on tower over the cross wings at each end. The
total frontage is some two hundred and seventy-five feet. It is of
reddish-brown brick, faced on the front of the first story of the main
building with gray marble, and pierced by two large round-topped windows
each side of a central doorway with a balustraded stoop and handsome
semicircular fanlight and side lights. Above, six Corinthian pilasters
support a beautifully detailed entablature at the eaves, from which
springs a pediment with ornamental oval window. Surmounting the hip roof
is a square superstructure of wood, paneled and painted white, above
which is a low octagonal belvedere platform with a huge, round
balustrade. Brick walls and an ornamental wistaria-clad iron fence
surround the grounds, and no visitor has entered the central gate since
La Fayette.

Within the building there is much splendid interior wood finish. Its
best feature, however, is the high, broad hall, with fluted Ionic
columns supporting a mutulary Doric entablature, leading back to a
double winding staircase, which is a marvelous work of art, combining
the simplicity and purity as well as the beauty of the middle Georgian
period. There are two landings on each flight, and from the spiral
newels at the bottom the balustrades with ramped rails and heavy, turned
balusters swing upward, as do the staircases, to the third floor. One
notes with interest the unusual outline of the brackets under the
overhang of the stair treads.

A few important public buildings of Philadelphia that were not erected
until early in the nineteenth century had their inception directly or
indirectly in the outgrowth of the War of Independence, and their
omission would render any treatise of the public buildings of the city
noticeably incomplete. Their inclusion here finds still further
justification in the fact that they are of classic architecture and so
to a degree in accord with Colonial traditions.

The Custom House, a classic stone structure, on the south side of
Chestnut Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, was built for the
second United States Bank, authorized by Congress in April, 1816,
because of the bad financial condition into which the government had
fallen during the War of 1812. The building was designed by William
Strickland, in his day the leading American architect, being modeled
after the Parthenon of Athens. It was completed in 1824 and was put to
its present use in 1845.

The main building of