New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-05-17
THE OUANDARY IN PHILADELPHIA.

If an outsider mi .ht be permitted an anxious
inquiry, When does h lad lphia hope to bring
into the world those public buildingsf The
mountain has been so long in labor that even
the sight of mouse woLd now be grateful.
Some years ago the City of Brothers who love
each other (Ahern, Hlgeerty, ct all discovered
that it stood in need of a new Court-lIOuse,
ProthOnotary and Clerks Offices, and immedi-
ately began q fierce and bloody nteneclne
war as to the site. Since then NewYork has
covered acres of groud with edifices that
have grown gray and hory with time. Cities
have sprung up in the West and become land
marks for pilgrims from all climes, but the
battle of the calm Quakers still RACES with
undated violence, and tie first stone
of those Clerks Offices is yet t. be laid Curl
ously enough, the difficulty in the way of this
city (Which our re ders W ii remember as an
immeasurable fat of small brick houses) is
want of room. The Corporation is apparently
not able to purchase ground, and is forced to
use one of the squares which fond and enthn-
siastIc Philadelphians are wont to invoke in
their domestic poems as the lungs of the city.
The question is, which lung will the city do
without Property look with greedy
eyes upon the Court House that is to be, and
summon all sorts of ghostly and malarous in
fuences to drive it from other neghbOrhOods
to their own.
The first proposal was to seize on Independ
epce-square, so that when pilgrims from all
parts of the country came up at the Centen-
NAL to look for the sacred ground on which
the nation had its birth, they might find it
occupied with thieves and murderers in their
dock, begirt with their surrounding Gordon of
political colleagues as policemen and counsel.
Whether Penn himself, armored in his drab in
tegrity from top to toe, rose and warned his
degenerate descendants off the hallowed ground
with a countenance more in sorrow than in
anger, or whether the bidding ran low in that
neighbOrhOOd, we know not, but the bill was
lost in the Legislature. Washington square
was haunted by the dead of a whole graveyard
under it, who rose and shook their gray
locks at the invading ProthonOtaries. Finally
Penn-square was decided upon, and the long
agony was over. The city breathed again.
Trees fell grass was rooted up, and the bit Of
country became muddy undergrad, when
the enemy rallied and attacked the Legisla-
ture with q proposal that the grass be
resOdded and the trees replanted, and that the
DuilulnBs snouiu 30 oh lhc NdliohS ph'h-
place, and Penn go finally to his own place,
wherever that might be. With the weight of
present Philadelphia justice upon him he
would not be likely to rise again. The cause
was presented to the Legislature by Com
mittee, and that venerable body waited with
grave attention for the tinkle of that
peculiar eloquence to which their con-
victions are always accessible. The Young
reporter who acted as spokesman, with
the Overweening confidence of impul-
sive youth, solicited their votes and offered
them with outstretchcd hands in return-hs
own most distinguished consideration. No
other consideration was limited ut or whispered.
Ii is needless 10 state that that Legislature be-