The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-03-02
THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS QUESTION
IN THE LEGTSLATURE

Nv Il nm 4 hH.
Mr.. DEcHERT yesterday, in the State Senate,
followed in the footsteps of the jocular Nagle,
and introduced bill to regulate the erection
of the public buildings His proposition is
to do away with the present commission, and
to create q new one to consist of the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court, the presiding
judges of the Court of Common Pleas and
District Court of Philadelphia, and the
Attorney General for the time being. Ex-
actly what good is to be obtained by this
arrangement we are unable to see, and
although such commission might be unob-
jectionable, provided the judges and the
Attorney General had plenty of leisure to
superintend the preparation of plans and the
erection of the buildings there really is no
occasion whatever for the constitution of a
new Board of Commissioners, as the present
board proposes to carry out in an eminently
satisfactory manner the expressed wishes of
the people. Mr.. Dechert and the other
Philadelphia members of the Legislature
ought to know by this time that the wild talk
of the Bulletin on the public buildings ques-
tion does not in any manner represent the
opinions of majority of the people of Phi
ladelphia. Before the October election the
Bulletin was perfectly confident that Wash
ington Square would be chosen as the site of
the public buildings by an immense majority,
for the good and sufficient reason that the
Bulletin building is located on Chestnut street,
above Sixth. The citizens of Philadelphia
were unable to see the matter in the same
light, and ever since the election our hitherto
amiable contemporary has entirely lost its
amiability, and has been so completely upset
by the actual result of the election that it has
not been abe to recover its balance. The
Bulletin predicted that the Washington
Square site would be chosen, and it warned
the voters of the awful consequences that
would follow if the public buildings
were not located in the neighborhood of the
Bulletin building. Notwithstanding the pre-
diction and the fearful warnings of the Bul-
hts7a, however, the voters of Philadelphia ac-
tually chose the Penn Square site by an over
whelming majority. Such a total want of
regard for the desires of the Bulletin was too
much for our contemporary, and it could only
account for the result of the election on the
theory that the voters had been hocus-po-
cused, hoodwinked, blinded, and driven like
dumb cattle to the polls by gang of terrible
conspirators known in the Bulletin Office as
the ''Penn Square ring" The consequence
of all this is that the Bulletin can scarcely be
considered as a trustworthy authority on the
public building question, especially as the other
papers which opposed the Penn Square site
have candidIy admitted their defeat and have
accepted the situation, or else have preserved
digniied silence on the subject. In view
of all the facts of the case, therefore, the best
thing Mr.. Dechert and the other members of
the Legislature can do is to allow the present
Board of Commissioners to perform the duties
entrusted to them without interference, for if
the public buildings are built in accordance
with the wild notions of those now oppos-
ing the plans of the commissioners, they will
excite the derision of every stranger who
visits Philadelphia, and will be anything but
matters of pride to our citizens either in the
| present or the future.
| ATrTc cnTrDy 10 in 1iT1ar IIa