Notes and Reviews 
P HYSICAL changes in American cities 
embody tasks as complex as men bearing 
the name of architects have ever been called 
upon to solve. In the design of great rail¬ 
way terminals especially are the complications 
new and seemingly without number. The 
new Washington terminal is perhaps the 
simplest of any of these. In that city the 
space is not so restricted as elsewhere and, 
while street grades must be changed by the 
engineers, the architectural problem is mainly 
confined to one ground level. The new Penn¬ 
sylvania Railroad station in New York is other¬ 
wise and is conditioned by paradoxes. A few 
of what may be termed its “architectural im¬ 
possibilities” are these: to design a building 
the main floor of which is forty-two feet below' 
the ground; to provide means for great num¬ 
bers of people to traverse that distance without 
depending on elevators, and to do so not 
onlv conveniently but with unconscious ease; 
to provide entrance and egress for people 
and regiments of people,—yes, and for in¬ 
animate objects, no less insistent and cum¬ 
brous than trains, baggage vans, automobiles 
and carriages innumerable. And these, be it 
remembered, arrive from many directions, 
from under the river, from under the street 
and the street itself, as from subway, surface 
and elevated road,—from everywhere indeed 
but from above,whence comes alone the inspi¬ 
ration which shall solve these needs and blend 
and harmonize such various elements. 
T HE New York terminal is, nevertheless, 
a passenger station onlv, and as such it has 
at least one plea of simplicity. In Chicago 
thirty million dollars is announced as the 
appropriation which shall secure an improve¬ 
ment of similar importance for that city. But 
it is an improvement which shall also accom¬ 
modate railway freight and railway storage. 
The Union Depot is to be enlarged as part 
of an improvement extending from Van Bu- 
ren Street to Madison, from Clinton Street 
to the River. Nor is it a railway terminal 
alone that is to be erected. A boulevard must 
be spanned, a tunnel built under the river 
and connection made with an elevated road. 
Several streets must be raised, others widened, 
a passenger terminal must be built, above it 
an eleven storey office building, adjoining it 
a large cold storage and supply plant and 
enormous bonded warehouses. All of this is 
to be one architectural scheme covering seven 
blocks ; a structural undertaking which shall 
be done without interrupting the traffic of five 
trunk railroads and evading always the mis¬ 
chievous waters of the river. Reduced to the 
simplest architectural terms, it is the design 
of a railway terminal, an office building, a 
vast warehouse, a power plant and a water¬ 
front— all rolled into one. 
B UFFALO also is to have a new Union 
Depot whose size may be measured in a 
way by the fifteen millions to be spent upon 
it. The Jersey City terminals present the 
yet different problem of connecting by means 
of subways and tunnels the five termini now 
separated from New York by the ferries. 
W E have seen projects proposed by the 
most imaginative of people as feats of 
academic design, theses whose scope is broad, 
elevating the human mind, and whose aim 
is that architectural concepts shall embellish 
lands and unite divers peoples. We re¬ 
member one in particular, a proposal to aca¬ 
demicians to unite two countries by eternaliz¬ 
ing the traditions of each at a frontier in the 
Alps, to link them by a monumental structure 
springing from two lofty heights. Those 
were projects unfooted in reality and never to 
be built. They called on sentiment to spin a 
web amid the clouds. 'These schemes of ours 
here in America call to quite a different sort 
of fancy; that which gives quick realization. 
Our projects have been started today and are 
to be finished in the stone tomorrow. 'They 
link, if not separate nations, the vital parts 
of a great one. Daring of attempt, beneficent 
in their promise of convenience, they call 
together all the resources of modern times 
in a way that is keenlv practical, yet in a new 
light, as noble and picturesque, — as poetic 
indeed,—as any flights of the imagination 
taken by the French teachers who are sup¬ 
posed to be leading us into the way of archi¬ 
tecture. 
