I5T 
 
 r 
 
 J^ 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster. LL.D., 
 
 ^jfiing of llje Cornifr %\i\\t 
 
 NEW PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 July 4, 1874. 
 

 
 
 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster. LL.D., 
 
 ^4gi«{) 0f ifj^ mm^t %imt 
 
 NEW PUBEIC BUIEDINGS, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 July 4, 1874. 
 
HENRY B. ASHM^AI), PRINTER, 
 
 llOi ANU 1104 SANSOM STKEIiT, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 ■%(i^ 
 
 ? 
 
OFFICE OF THE 
 COMMISSIONERS FOR I'HE ERECTION OF THE I'UliLlC BU1LDINC;S. 
 
 Philadelphia, July 7, 1874. 
 Hon. Benjamin Harris Brewster. 
 My Dear Sir: 
 
 It affords me great pleasure, on behalf of the Commissioners, to request for 
 publication a copy of the admirable Address delivered by you on the 4th inst., at 
 the laying of the Corner Stone. The Commissioners feel under obligation to you 
 for the research and labor expended in the preparation of the Address, which pro- 
 duced a marked impression on all who were so favored as to hear it, and cannot fail 
 to go far towards satisfying the public mind of the necessity, expediency and wisdom 
 of this great undertaking as it is now in process of accomplishment. The tone of 
 thorough and heartfelt loyalty to your native city, and the full appreciation of its 
 advantages and greatness which pervaded the whole Address, must have a most use- 
 ful and salutary influence. 
 
 Trusting that an early and favorable response may be accorded to the above 
 
 request, 
 
 I remain, very truly and respectfully yours, 
 
 Samuel C. Perkins, 
 
 Presidejit of the Commissioners. 
 
 Philadelphia, 13th July, 1S74. 
 To Samuel C. Perkins, Esq., 
 
 President of the Commissioners 
 
 for the Erection of the Public Buildings. 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I have been absent from town, or you should have had an earlier answer to 
 your polite note of July 7th. I thank you and the Commissioners most cordially 
 for the kind manner in which they make the request of me, and with this I send to 
 you for publication the Address as asked for. 
 
 I am, with great respect, your friend, 
 
 Benjamin Harris Brewster. 
 
At the conclusion of the Masonic Ceremonies with which the 
 Corner Stone was laid^ 
 
 Mr. Brewster delivered the following Address. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : These solemn ceremonies having 
 been performed, it is now my duty to say some few words, explaining 
 the history and purpose of this great public work. One hundred and 
 eighty years ago, when this city and this province were a wilderness, 
 William Penn, then the proprietor, dedicated this very spot of ground as 
 the suitable site for the public buildings of his projected city. That 
 such was his act, and such his purpose, has been judicially established 
 as a legal and historic fact ; and now we perform the conditions of the 
 grant, and honestly apply the gift to the object of the trust, obeying the 
 intentions of our provident benefactor. 
 
 For many years this city has been unprovided with buildings suitable 
 for the convenient performance of the usual and necessary public business. 
 
 Before the consolidation of the city, as created by Penn, we were 
 surrounded with outlying incorporated municipalities. Then the busi- 
 ness of each and all was transacted with reasonable convenience in the 
 old municipal buildings, and in the halls that had been erected in the dis- 
 tricts and townships of the county, but even then the accommodations 
 were wanting for the growing necessities of our courts. Year after 
 year the officers of the county (then a separate and distinct corpora- 
 tion with its own organization and officials), were driven to adopt expe- 
 dients to supply the courts with convenient apartments. At one time 
 the Supreme Court was held in the Hall of Independence, at another 
 time the Supreme Court, Nisi Prius, was placed in the chapter room of 
 the old, abandoned iMasonic Hall, Chestnut Street, above Seventh. 
 During those days the necessities for such buildings for general public 
 uses were few. Since then new and great departments have grown out 
 of what were subordinate clerkships of public employment. 
 
