The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1913-08-07

southern rim Of its bulky stone base is
deeply depressed and neither the low
err level of the structure nor a single
one o fthe eight succeeding levels is
really level Or near it.
Present alarm over the condition Of
the tower is no novelty. When war
and politics in Italy feel a temporary
lull there is always the Leaning Tow
err whereupon to cogitate and lose the
realms calm Of dolce far niete and Sc
curity. But more frequently than u.s.
ual have the fits Of disquiet over the
in~scrutable old patient broken out
since the sad day some years ago when
the Venetian Campanile fell. I'm
J doubtedly that event shook the nerves
of Italy and made the Italians, devot-
edly proud of their monuments, dread
a second accident Of the sort. The
two structures had been somewhat
closely linked in their long lives. for
had not the Pisans laid the founda-
lions for their tower in the year 1174,
coming hard upon the completion Of
the Venetians' tower. and, in fact, at
the very first occasion, namely the cap
ture of Palermo, when Pisa possessed
some surplus wealth to dedicate?
For the rest of the history of the
tower we know little save that 1t d.
verged from the level either at. the
START VI eise before tne structure mao
been reared thirty-f1ve feet above it,
swampy base: that after the compile
ton Of the third gallery above ground
with some corrections toward the
perpendicular on the way up, the
builders abandoned the work, to let
it rest uncompleted for a span of
several lifetimes. And that at last,
in 1850, a later generation resumed
the labor, added three more gallery
Ht0rinS and a ha1fry onS on nnrNr1ot-
ed the tower, with sundry and sue
cessive further snubhings back to-
ward the perpendicular.
The tower probably rests on piles
driven in the soft ground beneath.
Somewhere near its base runs under
ground the concealed masonry of a
Roman a%queduct. of which the brok-
en- end energies in a garden hard
by. with a rill of water issuing from
soft. plastic, unstable, wet founda-
ton. To the great establishment Of a
party of investigators who examined
the foundations a few years ~ it
was found that the stone substructure
of h tower extended down only nine
feet-but one twentieth of the tow
er's altitude! Insecure u~nderpinning,
standard. But of such points is the
mystery Of the Leaning Tower, a
structure seemingly constructed to
defy the various laws of sound archi-
lecture. a asst jest with the force Of
gravity, a secession from the canons
of formal beauty of line, an enigma
tic antiquity possibly erected as a
poser to posterity, which may never
learn even how much of all this was
intent, how much accident.
Three years g a tiny flow Of wa
ter was first noticed yelling up from
under the foundation. New and acute
disquiet broke out among the authori-
ties. the architects and the students.
Was this water washing away. grain
by grain, the sand and muck upon
which the towers bulk was resting?
There was renewed taking Of meas
urements with plumb lines, COMPARE
son of the results with those taken
in 1929. a report that the tower had
sagged eight inches in that time. Fin
ally a commission recommended that
the stones be marked and taken down
and re-erected upon a safer founda-
ton.