The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-06-26
A Great Building.

NudllcS L. uSIu W say lhub ilC ouh
never went down on his dominions.
The owners of the Rookery building
can more than eclipse that boast. The
fire never goes out in their domain
Just think of it, $4,000 worth of coal
used annually for the heating and light
ing of that gigantic structure. Talk
about the immense money transactions
done of old in Lombard street, London,
in Jews lane, Frankfort, or on the
Rialto in Venice! Why, the Rookery |
lays over them all tenfold, all of them
together. 1t is not too much to say |
that the aggregate sum OF money turned |
over and put into general circulation |
by the half thousand firms doing bust
ness in the immense pile amounts to
$500, 900 900 a year. And that is a
sum which three hundred years ago, at
the period when those three monetary
centers of Europe were in their prime,
could not have been raked together
with a fine-tooth comb which would |
have scratched over every hill and dale |
of the then civilized world. In fact, it
is now recognized that the Rookery
building is one of the main financial
centers of the whole country. Just one
of the 500 firms in the building-the
Illinois Steel Company-comma
alone a capital of $25, 100000 On the
seventh floor, where the railway pool
and number of interdependent insti-
tutions are located, millions on millions
of dollars are turned over and over
every month. The same is true of the
Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, with
its capital stock of 81 ,0O0, 900, and of
the Northwestern National Bank, one
of the wealthiest in the land. And as
for the Central Safe Deposit Vaults, of
which John Mitchell is president, and
which has just opened active operations
down in the basement, the wealth which
already lies piled up there and the
wealth which is going to roll into its
safe compartments within this year
is something so enormous that even
COrtez and Pizarro, though in their
time they wallowed in the gold of
the Incas and Montezumas, would
stand aghast and stop their talking
about the wealth they saw. In sober
truth, there is nothing in the whole
world like those safety deposit vaults.
The mere fitting up swallowed
$4,000. But when one sees the pol
ished steel doors, which weigh good
yet turn lightly and noiselessly by
means of a delicate mechanism, and
when one sees the 10000 boxes and the
triple system of automatic checks and
registry kept over the movements of
the watchmen and of all whopass those
marvellous gates, one gets an idea of
where the money has gone to. Just
citing the bare fact that the Rookery
is 160 feet high from sidewalk to roof;
that its length on LaSalle street is IFS
feet, and its width 1866; that there are
700 offices in it, and that there is a corps
of employees of over sixty belonging to
the building, with salary list of nearly
SOC, 900; that there are 1913 windows in
it, making 9, 626 panes of plate-glass, and
those windows alone cost 100000; that
the walls of the structure measure three
feet and one-half in thickness at the
bottom and still two feet up on the
twelfth story: that one concern in the
building has alone quarters measuring
10000 square feet; that the building cost
S1,750,000, to construct and fit up, and
that at present 100000 annual rental
is drawn from ito just mention these
facts tells something of the stupendous
size and the great importance of this
structure. But all of these facts to-
gether do not tell as much as the one
fact that it takes every day two of Uncle
Sans letter carriers to deliver the regu-
lar mail for the occupants of this one
building, and third carrier to collect
the outgoing mail matter. There are
two big mail boxes, each holding 300 to
400 pounds of mail matter, in the build
ing, and frequently the carrier who
empties them has to fill his big pouch
three or four times before one collec-
ton is finished. The two carriers de-
liver each an average of eighty pounds
of mail matter five times per day. A
simple arithmetical demonstration will
show that this means 100000 pounds a
year, or about 7,6S0,000 letters for the
500 firms in the building. This is no in.
considerable portion of the total mail
matter delivered per year to the whole
of Chicago. 1t will thus be seen that
the three letter carriers who attend to
the Rookery have no "soft snap" of it.
On the other hand, the people in there
are pretty liberal, and it is understood
that last Christmas, for instance, these
carriers made quite haul in the mat
ter of holiday gifts. One of them
is said to have cleared $l50-no small
addition to his regular salary. But
what, after all, does that mean for firms
like the Illinois Steel Company, which
pays matter of 100000 rental alone,
and which, with their dozens of de-
tendencies like Pickands, Brown g. Co.,
control the whole iron and steel trade
in this section of the country? What
does it mean for that hive of immensely
wealthy railroad companies which, side
by side, take up the whole of the
seventh floor? They can well afford a
ten-dollar bill each to secure bit OF
additional zeal and promptness on the