 Day by day the want of proper apartments pressed upon the courts 
 and interfered with the administration of justice. Day by day the same 
 want crowded the officials of the city and the people who had business 
 with them. There was hardly a county of any importance in the State 
 that had not buildings larger in proportion to their wants, by a hundred 
 fold, than our crowded and narrow rooms. Different plans had been 
 projected and suggested for supplying this want. From many causes 
 they all failed. Sometimes the fear of the cost hindered the prosecution 
 of the purpose. Then the selection of the locality was in the way, and 
 
then the choice of the means by which it was to be done. At last the 
 Legislature of the Commonwealth hnally resolved, and by an act, ap- 
 proved 5th of August, 1870, provided "for the erection of all of the 
 public buildings required to accommodate the courts, and for all muni- 
 cipal purposes in the city of Philadelphia." That act created the Com- 
 mission now in charge of this duty, and gave the people of the city the 
 privilege of indicating, by popular vote, whether the buildings should be 
 at Washington Square or at Penn Square, where we now are, and where 
 we have this day witnessed the laying of the corner stone of one of the 
 most majestic and useful structures that adorn, or have adorned, any city 
 of the world. May ir last for ever ! 
 
 After the passage of this act a heated and almost angry opposition was 
 excited ; a series of litigations ensued ; applications were made to the 
 Legislature ; resistance was attempted in the City Councils, and the ele- 
 ments of the most vehement partisan prejudices were used to frustrate the 
 law or secure its repeal. Then some of us regretted this opposition. 
 Some thought it too personal, too violent. But since it h s passed away 
 all are reconciled, and believe that it was for the best. Such an event, 
 conflicting as it did, with so many convictions and interests, must excite 
 opposition, and those who resisted had a right to be heard, and fully heard, 
 before all of the tribunals, popular, legislative, and judicial. These con- 
 tentions delayed the action of the commission for any practical result for 
 full a year. After that, all those obstructions being removed, it proceeded 
 to act as the law commanded, as the people had directed, and as the courts 
 had adjudged. What we now do is the product of that action. On the 
 7th of January, 1871, the work was first begun, by the removal of the 
 iron railings which enclosed the four squares or plots of ground, into 
 which the city had converted the whole, in the year 1828, for the pur- 
 pose of running Market and Broad Streets through the original plot. 
 Before that the place had been left as it was originally set apart — one 
 entire square — and in that state had been occupied, at different times, 
 and in different parts of it, by a Friends' meeting-house, and by the first 
 water-works established and used for conveying Schuylkill water to the 
 old city. I remember the small, neat building that graced the centre. 
 I think it was designed by Latrobe, the famous architect, who adorned 
 our city with some of its most beautiful structures, and who left the 
 Capitol buildings at Washington as the highest achievement of his 
 genius. The very columns that embellished its front now support the 
 pediment of the Unitarian Church, at the corner of Tenth and Locust 
 Streets. The bisection of this plot, by these highways, was for the 
 purpose of temporary public convenience, and to accommodate the rail- 
 
7 
 
 ways that were then for the first time introduced, and whose direct 
 access to the city proper was considered to be of great importance to its 
 trade and languishing commerce. With the growth of population and 
 the changes of events that has passed away, indeed the necessity now is 
 to remove the railways from the thickly-peopled parts, where they are a 
 dangerous obstruction to trade and the ordinary pursuits of the thousands 
 who throng their crowded ways. It was at most but a temporary occu- 
 pation and license, revocable at will, if it were not an unauthorized and 
 illegal intrusion. 
 
