Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-12-31
ON A MAMMOTH SCALE
Housekeeping as Done in a
Modern Skyscraper.
ALL IN FIVE HOURS
CLEANING UP THE EQUAL OF
MANY HOUSES.
Every Day in the Year - Surprisingly
Small Number of People En-
gagged in the Task.
Written for The Evening Star.

written for The Evening Star
If, as it is said the average housewife
awaits with fear and trembling the COM
ing of the weekly sweeping day, what ought
to be the state of mind of the man who
every working day in the year cleans with
the thoroughness of housekeeping time,
the equivalent of 100 TO 200 houses of seven
rooms each?
Beside himself? Ready to jump out of his
skin? Half crazy? Nothing of the sort
Taken by and large he is as cool-headed an
individual as could be found in a days
journey. He's got to be cool-headed. Other
wise he'd never get his work done, for he's
the man who is variously known as janitor
and superintendent of the modern skyscrap-
er, and his whole duty is to keep the great
pile of steel and bricks and mortar as clean
and tidy for its three four thousand
occupants as it is possible for elbow grease
to make it.
But, some duobting housewife may rise
to remark, surely cleaning a Skyscrap-
err isn't anywhere near equivalent to sweep
ing and busting and scrubbing a hundred or
two houses.
Isn't it. though? Well. here is handful
of statistics that ought to dispel all doubts
on the subject and make the doubter thank
her lucky stars that she's just a housewife
with only one little seven-room house to
scrub and dust, and not the man response
BILE for the physical condition of TWEEN
ty-five story office building.
In the first place, take that house which
she cleans once a week, with the assistance.
perhaps, of a maid. If each of the seven
rooms averages 12Xli feet-a pretty
liberal average by the way the aggre-
gate floor surface of the rooms would be
only ten short of 200 feet. Allow 900
square feet for the area of halls and stairs,
and the housewife has about 100 square
feet of floor surface to clean.
Big Figures
Now, a skyscraper that has any preten-
sion at all to "scraping' is every bit Of
twenty-five stories in height, while its floor
surface varies all the way from five thou
sand to ten thousand square feet to each
story. Let us be fair and give the repre-
sentative skyscraper floor surface of, say,
1900 square feet to each story. Then the
combined surfaces of the twenty-five floors
total 1877, 900 square feet, or 125 times the
floor surface coptained in the dwelling
house of l, 800 square feet
There you are. Is there any housewife
who thinks she has troubles of her own who
would like to exchange places for day
with the SkyScraper superintendent?
If there isn't, perhaps there's boy some
where who is dissatisfied with life because
every morning it's his lot to sweep out the
leading grocery store of the town. Maybe
he'd like to relieve the skyscraper janitor
of his job for while. But watt First let
it be known that some janitor who is sharp
at figures has calculated that cleaning
fourteen-story 'scraper," with 1915 square
feet to each floor, is equivalent TO tidying
up the entire business portion of a repre-
sentative western town-hardware store
dry goods store, bank, grocery store,
church, library, public hall, post and tele-
graph offices, market, fire house, drug
store, shoe store, hotel, Y. NJ. c. A. build
ing, news store, cigar shop, school house.
plumbers shop, harness shop, a second
grocery store, ditto a market, and living
Quarters for a score or more OF famliIeS
over such business places as news and
cigar stores. And this building is the sky
scraper of ten years ago. while the one of
today is nearly twice as high and with dou-
BILE the floor area.
In Five Hours.
Does the youngster still want to lay aside
his broom and brush for the cap of the
superintendent? But he doubtless will not
when he learns that skyscraper, no mat
ter how big it is-whether its stories num-
Der fifteen or thirty, it's floor space 1000 or
10 600 feet per fioor-has to be cleaned
from top to bottom in five hours, no more,
sometimes less time.
It's this way: From 0 o'clock in the MORN
ing till in the afternoon business of all
sorts is being carried on full blast in the
various suites of offices by 1,S00 1000
COCO occupants and their several thousand
callers These callers usually far outnum-
her the buildings occupants; New YORK
skyscraper of fourteen stories has 1,s0o
OCCUPANTS and the number of persons daily
carried up in the elevators average 1900
All these thousands of workers-sufficient
to populate a town the size of Bethlehem,
Pa.-are too much engrossed in their bar
gaining to brook interference by scrub
woman, porter and window cleaner. So the
cleaners wait and watch around o'clock
for tenant to leave his office, and almost
before he has set foot in the elevator they
are swarming all over the ofiice--a half
dozen of them. One woman, on her knees
scrubs the concrete floor; porter assists