Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

STEEL-FRAME BUILDINGS. 17 Fig. 66.—SKELETON FRAME OF BUFFALO SAVINGS BANK. (GREEN AND WICKS, ARCHITECTS.) entailed moving one part of the structure bodily for a distance of 25 feet, and substi- tuting an elliptical for a circular tower and dome ; and all this without in any way dis- turbing the hundreds of tenants occupying the building. So radical an alteration could not possibly have been made under similar con- ditions had the building been of any but the steel-cage type. We next come to the great Singer Building, which has attracted so much attention as pos- sessing the first extremely lofty tower, which rises 612 feet above the pave- The Singer men^. The ac£uaj dimensions Tower. of the tower arc such that it might fairly be described as a high building rather than a tower, save that its unusual height gives an idea of slenderness which is in reality purely relative. The tower has been added to what were once two separate blocks of offices, the Singer and Bourne Buildings, of (1,408) 2 eleven and fifteen stories respectively. The first was raised to the same height as the second by the addition of four stories, while the Bourne portion was extended laterally over an area of 100 by 52 feet. Then was added the tower, which includes forty-eight stories in all. The Singer Building as it stands to-day has a total floor area of nearly 9 J acres, and can accommodate enough people to populate a fair-sized town. It con- tains in the basement a battery of steam boilers of 2,000 horse-power capacity, electric Fig. 67.—BUFFALO SAVINGS BANK COMPLETE. generators, pumping engines, ventilating fans, and a vacuum cleaning plant. The heating system includes radiators with more than two acres of heating surface, and the ventilating apparatus provides for the circulation of more than 13,000,000 cubic feet of air per hour. In each office are a telephone, a mail-chute, a filtered ice water plant, and a vacuum cleaner with which occupants can remove dust from hats or clothes. Everything is on a scale worthy of the—at present—second loftiest building in the world. The premier place is taken by the Metro- politan Life Assurance Building, Even before its recent enlargement, this was one of the biggest structures of its kind. In 1906 it covered an area of 425 by 200 feet, excepting VOL. II.