Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/259

 Marca 22, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. 241 THE S. HELENS TOWN-HALLCOMPETITION. ae competition designs for the proposed new Town-hall, at S. Helens, were exhibited on Monday and Tuesday week. The S. Helens Standard comments on them as follows: Truth, No. 1.—This is one of the finest perspec- tive views in the room; and the design, which is Gothic, with a clock tower, reminds one of the Par- liament Houses, and is very creditable. Its cost, however, must far exceed our limit, if the other design, No. 2, is not much below it. The plan, however, is not quite so successful, the corridors being dark and the arrangements inconvenient. For instance—The police houses are detached from the police department, and have one common entrance ; the superintendent’s house is put to the back; single men’s quarters have no communication with the sergeants’ house, from which their food comes, or with the police office or parade yard; no way either from sergeants’ kitchen to the cells to take the pri- soners’ food; magistrates are put to the back, whilst their clerk has the front of the building. The assembly room is on the upper floor, its side to the front street. It has a large entrance hall under- neath, with fine open porch, but this is the only entrance or means of exit for the 1,000 people in the audience, which, in case of panic, would be sure to prove fatal. The main corridor in the building de- pends mostly for its light upon what it can borrow from the rooms. The council chamber is on the floor above the committee rooms and mayor’s room, and has no retiring room or private water-closet for the members. Truth No. 2.—This is a very plain Italian design, representing a much less costly building than that jnst described. It has a “porte cochere” in the front, which is carried up and forms the clock tower. This covered entrance for carriages is, however, the only improvement on the other plan. Police ar- rangements inconvenient; charge office has no communication with the store-room, clerk’s, or superintendent's offices, except across the pub- lic corridor, across which also the prisoners have to be taken to the cells, or from same to the court. Superintendent’s house at the back, and far from the office. Cell corridor lighted at one end only, and that by glass door or fan-light. Magistrates’ room and their clerk’s offices are a long way apart. Officials and advocates have to use the same corridor as the public going to police- court; and the only way to assembly room platform is through the room itself, or up the stairs going to the police bedrooms. Sergeants’ and single men’s quarters open to before-mentioned objections. Corri- dors dark, and police-court lighted only on same side as the bench. Assembly room has again but one public entrance to the body; and the library and reading room being open to the general corri- dors, would keep the whole building open every night after office hours, and render it very insecure. Respice Finem.—The exterior of this building is one of the best in the room. showing more merit in its simplicity than some of its more pretentious neighbours, and the cost has evidently been kept in mind. It is, however, a three-story building, which makes the rooms on the top floor too high for con- venient business use, where land is plentiful; and the arrangements are not equal to the design. For instance—the corridor to cells, although 70ft. or 80ft. long, gets light and external air from one end only; and in this dark corridor the prisoners have to wash, and the exercising yards have no water- closets. Office for inspector of weights is entered only from the gateway into police parade yard, so keeping the gate continually open; and the privacy of the sergeants’ house is destroyed by the single men passing through to their quarters. Magistrates’ room is at the back, whilst the front rooms are used for witnesses. Magistrates’ room is about 80ft. from their clerk’s room, and the corridors are alikeopen to magistrates, officials, and the public. There is but one general entrance for assembly room, library, reading room, and municipal department. so keep- ing all the premises open when any portion is required at night; and the assembly room, having only one means of ingress or egress for 1,000 per- Sons, cannot be too strongly objected to. This room, however, is not large enough for its purpose; and on the usual scale of allowance per sitting, would not hold the number just named. The council chamber looks into the side street and the Fire Brigade, drill, and workshop yard, getting the noise from both; and the communication from it to the assembly room would prove too close and direct to be free from serious objection. The Town Clerk’s offices and the muniment and paper rooms, being on different floors, would be very inconvenient in prac- tice, whilst the treasurer's and rates offices being on the top floor of a three-story building, is not only in direct opposition to the stipulation requiring them to be ‘‘easy of access for the public,” but would be the most inconvenient arrangement possible for the public, who use this particular office most. Justice.—To save space it may be said that this plan is also open to most of the objections pointed out in the others—dark corridors, and the use of one general corridor for all purposes—the arrangements generally showing the want of study of the practical everyday working of the various departments ; for instance, the police cells are detached from the police office, and seattered about a winding corridor of 6ft. wide, the greater part of which would be dark, rendering supervision almost impossible. Tensanda via est.—The same remarks would apply to this as to the last, but with more force. Take police arrangements again as a sample—The cells, 12 in number, are arranged side by side in one long length, opening into a corridor only 4 feet wide, with window only at one end, although its length cannot be far from 100 feet. Police-office looks to the side instead of the front, as required, and is entered from the back street up a corridor almost matching that just alluded to. Assembly room has but one public entrance for its 1,000 persons, and so great is the general muddle that the doors of the mayor’s parlour and the surveyor’s clerks’ office are face to face in a corridor only 6 feet wide. Device—Three Circles.