The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-10-26

Along with the announcement that
after thirty-one years of constant
building the largest building in Amer
lea is nearing completion comes an
other to the effect that the big pile is
so sadly overcrowded that it's $500 ten
ants are beginning to howl for an adj
ditional story. This despite the fact
that the structure. Philadelphia's City
Hall. has 6S2 rooms with a total floor
space of 51S.67S square feet. or 11S
acres.
Georgia G. Pierre, chief of the Blu
reau of City Property. who has juris-
dicition over City Hall, and John M.
Bunker, the buildings superintendent,
are being bothered with another COM
plant about the smallness of their big
charge. They are told continually
that its twenty-five elevators cannot
accommodate the thousands of persons
who enter the hall daily. MIR. Bunker
says that he knows full well that the
city employees are cramped for elbow
room and that the kick" about the
elevators is justified; but what can
we do ?" he asks helplessly. We've put
place to install another; and while
there's room to stick aEother story on
the building, we've no authority to do
it. But something will have to be
done soon to relieve the jam. The
only vacant rooms now at our COM
mand are the eight in the tower, the
highest in the world. but they are SO
poorly lighted and ventilated that they
are of no use except as store rooms"
or fG adI A5 70
City Hall it viii be only one of hun
dreds of queer things that have be-
come part of the buildings history.
How Millions Were Spent.
The leading queer thing-to
Philadelphia taxpayers = is how
the Hall, even if it is the
largest structure in the west
ern hemisphere and the worlds larg-
est municipal building, the Parliament
building excepted, ever came to take
$25,O00,000 from their pocketbooks A
recent report, in endeavoring to ex-
plain this vast expenditure, reveals
some interesting facts. 1t states that
$4,000 has been paid to the architect
and his assistants in salaries since 1871,
when the building was begun; SIS, 800
to a messenger; 1851, 400 for paint and
painting; eco for cast and wrought
iron the building has no steel frame,
for such a thing was unknown when
the Hall was begun; $1.612,0 900 for 3d.
100000 bricks and brick work; IS, 5O0 900
for 1,464,000 cubic yards of marble for
marble work; $1,000, 900 for dressed
stone for inside finish; $4,000, 900 for
fitting up rooms; $460,000 for plumbing
$156,000 for metal work on the tower;
100000 for asphalt floors and roof
$2S,000 for a tower clock; $61S,000 for
carpenter work; $65, 900 for 81, 346
pounds of bronze work; $1,S43, 900 for
watchmen and cleaners; $736,000 for
electric installation, and so on.
The installation of electricity fur
nishes an interesting incident in the
Halls history. When the walls were
erected electric lighting was unheard
of, but when scientists had demon
strated it's usefulness the now extinct
Public Building Commission, in the
late eighties, ordered electrical equip
ment. The electricians had to chisel
troughs into the stone wall for the
wires at an expense of thousands OF
dollars, and it took them the better
part of five years of steady work to
wire the building. Now, however, the
Hall has a plant capable of furnishing
all the light a city of 10000 to 10000 in
habitants could possibly use. Each of
it's five dynamos has power for 1000
lights of sixteen candle power each. In
the building are 10000 such lights and
2S6 arc lights of 1000 candle power
each, and in a circle around the tower
are &c arc lights of 1900 candle power
each. These lights, the most powerful
yet made, were manufactured especial
ly for the Hall. 1t takes two men a
full day to clean and trim them. Five
hundred and forty-eight incandescent
lamps are used to light the four faces
of the great clock in the tower.
A Remarkable Basement.
The dynamo room is one of fifty-nine
in the buildings basement, which runs
not only under the hall, but the plaza
in the center as well
These basement rooms TEEN with
surprises. First, there is a sand bed
filter with daily capacity of 100000
gallons of water, and the hall employees
and thousands of strangers who daily
tread the corridors manage practically
to consume this amount. Thousands
of gallons are carried to their homes
by the employees, for the water fur
nished the Philadelphia householder is
about the worst on earth and will be
until the city gets its big filter beds in
working order.
Then there are well-ordered and ca
pacious shops for the eight carpenters,
FIVE fresco and twelve ordinary paint
ers, two gas filters, twelve plumbers,
six brick masons and two steam filters,
who year in and year out spend their
time keeping the completed portions in
repair. Last year they looked after 621
complaints. The thirty-eight sweepers
and cleaners, as well as the four men
who spend their lives cleaning the 1920
windows; the seventeen lavatory at
tendants and the thirty-seven operators
of the twenty-five elevators also have
basement quarters.
Five engineers and twenty firemen
look after a score of engines and
pumps, which eat up 1000 tons of coal
each year. Since the Hall has been PC
cupied it has consumed 100000 worth
of fuel.
The basement also contains the only
place in the entire building that in any
way deserves classification with the
whispering and echo galleries of other
famous structures. This Is Significant
ly dubbed "HelPs Alley" 1t is a pass /,
ageway four feet wide and twenty feet
long, leading from the engine to the
dynamo room. Along the ceiling run
big steam pipes; and these make the
alley so hot that no one has ever been
able to stay in 1t long enough to take
the exact temperature. A newspaper
man tried II, but he gave up and ran
when the thermometer had scared way
beyond the 200 mark.
Queer Things In the Tower.
Like the lowest portion, the highest
part of the building, the tower, is an
interesting and curious place.
1t contains the largest stone in the