The Sun from New York, New York • Page 28

ii 4 4 Vj 1 JJ 10 I I i ii THE SUN SUNDAY AUGUST 2 1908 WORKING AT A DIZZY EIGHT STVffTS THE WEAVERS OF TOE MANHATTAN BRIDGE CABLES Photograph Exhibition the Daring of the 1 Mea mjo Built the Foot Bridge Plum for Spinning tire Mighty Cable Bridge to De a Beautiful Structure If the should by accident or design goto thblower that la the eastern end of Pike street ho would find about two blocks hook from the waterfront about tho most Impressive piece of masonry In New York It Is the anchor structure to receive and hold the Manhattan ends of the bljj BUS pension cables of the new Manhattan Bridge over the East River There Is much in this vast and solid i Structure to interest but perhaps the liveliest interest will be felt by those who study It In four short granite towers rUIng above the main structure near the river front end These granite towers do not rlso at the same angle as the slightly eloping front of the main structure but stand back at a somewhat sharper angle and when you knows whit they are for it is easy to think of them en four great giants loaning backward Nom dY under dheeffort to withstand a tremendous a strain The courses of granite of which they are built are not in horizontal layers but themselves are at an angle thus adding to the impression of something that hast uprisen there to withstand the strain These four leaning granite towers will kf support the saddles on which will rest tho four great suspension cables of the Manhattan Bridge before the cables disappear from view In the mysterious depths of there portion that main structure which to their anchor They rise as they do above the main structure In order to give an added height to the saddle so that the a gnat cables themselves at the lowest point tv1 of their sag over tli East River shall boG above the highest point of the main structure i 1 of the bridge a i Some it may be who have studied the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges have grieved to observe that the beautiful curve of tho cables Is Interrupted and marred because at the lowest point of the curvet a the lines of the cables are lost in the jumble of rigid lines of the superstructure This will not be so in the new bridget Those granite giants will put their shoulder under the shore ends of the cables and so uplift them that the cables at the a lowest point of their curve over midstream OLD IRON BALCONIES PRIZED A FEATURE OF XEW YORK HOMES is OF TIlE LAST CEXTVRY Tn Beauty of the Ironwork Recognized 3 Again The lialconlr In Demand for Country Homes Tjpes of the Design a Curiously Distributed In the City There are very few parts of the old New York houses of the better class which haven come to be valuable Old mahogany 9i doors have specific worthand If there Is an 1 old black or gray marble mantel left in any tt of the downtown houses Its presence there Is not due to any lack of perseverance on the part of the New York architects and decorators who search for such things Now fresh value has been put on another feature of some old homes of this town the iron balconies The merit of this old Ironwork was first brought to the attention of builders and lovers of the beautiful when a well known architect put a similar detail on one of his country houses This was a graceful iron balcony of the kind represented very generally in tho houses of this dty half a century ago The iron balconies were new details of domestic architecture in those days Many of them have disappeared in the demolition ft of the downtown homes to make way for i fiats or office buildings yet enough oft them survive to convince New Yorkers oft their beauty They are rather curiously distributed about the town Wreckers go slow now when It comes to taking down such a balcony The lumberyards over on the East Side to which this wreckage is carted now contain many of these graceful rather Oriental looking structures which were never meant to doa more than add ornament to a simple redbrick facade They are in demand now for 1 use on country houses They have undeniable beauty yet persons 4 who rave over their graceful lines and quaint Victorian affectation of a foreign Inspiration used to pass them by without tae 3aJr notice It Is a curious thing that these additions 11 to the houses of the middle of the last century I appear practically In only two forms More often they form only small porch for the numerous red brick houses that were put up half a century ago on the East Side i of town say from Twentyfourth up to I 1 Thirtieth street east of Fourth avenue I in mcr most ramlllar form they provide merely this porch over tho main entrance and they are usually finished with a quaint loping roof that rises to a point against the wall In these cases there are merely the front and side pillars of Iron with the grillIng at the top In other Instances the balcony In addition to providing a porch run the whole length of the front of tho house with the came Eastern looking little peaked roof and three pillars of the fancy wrought iron ti 7 ri I Jrz TVsrJJvG rrH1 STORNr y791 Zi rut OJZl OorSIUDGC PXO CR PX TKr KOtYS 7HC D1 rNG OJTKC HIrIrTN xr tw Jffk ypp rv if 8RooHlYIV TO I tJf5f 1 i mt rJi MM 1 tX i ilf tSJ4ir zk i RJ i JtSiytic xx1 4 mJ 1 ol fu 4 ii1 ttifii iIl 1 Vtiys 1J i4 iA 4 from the second toper to the other anchor I sixteen threesixteenth steel wire guides Those guides are stretched and adjusted i to give us the exact adjustment of the cables themselves That is the engineers have figured out Just the amount or tho degree au you might say which the main cables must slope In their curve over the river to perform their duty of carrying the main bridge structure You will understand that we must have guides for this because each cable Is built up of thirtyseven strands and each strand Is composed of 258 wires That