municipal appearance to it, as if it were the guild hall of a small
country town. The plain basement and the wide principal doorway, and the
row of three very large equal-spaced windows above, render it
unquestionable that this is a building with a low ground story, and one
large room above. A certain "public building" effect is given to it by
the large and enriched cornice with balustrade above and paneling below,
and by the accentuation of the angles by projecting piers, and by the
turrets over them, which give it quite a different character from that
of a private house.

[Illustration: Fig. 13]

If, on the other hand, the building were the free library and reading
room of the same small country town, we should have little doubt of this
if we saw it as in Fig. 14, with the walls all blank (showing that they
are wanted for ranging something against, and cannot be pierced for
windows), and windows only in the upper portion. Similarly, if we want
to build it as the country bank, we should have to put the large windows
on the ground floor, bank clerks wanting plenty of light, and the ground
story being always the principal one; and we might indulge the humor of
giving it a grim fortress-like strength by a rusticated plinth (i.e.,
stones left or worked rough and rock-like) and by very massive piers
between the windows, and a heavy cornice over them; the residential
upper floor forming a low story subordinate to the bank story. It is
true this would not satisfy a banker, who always wants classic pilasters
stuck against the walls, that being his hereditary idea of bank
expression in architecture.

[Illustration: Figs. 14 and 15]