 On the loth of August, 1871, the ground was broken by John Rice, 
 Esq., then president of the Board of Commissioners, and the first stone 
 of the foundation was laid at 2 o'clock, p. M., on the 12th day of August, 
 A. D. 1872. The closing of the streets and p'acing the building in the 
 centre of the plot was the subject of much discussion in the Commission 
 itself. By some it was wished that the streets should remain open, and the 
 four plots should each contain a structure ; but the final resolution of the 
 Commission was, and is, to place it and keep it where it was intended 
 by Penn that it should be put — in the centre of the whole ten acres. 
 And with this conclusion, I believe, most men now concur. It is the 
 only place where a building of suitable dignity can stand to display its 
 parts in all the beauty of their architectural effect. It will adorn, and 
 not blemish, the highways at whose intersection it is placed, and it will 
 give an air of majesty and grandeur to these long and broad avenues. 
 It is not put in a corner, hidden from view, but it stands out in bold and 
 high relief, commanding admiration. It is placed, as other and similar 
 great structures are, as the centre of human concourse from which all 
 things radiate and to which all things converge. It is surrounded by a 
 grand avenue 135 feet wide, on the southern and eastern and western 
 fronts, and 205 feet wide on the northern front. Neither the view nor 
 wav is hindered by it. Ihe view is improved, the effect being magni- 
 fied — and the way is widened into open spaces of unusual dimensions, 
 but of proportions that harmonize with the magnitude of the building, 
 and answer the convenience of the multitude that will be drawn here to 
 transact public and private affairs. Had the buildings been divided and 
 placed on the four squares, the cost would have been increased and their 
 beauty lost, while the inconvenience to the public would have been 
 great, and the expense of maintaining them with light and heat and 
 water, and the other necessaries, would have been largely multiplied. 
 The highways would have been smaller and narrower and less conve- 
 nient. In this, as in all that has been done, these Commissioners have 
 wisely followed, not forced, the general public judgment. Mr. John 
 
McArthur, Jr., of this city, who had before this been engaged in pre- 
 paring all the previous plans, which had been the subject of public con- 
 sideration for many years, was chosen the architect, and his plan adopted. 
 That has been submitted to the public, and it, too, has been justly 
 applauded and approved, I shall not here undertake to describe it by a 
 multitude of words, which can only degenerate into mere rhetorical 
 expletives, and would therefore be unsuitable as well as vulgar. This 
 much, however, I must speak. It is suited for its purpose, it is of suffi- 
 cient size to answer future wants. It is admirable in its ornaments, while 
 the whole effect is one of massive dignity, worthy of us and our posterity. 
 
 I will here give the dimensions, and a few of the details of this re- 
 markable structure. It is 470 feet from east to west, and 486^ feet 
 from north to south, covering an area, exclusive of the court-yard, of 
 nearly four and a half acres. It is probably larger than any single 
 building on this continent. The superstructure consists of a basement 
 story, 18 feet in height, a principal story, of 36 feet, and an upper story, 
 of 31 feet, surmounted by another of 15 feet. The small rooms open- 
 ing upon the court-yard are each sub-divided in height into two stories, 
 for the purpose of making useful all the space. The several stories 
 will be approached by four large elevators, placed at the intersections of 
 the leading corridors, to make easy the intercourse of citizens with 
 courts, public offices, and departments of city government. In addition 
 to these means of access there will be a grand staircase in each of the 
 four corners of the building, and one in each of the ce.ntre pavilions on 
 the north, south, west and east fronts. The entire structure will con- 
 tain five hundred and twenty rooms, of suitable dimensions, and fitted 
 with every possible convenience, including heat, light, and ventilation, 
 and the whole is to be absolutely fire-proof and indestructible. All of 
 the departments now existing will be abundantly supplied, and a vast 
 amount of surplus room will be left for judicial and other city archives, 
 as well as afford room for all of our growing wants. This is as it ought 
 to be. We provide for the present urgent wants, and protect the people 
 hereafter from those inconveniences under which we now sufl^er, and which 
 expose our records to ruin and decay, while they seriously obstruct and 
 hurt all branches of business and public duty. It is computed that the 
 entire cost of this work will be near ten millions of dollars, and that it 
 will be completed in ten years from the day when the first spadeful of 
 earth was removed. 
 
