THE “SKYSCRAPER.”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 20, 8 September 1911, Page 7

THE “SKYSCRAPER.”

That much-abused American development, the “skyscraper,” is the subject of an informative and sympathetic article in the “World’s Work.” To the writer, who is evidently thoroughly well acquainted with his subject, the “skyscraper” is not a thing to be deplored. It has beep yeuejered necessary by certain conditions,■ and it has a beauty of its own. as the lino illustrations by Mr Joseph Pennell show. To illustrate the convenience of these huge buildings that house the population of a town, he suites that if a tenant in the new Hudson Terminal buildings in New York decided to build a railway, he might personally attend to every detail of the enterprise without putting on his bat; for among his fellow tenants are firms dealing in all the many things wanted for a railway, from ballast and rails to coal and signals. The elevator is the factor that limits the heigeht of the “skyscraper.” Architects are quite ready to plan safe buildings much higher than those in existence, but the higher the building the move the space that must be given up to elevators, and the less that is available for letting to tenants. The elevator space in the lofty Singer tower is astonishingly large. ' The problem of moving the population of these enormous buildings is much more difficult than one might think. Eight hundred people live in the Singer tower, exclusive of the great building below, and there' are 11,000 ! in the Hudson Terminal buildings. It | is obvious that to devise a system j to carry these people up and down quickly requires a good deal of careful planning. For instance, in a certain building it would take twenty elevators thirty minutes to take the 2100 people out to lunch, assuming that they lunched at the same time. In some . buildings it wqqlcl. take ( .hyico, as long. In a Chicago building it was found necessary to arrange with the tenants to dismiss their employees at different hours, so as to avoid crowding on the .elevators, and it was found that in a New York “skyscraper” it would take the elevators an hour and a half to get everybody out of the building in case of panic. Tenants insist on a good elevator service, so if the height of towers like the Singer structure is greatly increased, most of the floor space will have to be devoted to elevator wells..