NEW SKYSCRAPER

Hokitika Guardian, 23 September 1929, Page 2

NEW SKYSCRAPER

HOTEL OF 80 STORIES FOR NEW YORK.

NEW YORK, 5,

An 80-story skyscraper, which will tower 200 ft above any existing building on Manhattan Island, is to be erected on the site of the old Wal-dorf-Astoria Hotel, now -being demolished.

This announcement is made by Air A 1 Smith, the former Democrat candidate for the United States Presidency and ex-Govemor of New York, who is receiving a salary of £IO,OOO a year as president of the new company for which the hotel is to be built.

The company paid £3,000,000 for, the site, which covers two acres and lias a 200 ft frontage to Fifth Avenue. t It is stated that the building alone will cost £9,000,000. It will extend from Thirty-third to Thirty-fourth Street along Fifth Avenue and halfway back towards Sixth Avenue. Forty high-speed elevators will serve the upper stories. They will be arranged around a great rotunda in the centre, reached by two arcades which will pierce the bulk of the building at right angles to one another. Tlip architects have arranged the space so that the first few stories will be of great height, in some 23ft providing snno'ons quarters f (, r hanks or similar establishments. Ramos will lead down to the basement and motorlorries can ho driven into the building and unloaded directly into the goods elevators. There will also he a terminal station in the basement, from which the long-distance crosscountry buses will start.