The Evolution of the Street—IV. 
THE ESCOLTA, THE PRINCIPAL STREET OF MANILA 
An ancient street being readjusted according to American ideas 
tween the early street plan and the building 
is thus plainly manifest. 
We may note that in a hundred years the 
architecture of the street has changed not 
less than the street upon which it fronts. 
With the swift influx of a cosmopolitan pop¬ 
ulation, the repose and harmony of a single 
style has passed, and the buildings represent 
as genuine a mixture as there is now among 
the people who crowd the anciently deserted 
way. 
A block up State Street hill, the camera 
preserves a scene that happily represents a 
street in progress, as well as the evolution of 
a hundred years. It shows what the devel¬ 
opment has been and pictures its continu¬ 
ance. The block pavement, much preferable 
to the cobblestones as it is, is cut by cross¬ 
walks that the tender feet of modern pedes¬ 
trians may feel no unpleasant change even 
when they leave the sidewalk to cross the 
road. In the foreground are mail boxes, 
both for letters and packages. On the fur¬ 
ther corner an electric light hangs from an 
ornamented pole of iron. Trolley cars are 
hurrying by ; and if before us there is an 
ugly row of telegraph poles and a mesh of 
wires overhead, behold in the middle dis¬ 
tance the fine pavement of the street torn 
up and a gang of men at work laying con¬ 
duits for the burial of wires! There is pic¬ 
tured strikingly the advance 
of a hundred years,—for Al¬ 
bany having been settled for 
many generations when the 
nineteenth century began, the 
streets of 1802 were not the 
streets of merely a town be¬ 
ginning,— and there is pic¬ 
tured a street still in the mak¬ 
ing, while we yet are able to 
foresee a better street. 
This sums up perhaps, as 
well as anv example would,the 
evolution of the typical Ameri¬ 
can street—strictlv national in 
the cosmopolitanism of its 
architecture, in the ready ac¬ 
ceptance of every device for 
the acceleration of business 
and for the facilitation of liv¬ 
ing, and in its preference in 
the matter of time for the ob¬ 
viously useful rather than the beautiful. 
The American street has made some progress 
toward dignity and majesty ; and we can see 
that shortly it will make much more, for this 
progress has as yet been incidental. It is 
only now beginning to be sought for con- 
sistently. 
To reenforce the judgment, we may turn 
to Manila, to find an old time street in the 
process of readjustment to American ideas. 
We shall find the principal street still lined 
with flimsy Oriental structures, picturesque 
with their overhanging upper stories, their 
tiled roofs, and curious latticed walls, and 
harmonious in their uniformity. But we 
shall find the street modernly paved, with 
provisions for rapid transit. We shall find it 
electricallv lighted; and business, with aggres¬ 
sive advertisements, elbowing picturesqueness 
as much out of sight as it can,—not that 
picturesqueness is loved less, but trade is 
loved more. We shall find much respect 
for the ease and convenience of travel, for 
sanitation and for safety, but no time as yet to 
attend to thoughts of the beauty of the way. 
Yet we can see that when, at last, beauty 
does come to an American street, it will be 
on a strong and rational foundation. 
In the development of a typical English 
street, beauty seems to the eyes of an Ameri¬ 
can to have been an earlier step. And even the 
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