THE AMERICAN SURETY COMPANY’S BUILDING, NEW YORK.
THE AMERICAN SURETY COMPANY’S BUILDING, NEW YORK.
The general scheme of the Congressional Library was conceived by Smithmeyer & Pelz, the details carried out subsequently by General Casey and his able assistants and successors, and the building opened to the public in 1896. The experiment of the collaboration of sculptor and painter with the architect had resulted so favorably in Chicago, that the artists invited to decorate this building gladly responded; and although the remuneration was inconsiderable, their loyalty to the country, as to Art, resulted in such mural decoration as had not been seen since W. M. Hunt decorated the Senate Chamber in Albany, or La Farge did the figures in Trinity Church, Boston, and St. Thomas Church, New York. Blashfield’s dome, typifying all the nations of the earth; Vedder’s Minerva, in mosaic; H. O. Walker’s large lunettes, illustrating English poems, and Simmons’ small lunettes, filled with exquisite little figures, are but a few of the many interesting works in color. Two of the main entrance doors of bronze were modeled by Olin L. Warner, but he did not live to complete them. The marble stairway is by Martini, and the statues which adorn the main reading-room are by Adams, Bartlett, Partridge, Ward, and others.
The plan of the building is that of a central octagon containing the general reading-room, connected by wings containing the book-stacks with a surrounding hollow square containing rooms for special collections. There are ample reading-rooms for representatives, senators, and the public, and a tunnel by which books are sent to the Capitol. This is the last building of considerable importance constructed by the government, and it was built on time and within the appropriation of $6,000,000; it may be said to be dignified and suitable to its purpose, and to be representative of the people at the close of the century.
It now seems probable that New York will build the handsome library designed by Carrère & Hastings; the Egyptian lines of the reservoir occupying the site—emphasized by the varying hues of the ivy for so many seasons—will give place to those of an example of modern French Renaissance.
Among the changes incidental to the growth of this city is the recent disappearance of the old Tombs prison, which was another building of Egyptian architecture, good of its kind, and quite dignified and impressive.
There are certain other buildings designed in the style of a country almost as tropical as Egypt, and as light and airy as that is sombre and gloomy, but which seem quite as appropriate for their different purposes: they are the Casino Theatre and the Synagogue at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third Street,—each an excellent example of Saracenic architecture,—the former of brick and terra cotta, and the latter of vari-colored sandstones. Another synagogue, by Brunner & Tryon, further up the avenue and facing Central Park, has a decided Byzantine flavor,—the large arch accentuating the entrance, carrying a small arcade, and being surmounted by the traceried dome.