 To judge of its massive size, I will give you an account of what 
 materials have been consumed in constructing the foundation and the 
 parts of the superstructure you now see before you : 74,000 cubic feet 
 
of cement concrete, 636,400 cubic feet of foundation stone, 8,000,000 
 bricks, 70,000 cubic feet of dressed granite, and 366 tons of iron, includ- 
 ing floor beams. 
 
 The excavation for the cellars and foundations required the removal 
 of 141,500 cubic yards of earth. A large quantity of the marble for 
 the superstructure has been prepared, and the corner stone is the first 
 block that has yet been set in the building. Here I will end my details. 
 To be more minute would be tedious and prolix ; but this much should 
 be given to properly advise the public. 
 
 Let me state with accuracy to what purposes the building will be 
 devoted, and who will occupy it the day it is ready for public use, that 
 you may see and know what are our wants. 
 
 The Mayor will require for the use of his office and of the police at 
 least twelve commodious rooms. 
 
 The City Council Chambers and their officers will need 
 
 The City Treasurer, .... 
 
 The City Controller, .... 
 
 Law Department, .... 
 
 Water Department, .... 
 
 Highways, Bridges and Sewers, . 
 
 Survey Department, .... 
 
 Markets and City Property, 
 
 Building Inspectors, .... 
 
 Boiler Inspectors, .... 
 
 Health Office, 
 
 Fire Department, .... 
 
 Receiver of Taxes, .... 
 
 Police and Fire-alarm Telegraph, 
 
 Guardians of the Poor, 
 
 Port Wardens, ..... 
 
 City Commissioners, .... 
 
 Coroner, ...... 
 
 Girard Estates, ..... 
 
 Board of Education, .... 
 
 Gas Office, ...... 
 
 Park Commissioners, .... 
 
 Board of Revision, .... 
 
 Collector of Delinquent Taxes, . 
 
 Courts, 13 rooms, with accommodations for the Prothonotaries 
 
 and Clerks, for the Law Library, witness and jury rooms, and 
 
 District Attorney. 
 Recorder of Deeds, ......••• 
 
 Register of Wills, ......••• 
 
 Sheriff, 
 
 15 
 3 
 5 
 9 
 7 
 4 
 4 
 
 At this time the city rents apartments for the Recorder ot Deeds, in 
 
lO 
 
 the Philadelphia National Bank ; for the City Controller and Treasurer, 
 in the Girard Bank ; the Law Buildings on Fifth Street, for the Law 
 Department ; of the American Philosophical Society, for the Water 
 Department ; and for the Survey Department, in No. 224 South Fifth 
 Street ; in No. 723 Arch Street, for the Tax Office and Board of 
 Revision ; and the southwest corner of Fifth and Walnut Streets for the 
 Department of Markets and City Property \ and for these insecure and 
 unsuited places it pays a rent of i{F4 1,300. These I mention that it 
 may be known and seen how scattered, costly and unfit are our present 
 accommodations for public purposes. 
 
 It will now be proper for me to speak a iev^ words of the extent of 
 our City of Homes, as it has been called, — of its large accommodations for 
 its people, — of its great public improvements for public necessities and 
 private comfort. This I will do in a cursory way, as the occasion and 
 the time will not admit of precision and detail ; but it should be done, to 
 show how fit this structure in all its magnitude of dimensions is for the 
 community it is intended to supply, and how it harmonizes in all things 
 with that which we have around us and about us in daily use, and how 
 essential it is to construct it as it is designed, if we are to have a provi- 
 dent regard for the manifest wants of the future. I have seen and lived 
 in almost all of the capitals of Europe, and I have read of all of the great 
 cities of the world ; but I have never seen or read of such a city as this is. 
 There is no town in the world, of its dimensions or population, and there 
 never has been one, that possesses such accommodations for its people. 
 Artisans, and even laborers live with us as they never lived before. 
 Men whose daily earnings in other cities will hardly sustain life and pro- 
 vide a shelter for themselves and their families, except in the most rude, 
 coarse, scanty and crowded way, are here the occupants of single and com- 
 fortable dwellings, and thousands of them the owners of their own houses. 
 The efiectof this upon the mei^.tal and moral condition of the citizens 
 is evident, even to transient visitors. We have no such class here as 
 the poor workingman ; our city is filled with workmen, independent, 
 prosperous freemen, who bring up families of boys with habits of thrift 
 and industry, to go out into life prepared and resolved to earn homes, 
 because they have enjoyed them in their happy childhood, and with good 
 girls, who are certain of provision for life with a comfortable house for 
 their families, because they are trained to keep those homes with tidiness 
 and economy, and because they are raised with a race of men who honor 
 and love their families, and find their only sense of content in the culti- 
 vation of the domestic affections. This is true, every word of it true, 
 of Philadelphia and its workmen. At the beginning of the year 1873, 
 
