SKYSCRAPER PERILS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2104, 1 February 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

SKYSCRAPER PERILS.

Freak skyscraper buildings are all tight for advertising purposes, but (says tho New York correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph") they disfigure the city and aro dangerous from tho standpoint of fire. Tins is the verdict of tho Building Commission liore, who will order that no now buildings shall be over 200 ft high, say . 20 stories. This resolution takes effect in January next, and is designed to stop -tiny feverish race for the construction of lofty buildings. Tho fire insurance interests have feared that the 41-story Singer building hero, about 658 ft high, might be followed by a 50-story, and then by a 60-story'house, because American architects and builders seemed practically agreed tliaat, with steelwork construction developed to such a fine art, the limit of height' might safely go beyond that of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris. ITow long these skyscrapers can last is the chief problem, which time alone can solve. Insufficient material exists to enable tho experts to say just how long they may be safely occupied by their thousands of tenants. It is recognised in America, however, that one skyscraper collapse would mean untold damage to the skyscraper family, and the inspection -is now very sovere, with the object of detecting the first signs of corrosion in the steel joints' or other flaws likely to entail a public calamity. More than two score of New York’s best-known skyscrapers exceed the dead line fixed by the new regulations.