vigor and good judgment with which the Association conducted its work gave to it the full confidence of the very best men in the city (its real estate is held by a Board of Trustees, composed of such men as Stewart Brown, Robert L. Stuart, James Stokes, Charles C. Colgate, Robert Lenox Kennedy, Jonathan Sturges, and others), and the result was that in the summer of this year the building YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION BUILDING. was completed and thoroughly furnished at a cost of about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The building itself stands directly opposite the Academy of Design, on the south-west corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. It is acknowledged to be one of the finest specimens of the Renaissance order of architecture in the city. The roof is of the steep Mansard pattern, presenting towers of equal height at each corner of the building, and a larger tower (windowed) over the entrance (on Twenty-third Street), which is simple and elegant. The dimensions of the building are one hundred and seventy-five feet on Twenty-third Street, eightythree feet on Fourth Avenue, and ninety-seven feet at the rear. The material is New Jersey brown-stone and the yellowish marble from Ohio in almost equal parts, though on account of the latter composing the trimming material the brown stone gives the building the controlling air. The building contains twenty-five apartments in all, including gymnasium, library, lecture-rooms, offices, etc. Besides this general building, the Association has rooms at 76 Varick Street, One Hundred and Twenty-Second Street and Third Avenue, and at 97 Wooster Street, for colored young men. "Branching off along the same street, to the west of Fifth Avenue, will bring us to Booth's new theater, on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street. The building is in the Renaissance style of architecture, and stands seventy-five feet high from the sidewalk to the main cornice, crowning which is a Mansard roof of twentyfour feet. The theater proper fronts one hundred and forty-nine feet on Twenty-third Street, and is divided into three parts, so combined as to form an almost perfect whole, with arched entrances at either extremity on the side for the admission of the public, and on the other for another entrance and the use of actors and those employed in the house. There are three doors on the frontage, devised for securing the most rapid egress of a crowded audience in case of fire, and, in connection with other facilities, said to permit the building to be vacated in five minutes. On either side of these main entrances are broad and lofty windows; and above them, forming a part of the second story, are niches for statues, surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely-sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either side by quaintlycontrived blank windows; and between the columns, at the depths of the recesses, are simple pilasters, sustaining the elliptic arches, which will serve to span and top the niches, the latter to be occupied by statues of the great creators and interpreters of the drama in every age and country. The finest Concord granite, from the best quarries in New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire façade, as well as in the Sixth Avenue side. The interior --probably the most complete and elegant in the worldis equally deserving of notice. It is subdivided, architecturally speaking, into four heights. The first and lowermost embraces the parquet, circle, and orchestra seats, for the accommodation of eight hundred persons. The second tier is thrown into the dress-circle; the third constitutes the family circle; and the fourth embraces the gallery, or amphitheater. There is something of the French model suggested by the general effect of the interior, but there are many graceful and pleasing originalities. The stage is fifty-five feet in breadth, seventy-five feet in depth, fifty in total height, and is set in a beautiful ornamental framework, so as to give the effect of a gorgeously framed picture to the mise en scène. The boxes are tastefully arranged on either side of the stage; and all of the interior divisions and subdivisions unite in their construction the latest and most improved appliances for celerity and ease in the manifold operations of the entire company. |