The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-10-22


 really fresh air, the simon-pure article. could be obtained only in regions Tar from the great cities and preferably In such localities the balmy pine groves of the south the great forests or the Adirondacks, and on the mountain slues of the west. In cities and towns the remark Lets go out and get a Dreatn of fresh air'' is often made, but now adays, with the aid of the building scien- lists, it might with more truth be said, Let's go in and get a breath or pure air for nowhere else in town or coun- try is the air so free from dust ana germs as that which is artificially circu- lated through our huge modern bulld- ings, the skyscrapers of American cities.
 Collecting Air in Bottles.
 The managers of great enterprises are spenuing much money and exercising their ingenuity to meet the demands or their patrons for fresh air. In the new subways in this city young man has recently been wandering from point to point. collecting air in bottles that it may be examined by experts, and means adopted to safeguard the breathing ma terial of the army of New Workers who are daily whisked about beneath the streets. The subway buildings are stlll studing the problem; the modern hotel keeper, so far as his own enterprise Is concerned, has mastered the difficulty. The visitor to the metropolis Is filled with admiration when he sees rooms decorated by artists of more than nat ional reputation and equipped with cost ly furniture made of wood gathered from the four corners of the earth. He may not reanze it, but large share Of the hotel guests enjoyment of his surround i'm fc dIia to hn Ct DreAtl- ing air which has been freed from dust and germs, warmed in winter and cooled i in summer, mostened when the weather is dry and dried when the atmosphere without is damp. Close the windows and doors tightly and this greatest of all blessings is forced upon you as 1t were blessing none the less because unseen and so by many unappreciated. There are no draughts or chills, no dust or noise as when ventilation came from open door window. Pure air enters 1 every room through adroitly concealed l openings near the ceiling, and flows down. ward to be carried away through equally unobtrusive gratings near the floor.
 Pure Air Factories.
 Far below the street level in great houses of entertainment the pure air factories. If you go&.ato the deep cellars of the new Hotel Astor, the T,0oo,000 hostelry which rises at the side of his toric Longacre Square, you find a battery of centrifugal fans and blowers driven by electric motors. Connected with them are two huge air shafts rising above the level of the roof or more than 100 feet in air Down one of these shafts the powerful lungs of the hotel, as they might be called, inhale the fresh air at the rate of many thousands of cubic i feet minutes, and circulate it to every i part of the building through hundreds of pipes and conduts concealed in the walls and beneath the floors. Through the other shaft is expelled the vitiated air drawn from kitchen, dining room, lobby and guest chamber.
 1ne score of giant fans and blowers can force through the building more l than 25O 600 cubic feet of air every min ute of the twenty-four hours. The venti- 1 lating plant is divided into five distinct l systems. for independent control each of which has both filling" and exhaust fans. | Inc separation of the supply ducts that connect with the registers all lover the ] house is made mainly in the basement and some of the pipes are more than 300 l feet long from their starting point at the great fans to where the air is dis charged. while the velocity with which l the air whirls through them is a little , higher than that at which it passes down 1 the main shaft, where it travels at the l rate of HOO feet a minute.
 1 It might be supposed that air taken 1 from the top of lofty building would be regarded as pure, but as a matter of l fact the atmosphere about great city i is heavily charged with dust, germs and i all sorts of undesirable things. No up- to-date hotel would think of furnishing to its patrons this sort of breathing ma terial any more than 1t would tolerate i impure or improperly cooked food. So far all the air blown through the Astor's ventilating system is carefully filtered as soon as it Is drawn from the upper re- gions. The filters are made of fine-woven l cheesecloth, re-enforced by wire sceens, and there is a series of these screens in the main air duct arranged zigzag. so that they present surface area equal to forty times that of the duct itself. Every particle of dust and every impurity is removed from the air as 1t passes through these purifiers The amount of matter which is screened out-matter which no one would care to inhale-is something surprising.
 System of Hotel Astor.
 One feature especially distinguishes the ventilating system of the Hotel Astor. 1t is an arrangement by which there is always a draught of air away from the public rooms which guests frequent into and through the working departments The exhaust fans in the kitchen and engine rooms, for instance expel more air than is forced either of these apart- ments by the blowers. which supply 60. COG cubic feet of filtered air each minute This process produces low pressure in these two departments. so If door is opened from any part of the house adjoining, A draught is imme.iately started in the direction of the working rooms
 All through the building these air waves, imperceptible unless a lighted match or a trailing wreath of cigar smoke shows their presence, sweep constantly from lobbies, banquet halls, parlors and corridors toward those recesses of the es- tablishment where guests do not ordi- narily penetrate. From these quarters the stale air is being constantly drawn out, the pressure keeping 1t moving to- ward the outlet in steady stream. Thus none of the disagreeable odors that used to be the bane of so many public houses are anywhere to be found here.
 Machines for Adding Moisture.
 In the basement, near the air filters are the ingenious machines by which mositure is added to the air when 1t ts too dry, and which cool 1t when the weather is warm. Here. too. are the