About one hundred and fifty yards from the premises just described stands the girls' building, two hundred and sixty-nine feet long, varying in width from forty-five to seventy feet. It is built in the Romanesque style, with high basement and three stories of brick, and two attic stories of wood and slate. Its foundation stone was laid July 4th, 1868, and was sufficiently completed to receive its inmates November 1, 1869. It is admirably adapted to its use, and cost over $200,000, though it is but about half the size of the original design. The cut represents the building as it is, whereas the one in the City Manual presents the one in prospect. The basement contains the kitchen, dining-room, laundry, furnace-room for heating the building, etc. The cooking is done with steam. The first floor contains reception rooms, offices, work-rooms, etc.; the second is divided into a series of school-rooms, with folding partitions, so arranged that the whole can be thrown into a vast hall for religious exercises, with seating for two thousand persons. The third floor is the dormitory, with three hundred and fifty beds, a row of cells being constructed at each end of the room for the accommodation of the Sisters. The fourth floor is divided into several dormitories arranged for hospital purposes, with baths and closets, and is supplied with hot and cold water. The fifth is for storage. The management of the girls' department is committed to the Sisters of Charity of Mount Saint Vincent Convent, twelve of whom, when we visited the Institution, had charge of its family of two hundred and fifty girls, and taught all branches of study and toil except a few intricacies of skirt-making and handicraft. The girls, like the boys, are nearly all received from the courts, as vagrants or criminals, are ignorant and spoiled children, and make large demands on the patience of their teachers. Their new building has accommodations for six hundred inmates, which will doubtless soon be filled without making any appreciable change in the seething masses of the great city. Skirt-making is the principal employment of the girls, each being taught every part of the business, and each in turn takes her part in the duties of the kitchen, laundry, and chamber. During the first seven years of its operations the society received over three thousand five hundred truant children, many of whom have been recovered from a life of crime, and now bid fair to be industrious and good citizens. Its work, however, has but just begun.

The buildings are large and beautiful, but everything around and within gives evidence of great economy. But while the children at the House of Refuge are supported at an annual expense of less than seventy dollars per capita above their own toil, the managers of this Institution declared that during 1867 the net cost of maintaining the boys, exclusive of their own labor, the interest on land, buildings, etc., was one-hundred and thirteen dollars per head, and ninety-six dollars for the girls. The entire expenditures of the Society, up to January, 1868, amounted to $469,034.02, of which $164,807.49 had been given by State and city grants, the remaining $304,226.53 having been provided by private donations, the labor of the children, and by public fairs, one of which, in 1867, yielded a profit Of over $100,000. We have been unable to obtain the last published report of the Society.

The principal motive in founding the Institution was to save the children of Catholics from the influence of Protestantism, which prevailed in most other institutions. It, however, makes no attempt to proselyte, and has refused to receive some children who had Protestant parents or guardians. The farm cost $60,000, and is now valued at $150,000. A dairy of forty cows is kept, and most of the vegetables consumed are grown on the premises.