conditions, secured by a wise civic policy early in the century, had reached the full development, which they have since maintained, at the opening of the war. Inexpressibly dull was the extension the city now made, the dreary reaches of homes, which oppress the stranger west of Eleventh Street, and appear in unvarying blocks on the North and South Streets, the building operations of the '40s and '50s, in whose even rows were the last, worst expression of the dull, utilitarian spirit of the pre-war, pre-centennial period. Napoleon LeBrun built the Cathedral and the Academy of Music, a brick shell holding a shapely and grandiose interior, and Walton and McArthur added to the pseudo-classic. When the Jayne Block went up on Chestnut, east of Third, it was believed to be the largest single business building yet erected on the continent. The Girard, 1852, was one of its largest hotels, and echoed the Italian palace front which Barry had taught London in his Reform Club.
The development in manufactures after the war, railroad expansion and the somewhat deceptive prosperity of the Centennial gave the city the same sudden burst which Chicago had in 1893, and Philadelphia took on the aspect