—These drawings are not only unique in their style of getting-up, but they are effective in elevation, and in arrangement have evidently received the careful study of a practical mind. Nothing seems to have been thought too small for attention, and if we confine ourselves to the task we set out with—of pointing out the “‘ de- fects in the arrangements "—we need say no more; it is but fair, however, to say that here we have a plan the suitability of which to the site is seen at a glance. There are no dark corridors or halls, no waste space, no useless angles or passages frittering away the land. The principal rooms are in the most important places; each department is distinct in it- self, and may be kept so, or combined when neces- sary ; and instead of an assembly room on an upper floor, in which, to get the 1,000 persons required, they would have to sit upon each other’s knees, and to which there is but one way in and out, here is a room on the ground floor that will fairly seat the people, and which has three large entrances from the street, and no less than five doors into the body, four to the gallery, and two to the boxes. True, there are defects, also, in these plans; but they are so out- numbered with the good points as almost to be lost. Utility—In this plan also, the police arrange- ments, so far as the office and cells are concerned, are worthy of study, but the corridor is not wide enough to secure that through draught and light necessary for such a place. As in the last plan, a special pri- soners’ lavatory is provided, but there are no water- closets in the yards. The superintendent cannot get from his house to his office without crossing the public entrance to police-court, and the sergeants’ house, and single men’s quarters are far apart, and without communication, although all food for one has to be carried to it from the other. Principal entrance very poor, and better position is given to the town clerk’s rooms than to those set apart for the mayor ; the two committee rooms, which ought to be cheerful, look one into an area, and the other has top light, and the surveyor’s rooms, for which north light was stipulated, look to the east. The assembly room is on the upper floor, and is open to most, if not all, the objections of other plans, as to means of ingress and egress; and looking at the plan generally it seems to straggle over the paper without any de- finite aim, as if it had been made for some other site. The elevation is Italian in style, boldly treated, and reminding one strongly of some of the palatial offices in the neighbourhood of the Liverpool Exchange. —_@—_—__ PAPER AS A BUILDING MATERIAL. O make planks out of sawdust has hitherto been regarded a problem so insoluble that the ex- pression has been used to point a jest, and referred to the same category as that to which belongs the art of spinning ropes out of sand. However, like many other so-called impossible things, the manu- facture of planks out of sawdust is now unquestion- ably possible, though we (Engineer), do not say economical ; still the operation by which this might be accomplished, slightly varied, yields products not only curious but economical, and some of them, we believe, are destined to find large application as building materials. Let us explain. The chemical material lignine or cellulose was regarded until quite recently as in- soluble, Practically, everybody knows that timber of whatever species may be exposed to water for any length of time without suffering the slightest amount of loss by solution. Timber thus exposed may or may not decay—that will depend on the sort of timber, and also on the agents held in solu- tion by the water of immersion; but it never dis- solves. A more striking illustration, however, of the non-solubility of lignine or cellulose is seen in the long durability of cotton and linen goods. These may go to the wash again and again; when at the wash they have to suffer from one or more of the various nostrums which washerwomen delight in— alkali, plain or caustic, chloride of lime, soaps in variety. They have to withstand rubbing, boiling, ironing, mangling, and other hard usage, but the fabrics thus tortured never dissolve. They abrade and wear out mechanically, but that is all. The point need not be insisted on here that every remark made concerning the non-solubility of woody matter, whether in the state of timber or of cotton and linen woven fabrics, equally applies to paper, which latter, although easily destructible by water soakage, is in water quite insoluble. Water can reduce paper to pulp, but that is all. Having premised these remarks, we now come to the point of stating that the fluid “cupro am- monium ” dissolves woody fibre with great facility. The rapidity of solution varies with the mechanical structure of the woody matter (cellulose or lignine) operated on. Old linen or old cotton textures that have suffered much wear and often gone to the wash dissolve in cupro ammozium, so to speak, immediately; or, if a simile be required, they dis- solve with very near the rapidity of a lump of sugar in a tumbler of hot water. New linen or new cotton are slightly more refractory, but still they dissolve with time. Similarly, and by a further application of the same principle, sawdust, no matter of what wood, yields with more or less ease to this curious solvent. There is good reason for belief that materials built up by taking advantage of this curious solvent property of cupro ammonium will before long be turned to great practical use, not, however, by effecting complete solution, but only partial or sur- face solution. Thus, to take a simple case, suppos- ing it were desired to render a sheet of paper water- proof by cupro ammonium treatment, this could easily be effected in the following manner :—The sheet being dipped momentarily in cupro ammonium, and then passed between rolls to squeeze out excess of moisture, and finally dried, the paper so treated would be in a chemical, though not in a mechanical sense, waterproof. To be precise, such paper might be soaked indefinitely in water, even boiling water, without suffering any disintegration, Neither, if made into a bag and filled with water, would paper thus prepared allow any water to come through, save and except through such apertures as paper, even the best of paper, invariably possesses. Hence, to treat a single thickness of paper with cupro am- monium for the sake of waterproofing it is an opesa- tion of very little use; but if two thicknesses of paper be momentarily dipped in a cupro ammonium bath, then withdrawn and passed face to face between steel rollers, then the two surfaces adhere so absolutely that, when the compound material has dried, the plane of juncture is not only invisible, but cannot be rendered visible by any sort of dissec- tion, Except under the condition that two holes in the two opposed sheets absolutely correspond, no defect of continuity can arise, and the chances against such correspondence of holes are almost infinite. The manufacture of this double tissue paper furnishes the simplest case of what may be called lignine construction. What can be effected on two sheets can obviously be effected on any number by reduplication of the process, and thus artificial lig nine sheets may be built up of any thickness, from that of paper to that of plank or scantling, should the operator so desire. ‘The material, when in a certain state of moisture, moulds with almost the same facility as potter's clay. It readily corrugates, either by fluted rolling or by rectangular pressure, and the corrugated material, extremely light, hard, and, chemically, next to indestructible, is destined, we believe, to supplant corrugated iron in numerous applications of the latter. So far as experience has gone, water exercises positively no influence on com- pound fabrics built up of lignine consolidated by cupro ammonium. Acids affect them only slightly, and not injuriously ; in fact, the only agent which they cannot stand is ammonia. With regard to cohesion, it is a remarkable, though not an unprecedented fact, that although cupro ammonium speedily effects solution of lignine, yet the first result of immersion is a strengthening of the fibre. If, for example, a piece of linen be tested for cohesive strength, and the result noted; if, then a corresponding piece be dipped for an instant