The Warner sun. (Warner, Brown Co., Dakota [S.D.]) 1885-1???, 1885-11-20
A Great Government building

n GTedU VeTnIlC BuItuluS
Two hundred hands are busy work.
ing upon the immense new granite
building deyotedto the state, war, and
navy departments. and the hammer
of the mason and the whistle Of the
steam engine SIS they put the big gran,
ite blocks in their places can be heard
plainly in the cabinet Don of the
| president across the way. This mann
moth building is at last approaching
completion, and within two years at
furthest it will be o finished structure
1t has already cost about nine million
dollars, and when it is done it's aggre
gate will foot up at the least ten mill
ion and a quarter. 1t Isl the largest
BIT iiding in Washington, and is said
to be the largest granite building in
the world. 1t covers aboutfour acres
and a half of ground, or an acre more
than the capitol; it is SO built that II
will almost outlast the ages. It's
composition is of immense blocks oil
iron-gray granite, weighing all the way
from a ton to 20 tons each. In the
north wing of the building alone there
are ten thousand of these big granite
blocks, and in the whole st~ructure,the
number of blocks of this immense size
will aggregate about fifty thousand.
The public square of Cleveland ON.
tains about ten acres. The. flooring
space of this building In it's varioul
stories will be more than twice "a
large as that park, and the pipes and
fues, If stretched out In one straight
line, would reach nearly forty miles,
or as far as from Washington to Bal
timore. Among all themillionaires OF
Cleveland there is not one, / should
say, who has as many dollars as there
are bricks i'm this building, and if one
could receive the cost of the smallest
item of It's construction he would be
worth q fortune.
The building contains four wings,
north, south, east, and west. The
stairs of the north wing alone cost
$4,000 and the plastering even more
than this. It's floors cost $4,000,
and the granite work footed up over
a million. In this wingthere are $91,-
900 worth of bricks, morethan $780,
600 worth of roof, and the plumbing
and the gas fitting when figured up for
this wing devoted to the War Depart
ment, equals about as many dollars
as there are soldiers in the whole Unit.
ed States army.
This building is perfectly fire-prooi
1t is made entirely of iron and stone,
with the exception of q skin of boards
which is laid over the stone floors OF
the offices for comfort, and ofthe doors.
The doors are of polished mahogany,
but their castings are of iron, and there
are 545 tons of iron In the castings OF
the window frames and door castings
of the east wing alone. The building
has hundreds of windows, and it is
perfectly lighted and ventilated. It's
chandeliers will be numbered by the
thousand, and it's mantels and fire.
places by hundreds. 1t is so arranged
that electric wires can be run through
every part of it so as to connect one
office with allparts of the building. On
the desks of the secretaries, heads of
bureaus, and chief clerks you will see
rows of electric buttons labelled with
various names. If the Secretary
wants a messenger or a man from any
other part of the building, he touches
a button devoted to him, and as he
does so a bell rings in that man S office,
it may be a third of a mile away.A
third of a mile, | say, for that is the
distance one goes over in passing
around the building, and it is nearly
600 feet from the northend oft to the
south.-Washington Correspondence
of Cleveland Leader.