with castings, if by so doing he can obtain greater rigidity of bearing, strength, and durability. He ought, of course, to vary the proportions of his pilasters and horizontal lintels, and make them more in accord with the material. It is the wholesale reproduction of the more costly and ornamental features, such as we see in many buildings of New York and Philadelphia, where whole fronts are manufactured of cast iron and sheet-metal, which has shocked the minds of architects of culture and sensitive feeling. Such imitations and cheap displays outrage the artist by the attempt to produce in cast or rolled metal what properly belongs to a stone front. Bearing this distinction in mind, we are not presuming too much to assert that architects have in cast iron, when properly employed under certain restrictions, a material which might be turned to account in narrow fronts where the use of brick or stone piers would encroach too much upon the space for light. For warehouse fronts, we have evidence for thinking that the employment of iron might be attended with advantage, especially in combination with brickwork for the main vertical piers. Plain classic mouldings, capitals and bases of the Doric or Tuscan order, are well suited for cast-iron supports to lintels or girders. In one attempt to make use of the structural features of the latter, the fronts of the girders between the piers are divided into panels, the flanges and stiffening pieces to the webs forming an effective framework for cast or applied ornament to be introduced. The iron framework thus constructed lends itself to the minor divisions of the window openings, which can be of wood. In the new Leaden Hall and Metropolitan Fruit and Vegetable Markets, cast-iron fronts have been largely employed, consisting of stanchions cast in the form of pilasters, with horizontal connections and other architectural members. Regarding the more constructive aspects of cast iron, the employment of it in fronts having numerous points of support and small bearings is clearly within the capabilities of the material. So long as it is used in positions in which its resistance to compression is the chief office it has to fulfill, cast iron is in its right place. In the fronts of buildings, therefore, where it is made to carry the floors and rolled joists, and the lintels of openings, either as piers, pilasters, or simply as mullions of windows, it is strictly within its legitimate functions. So with regard to lintels and heads of openings where short spans exist, cast iron is free from the objection that can be urged against it for long girders. In fact, no position is better fitted for a brittle, granular material than that of a vertical framework to receive windows and ornamentation, and for such purposes cast iron is, to our minds, admirably suited.