annot get far enough
away for a proper estimate of the proportions. Any city might feel
proud to count amid its commercial architecture such features as the
entrance of the Phenix Building, the office of the American Express
Company, and the monumental Field Building, by Richardson, with what
Mr. Schuyler calls its grim utilitarianism of expression; and the same
praise might, perhaps, be extended to the Auditorium, the Owings
Building, the Rookery, and some others. In non-commercial architecture
Chicago may point with some pride to its City Hall, its University,
its libraries, the admirable Chicago Club (the old Art Institute), and
the new Art Institute on the verge of Lake Michigan. Of its churches
the less said the better; their architecture, regarded as a studied
insult to religion, would go far to justify the highly uncomplimentary
epithet Mr. Stead applied to Chicago.

In some respects Chicago deserves the name City of Contrasts, just as
the United States is the Land of Contrasts; and in no way is this more
marked than in the difference between its business and its residential
quarters. In the one--height, narrowness, noise, monotony, dirt,
sordid squalor, pretentiousness; in the other--light, space,
moderation, homelikeness. The houses in the Lake Shore Drive, the
Michigan Boulevard, or the Drexel Boulevard are as varied in style as
the brown-stone mansions of New York are monotonous; they face on
parks or are surrounded with gardens of their own; they are seldom
ostentatiously large; they suggest comfort, but not offensive
affluence; they make credible the possession of some individuality of
taste on the part of their owners. The number of massive round
openings, the strong rusticated masonry, the open loggie, the absence
of mouldings, and the red-tiled roofs suggest to the cognoscenti that
Mr. H.H. Richardson's spirit was the one which brooded most
efficaciously over the domestic architecture of Chicago. The two
houses I saw that were designed by Mr. Richardson himself are
undoubtedly not so satisfactory as some of his public buildings, but
they had at least the merit of interest and originality; some of the
numerous imitations were by no means successful.

The parks of Chicago are both large and beautiful. They contain not a
few very creditable pieces of sculpture, among which Mr. St. Gaudens'
statue of Lincoln is conspicuous as a wonderful triumph of artistic
genius over unpromising material. The show of flo