Clearwater Hall

“ The grandstand and the bleachers were overflowing with spectators, and in a distant field were parked a hundred automobiles or more, while in another field were numerous carriages and farm wagons.
"We've certainly got a crowd to-day," remarked Randy, who, with his brother, was in the section of the stand reserved for the Colbyites and their friends. In front of the twins and their chums sat Ruth, May, and half a dozen other girls from Clearwater Hall.
"I don't see anything of Nappy Martell or Slugger Brown," remarked Ida Brierley, who was with the girls. ”

“ Portrait of John Carlyle's mother, Rachel Carlyle, which hung always above her son's bed
Inside, a large hall divides the house. A stairway that has neither the appearance nor character of so old a house, and is doubtless an "improvement," winds up to the second floor. Four rooms open into this hall—fine rooms, too—but the blue or drawing room is the gem, architecturally and historically. This is paneled from floor to ceiling. There are three windows with low window seats and heavy paneled blinds which become a part of the jambs when closed. ”

“ The neatly panelled roof, resting upon shafted cross-beams tastefully ornamented, gives to the Chester Music Hall a richness and elegance wholly unapproached by any similar room in the city. The Hall is, in every respect, a credit alike to the architect and to the city; and it is not too much to add that Mr. J. D. Williams, the builder and decorator of the structure, has done his part of the work faithfully and well. One man only was killed during the progress of the works, by an accidental fall from the ceiling of the Hall. ”

“ My dear lady and I shared a bedroom and dressing-room together, our windows giving on the front. Clevere Hall is, as you know, not very far from York, on the other side of Bishopthorpe, and is one of the finest old mansions in the neighbourhood, its only disadvantage being that, in spite of the gardens being very extensive in the rear, the front of the house lies very near the road. ”

“ Opposite to the kitchen a line of foundations shows the position and dimensions of the great hall, 100 feet by 60 feet. It was built against the south curtain, and extended from the Exchequer to the Prince’s Tower, the latter being, probably, at the dais end. From the other end of the hall, a straight staircase led to a postern which opened upon the quay and the river.
Caernarvon is mainly built of limestone. The stones are hammer dressed, and roughly squared, and laid throughout in courses. Ashlar is very freely used, and finely cut. ”

“ He exercised great vigilance in dealing with the college estates and college discipline, rebuilt the college hall, and added attics or 'cocklofts ' to the old Durham College quadrangle, of which the east side still remains. About 1620 he built for the use of commoners, on the site of 'Perilous Hall,' the fine stone house in Broad Street which is still known as Kettell Hall. ”

“ For into this cramped wheeled chamber, looking scarce larger than her own cart, and certainly not so large as Commander Dap’s cabin in the Watch Vessel, was packed not only a complete cottage with its parlour, living-room, bedroom, scullery, and kitchen, but the mantelpieces and chests of drawers were as crowded with china dogs and shepherdesses as Blackwater Hall itself, besides a wealth of pictures, objects of art, posters, and inhabited birdcages, to which Daniel Quarles’s domain could lay no claim. ”

“ Salford Priors was anciently the property of the Priory of Kenilworth, and Salford Abbots that of Evesham Abbey. Here, enclosed within a jealous high wall, is the old Hall, generally called “the Nunnery,” because of a Roman Catholic sisterhood having been established here in modern times. It is a small Jacobean mansion, very tall in proportion to its size, and curiously huddled together. Quaint curved and re-curved gables of a bygone fashion, deeply set windows, and lofty stone chimney-stacks, give the place a reticent look; the look of a house with a history and secrets of its own. ”

“ James's Hall, a beautiful and almost lavishly ornate structure in Piccadilly, is commonly used by the leading Roman Catholics of London when they desire to make a demonstration. There are political classes which will use either place indifferently; but Exeter Hall has usually a tinge of Protestant exclusiveness about its political expression, while the ceiling of the other building has rung alike to the thrilling music of John Bright's voice, to the strident vehemence of Mr. Bradlaugh, the humdrum humming of Mr. Odger, and the clear, delicate, tremulous intonations of Stuart Mill. ”

“ The advantage of living in separate communities meantime had become so clearly evident that by the middle of the fifteenth century chamberdekyns were abolished. All students not living in a college were required to live in a hall. It was thus that the halls lost some of their democratic independence. At this period in their development they may be roughly compared to such modern American halls as Claverly at Harvard, where the residents govern their own affairs in the main, admitting newcomers only by vote, but are all alike subject to the authority of a resident university proctor. ”

“ I might have suggested instruction on the key-bugle, which I play to the annoyance of my neighbors; but there is already a musical instructor at the Hall.
“I might have suggested a class in the ancient and [24] honorable calling of cobbling (which is the handmaid of Philosophy, I believe, for I have found most cobblers to be philosophers) as I often repair my own shoes,” pursued Professor Krenner, with the utmost gravity. “But there is a lady at the Hall who will teach you to do very ladylike tricks in burnt leather, and the two arts might conflict. ”

“ Concert hall, built in 1857 by J.W. McClung, had room for 400 or 500 people, but it was somewhat inaccessible on account of its being in the basement of the building and was not very much in demand. Horatio Seymour made a great speech to the Douglas wing of the Democracy in the hall during the campaign of 1880, and Tom Marshall, the great Kentucky orator, delivered a lecture on Napoleon to a large audience In the same place. ”

“ In casting the eye round the whole room, it is almost impossible to detect scarcely a square inch which is not either carved or gilded. The ceiling, with its massive gilded and decorated panels, presents a most imposing and gorgeous effect, and one of truly royal splendor. The St. Stephen's Hall is ninety-five feet long, thirty feet wide, and sixty feet high; the roof is stone-groined, springing from clustered columns running up the side of the hall. The bosses, at the intersections of the main ribs, are carved in high relief, with incidents descriptive of the life of Stephen. ”

