SUN-DIAL, GRACE CHURCH RECTORY, NEW YORK CITY.
a superabundance of wealth, she could not have gratified a sentiment wherein a sinister and selfish side out-weighs its virtue. You see, how very few of us may be trusted with money! For it would have been a so much finer monument to Mr. Ward had this house been bestowed by his legatee upon some poorer though deserving couple whom the Lord had destined to be of use to Him:—it would have been infinitely better dedicated as a museum of the Transitional period for its didactic benefit to art students; but I fear I am the only human being, excepting the care-takers perhaps, who has derived any tangible satisfaction from No. 23 Bond street since the sad dénouement which closed it so tightly to the busy stream of life constantly passing. [6]
I suppose the finest specimen of Transitional domestic architecture extant in the United States is the Bennett house on County Street in New Bedford ([see Plate LI], also Frontispiece), erected about 1840, for a full description of which I would respectfully refer the reader to the Architectural Review (Boston) for July, 1901. There is nothing disappointing about this Transitional exemplar; it was one of those grateful notes of hope at a season of national melancholia. Wonderfully imposing from its great size, it will grieve the reader to learn that the magnificent pile is already crumbling from lack of appreciation, and it will not be long before the dealer in second-hand building materials carries it away, piece by piece, to his yard, so little do the people of New Bedford care for the most interesting building by far that their city possesses to-day. The Bennett house is the only successful adaptation of the Greek-temple motive, pur et simple, to domestic purposes that has come to my knowledge.
And here I want to say a single word about restoration. If by any chance you live in a house of the Transitional period that illustrates as good architecture
HOUSE OF MRS. RICHMOND-DOW, WARREN, R. I.
