Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-10-24
RUme's Palatial POstOffiee.

The building is spacious pile Of
contiscated convent property. a con-
vent in Rome, should say, means
what we commonly call a monastery.
You enter it on either side by hand
some Railways, possibly fifty feet high,
certainly forty, whose sides are adorned
by immense panels of oil paintings
emblematic pictures of the genius of
the railway and the telegraph. Once
over the tesselated pavements of these
fine arches you enter q. grand interior
court. So magnificent is the provision
of room that this court or plaza is a
beautiful square one hundred and fifty
feet in length and breadth, lovely with
fountains, flowers, statuary, grass, plats
of grass and with a covered corridor
frescoed on ceiling and wall and paved
with bright marbles stretching all the
length of its exterior. Around this
court this building proper rises in three
grand stories.
There are rooms and offices for every
conceivable purpose, and those for the
accommodation of the public nearly al
ways in duplicate-one for men and one
for women. All these rooms are fres-
coed or painted, and equipped with
furniture of massive style and artistic
design. So lavish is the establishment
that the corridor affords a wall of six
hundred feet of continuous pictorial
design, much of it fantastic and quaint,
and on the theme either of the railroad
or telegraph wire, steam or fire. The
building has just been opened to the
public, and is daily thronged with
groups of esthetic Italians-which
means the lower classes as we'll as what
We call the Observation-Disclosures with
interest and animation the taste and ex-
ecution of the work.
To make the contrast fairly with the
dingy discomfort of our Philadelphia
quarters it must be remarked that Rome
is city not one-third as large as Phil
adelphia, and that its people do not
have the habit of writing and commu-
nication. There is, for instance, no
newspaper mail at all as compared with
ours. There are no large business es-
Establishments flooding whole continent
or the world with circulars. In fact
the circular is not known here in our
sense. Finally, of the quarter of a
million people here, there are vast num-
OCio WIZ ACNCl ClUuCI bCau VI lOCCltO u
letter. doubt if the amount of bust
ness to this Office is one-tenth that of
ours. As an illustration of the different
habits of the people, among the wealth
of rooms in the building land there
are SO many that they seemed at loss
sometimes think to know how to label
them) there is one set apart for the
public and common use of any one
who wants to write his letters or ad-
dress them, or do anything of the kind
at the office. This room, all brilliant
with painting, had in it four small ia.
bles. all neatly fitted out with station
cry, ink, pens, blotters, etc., two seats
to each table, and was, in fact, a charm
ing little retreat. Just one seat was &C.
cupied. In Philadelphia or New York
or Boston one hundred chairs would be
kept pretty we'll filled.
Even in so purely democratic a mat
ter as postotfice accommodation, both
for the people at large and the men who
serve them, We have something to learn
from the monarchy philadelphia Press,
R0uan Letter.