NEW YORK SKYSCRAPERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2666, 23 November 1909, Page 4

NEW YORK SKYSCRAPERS.

PROPOSAL TO LIMIT THEIR HEIGHT.

There are some people in New York, notably Mr Croker, chief of the Fire Department, who have no love, for the skj’scraper, and several efforts have been made to limit by law the height to which any building "may be put np. When the subject was being debated by the Board of Aldermen recently, and it seemed (probable that a limit might be fixed, the Equitable Life Insurance Compan\' filed plans with the Building Department for a building 909 ft high, with sixtytwo stories. This would be only 75ft less than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. These plans were filed not because the company intends to put up such a building at once, but in order

to get its plans officially accepted and authorised before any limit is set. It is said that the preparation of these plans cost the company about £50,000 in fees to architects, engineers and draughtsmen. Opinions differ widely as to the beauty or ugliness of these skyscraper*. Not one of them standing alone'could be considered a thing of beauty; but the effect of them in a mass is at least imposing, and many European artists and architects On visiting New York have frankly expressed l their admiration. It is certain that they are the expression of a new style o.f architecture, resembling nothing that has gone before —a style that is so peculiarly adapted to tlie conditions •of business in the United States that it is only fair to call it- the American style. In it American life is expressed with all its vulgarity, all its nobility, all its soaring ambition, all its utilitarianism, and all its tremendous, energy.-. .. A few days ago (writes the correspondent' of : the Manchester “Chronicle”) I happened to be in the “Flat Iron 1 ’ Building, one of the great New York business buildings which is over twenty 'stories in height. On the opposite side of Madison - Squares which it faces, stands another mammoth structure, the Metropolitan Insurance Building, which, is almost as high, and has a tower, filled with offices, which mounts skywards nearly twenty stories higher. Some workmen were putting the finishing touches to the thirty-fourth storey of the tower, over five hundred feet above the pavements, looking at that height like mere pigmies. Suddenly a dark object shot from the scaffolding and down into the street below. A few moments later the cry was raised that one of the men had been hurled to death through missing his footing. His body was literally crushed into pulp. Such is the fate which too often, befalls the men technically known as“riggers,” who work at these dizzy heights, putting together the street framework of the great New York pffice buildings, each of which lias claimed its victims. „ „ . , , With the advent of the forty-story building, the height of the New York skyscraper seemed to have reached its limit; but there is now some talk of one that is to be over fifty stones high. Ys New York, however, has no law ot ancient lights, there, is nothing to prevent the erection of a building of even a hundred stories. And for this craze for excessively high buildings, there is also a reason. New York being largely situated oii a narrow island, where space is consequently limited, there is no way for its principal business district to expand except to mount skyward. Thus it is that the busy “downtown” quarter of New York, abounds in office buildings of twenty stories ormore, each of which has enough tenants to populate a. town.