re sure that the best of it is equal to the
best anywhere, and we want to be able to prove it. The treatment of our
modern mercantile and business structures, particularly those ten or
twelve stories in height, is more successful than any other work of the
kind in the world; the planning of our office-buildings is unrivalled
anywhere, and some of our apartment-houses will bear comparison with the
best in Paris--which are the best anywhere--and are more interesting, on
account of the more complex character of the services which we must
provide for. Besides this, many details of American construction, such
as the encased iron framing-and isolated pier foundations of the Chicago
architects, and the heating and ventilating systems in use everywhere
here, are far in advance of foreign practice, and we want our foreign
readers to see this with their own eyes, and to give their American
brethren their proper rank in the profession. To do this we must have
the material, and we appeal once more to American architects who have it
to furnish it, and to those who do not have it themselves, but who know
where it is to be found, to get it for us, or to put us in the way of
getting it. Plans, elevations, perspectives, sketches, photographs,
negatives, descriptions, whatever is good, we want to show, for the
benefit and reputation of the profession in America far more than for
our own, for we know better than the profession how very valuable
publicity of the kind is to architects. The late Mr. Richardson, even to
a comparatively late period in his professional career, was afflicted
with the usual bashfulness about having his work published. We well
remember the solicitations, the refusals, the renewed appeals, and,
finally, the reluctant and conditional assent to have a single gelatine
print from one of his perspectives published. This was the drawing, we
think, of the Woburn Library, and was accompanied by a plan. Finding
that he had suffered no severe injury from this exposure of his design
to the gaze of the cold world, Mr. Richardson soon became one of our
kindest friends, and if reputation and employment are things to be
desired by an architect, we may say with all due modesty that what he
did for us was repaid to him a hundred-fold, for, great as was his
talent, it must, without the publicity given to his work through means
like ours, have had for years only a local influence. As it was,
however, every issue of ours with one of his