EXHIBITION BUILDING.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 419, 29 October 1861, Page 3

EXHIBITION BUILDING.

The foundations have already consumed 5000 tons of concrete, which, as the first item, is pretty fair. On these foundations will be laid nearly 60,000 tons, or 1,000,000 cubic feet of brickwork, requiring upwards of 14,000,000 bricks to build it. To 18,000,000 bricks no less than 22,000 lons of mortar will be requisite. 10,000 tons of ironwork—viz., about 7000 tons of cast, and 3000 tons of wrought iron will be used in the entire structure. As there are nearly 1,200,000 superficial feet of flooring, the same amount of timber ai of iron is required—namely, 10,000 tons. The flooring alone consumes 360 miles of planking, seven inches wide, and 270 miles length, nine inches wide, or upwards of 600 miles' length of planking in all. The actual quantities are 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 lineal feet of each kind. For the windows no less than 108 miles' I length, or 600,000 feet, of sashing will be I required, to fill in which are required 500 tons of sheet glass and upwards of 50 tons of putty. The roofs will need 600,000 square feet of felt. Among the minor items are between 200 and 300 tons of nails, 600 tons of paint, 300 tons ol piping, and so on. The cubical contents of the whole structure will be no less than 73,000,000 cubic feet. The building is rapidly progressing towards completion, nearly'one quarter of tha ironwork required, weighing in all about 4000 tons, being already in its place, and the remainder to be delivered by the 30 th of September. There will be 1100 columns in the building, which, if laid end to end, would reach from Kensington to the Crystal Palace. The formal transfer of the building to the royal commissioners is fixed for the 12th of February, on which occasion it it is said Messrs. Kelk and Lucas will celebrate the completion of their labors by a fete in the centre nave. The 30th of September is the last day for the reception of applications for space, which have already vastly exceeded the whole available space, one man alone, for example, demanding a space of 2,250,000 square feet, or nearly three times as much as the whole exhibition space in the building, for agricultural implements. Many of the applications, especially those of inventors, are %i a somewhat ludicrous nature. The articles exhibited are not, as at Paris in 1855, to be classed under the heads of manufactures, animal, vegetable, mineral, &c, but by tne respective trades under which they come. A result of this arrangement is that commissioners now posssss. a.list of upwards of 6,000 distinct trades and manufactures, hundreds of which are utterly unknown to the public, and many even to the commissioners themselves.— Home News.