Is to say we have to build up In the air four cables each composed of 9472 wires or a total for all tho cables of 37888 wires and each of those wires must be laid with exactly tho same curve with the same strain upon it in other words or elsa it becomes a useless part of the I cable to which it belongs You understand that none of these strands Is twisted or braided Each strand Is composed of its 258 single wires laid parallel and each cable is then composed of its thirtyseven strands laid parallel Now a guide rope gives us our measurements but when wo have stretched according to the measurement of the guide say sixteen wires the guide is dropped to the footbridge and we continue adding wires using those first stretched as our guide We make these strands four at time ttlX I ti UJs IIIIII if 1 1 fQ TOP or txwzr ztnoorccr Tr OlR sMJIMMsM1 i 1 tfi a i i1IF LCL 4R YZ lJ 07 oorB DOZi will be wholly above the platform structures and be clearly defined in the whole length of their lovely curves A smooth faced darkly tanned man in his shirtsleeves the superintendent of the wire construction who explained this to the reporter added I That does not help In the strength or utility of the bridge but It will make it the moat beautiful of nil the four bridges over the East River It seems to me that when a great city like this Is building an important and permanent structure it is right that architects should bo called in to study and advise about the plans so that the structure whop completed shall bo beautiful aa well as useful As ho said this he and the reporter were watching the men making fast the last of the steel guy ropes connecting the four foot bridges and what Is known as the storm cable beneath the foot bridges In some of tho pictures printed with this a good idea is given of where and how these men worked What is the next thing you will do toward getting the cables built and in place the reporter asked The next thing we do answered the superintendent 9s to string from anchor to tower then from tower to tower and In addition to a railing and the border at the top These long balconies are now rare One exists in East Twentyeighth street and another In Clinton place Down on lower Fifth avenue Is an unusual specimen of the same work which extends over the entire facade of a house which has in effect two entrances although the appearance is of only one house This Gothic balcony crosses the entire first floor forming in the centre a more elevated porch The spaces between the thin pillars are supplied with pointed arches which are of a kind with the extreme simplicity of the rest ofi this pattern almost geometrical in its plainness I The little three story red brick houses on the East Side In the region described were the dwellings erected to succeed the red brick two story and dormer window houses built early in the last century In old Greenwich village and further downtown One looks in vain through those downtown streets on the West Side for any sign of these ornamental balconies Every house has Its straight stone steps with the railing of iron and sometimes tho ornamental newel posts of iron But the fancy wrought balconies were not a part of tho New York architects equipment at such an early day There arc some beautiful old doorways still In Chelsea and in the streets lying to the south of it but that in an empty land so far as the balconies are concerned Much the same style of balcony Is seen in some of the Southern cities notably in New Orleans It was from Franco that they were brought to that part of this country The specimens in New York are undoubtedly of local origin In general they are divisible into throe different designs In just the same degree that Chinese Chippendale is Chinese the most common of these designs may bo called Chinese Its scrolls are extremely I light and graceful and an occasional pane I of geometrical Iron grilling does not Interfere with the Oriental Impression A very excellent specimen of this pattern Is to be soon In front of an old house on East Thirtieth street not far from Lexing ton avenue It has one other beauty than the full preservation of its design It is the solitary balcony seen by the writer which was Intended only for use from these ond floor It stretches across the whole width of the second story The exquisite border and the railing are divided by three flat columns of the iron making divisions of equal width It has the pointed roof and the sides are finished with two flat columns It Is about three foot broad Altogether there is no more typical or beautiful iron balcony in New York than this one One of the other long balconies of this kind is in East Fifteenth street It is just as perfect a specimen of tho Chinese Chippendale and extends at tho stoop floor along the entire front of the rod brick house An interesting nuance is found here In the cornice which finishes the top of the balcony It consists of series of ornament rococo rather than Chinese and not distinctively like the rest of the balcony Either this finish was very rare or it is seen now on fpw of tho balconies because it has been worn away ConsiderIng the length of time they have stood in New York them lority of theae balconies are Very wall presj ved The oprUoatkiaW tt balconies to frame buildings is very rare The only one discovered by the writer is in Sixteenth street near Third avenue The small two and a half story frame cottage which it ornaments has nothing else to relieve its plainness bu this iron porch Bu tho porch is of very beautiful design showing closely woven bunches of grapes The balconies that came in the next period of New York architecture wore also of iron although none of them had a trace of tho lightness and grace characteristic of the preceding period They are as crude and heavy as the unimaginative brownstono fronts they were intended