The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-11-22
SEVEN THOUSAND
 MILES OF STEEL Contained In Modern New York
 SkyscraperS AAATrnIA1 In nlli n nlrNL
MATERIAL TO BUILD CITY
Bricks Would Stretch Distance of es5 Miles, While Wires Would Cover
 3425 Additional-concrete
 Would Fill 1o,1so Trucks.

Did 1t ever occur to you that if one Of New York's modern skyscrapers. say, the Metropolitan Life or the Singer Build ing, with it's cloud-piercing tower. could be picked up bodily and dropped on some prairie, there would be practically every thing needed to start little city, includ- ing the population? In fact. when it came to building materials, there might in some instances be stuff left over for use in neighboring towns. says build CTS exchange.
 Take the Singer Building, for instance. It contains 1ss miles of various kinds of metal piping. The telephones. elevators. electric lights. fans. and clocks require 3.425 miles of wire. which, if stretched out, would extend from the top of the Singer Building to the top of Eiffel Tow CT in Paris, with 300 miles left over. The steel used in the construction of the Sing l CT Building, if made into 3-4-inch wire cable, would reach from New York to Buenos Ayres, a distance of HOO miles.
 The terra cotta floor blocks in the building, if spread out on a plane, would
 
 would extend a7 miles, or from New 1 York to Philadelphia. The new skyscraper contains 5,035 800 bricks, and these laid end to end would reach 6S5 miles, from New York to De- troit. They would pave a footpath P inches wide from New York to Boston. This modern skyscraper contains 1O1 tons of sheet copper. enough to cover AGA acres. The copper combined with the statuary bronze in the building would yield 46,2OS, 900 cents, or S462,OS 1 If the concrete in the foundation of the building were all loaded on two-horse trucks, it would make a continuous line of 1O.18O trucks, 3s miles long, or twice the distance from the Singer Building to Yonkers.
 Could Build Many Locomotives.
 The steel In the building would make 125 large type mogul locomotives; that is a continuous line of engines for mile and a half. It would make a 74-mile stretch of heavy modern track, rails | spikes, and tiepieces. Made into elevator cables, 1t would extend 7.1OO miles, and if the total lengths of all the strands of wire in the cables were put together they would reach from the earth to the moon three and one-half times. i If the steel were rolled out into a plate quarter of an inch thick it would cover , an area of 50 acres. In other words, Broadway, from Liberty street to Sew ! enty-second street, could be paved with steel plate to that thickness.
 There are 13.S miles of picture mold ing in the building If all the holdings for the doors, pictures and windows were put in a straight line they would reach l 60 miles,
 l More than 5,54 tons of mortar was used in the masonry. This would make path 14 inches wide and 1 inch thick from New York to Washington, a distance of 240 miles. About 197 tons of paint was used on the various surfaces. It would cover board fence 6 feet high from New York to Springfield, 126 miles, with one coat.
 There are 25.4 acres of wall area in the new skyscraper. It would make line of plaster 12 inches wide from New York to Boston.
 Great Show Windows.
 The glass in the building, S5 ,203 square feet, would make a continuous show win dow feet high on one side of Broadway from Liberty to Thirty-fourth street There are 256000 square feet of metal lath, or 5.9 acres. To support these laths 49.1 miles or structural angle irons were required, together with 130 miles of tying wire and 10000 bolts.
 There are 8.S5 miles of elevator cables in the building, and fans capable of blowing 6,S20,000 cubic feet of air an hour. which would make it possible for an or dinary sized town almost to generate it's own tornado.
 The lighting system of the Singer build ing represents a capacity of 278,000 can dle power. The boilers of the building, to generate light, heat, power etc, must yearly generate 150.OOO.oOO pounds of steam. This will take 1s,OOO0O0 gallons of water and 5000 tons of coal. The tower elevator cars travel about 600 feet a minute. With the building 1 fairly well filled the cars will travel BIO miles daily and make yearly total of 98,270 miles, or about four times the dis tance around the earth. The length of the highest elevator shaft is 548 feet 9 inches, the tower from curb to roof be- ing 612 feet.
 There have been expended in the con- structon of the Singer Building about s60, 900 days labor. One man would have a job lasting 2,Sso years if he cared to tackle 1t alone.
 The Metropolitan Life Building when 1t is completed, will afford much larger figures than these. The tower will not only be S3 feet higher than the Singer structure, but Is of larger proportion all the way through.