The year is significant: the Erie Canal, which consolidated New York's claim to be the commercial metropolis of the United States, was completed.

It was a booming commercial and cultural metropolis at the time von Galen arrived-its population increased from 900,000 in 1871 to slightly less than 4 million by 1920.

In the late 1800's, new arrivals from Germany, Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe were building St. Louis into an industrial and commercial metropolis to rival Chicago.

There is constant talk these days of turning Mumbai, the southern commercial metropolis formerly known as Bombay, into a new Shanghai, China's most glitteringly modern city.

It was designed to emphasize Copenhagen's position as a commercial metropolis.

Tzechanis was born in Moscopole (now southeast Albania), an 18th-century cultural and commercial metropolis of the Balkans and center of Greek culture.

It also was a seat of commerce conveniently situated between the cultural and commercial metropolises of New York and Philadelphia.

"It was the classic American model of a pavilion in a park, up and away from the commercial metropolis and the bars" of downtown Seattle at that time, Mr. Walsh said.

In the drawing, the church spires reach skyward above the four- and five-story structures that were tokens of the growing commercial metropolis.

Caravan city, Tichitt was a commercial metropolis in the Sahara.