LEANING TOWERS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 84, 5 October 1929, Page 20

LEANING TOWERS

MANY JN EUROPE

Pisa's.leaning tower is well known, but ■ there are others .not quite so- familiar. In England or ' America, such tilting; {structure* 'would bo promptly eondainned by-,the building inspector, but in. Europe they :are used to lure- the tourist, states a writer in "Popular Science Monthly:" -.; .'-. . :, ■■ Mlore .than 350: -years after-its construction, engineers are1 seeking a way to straighten tho famous leaning tower of St. Moritz,. Switzerland. They hopo to make, the foundation as level as it is-firm. . The .tower was originally partof a church, long since .pulled down The leaning tower, df Bad Ems, Germany, is said to have.boen built on the foundation of the watch tower of a fort once occupied by legions from Borne. Not so tall as tho others—being but ninety feet—the Butcher's Tower at Ulm, Germany, reminds ono of the old saying by standing so straight that it leans backward, four and a half feet out of plumb. The leaning tower of Pisa, Italy, started in 1174 on a foundation of wooden piles only ten foot (loop in soft ground, and not com-pleted-until tho middle of tho fourteenth century, began to tilt when tho third story was built. The "leaningest" tower in tho world, it was 15,} feet out of plumb in-1829 and 16} in 1010 Its present rate of "fall" i 3 an inch iv twonty-iivo years. More desorving of leaning-tower fnnib than Pisa is Bologua, also in Italy, boasting two such towers, built early in tho twelfth eontury from motives of partician vanity J.'ho 320-foot tower, built by the' Asinolli family, has a lean of four f'eot not incroasod since the base was strengthened in 1488. The Garisenda Tower, 137 feet high, and eight feot two inches out of plumb, was not finished and tho upper part was removed, probably to savo tho rest, in 1358, „ .