to accompany It is not likely that any future period will ever restore them to favor The absence of these balconies on the west side of town at present doe not mean that they were never a detail of the architecture The streets lying between Fourteenth and Thirtyfourth streets were long ago converted to business use and that transformation removed from view tho balconies that were there There were certain of these balconies in West Twentyfirst street to the west of the old Union Club building and on the same side of the street But there was evidently In the minds of tho architects a discrepancy between this ironwork with its delicate tracery and light grnca and the brownstone that succeeded red brick as a building material The red brick seems to have been selected for the more modest homes in the streets above Twentvthlrd on the East Side so the iron work was used chiefly there All investigations by the reporter to discover the source of this work wore futile None of the largo iron manufacturers of the present day Boomed to know where it came from It seems to be agreed that the first balconies of this kind were imported from Franco about 1830 Then they were copied here They are an uncommonly nrtlstio survival of a day which has bequeathed very little beauty to New York SHE GOT HER nAn Prodded Him Out With llrr Seliiorf Then Toinnhatvkrtl Him As for that grit of womenmeaning Indian womenwhich has boon celebrated in a well known book there is a story in Fur Nevf which is good evidence of their physical courage A dealer In skins tells of a squaw who was walking along on her snowshoes one day when her small boy saw a bear curled up under the snow in his winter sleep She could not kill him whore she was so she lashed pair of scissors to a sapling prodded him out and smashed his head In with her tomahawk as ho emerged I gave her SIO for tho skin writes tho dealer so it was not a bad mornings work Another ingenious piece of hunting that I remember was accomplished by an Indian who found two moose in a yard that IB the snow clearing which the animals make when the frosts are breaking up and tho snow is too sharp and brittle for their comfort He crept up and got tho female with his tomahawk The male was driven to fury and it was unsafe to approach him The stroke of a hoof would have put the Indian out of business close order Having no gun ho improvised a bow and arrow from the trees stuck a sharp file into the point of the arrow made a bowstring with the laces of his moooanlns and shot Uie boost through tho hearts COTTAGE HOME IN THE CITY FIX OF A ITOJMV WHO WAITED A HOUSE WITH ATMOSPHERE Picturesque Sites In Manhattan Which Are BleetedStrecU Out of the Ordinary That the Average New Yorker Donnt Care to Ave InThe Northward March I A persistent woman who wanted to live In some way that her neighbors did not setout a few months ago to find a habitation which should meet her demands I want atmosphere she said and by that I dont mean fresh air I want a place that will possess what artists call feeling in the latest cant of the tribe I believe It exists and I intend to find it Of course she did not have limitless I means That would havo spoiled the fun I She had a very limited capital for a pioneer Her husband had restricted her to a rent of 50 a month Hardened flat hunters In this city know how little the flat of that price differs from the tenement I think its a good idea to fix that limit she said with an affectation of contentment Of course Ill have to spend a lot I on repairs and decoration so its best to keep down thereat She found the place and is satisfied Her I friends are bound to secrecy concerning it I for she does not move in until October She comes to town once woek walks over to the West Side of the city and takes a look at the find Shes afraid somebody might carry off the house during tho night which would not be so hard a task to a man of strength It is not so easy perhaps to understand why anybody should want to steal it if that carried the necessity of living in it as well It is the first house from tho comer of a popular West Side avenue and is one of three wooden cottages They do not front on the side street but face east just like the houses on the avenue Part of the lot is occupied by a small wooden building serving as an office That loaves a narrow passage closed by a wooden gate by which you got to tho yard in which the three wooden cottages face This yard is probably 80 by 20 feet I The cottages are in good repair and face tho rear of a tenement of the bettor clots that is situated on the avenue Naturally it is tho tenement kitchen windows that are nearest the yard A large Hree hides this culinary outlook to some extent On the side of the cottages away from the street Is a lumber yard which assures a north view from the cottages upper windows that is unobjectionable and clean and moreover does not smell of cooking The cottages have three stories hot water and gas and are heated by stove One of them was taken by theenthugUstlo searcher for atmosphere and eho has also the promise of another which maybe free In the autumn This the is reserving for a for each cable so we are making sixteen strands at a time They are of course slightly separated but when a strand is completed It Is laid parallel with other completed strands until wo have thirty seven completed strands snugly laid alongside of each other and that makes a cable as wo know it MIt you should take thirtyseven load pencils and lay them parallel with each other trying to make them as nearly around bundle as you could and imagine each pencil made of 250 slivers of wood you will have a notion of what a completed cable looks like to us Tho public jjever pees it in that form butt Ill tell you about that later How do you get each of those wires stretched over its 32f0 feet That is done by what