A more conventional and a quite unmistakable example of church building is a Presbyterian church in St. Paul, which follows the established ecclesiastical type, albeit with a recognition of the modern demand that a church shall be a good place in which to preach and to be preached to--a demand which here, as often elsewhere, is met by shortening the arms of the cruciform plan until the church is virtually limited to the crossing. It is no disparagement to the present design to say that in its general composition it seems to have been suggested by--and at any rate it suggests--an early and interesting work of Mr. Richardson’s, a church in Springfield, Massachusetts, upon which it improves at some points, notably in the emphatic exposition of the masonic structure. At other points the variation is not so successful. The tower at Springfield, with its attached turret, the entrance arch at its base, and the broach spire with pinnacles detached over the squinches, is a very vigorous piece of design. In the corresponding feature at St. Paul, the relation between the two superposed open stages is not rhythmic or felicitous, though each in itself is well modelled, and the transition from the tower to the shingled spire, marked by shingled pinnacles without a parapet, is distinctly unfortunate. For all that, the church is a studied and scholarly performance. [Illustration: PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ST. PAUL. Gilbert & Taylor, Architects.] In the material and materializing development of the West, it is not surprising that the chief object of local pride should not be the local church, but the local hotel. “Of course a large hotel” is now, as in Trollope’s time, [Illustration: WEST HOTEL, MINNEAPOLIS. L. S. Buffington, Architect.]