Morning journal and courier., 1885-10-05
AGrsat Government Building.

Washington Correspondence of Cleveland Leader.
 Two hundred hands are busy working up-
 on the immense new granite building de-
 voted to the State, War and Navy depart ments, and the hammer of the mason and
 the whistle of the steam engine as they put
 the big granite blocks in their places can be plainly heard in the cabinet room Of the President across the way. This mammoth building is at last approaching completione and within two years at furthest it will be g finished structure. It has already cost about nine million dollars, and when it is done it's aggregate will foot up at least ten million and a quarter. It is the largest building in Washington, and ir is said to be the largest granite building in the world. It covers about four acres and half of ground, or an acre more than the Capitol; it is built that l it will almost outlast tke ages. Its compost ton is of immense blocks of iron-gray gran ite, weighing all the way from a quarter of a 1 ton to twenty tons each. In the north wing of the building alone there are ten thousand | of these big granite blocks, and in the whole structure the number of blocks of this inn ] mense size will aggregate about 50,000. The public square of Cleveland contains about l ten acres of space. The flooring space of | this building in it's various stories will be more than twice as large as that park, and ! the pipes and fues, if stretched out in one | straight line. would reach nearly forty miles, l or as far as from Washington to Baltimore. l Among all the millionaires of Cleveland there | is not one, should say, who has many 1 dollars as there are bricks in this building, | and if one could receive the cost of the smalls I est item of it's construction he would be l worth 8 fortune.
 The building contains four wings, north, | rba air of fbo ,ortb ! wing alone cost $33, ,000, and the clustering 1 even more than this. Its floors cost $72, 900, l and the granite work footed up over a mil l lion. In this wing there are $91 ,000 worth | of bricks, more than s100, 1000 worth of roof, ! and the plumbing and the gas fitting when | figured up for this wing devoted to the War 1 department, equals about many dollars as | there are soldiers in the whole United States army.
 This building is perfectly fre-proof. It is made entirely of iron and stone, with the ex ] ception of a skin of boards which is laid over l the stone floors of the offices for comfort, and l of tho doors themselves. The doors are of l polished mahogany but their castings are of | iron, and there are 545 tons of iron in the castings of the window frames and door cas- l ings of the east wing alone. The building ! has hundreds of windows, and it is perfectly I lighted and ventilated It's chandeliers will be numbered by the thousand, and it's mantles and freplaces by hundreds. It is so ar ranged that electric wires can be run through every part of it so as to connect one office with all parts of the building. On the desks | of the secretaries, heads of bureaus, and chief clerks you will see rows of electric but tons labelled with various names. If the sec. l retary wants messenger or man for any l other part of the building, he touches but.
 1 ton devoted to him, and as he does so bell
 rings in that mans office, it may be third
 l of a mile away. A third of mile, I say, for
 ] that is the distance one goes over in passing
 l around the building, and it is nearly COG feet from the north end of it to the south.