blemishes upon the design of the first five stories, and these stories exhaust the architectural interest of the building. There is something even ludicrous in the sudden and complete collapse of the architecture above the large arcade, as if the ideas of the designer had all at once given out, or rather as if an untrained builder had been called upon to add three stories to the unfinished work of a scholarly architect. In truth, this superstructure does not show a single felicity either of disposition or detail, but is wholly mean and commonplace. It suffices to vulgarize the building below it, and it is itself quite superfluously vulgarized by the unmeaning and irrelevant conical roofs with which the sky-line is tormented. If the substructure be amenable to the criticism that it is not commercial architecture, the superstructure is amenable to the more radical criticism that it is not architecture at all. The Owings Building is another conspicuous commercial structure that invites the same criticism of not being strictly commercial, but in a very different way. There is here no prodigality of ornament, and no irrelevant preciousness of material. A superstructure of grayish brick surmounts a basement of gray-stone, and the only decoration is reserved for the main entrance, which it is appropriate to signalize and render conspicuous [Illustration: THE OWINGS BUILDING. Cobb & Frost, Architects.] even in works of the barest utility. This is attained here by the lofty gable, crocketed and covered with carving, that rises above the plain archway which forms the entrance itself. The lintelled openings of the basement elsewhere are of a Puritanical severity, and so are the arched openings of the brick superstructure. Neither is there the least attempt to suggest the thing that is not in the interior arrangement by way of giving variety and interest to the exterior. In the treatment of the wall space, the only one of the “unnecessary features,” in which Mr. Ruskin declares architecture to consist, is the corniced frieze above the fourth story of the superstructure, with its suggested support of tall and slim pilasters; and this is quite justifiable as giving the building a triple division, and distinguishing the main wall from the gable. For this purpose, however, obviously enough, the dividing feature should be placed between the two parts it is meant to differentiate; and in the present instance this line is two stories higher than the point actually selected, and is now marked only by a light string course. If the emphatic horizontal belt had been raised these two stories, the division it creates would not only have corresponded to the organic division of the building, but another requisite of architectural composition would have been fulfilled, inasmuch as one of the three members would visibly have predominated over the others; whereas now the three are too nearly equal. It is quite true that the prolongation of