II 
 
 we had 134,740 buildings of all kinds. Of these 124,302 were dwell- 
 ing houses, occupied by families. They exceed the following cities by 
 the following numbers : 
 
 New York, by over 
 Brooklyn, by over 
 St. Louis, by over 
 Baltimore, by over 
 Chicago, by over 
 Boston, by over . 
 Cincinnati, by over 
 
 60,000 
 78,000 
 84,000 
 83,000 
 79,000 
 94,000 
 99,000 
 
 This city has a population of near 800,000, and they live in an area 
 of 1 29 J square miles. It has looo miles of streets and roads opened for 
 use, and over 500 miles of these are paved. It is lighted by near ten 
 thousand gas lamps. The earth beneath conceals and is penetrated by 
 134 miles of sewers, over 600 miles of gas mains and 546 miles of water 
 pipes. We have over 212 miles of city railways, and near 1794 city 
 railroad cars passing over these railroads daily, 3025 steam boilers, over 
 400 public schools, with suitable buildings, and over 1600 school 
 teachers, and over 80,000 pupils. We have over 34,000 bath-rooms, 
 most of which are supplied with hot water, and for the use of the water, 
 at low rates, our citizens pay more than a million of dollars annually. 
 We have over 400 places of public worship, and accommodations in 
 them for 300,000 persons. 
 
 We have near 9000 manufactories, having a capital of $185,000,000, 
 employing 145,000 hands, the annual product of whose labor is over 
 $384,000,000, We exported in 1873, in value, over $34,000,000, and 
 we imported in value over $26,000,000. The amount paid for duties 
 in gold was near eight millions and a half. The real estate, as assessed 
 for taxation, was over $518,000,000, and we collected near $9,000,000 
 for taxes. Our funded debt, including the gas loan, in January, 1873, 
 was $51,697,147 67, and our annual outlay in 1873, inclusive ot in- 
 terest on our debt, was $7,726,123. We have parks and public squares, 
 and Fairmount Park, which is one of them, contains 2991 acres, and 
 is one of the largest parks in the world, and was enjoyed in 1873 ^Y 
 near 3,000,000 of people. 
 
 From this we can understand for whom we are now building, and why 
 the outlay proposed is provident and necessary. We can also see in a 
 partial way where our money has gone, but we can see with sufficient 
 fullness how providently and judiciously most of it has been expended, 
 when we behold this list of stupendous improvements, millions of which 
 lie beneath the surface of the earth, and millions of which we drive 
 
11 
 
 over and walk over, unheeding the cost of the conveniences and com- 
 forts we are daily using in the paved, curbed, watered, drained and 
 lighted highways, on which front, for over 2000 miles, 124,302 neat 
 and comfortable homes. I said, we can see in a partial way where our 
 money has gone, because near twelve millions of the debt was incurred 
 for the expenses of the civil war. But even that we can see and value, 
 when, as the fruit of it, we can behold around us not only our own 
 comfortable and peaceful homes, but we feel by its outlay, made with 
 generous prodigality in such a cause, that we have saved a country and 
 a free home for ourselves and for others in this land, and in foreign 
 lands ; and we feel that we have also shown, that a republic can " main- 
 tain a perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, pro- 
 vide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure 
 the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity." 
 
