But it is the business portion of the south side that is the miracle of the time, the solid creation of energy and capital since the fire—the square mile containing the Post-office and City Hall, the giant hotels, the opera-houses and theatres, the Board of Trade building, the many-storied offices, the great shops, the clubhouses, the vast retail and wholesale warehouses. This area has the advantage of some other great business centres in having broad streets at right angles, but with all this openness for movement, the throng of passengers and traffic, the intersecting street and cable railways, the loads of freight and the crush of carriages, the life and hurry and excitement are sufficient to satisfy the most eager lover of metropolitan pandemonium. Unfortunately for a clear comprehension of it, the manufactories vomit dense clouds of bituminous coal smoke, which settle in a black mass in this part of the town, so that one can scarcely see across the streets in a damp day, and the huge buildings loom up in the black sky in ghostly dimness. The climate of Chicago, though some ten degrees warmer than the average of its immediately tributary territory, is a harsh one, and in the short winter days the centre of the city is not only black, but damp and chilly. In some of the November and December days I could without any stretch of the imagination fancy myself in London. On a Sunday, when business gives place to amusement and religion, the stately city is seen in all its fine proportions. No other city in the Union can show business warehouses and offices of more architectural nobility. The mind inevitably goes to Florence for comparison with the structures of the Medicean merchant princes. One might name the Pullman Building for offices as an example, and the wholesale warehouse of Marshall Field, the work of that truly original American architect, Richardson, which in massiveness, simplicity of lines, and admirable blending of artistic beauty with adaptability to its purpose, seems to me unrivalled in this country. A few of these buildings are exceptions to the general style of architecture, which is only good of its utilitarian American kind, but they give distinction to the town, and I am sure are prophetic of the concrete form the wealth of the city will take. The visitor is likely to be surprised at the number and size of the structures devoted to offices, and to think, as he sees some of them unfilled, that the business is overdone. At any given moment it may be, but the demand for “offices” is always surprising to those who pay most attention to this subject, and I am told that if the erection of office buildings should cease for a year, the demand would pass beyond the means of satisfying it.