NOVEL DANCE FLOOR

Waipa Post, Volume 39, Issue 3088, 12 December 1929, Page 2

NOVEL DANCE FLOOR

RAISED AT WILL.

By means of an installation costing some £IO,OOO, the dancing floor at the Savoy Restaurant in London can now be raised a height of 25 inches at a moment’s notice.

Just before the beginning of the cabaret entertainment recently, a button was pressed, and, to the astonishment of most of the guests, the whole space of polished flooring moved impressively upwards, while safely folding shutters glicTed into position at the sides to prevent the possibility of accidents. It weighs 16 tons, and has a lifting capacity of eight tons. The dance surface is of Balkan oak, and the whole is raised by eight electrically controlled hydraulic lifting rams.

Mr Reeves Smith, managing director of the hotel, said that the management had decided to build the new floor to enable guests in every part of the Restaurant to get a better view of the cabaret entertainment than was possible on the level, and also to enable the performance to b'e more dramatically presented. “ The hotel’s chief engineer, Mr Paye,” he said, “ working in co-opera-tion with a well-known firm of hydraulic engineers has completed the task in six months, and most of the work has been done between 2 a.m, and 10 a.m.., so as not to interfere with daily business.. The installation cost about £IO,OOO, and special hydraulic engineers with hundreds of feet of high-pressure piping had to be built in. The floor is raised by the pressure of thousands of gallons of water from the artesian wells below the Savoy, forcing, at a pressure of 900 lbs to the square inch.”.