NOVEL DANCE FLOOR.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 320, 24 December 1929, Page 8

NOVEL DANCE FLOOR.

~R AI SEP' NOTICE. installation costing the dancing floor Restaurant in London -raised a height of 25 .Moment’s notice. Just ,Before the beginning of the Aabaret entertainment recently, a butl4on was pressed, and, to the astonishment of most of the guests, the whole space of polished flooring moved impressively upwards, while safely folding shutters glided into position at the sides to prevent the possibility of accidents. It weighs 16 tons, and has a lifting capacity of eight tons. The dance surface is of Balkan oak, and the whole Is raised by eight electrically controlled hydraulic lifting rams.

Mr Reeves Smith, managing director of the hotel, said that the management had decided to build the new floor to enable guests in every part of the festaurant to get a better view of the cabaret entertainment than was possible on the level, and also to enable the performance to be more dramatically presented. “ The hotel’s chief engineer, Mr Paye,” he said, “ working in co-opera-tion with a well-known firm of hydraulic engineers has completed the task in six months, and most of the work has been done between 2 a.m. and 10 a.m.., so as not to interfere with daily business. The installation cost about £IO,OOO, and special hydraulic/engines with hundreds of feet of piping had to be built in. The floor is raised by the pressure of thousands of gallons of water from the artesian wells below the Savoy, forcing at a pressure of 900 lbs to the square inch.”