WORK THAT TELLS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3000, 10 February 1917, Page 12

WORK THAT TELLS

ROMANCE OF ENGINEERING

INTERVIEW WITH MH. HENRY E. WHITE

Somehow or other, in this age of the introduced overseas expert, there is usually a sense of diffidence in referring to any achievement,' however meritorious,- on the part of the native—the man on tho spot. The one is brought from Home or America at great his career is extolled, and his ideas sifted, but the other is perhaps given a vote of thanks by the directors, and passes 011 to other work in a groove of obscurity which knows no end. This notion was inborn on the writer when contemplating the good work and the very ' wide range of good vork which has been accomplished by Mr. Henry E. White, a New Zealander, still on the sunny side of forty, who has returned to these shores inspecting various works in progress here, after establishing himself firmly in Australia, where his talent as an architect and constructional engineer was immediately recognised. Wellington will know Mr. White's work by His Majesty's Theatre, the first complete steel-framed theatre to be erected in New Zealand, and the .Midland Hotel, 011 Lambton Quay, which sets a new standard in this class of commercial structure. Mr. White, who happens to be in Wellington at the present time, has the knack of talking about his work in an interesting manner, and, being in the vein, he chatted to a Dominion reporter in a way that made-bricks, and steel and concrete and gelignite more like the ingredients of a Rex Bench story rather than their own mundane selves. For this man has done things, and still retains a certain modesty in referring to them. What is most surprising is his spacious grip, , not only of commercial architecture, but of every out-of-the-way phase of constructional engineering", where resource, grit, persistence, and cunning are required 011 top of sour.d theoretical knowledge.' About the Otira Tunnel. "]. don't think the story has ever been told of our offer to put through the Arthur's Pass tunnel. When I e?,y ours, I mean that of Mr. W. G. T. Goodman, now engineer and superintendent o£ the Adelaide tramways, and myself. At that timo the Government was calling for tenders, and we decided to have a go. I lived for some weeks on the territory, examining the nature of the ground, taking measurements, and generally making myself acquainted with the difficulties to be overcome. Then we tendered, but vero turned down by the Government, as our price was a bit over the Government Engineer's estimate. Later on the Government. accepted the tender of the M'Lean Bros., at a price of some <£(100 over ours, and, as everyone knows, they had to give it up, and the Government is carrying 011 the work, at what cost I would not like to guess. I am still certain we could have done the job. A Rock-drilling Record. "Since then I carried out the Waipori Falls tunnel scheme for the Dunediu City Council, on similar lines I had planned for the Otira. As an exanipU of the lmrduess of the rock to be pierced it was found necessary to us< from -100 to 600 plugs of eelig nite in one round. The. council of feral two years and nine months to d( the job, but I undertook to do ft 11: two, and was fortunate enough to gel through in under the two years, and oui average progress per day still stands a; a record; at least, ■ I have never beei able to read in the American engineer ing journals of faster rock-drill work The council was. very appreciative an( gave me a very.nice letter to say so. "Another job I carried out was the re inforced concrete reservoir on the Cash mere Hills which to-day supplies Christ church with high-pressure water. Whei this work was mooted it was though that big cranes and steam diggers wouli be necessary to get the stuff out, but ! managed to devise a way that dispenset with such plant. Within the area of thi basin I made a spiral roadway as wi went down—a sort of miniature to th< one on the Main Trunk line, quite pos sible to drays, and having got out th stuff we had to shift, we last of all du| away the spiral, and left the basin read; to be lined. Talking of.Christchurch re minds me of the time I hai ' fixing the new sewerage system. Mos work was sixteen feet below the water level in lively quicksand, and the sew age pits were sunk even lower than that ! with the centrifugal, pumps, which ha< to throw the sewage up to a higher leve 1 in order that it wou.ld run by gravita tion down the outfall sewer. 