The Publishing Houses of New York form an imposing and interesting department of the city. The buildings of the Harpers, the Appletons, and of Charles Scribner & Co., are very extensive. The new Methodist Publishing and Mission Buildings, corner of Broadway and Eleventh street, are the headquarters of the most extensive denominational publishing interests in the world. The enterprise began in Philadelphia in 1789, with a borrowed capital of $600. In 1804 it was removed to New York, and in 1836 was destroyed by fire, inflicting a loss of $250,000 upon the denomination. Besides paying for various church interests $1,335,866.25, the agents in 1868 reported a net capital of $1,165,624.55, which has since been increased to over $1,500,000. The new buildings on Broadway were purchased in April, 1869, and cost nearly a million dollars. The structure is of iron, with five lofty stories, and a basement which extends nineteen feet under Broadway and fourteen feet under Eleventh street, and has a floor of nearly half an acre. Besides furnishing salerooms for books and periodicals, elegant offices for agents, editors, missionary secretaries, rooms for committees, preachers'' meetings, etc., etc., enough is still rented to pay the interest on the cost of the entire building.

Many of the periodicals of New York are issued from colossal iron-fronted structures, which would have been an astonishment to our, fathers. The Herald building, covering the site of Barnum''s old museum, is perhaps among the finest of this class. The Times building, erected several years earlier, is another fine structure, occupying a commanding position at the head of Park Row, that ominous center of compositors and printing ink. Near by stands Printing-House square, in or around which are published the Tribune, World, Observer, Sun, Day-Book, Examiner and Chronicle, Scientific American, Evening Mail, Baptist Union, Rural New Yorker, Independent, the Agriculturist, Methodist,Christian Union, etc.