--The following is an extract of a Boston letter in the St. Louis
Republican:
‘
Boston is growing fast, notwithstanding the war, and in nothing is shown more plainly than in the number of public buildings now in process of erection.
We are building a new City Hall — having torn down the old — which will be the finest edifice of the kind in the country.
It is to be entirely of granite, and will cost very nearly a half million of dollars.
A free City Hospital is also being erected, which will cost at least a quarter of a million.
It is a large building, having four separate wings for different forms of disease, and will combine all the modern improvements which can add to the comforts of patients, and will be open to all without charge.
On the
Back Bay lands the
Natural History Society has erected a fine building for their occupancy, at a cost of over $100,000, and near by a similar building will be erected for the use of the
Institute of Technology, which is, I believe, essentially a Yankee institution, and designed to afford to all opportunities for becoming practically acquainted with the science of mechanics and the operation of machinery of all descriptions.
An "Institute of the
Fine Arts," on a similar plan, is also contemplated, and there is one or two school houses being built, at a cost of from $30,000 to $50,000 each.
’
Boston is growing by the war, as it has always done by national calamities.
After the war it will grow small by degrees and beautifully less.