 Of all the cities in this nation, Philadelphia is pre-eminently Ameri- 
 can. Philadelphia's characteristics and customs, the habits and pecu- 
 liarities of the people, are essentially American. The vast body of its 
 population is chiefly the product of its own people, who were here 
 almost from the beginning. The descendants of the men who were 
 here at its foundation, and were here at the outbreak of the Revolution, 
 are the men who now compose the body of its citizens, who do its 
 work, carry on its trades, make its ordinances, control its offices, own 
 its property, and fill the stations of public usefulness and dignity. We 
 are not governed by strangers, and have never been willing to submit 
 to such rule. We have a manly local pride of citizenship; other sea- 
 board cities are provincial, or filled with strangers from other parts of 
 the nation and from other countries ; and the Western cities are, like 
 New York, the homes of new men from old places. 
 
 If a foreigner were to ask me, where will I find a real American, 
 untouched in his character and nationality by the ever-drifting tide of 
 emigration, domestic and foreign, and with no taint of provincial nar- 
 rowness, I would say, go to Philadelphia, and there you will find just 
 such men and women by the hundreds of thousands. There you will 
 find a provident, steadfast race, the sons for over six generations of pro- 
 vident, steadfast ancestors; real Americans, bone of their bone, flesh of 
 their flesh. Earlv in our career we commanded the foreign and domes- 
 tic commerce of the colonies, and till 1820 this city was the commer- 
 cial metropolis of the country. For a time that ascendancy passed 
 away, and New York, by her ijiternal improvements, acquired the trade 
 we had lost. While we thus ruled, we ruled grandly, and we have 
 never forgotten our dignity. The sentiment that then prevailed with 
 
13 
 
 our people still prevails. Then they embellished our city with works 
 of architecture, equalled nowhere in the Union in beauty and fit- 
 ness. We then possessed nearly all of the public buildings and public 
 works of the land, and they were objects of admiration. Strangers 
 came from a distance to see them and enjoy them. The Fairmount 
 Water Works, the old Bank of Pennsylvania, the old Bank of the 
 United States (now the Girard Bank, both the works of Latrobe), the 
 new Bank of the United States (now the Custom House), and the Ex- 
 change and the Mint of the United States, and the Naval Asylum (the 
 works of Strickland), the old Philadelphia Bank, and such like, were 
 scattered over our city, then small in its dimensions and population. 
 Even in the earlier days we were not unmindful of what was due to 
 good taste in the erection of our public structures, as well as in our 
 beautiful private mansions that then stood surrounded with groves of 
 trees adorning the town and country homes of our cultivated and wealthy 
 colonial gentry and merchants. Let any one but step into Christ's 
 Church, even as it is now changed by the renovating hand of modern 
 improvement, and he will there see the remains of a harmony, sim- 
 plicity, and fitness of adornment that indicates a high standard of just 
 taste. And there is also the State House, in Chestnut Street. Enter 
 the great hall that leads to the Hall of Independence and to the tower, 
 on which is built the steeple, and there will be seen a passage of modest 
 dignity, and a broad, well-constructed stairway, showing that even in 
 those days, over one hundred and twenty years ago, when it was built, 
 surrounded with the forest trees, and out of town — in those simple days 
 our ancestors had provided, as we provide, for the future and tor public 
 purposes, with a liberal hand, regarding taste as well as utility. Let us 
 not forget the Pennsylvania Hospital in Pine Street, with its spacious 
 grounds and its lofty, stately main building, at this day an object of ad- 
 miration for its size aiid its proportions, so suited for its purpose, and so 
 simple in its quiet, harmonious beauty. 
 
