, the Colonnade and Arcades,
New Theatres, Inns of Court, &c., &c. Many of these improvements have
resulted from the falling-in of long leases on the Colmore, the Grammar
School, and other estates, while others have been the outcome of a
far-seeing policy on the part of such moneyed men as the late Sir Josiah
Mason, Isaac Horton, and others of somewhat similar calibre. Going away
from the immediate centre of the town architectural improvements will be
noted on all hands, Snow Hill, for one place, being evidently in the
regenerative throes of a new birth, with its Gothic Arcade opposite the
railway station, and the new circus at the foot of the hill, where for
so many long years there has been nothing but a wreck and a ruin. In
close neighbourhood, Constitution Hill, Hampton Street, and at the
junction of Summer Lane, a number of handsome houses and shops have
lately been erected by Mr. Cornelius Ede, in the early Gothic style,
from designs by Mr. J.S. Davis, the architect of the Snow Hill Arcade,
the whole unquestionably forming a very great advance on many former
street improvements. The formation in 1880 of John Bright Street as an
extension of the Bristol Road (cost L30,000) has led to the erection of
many fine buildings in that direction; the opening-out of Meetinghouse
Yard and the alterations in Floodgate Street (in 1879, at a cost of
L13,500), has done much for that neighbourhood; the widening of
Worcester Street and the formation of Station Street, &c., thanks to the
enlargement of the Central Station, and the remodelling of all the
thoroughfares in the vicinity of Navition Street and Worcester Wharf,
also arising therefrom, are important schemes now in progress in the
same direction; and in fact there is hardly any district within the
borough boundaries in which improvements of more or less consequence are
not being made, or have been planned, the gloomy old burial grounds
having been turned into pleasant gardens at a cost of over L10,000, and
even the dirty water-courses known as the river Rea and Hockley brook
have had L12,000 worth of cleaning out bestowed upon them. It is not too
much to say that millions have been spent in improving Birmingham during
the past fifty years, not reckoning the cost of the last and greatest
improvement of all--the making of Corporation Street, and the consequent
alterations on our local maps resulting therefrom. The adoption of the
Artizans' Dwelling Act, under the provisions of