1 One 0 the little jobs necessitated knockin, away some of the foundations of tli pumping station, raid big chimnoy-stac and under-pinning them, work that hai 1 to be done in running sand. Some 0 the experts voted the job dangerous--1 and kept away. I was nervous about i i myself, for if anything had gone wron. the whole drainage system of Chrisf church wou.ld have been held up. Othe 1 work in Christchurch was the 'Press office, which I constructed but did no design, also the fine cafe at Sumne which was subseqnentl.ly burnt down and the Royal Exchange block. Whe , in Christchurch I also reported on th Heathcote-Sumner ship canal and th 1 Gollan's Bay harbour schemes on behal 1 of the Lyttelton Harbour Board, 'l'hes j sdhemes aggregated nearly I (estimated cost), and at that time could have formed a company to undei take the work. "At Dunedin I was called in by th City Council to report 011 the big gai holder which collapsed under the pret I sure of water. On my advice it wa - removed to another site., - Expert in; Steel Construction. "Steel work has been a hobby of mini and its u.se in connection with tlieati construction has always been favoure by myself. It has enabled me to prai tically eliminate posts or pillars in theatri by the use of the cantilever or seini-cai tilever principle in gallery constrm tion. A good example is to be seen i tho new Tivoli Theatre in Brisbani This is really a double theatre, fo there is the ordinary theatre on th ground floor and a completely equippe theatre, dressing rooms, full stage an all 011 the root. For the roof garde theatre there are 110 posts at all, th roof boing a clear span of special stei construction. One of the latest 11 stances of what can be done by can fully calculating the strength of ste in relation to the maximum load it ' likely to be asked to carry is in tl Grand Opera House, Sydney, where dress circle with a capacity of over SI people, and a gallery seating 1000 ai " supported by a oue steel column systei: The same is I he case with the Palai Theatre, Melbourne, that I have ju, .!? reconstructed lor the Fullers'. In tl |J latter theatre I have devised a lie r scheme for handling scenery that di 4 peuses with the old-time 'ilies.' By 0 system of counterweights a boy can ( '■ the work that usually takes hulf-o-doxt ' men to do, which is a consideration : J these days of labour troubles. 1 a 6 now building one about the same size : His Majesty's in Newtown (Sydney), ai am commencing another 111 Newcastle f the Fullers. Another of my jobs he io is the Midland Hotel, which is perha; 1- a variation from the hard-beaten, trni W in hotel construction, and wliic t is giving every satisfaction to tl d' proprietor, Mr. -I. Dwyor, and his guest The walls and floors of tho Midland a: solid'brick and concrete, which ensure building that if looked after cannot ha hour vermin—there is no place for the 1. —and what is also almost as great blessing, the. rooms are sound-proc ■ s Each one, too, has its own hot-vub supply, and the taps run ful_j,i>ore pipii hot tho whole of the twerity-ic« of the day. s > Importance of Hydro-Electric Power. n Mr. Whito recently visited Rotoru II and whilst there visited the hydro-cle trie generating station. He was surprisi s ' io .see how much water was running. l - waste, and declares that there is enoui power, running away there to supp Hamilton, the Thames, and the whole tho rapidly-growing district in betwee e ' After recent experiences in Sydney'dn ing tho coal strike, he believes tl.nt 1 timo should be lost in utilising tho vu measures of power that are running' wnste in New Zealand at tho prosci

time. He is interested in the subject, having on one occasion reported oh the Lake Coleridge scheme for a sy'ndjMtt who were thinking of tendering for the constructional work. "With the Waipori and the Lake Coleridge schemes before them, both working very successfully, Xew Zealand euou'd waste no time,," said Mr. White, "and if the Government does not feel disposes to hurry,' they, for the good of tlie country, should allow private enterprise to take a hand, and push through hydroelectric schemes that are needed more urgently than people supposed. If they had been in Sydn&y during the recent coal strike they would know what he meant. There the whole city was thrown into Stygian darkness, because a few men chose to down tools. The very absurdity of it! At city of nearly a million people! And there was witnessed people struggling with anything from a hurricane lamp ta the 'homely but extremely dangerous candle. The "wild-cat" man that'could make an illuminating gas everywhere, experimenting with kerosene and petrol. Old machines were trotted out, and its often as not broke down in the attempt to make sparks. Old kerosene lamps were dug up, and bursts were common. Women could not venture out after dark, and when men did they, as often as not. carried means of urotectiun. It was a more anxious time than many realised, and all for what—the want of a hydro-electric scheme, that, with tho aid of two or three engineers, runs it- . self. That is the aspect that New Zealand want; to view hydro-electrics from I"