 All this we still have ; and, further, we have the Girard College, 
 with other grand and elegant structures that are the work of our own 
 days. I will not speak of them in detail ; time will not permit me to 
 describe the rows of new residences that adorn our streets, or the costly 
 and stately churches that are scattered in every quarter of the town. 
 You have the great Masonic Temple and three beautiful churches that 
 cluster round this very spot. I can remember well when but two 
 steeples rose above our town ; now, as you gaze from the summits in 
 the Park, the city lies before you with a number of lofty domes and sky- 
 piercing spires. These are the work of private enterprise and bounty. 
 
14 
 
 We must not omit to remember the great gift the city has this day be- 
 stowed upon her people. To-day the Girard Avenue Bridge was de- 
 hvered over to the authorities, and is now possessed by all of us. It is 
 a work of wonderful merit, and is well worth the millions spent on it. 
 It is an avenue worthy of any of the greatest cities of the world. It 
 contributes to our convenience and prosperity, while it bears witness to 
 our pride and liberality of feeling in all that concerns the common and 
 public o-ood. In our growth we live up to the example of our ances- 
 tors, and have resolved now that for our present necessities, and accord- 
 ing to the abundance of our means, we will adorn our city as it was 
 adorned oT old, with a structure that will fully answer its end, and com- 
 mand the admiration of all men. 
 
 Such is my love for and faith in this city, that I feel possessed with 
 a conviction, which might even be called a superstition, that it will 
 again be, as it once was, the real metropolis of the nation. The capital 
 and the public offices of the Union will never return ; the foreign trade 
 may cluster at New York as it does in Liverpool ; but Philadelphia will 
 be again, as she first was, the real centre of finance, of commerce, and 
 wealth. She is at the head of the mechanic arts and ot manufacturing, 
 and she has ever led in refinement, in science, and in jurisprudence. 
 The material supremacies which left her will return, and those graces 
 and glories which she has ever had will never leave her. Here they made 
 their home, where Penn, the greatest of all the founders of free common- 
 wealths, demonstrated that liberty, the largest liberty, was compatible 
 with obedience to law, and a colony, established to maintain the firmest of 
 religious convictions by the strictest of sects, could protect all other beliefs. 
 
 This wisdom he transmitted to' our people, and as a body they possess 
 it to this hour as a spirit or living public soul, and it is that which has 
 made us just what we are, and for which we are and have been con- 
 spicuous in all of our public history. In the Revolution, when we had 
 most to lose, we were first in action, and faithful to the end, enduring 
 all things, hoping all things, believing all things for the love of that 
 Christian liberty which was a part of our blessed faith. In those sad 
 days, here came, as to a common centre, all of the wise and brave who 
 guided and led in that contest. Here the Continental Congress sat, 
 here the Declaration of Independence was written, executed and pro- 
 claimed. After the Revolution, here George Washington presided over 
 the deliberation of the Constitutional Convention ; and here, too, he 
 administered to the end of his official life the Government he had helped 
 to form for the country he had saved. How thickly the memories of 
 these events, our great events of the past, press on me ! How the 
 
15 
 
 names of the wise and good and mighty rise up- before me, and tempt 
 me to enlarge upon the history of the grand things done, and of the men 
 who did them. I mean those who belonged to us, who were Philadel- 
 phians, but whose fame is so large that men remember them only as 
 belonging to mankind. We have had Penn and Franklin and Ritten- 
 house and Rush and Godfrey and Bartram, whose names posterity will 
 not willingly let die. Penn and Franklin are names that never will be 
 forgotten ; they will pass down through time linked with Solon and 
 Lycurgus, Pythagoras and Archimedes and Socrates and Plato and 
 Aristotle, the crowned monarchs of human thought. But I must here 
 pause. I have well-nigh done all that was required of me. I must not 
 wander off, tempted by these proud thoughts of our proud citizenship. 
 I never approach a great building but with a sense of awe. Mechani- 
 cally I lift my hat, as if I stood in the august presence of something 
 grand and good. I can understand why men have imputed spiritual 
 gifts to the masters of this the greatest of all arts. 
 
