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From Newberry Transcribe
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16 of the world Certainly Belgravia can show nothing like it. There is no stucco. Nor are the houses built as is the case in our streets in rows of monotonous uniformity , but in some places each separate house differs in design from its neighbours, sometimes you may find three or four that are like, but seldom more than half a dozen. And probably those that are alike in general design will vary in the ornamentation of the doors & windows; thus indicating that they are not run up to order as in Paris; or on speculation as in London, but that they were built by the people who inhabit them This variety of facade where nothing is mean, of course contributes very much to the effect of street architecture. The materials too used for building in New York are better, & more varied than those used by ourselves. In the best quarters a chocolate coloured stone is the most common. Brick which is always painted & dressed with stone, comes next in frequency. Then a stone which in colour is compounded of a yellowish white with a very perceptible trace of green. Some of the largest stores & Hotels, & occasionally a private residence & church are of white marble. Of this latter material is constructed the imposing office of the New York Herald, I suppose the most magnificent Newspaper Office in the world.

 The great glory, however, of the City is its Park. It is on the central ridge of the Island

on very uneven ground, with the native rock every where cropping up through the surface & with many depressions in which are pieces of water peopled with various kinds of water fowl It is between two & three miles in length, & is throughout kept in faultless order. It has already cost the city twenty millions of dollars. It is one of the more than Imperial works of the American democracy.