representing "Britannia rewarding the Birmingham manufacturers." In the other pediments the groups represent Manufacture. Commerce. Literature. Art, and Science. Under the central pediment, and within a semicircular arch over the central entrance, is a large and beautiful figure-subject in mosaic, executed by Messrs. Salviati and Co., of London. Besides the central entrance, which is reached through a portico supported by square and round columns, and is reserved for the use of the Town Council and state occasions, there are four entrances to the building, one at each end of the principal front, one in Eden Place, and the other within the gateway which runs through the Congreve Street wing into the courtyard at the back. By the last-mentioned staircase access is obtained by the general public to the Council Chamber. The building contains 94 rooms of various sizes, three of the largest devoted to occasions of ceremony, and the rest to the uses of the different departments of the Corporation work. The central of the three reception rooms is 30 feet square, and is divided from the other two by an open screen of marble columns, both rooms being 64ft, by 30ft. The Council Chamber is 39ft, wide and, including the gallery for spectators, is 48ft, long, the fittings and furniture being of the most substantial character as well as ornamental. In various parts of the building accommodation has been found for the Town Clerk, the Borough Treasurer. Surveyor. Analyst. Chief Constable, and every other department of Corporation work. The furnishing of the Council Chamber and the other parts of the Municipal Buildings amounted to £15,603, the laying in of the gas and water services being £2,418 additional.
Odd-Fellows Hall.—Before the New Street Railway Station was erected there was an Odd-Fellows' Hall in King Street. The first stone of the present building in Upper Temple Street was laid early in 1849, the opening ceremony taking place Dec. 3 same year. The principal room or "hall" will accommodate about 1,000 persons, the remaining portion of the premises being let off in offices.
Parish Offices.—The meeting-place of the Board of Guardians and their necessary staff of officers has from the earliest days of Poor Law government been the most frequented of any of our public buildings. Formerly the headquarters were at the Workhouse in Lichfield Street, but when that institution was removed to Birmingham Heath, the large building at the corner of Suffolk Street and Paradise Street was built for the use of the parish officers, possession being taken thereof Feb. 26, 1853 Thirty years seems but a short period for the occupation of such a pile of offices, hut as it has been necessary several times to enlarge the Workhouse, as well as to collect Very much larger sums from the ratepayers, it is but in the natural order of things that the Overseers. Guardians, and all others connected with them should be allowed more elbow-room. A parish palace, almost rivalling our Municipal Buildings in magnificence of ornate architecture, has therefore been erected at the junction of Edmund Street and Newhall Street, where poor unfortunate people going to the Workhouse, and whose ultimate destination will possibly be a pauper's grave, may have the gratification of beholding beautiful groups of statuary sculpture. Corinthian columns of polished granite, pilasters of marble, gilded capitals, panelled ceilings, coloured architraves, ornamental cornices, encaustic tiles, and all the other pretty things appertaining to a building designed in a "severe form of the style of the French Renaissance," as an architectural paper critic calls it. Ratepayers will also have pleasure in taking their money to and delivering it over in " one of the most convenient suites of poor-law offices in the kingdom," possibly deriving a little satis-