 For in it all science and all art unite to produce sublime and almost 
 supernatural results. Solomon, the wisest of men, thus illustrated the 
 highest reaches of his superhuman genius, and the greatest achievement 
 of the chosen people was the vast temple built by that monarch and 
 dedicated to the service of Jehovah. Go where you will on the face of 
 the earth, you will there find these grand works of nations now dead 
 and perished from the memory of men. Those who made them had 
 immortal souls ; but for this life they were mortal, and are no more re- 
 membered of men ; and yet thus their history is recorded and remem- 
 bered in monuments that were the works of their minds and hands — 
 monuments that stand like great books written in the very rocks they 
 are built upon. Where no such monuments are to be found the 
 people had no mental or moral natures above the faculties of brutes. 
 Wherever a nation had a conscience and a mind, there it recorded the 
 evidence of its being in these the highest products of human thought, 
 human knowledge, and human will. 
 
 It has been well said that architecture rests on two ideas — the natural, 
 or the idea of order ; the supernatural, or that of the infinite. In these 
 various monuments of by-gone ages these thoughts are displayed accord- 
 ing to the genius of the people. 
 
 " In Greek art order directs and guides the natural and rational idea. 
 The strong column elegantly grouped, bearing at its ease a light pedi- 
 ment — the weak rests on the strong ; this is logical and human. Gothic 
 art is supernatural — superhuman — it is born of the belief of the miracu- 
 lous and poetic. The geometry of beauty bursts brilliantly forth in the 
 
i6 
 
 type of the Gothic architecture in the Cathedral of Cologne. To whom 
 belonged the science of numbers, this divine mathematics ? To no 
 mortal man did it belong, but to the Church of God. Under the shadow 
 of the Church in chapters and in monasteries — the secret was transmitted 
 together with instructions in the mysteries of Christianity. The Church 
 alone could accomplish these miracles of architecture. She could often 
 summon a whole people to complete a monument. A hundred thousand 
 men labored at once on that of Strasbourg, and such was their zeal that 
 they did not suffer night to interrupt their work, but continued it by 
 torchlight. Often, too, the Church would lavish centuries on the slow 
 accomplishment of a perfect work." 
 
 The original and brilliant historian and thinker, whose words I have 
 just repeated, citing them as the evidence of an observer, philosopher, 
 and critic, conveys to us, in his clever sentences, those truths which 
 illustrate and account for some of the most marvellous products of this 
 mighty art. He reminds us that when pious zeal inspires, it passes 
 beyond the mere love of order and fitness, and soars into the very em- 
 pyrean of the miraculous and poetic. What a grand thing is it thus to 
 perpetuate such sublimities of thought and feeling in monuments as 
 everlasting as the hills, and as spiritual in their influence on the human 
 soul ! This is what we are doing. We are erecting a structure that will 
 in ages to come speak for us as with "the tongues of men and angels." 
 This work which we now do, as it were, in the morning hour of our being, 
 will, probably, like the broken arch of London bridge fancied by Lord 
 Macaulay, in some far off future day be all that remains to tell the story of 
 our civilization, and to testify to the dignity and public spirit of our people. 
 
 What we thus give we must give with free spirit, not grudgingly, for as 
 we are of great and good beginnings, and have been an earnest and noble 
 race of men, so should we make this our monument tell the world and 
 posterity how provident we are ; how, scorning ugliness as we do vice, 
 we resolve thus to speak to men as it were in words of marble, that 
 in their order are logical and human, and in their form reach to the 
 miraculous and poetic. 
 
 We have done and are doing a great, great work, and it will inspire 
 our posterity to live up to our standard, as we are inspired to live by the 
 standard of our ancestors. They loved their town with a gentle fond- 
 ness that is testified by every act of their useful and remarkable public 
 lives, and they transmitted to us, their sons, the same soft sense of affec- 
 tion. We, too, can say, as Franklin said when writing of his home — 
 dear, dear Philadelphia. Do we not say it in enduring words with this day's 
 work, and when we leave behind us this noble building to say it for us ? 
 
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