Page:St. Nicholas, vol. 40.1 (1912-1913).djvu/608

 408 keeps. The ‘gooseneck’ of the derrick had broken. It was a heavy steel piece about two inches thick at the top of the mast of the derrick, that joins it to the two slanting legs.”

“Was n’t the girder smashed?” we queried.

“Oh, no, it was n’t hurt in the least. We took it apart—you know it is built up of plates and channels—and hauled it up in three separate sections.”

“Where are the engines that work the derricks?” asked Will.

“On the same story with the derricks at the start, but the derricks are moved up story after story, until they are six or eight stories above the engine before the engine is moved.”

“And the signals,” I put in, “how do you manage them?”

“At first we had a man stand at the edge of the building on the floor where the work was going on; he sent signals to the engineer by pulling a rope that rang a bell. Now that the building has reached such a height, we have the signals sent from the ground to the man on the floor where the derrick is set, by electricity. He in turn touches a button that communicates the signal to the engineer.”

To save time, Mr. Hotchkiss here told us to go down five flights and wait for him, as he had to attend to some work at the front of the building, and would find his way down by another stairway. When he came back, we were ready with more questions.

“That,” he said, referring to a huge black cylinder that ran up through the building, “is the smoke-stack.”

“It must be very heavy,” I ventured.

“Oh, no; not at all. It is made of light stuff. It looks heavy because it is so bulky. Each section is two stories high, and is supported by brackets on the floor beams so that there is no more weight on the bottom section than on the top. The sections are not riveted together, but are connected by slip joints. That gets rid of any trouble from expansion and contraction, you see.

“You must be going to have quite a powerful plant to need such a smoke-stack?”

“It will be quite a plant, 2400 horse-power. It takes a lot of power to run a building like this. We expect to have from 7000 to 9000 tenants. That makes a good-sized town, eh? and we are going to supply them with 81,000 lamps. Why. there will be enough wire in this building to reach from New York to Philadelphia.”

A few stories farther down, we came across the men who were building the walls. I was astonished to find that what had looked from the street like marble was really terra-cotta coated on one side with a sort of enamel. It seemed like a fraud, but Mr. Hotchkiss explained that this material was not only cheaper, but in every way better, than real stone. It was much lighter, and was thoroughly waterproof; no water could soak into it to freeze and chip or flake off the surface in winter-time. He explained how it was that the walls were not started at the ground floor. Each story carried its own wall, supported on brackets, and so the walls could be begun anywhere. As the first four stories were to be of stone and the work of setting the stone was comparatively slow, there was no necessity for waiting for the stonework to be completed before going on with the terra-cotta. The walls were actually built of brick with the enameled terra-cotta attached to the brick by means of metal straps or bands. The only reason for using real stone on the lower stories, we were told, was be- cause the imitation could too easily be detected so near the street. Large blocks of stone were used, and these had to be set in place very care