“ Anyone—almost anyone—desiring to be insulted by the Lady Eltons, Mrs. Chesleys, and Miss de Latours of Ottawa, or to be snubbed of their acquaintances, had only to proceed to the Main Entrance of Rideau Hall, pass beneath the new facade—so symbolic of fronts, both physical and architectural, that had suddenly been acquired all over the City in honour of the Royal Governor-General—and there, in the white marble, red-carpeted hall, sign a huge register, under the eye of two supercilious, scarlet-coated flunkeys, who regarded each newcomer with all the antagonism of their class. ”

“ The desirability of placing the kitchen within easy reach of the hall is obvious. At Kenilworth, where the magnificent hall, built towards the end of the fourteenth century, occupies the whole north side of the inner ward, and is on a first floor above a vaulted cellar, the private apartments formed a wing against the west curtain of the ward, while the kitchen was against the east curtain, and was within easy reach of the stair to the hall, and the passage below it which led into the cellar. ”

“ The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place. In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of tenseness, of excitement. Bonbright could feel it. It made him tingle; it gave him a sensation of vibrating emptiness resembling that of a man descending in a swift elevator. ”

“ Cirencester possesses a magnificent town hall, a stately Perpendicular building, which stands out well against the noble church tower of the same period. It has a gateway flanked by buttresses and arcades on each side and two upper storeys with pierced battlements at the top which are adorned with richly floriated pinnacles. A great charm of the building are the three oriel windows extending from the top of the ground-floor division to the foot of the battlements. The surface of the wall of the façade is cut into panels, and niches for statues adorn the faces of the four buttresses. ”

“ The City Hall, fronting on one side of the square known as the Campus Martius, is a structure of which any city in the land might be proud. It is built of Cleveland sandstone, and faces on four streets,—being two hundred feet long on Woodward avenue and Griswold street, with a width of ninety feet on Fort street and Michigan avenue.
It is built in the style of the Italian renaissance, with Mansard roof and a tower rising from the centre of the building, adorned at its four corners with colossal figures fourteen feet high, representing "Justice," "Industry," "Arts," and "Commerce." ”

“ The broad-shouldered old white Congregational meeting-house stood at the top of the street in Field Park; it was the goal of restless Sophomores for several hours every Sunday, and it was also the goal of all ambitious contestants for college honors. Griffin Hall was then chapel, museum, laboratories, and recitation-rooms; East, South, and West Colleges, with Kellogg Hall, on the West lawn,—"factories of the muses," in Lowell's expressive phrase,—stood forth in their naked practicality much as they stand to-day. ”

“ Sibberton Hall was, however, the seat which the young Earl preferred, and where he usually spent the few weeks of summer between the season at Cowes and that of the moors. As I came up the straight shady avenue of ancient beeches which met overhead for more than a mile, the magnificent façade of the splendid old place with its countless windows, its towers and high twisted chimneys stood in the soft crimson haze of the brilliant afterglow, its delicate traceries and marvellous architecture giving it almost the appearance of an illustration from some fairy tale. ”

“ Kendall descended the steps and turned to his left. At the first entrance of Clarke Hall he entered and climbed two flights of well-worn stairs, bore to his left again and opened the door of the last room on the front of the building. Number 28 was a big, square, well-lighted room. Beside the shallow bay windows in front there was a window on the side from which, past the obtruding shoulder of Whitson, one caught a brief view of Wissining and the mouth of the river in the distance and of The Prospect in the foreground. Each side of the room held a bed, a washstand and a bureau. ”

“ Immaculately clean, inconceivably tidy, shimmering with brilliant light under its lofty and beautiful ceiling, shaking and roaring with the terrific thunder of its own vitality, this hall in which no common voice could make itself heard produced nevertheless an effect of magical stillness, silence, and solitude. ”

“ It means a great school of debate, a college that grants no degrees. It gives me a sadness that is not akin to pain, to hear a young person designate a building as Lyceum Hall, using the word as if it were Grampian Hall or Hamilton Hall, having no glorious, clear conception of what the name of the hall signified to the early community. Tradesmen, farmers, professional men, themselves readers and thinkers, above all restless and eager disputants would meet night after night to discuss the unselfish problems of life. ”

“ Bank is opposite. It is a plain, well-proportioned brick building, symmetrical and without tawdry 182ornament; it was designed by R. Norman Shaw. It is flanked on either side by a public-house, The Black Lion and the City of London Tavern. Just opposite the entrance of Threadneedle Street the Wesleyan Centenary Hall attracts attention by its size and solidity. Four immense fluted columns run up the facade to a frieze and triangular pediment. ”

“ The wide and weedy moat, enclosing nearly an acre of ground, is there as of yore, but the chief interest of the place is in its history. Still Claverham is picturesque: a pleasant, retired, and wholly delightful abode in the summer-time; in the winter—well, it was not winter-time then. Portions of the interior are quaint, especially the black oak-beamed and plastered hall that with its ingle-nook gives one a genuine old-world greeting. The beams of the hall are of the original building, and so, we were told, was the wide ingle-nook of the dining-room ”

“ Hall had not yet returned from church. Their place is an exceedingly pretty one, and arranged in very good taste. The house is not large; but is filled, in every room, with fine engravings, statuettes, ingenious prettinesses or beautifulnesses in the way of flower-stands, cabinets, and things that seem to have bloomed naturally out of the characters of its occupants. There is a conservatory connected with the drawing-room, and enriched with lovely plants, one of which has a certain interest as being the plant on which Coleridge's eyes were fixed when he died. ”