The foregoing paragraph applies equally to the Roberts mansion at the northeast corner of Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia (Plate LIII). For the sake of goodness, don’t try to colonialize it! There are several houses in Philadelphia that resemble the Roberts house--the Dundas-Lippincott house and the Willstack house being two of them, but I think neither so admirable. I do not know that I should ever build myself a house to live in after the manner of the Transitional period even after such delightful and exceptional models as are supplied by the Bennett, Roberts or de Zeng houses, but if I already possessed one, I should rest content that its architecture could not be improved by any material alteration I could suggest. In the _Architectural Review_ for February, 1902, the reader may read about the Transitional houses of lower Fifth Avenue, New York City, also of that celebrated row facing Washington Square. The Waterbury house (see Plate LIV) was demolished last winter, so that its entrancing attic windows screened by the crosses of St. Andrew will no longer delight the visitor who returns to the old neighborhood. The venerable Colonnade on Lafayette Place (Plate LV) probably makes its last public appearance in this review as among the remains of our Transitional period. Half of it is already gone, while the other half is in imminent danger. This row of dwelling-houses should not be confounded in any way with that other row known as London Terrace of Chelsea village (Twenty-third Street), because the Lafayette Place PLATE LII. [Illustration: DOORWAY, NEW YORK CITY.] PLATE LIII. [Illustration: THE DE ZENG HOUSE, MIDDLETOWN, CONN.] [Illustration: THE ROBERTS HOUSE, RITTENHOUSE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA.] houses were the “real stuff,” those of the London Terrace are sham in comparison. In the Colonnade there dwelt at different times many noted individuals. When the first John Jacob Astor decided to devote some of his money to art, the Astor library and other gracious projects, he looked about him for some men of a gentler type than those with whom he had rubbed elbows in the accumulation of his wealth--men of some literary and artistic achievement who would be competent to direct the proposed outlay. Such spirits were rare in the forties, and Mr. Astor had difficulty in finding them. He induced the poet Halleck to become his protégé, and Washington Irving to pay him extended visits. I am not sure that Washington Irving was considered a guest of Mr. Astor when he lived in apartments at the Colonnade, but as he was often entrusted with various commissions in matters of literature and art, and the financing of same for Mr. Astor, who lived just over the way, it was nearly the same thing.