Copyright, by International News Service.
NEW YORK CITY HALL.
Classic Revival.
| OLD PINE STREET MARKET, PHILADELPHIA. | CARPENTERS’ HALL, PHILADELPHIA. |
nearly resembles the Georgian town houses that may yet be seen in quiet little English market towns. Very similar to this bit of Georgian excellence are the old Town Hall in Chester, Pennsylvania, and the Town Hall in Newcastle, Delaware.
In trying to form an adequate mental picture of the civic life of Colonial times, in relation to its architectural setting, we must not overlook the hostelries, theatres, schools and hospitals. The eighteenth century ordinary came into contact with the social and civic life of the period at every conceivable point. Thither came the most substantial citizens, there matters of public concern were discussed, meetings were held, entertainments were given, distinguished strangers were fêted and travellers found welcome hospitality. If one has a taste for poking about and nosing into out of the way nooks and corners, a voyage of discovery in some of our older cities will often be richly rewarded. On north Second street, in Philadelphia, one may still dive under arch-ways and find inn yards surrounded partly by balconied back buildings that stretch away in a string of offices and kitchens, partly by stables and waggon sheds. One almost feels that these inns have been transplanted bodily from old London, so like are they to their English prototypes and, we may incidentally add, in a much completer state of preservation. Just such inn yards as these served for theatres in Shakespeare’s day. It was from such inn yards, too, in the old staging days, that the mail coaches set out with cracking whip and blast of horn. The petty itinerant shows, that used to come occasionally to divert our Colonial forebears by the sight of a real live lion or bear or electric eel or any unusual creature that the showman had been able to acquire, availed themselves of the inn yards for exhibitions. In 1763, Elizabeth Drinker, then at Frankford, notes in her diary: “A lioness passed this road in ye morning. Paid 2d. for seeing her—a large ugly animal.” No doubt the “large ugly animal” had been previously exhibited in some of the inn yards on Second street, for out that thoroughfare passed all the traffic for New York and every place to the north.