There are now about sixty-five thousand buildings on the island, of which about thirty-four thousand are of brick, twenty thousand of stone, and eleven thousand of wood. Twenty thousand of these are occupied as tenant-houses and contain over, half the population. Many of the churches are large and beautiful, worthy of the times and the people who built them, though it is not complimentary to our Protestant evangelical Christianity, that the three largest enterprises in church architecture undertaken on the island during the last ten years, should result in a Jewish synagogue, a Universalist church, and a Roman Catholic cathedral.

Choice architecture on Manhattan amounts to a practical science, which is much studied, and some intrepid genius is every year seeking to eclipse all his predecessors. At this writing the Free Masons are erecting a superb temple on Sixth avenue and Twenty-third street; a fine building called the Seamen's Exchange is rising on Cherry street, at an expense of $100,000, to contain a reading room, savings bank, and other means for improving the condition of sailors. The Industrial Exhibition Company have purchased a plot of twenty-two acres between Third and Fourth avenues, at One Hundredth street, and are preparing to erect a vast crystal palace, the dimensions of which are to be so immense, that the crystal palace of nineteen years ago will be remembered as a mere "toy-house." What the next generation will undertake we shall not attempt to divine.