| PLATE V | COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, NEW YORK CITY |
Taking next the second comparative table, we find that in the "First" and "Second" lists taken together, 20 per cent of the names are those of government or administrative buildings; 15 per cent are churches, with the same number of libraries (three of each, all on the "First" list). There are two each of museums, club houses and private residences; and one each of office buildings, hotels, and amusement houses. Here again we encounter the same breadth of judgment as in the first comparison. The Brochure readers, and presumably our architects generally, are willing to discover beauty alike in public, private, religious, and commercial architecture.
It is a significant fact that churches and libraries constitute 60 per cent of the "First" list, and that there is but one residence, and not a single commercial edifice among the ten buildings it enumerates. Apparently it is religion and education which inspire and call forth the highest results in architecture, rather than the private and commercial luxury of which we hear so much in these days. If to these sources of architectural inspiration we add that of civil government, it appears that we owe 80 per cent of the "First" list to government, religion and education—the three highest activities of the community. This is not merely due to the fact that the architectural requirements of churches and civic buildings are such as favor monumental results; for both in size and cost, and hence in the opportunity for an ample and sumptuous architectural treatment, these are often surpassed by banking and office buildings, private palaces and rich men's clubs. The presence of three truly magnificent public libraries of recent erection in the "First" list seems to me particularly encouraging, as a symptom of the extent to which the wealth of the country is being devoted to the higher interests of the people, and at the same time to the promotion of high art. That this is a correct symptom, is confirmed by such buildings, erected or about to be erected, as the Chicago Library, the magnificent New York Public Library, the new libraries at Milwaukee, Providence, Newark, N.J., Jersey City, and Washington; by the Art Museum at Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery at Washington, the new wing to the Metropolitan Museum at New York, the Phebe Hearst competition for the University of California, and other like enterprises. The most important architectural enterprises in New York today are the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the vast palace of the Brooklyn Institute, of which a new wing is about to be erected. Evidently our art has not fallen wholly a prey to commercialism and private luxury.
The geographical distribution of the buildings chosen is interesting. In 1885 but three out of ten were in New York City, and Albany stood ahead of Boston. In the "First" list New York has one-half of the ten, and in the "First" and "Second" lists, jointly, nine out of twenty buildings. Boston and Washington divide the second place, with two each on the "First" list. In the two lists together there are nine cities and towns represented, of which five are in the northeastern states, with fourteen out of twenty buildings; one in the nearer west (Chicago); and three in the south (if we include Washington among southern cities). Of course the fact that New York, Boston and Washington are old cities, as cities go among us, counts for much in the way of maturity of civilization and accumulation of architectural resources; and it is only natural that the wealthiest city in the New World should possess the greatest number of important buildings. But it is also very possible that the majority of the Brochure readers are in the northern and eastern states, and therefore more familiar with eastern and northern than with southern and western buildings. Allowing for this, they may draw their own conclusions from this table.
| CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, APPROACH | WASHINGTON |