Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: [v. 90, no. 2335]: December 14, 1912

Text version:

mm DECEMBER 14, 1912 THE ELEVATOR AND THE 1000 FOOT BUILDING More Passengers Carried Skyward Per Day than the Subway Carries Longitudinally—The Double Story Car and the Elevator Air Brake. L E \ A T O R S are the ferries con¬ necting the clouds with the mainland of Manhattan. There are 11,350 passenger and 6,- 500 freight eleva¬ tors in Greater New York, ac¬ cording to the United States Fi¬ delity and Guaran¬ tee Company, making a total of 17,850 in the five boroughs. The average height of elevator buildings in the city is eight stories, or 104 feet, figuring thirteen feet as the average distance between stories. The average number of trips per ele¬ vator in a single day is seventy-five, thus making a total of 7,800 feet for each elevator every twelve hours, and a total distance for all elevators in Greater New York of 26,142 miles in a business day, equivalent to the distance around the world and that from New York to Chi¬ cago in addition. Each elevator carries on an average three passengers a trip, so that during the average day 2,553,- 750 Gothamites travel skyward and back to terra firma. The last official report issued by the statistical department of the Public Service Commission shows that an average of 891,099 persons trav¬ elled daily on the cars of the Interbor¬ ough subways in the year ended June 30th, or 1,662,601 passengers less than the number of passengers daily carried by New York's sky cabs. One would imagine that with one- third of New York's population riding latitudinally every business day that el¬ evators would have been perfected to the extent, at least, hi insuring as great safety as that which the longi¬ tudinal traction carriers afford to the one-sixth of New York's population, which daily patronize the subways. Vet, 105 dropped between 1902 and the sum¬ mer-of 1912, killing 38 and injuring more than 270 persons in New York alone, or 13 per cent, of the falling elevators and 21 per cent, killed and 21 per cent, injured throughout the country. -\s a matter of fact, the elevator has been perfected in everything but infallible safety, while the subway, carrying less than half the total number of persons credited to the ele¬ vator, has been equipped with automatic stops, emergency brakes and air brakes that absolutely preclude any reasonable possibility of a train running away or getting beyond the control of the op¬ erator. One is a privately owned trans¬ portation without popular supervision, while the other, although privately owned, is under government control. And yet, they talk of introducing the thousand-foot skyscraper, on the ground that the last retardant factor—the ele¬ vator—has reached such perfection that the seventy, or even the one hundred story building is entirely feasible aside from the question of floor space an ad¬ equate elevator equipment for such a building would require; not the ques¬ tion of safety for the passengers riding in these cloud-piercing conveyances. But invention and ingenuity have re¬ cently come to the rescue of the mil¬ lions of elevator passengers, not only in the city of New York, but in the country at large. One contemplates the installa¬ tion of the air brake upon all passenger and freight elevators, while the other paves the way for the thousand-foot inhabited structure, by cutting in half the floor space, which otherwise would be required for elevator equipment. The former offers to owners and operators of elevators the same guarantee of ef¬ ficiency and safety that the air brake now gives to the high speed, as well as the low speed railroad train, while the THE APPLICA¬ TION OF THE ELEVATOR AIR BR.VKB. ThiN ilevice iu actual operation in this city, can stop a fully loaded car tvitb- out jar or jolt ^^■ith every cable cut and the air compressor plant detached, as fre¬ quently as desired to bring disabled car to one or more floor landings.