly, No. 199.1 20 



