Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-06-28
ON A GREAT SCALE
Extensive Operations of Exca-
walton in New York
PENNSYL VANIA'S TERMINAL
Outlay Of Thirty Million Dollars In
volved.
SOME OF THE FREAK BUILDINGS
Tower Seven Hundred Feet High for
Offices Representatives,
Clark's Palace.
SOME OF THE FREAK BUILDINGS
BY WILLIAM E. CURTIS.
By WILLIAM E CURTIS.
Written for The Star and the Chicago Record
Herald

Written for The Star and the Chicago Record
Herald.
At SEA, S. s. St. Louis June 3, 1906.
The other day in New York. Mr. Isador
Saks took me up OH the roof OF his new
store at the corner of Broadway and 34th
street and showed a strange and inter-
esting sight-severaI hundred men busily
at work in an enormous pit between It'll
and sth avenues and 31st and SD streets,
where the Pennsylvania Railroad Company
is building its new station. They are dig
ging the cellar, "a great hole in the ground
/ 400 feet long, 4GG feet wide ana forty feet
deep for all the trains are coming into that
station through tunnels under the hudson
and East rivers, forty feet below the sur
face.
Nearly all of that section of the globe is
composed of rock which has TO blasted
out and the fragments with the earth, are
shoveled into trucks and hauled by tiny
locomotives on an elevated railway track
over the streets to the foot of 18th street,
on the banks of the Hudson, where their
loads are dumped into barges by automatic
apparatus. The barges are then lowed
down TO Staten Island and Bay Ridge. at
the mouth of the bay of New York, where
the earth and stone are used for filling in
the new terminals which the Pennsylvania
company has been constructing for its New
England business at a cost OF several mil
lions of dollars. The preparations for the
excavation of the cellar of the new station
cost much as 90 per cent of the other
railway depots of the world, for the elevated
railway is nearly a mile long on steel and
wooden tressels and the machinery for ham
ding the earth is both extensive and expen-
sive.
Outlay of Thirty Millions.
But you have doubtless read that this
stupendous passenger terminal of the Penn
sylvania company will cost $25, 600 600 which
seems a fabulous sum. 1t will be one of the
largest buildings ever constructed by human
hands and will have $3.50 running feet of
granite wall sixty feet high above the
ground and forty-five feet below ground.
There will be more than go columns on
the exterior and more than LOO pillars In
the interior. and more than 5000 windows.
Under the windows, inside on the walls of
the great waiting room, will be frieze
800 feet long and forty feet wide, represent
Ing map in colored relief of the Pennsyi-
vania system of railroads.
The proportions of some of the rooms seem
almost incredible. The main waiting room
will be high the dome of ST. Peters
at Rome--327 by 10 feet in size and $50 feet
from the floor to the roof. There are sew
craI other rooms of smaller proportions
which would be considered great in any
country in any age.
All the trains, as | have said, will enter
through tunnels forty feet below the surface
and the passengers will be lifted by eleva-
tors and moving stairways. or. If they pre-
fer. they can climb ordinary stairs
The outside dimensions of the building
will be $50 by 430 feet.
The company has recently bought 26G feet
frontage 34th street in order to give its
passengers access to the city subways, and
II is supposed to be buying up the entire
block between 9th avenue and 18th avenue
and 32d and 33d streets. which will give 1t
access to Broadway and the elevated station
at SD street. At least somebody is buying
the property in that block and the purchaser
is giving the tenants notice that they must
move as soon as their leases expire.
Altogether, the Pennsylvania company
will have invested about thirty million dol
lars in these improvements which are SIM
ply intended to serve the public convenience.
Go not believe they will attract sufficient
number of additional passengers to pay the
interest on one-tenth of that sum, but the
patrons of the road, who now required
to leave the cars at Jersey City and cross
the river by a ferry, will then be landed in
the heart of New York.