we call a carrier Now Ill try to explain that to you so that you can think youre seeing it going on Well take the case of a carrier at work It consists of a sheave and wheel A carrier starts well say from the New York end it is brought close to a spool of wire Tho end of tho spool of wire is taken rom tho spool passed around the whoa of the carrier and brought back and made fast to its permanent fastening Then by machinery we begin to draw that carrier friend Tho third has for years been occupied by an old couple So there is no fear of objectionable neighbors The rent of the cottage is S4S and It cannot be rented for more than a year as the property along with some other lots in the neighborhood is in the market Never you mind answers the woman when her friends try to discourage hdr by telling of the drawbacks to the atmospheric abode she has selected Just wait and eee It next winter Im going to have more room and light than I ever had in any studio or apartment before and I will invite my friends to my first garden party toward the end of April Ive thought of all the drawbacks and Im not going Into this thing with my eyes shut So her friends are waiting to see what she Is going to do with her unusual hour The neighborhood is not smart but respectable It is within five minutes of Fortysecond street and there are but two blocks between the cottage and a subway station So there is nothing to complain of on the score of inaccessibility If there were more women like that said a real estate agent who learned of her independence hi setting out to find what she wanted there would not be so much complaint of tile lack of atmosphere In New York houses There aro lots of places which would make charming and unusual homes and I they have very few drawbacks But that sort of thing doesnt appeal to the average New Yorker He wants to live where his friends do move uptown when they move up and folloy tho inevitable tide from north to south or move to the suburbs Consequently it is useless for Investors to build anything but the most conventional kind of flats New Yorkers make a god of comfort They would rather have plenty of steam hoot and electric light than tho most picturesque abode that might be devised and there isnt one of them that would not rather have hot water than all the feeling in the world Even with these Inducements they keep moving In one direction They fix their eyes on The Bronx and move northward without ever appearing to reallce that a detour to the east or the west might bring them oomfort and beauty Then this agent told of a street not more than five minutes walk from the Grand Central Station It Is short not extending more than three city blocks There is the utmost quietude there because there is I practically no traffic Perched upon a hill which overlooks the river the citys noise sounds in this street as a murmur In tho upper stories of a skyscraper Before the windows stretches a beautiful panorama of Long Island and at the foot of the hill is the ever changing view of the river life In London such a street would be chor belied as a beautiful park There would be flowers and plants along the sidewalks and fortunate dwellers would do every from the anchorage up over the tower and from there over the foot bridge to tho other tower and thence io tho other anchorage Now you will see that that carrier Is carryIng two wires one the dead wire the end of which has been already fastened to its permanent fastening the other the live wire which is being unwound from the spool of wire and paying out as it passes around the wheel in the sheave of the carrier So you see that carrier starting from New York when it arrives in Brooklyn has laid not one stretch of wire but two na if you were to take a loop of string over your two index fingers and move one until you had reached the limit of your stretch and you would have two stretches of string As the carrier travels well say from New York to Brooklyn it spins along behind it those two threads of wire which the cablo men along the foot bridge adjust to the curve of the guide wire As they ore doing that taking up slack perhaps a little or asking a little more slack the carrier has started from Brooklyn to New York carrying two more threads of wire In that way over each foot bridge four strands aro being laid at the same time But the cables that tho publio see on the bridges said the reporter show wire wound just the other way round and thing possible to make the street more beautiful Barring the old fashioned houses on the Heights In Brooklyn there is no suoh view to be had anywhere else outside of the windows of the big skyscraping office buildings downtown And do you suppose that stretch of street is popular asked the agent Not in the least The houses rent poorly the apartments are not aa much in demand aa less desirable flats in other parts of the town and the whole place has a look of neglect and desertion that shows how little appreciated it is There are two other terraces on the East River equally beautiful in situation but they are too far east to suit persona who think it Is either inconvenient or un smart to live outside a certain radius and therefore cramp themselves up In any kind of house just to be in the neighborhood that they think ISproper or convenient One of these terraces is filled with very attractive houses and the apartments that end each block have wonderful outlooks over the river and the Sound yet these attractions do not seem to have the least weight withNew Yorkers In counterbalancing their situation oo much out of tho beaten track Yet neither of these terraces is more than ten minutes from tho Grand Central Station Not ten minutes from tho Plaza Hotol Is short street of one block which closed at either end by an iron fenco A row of I brownstone houses fills the greater part of it One end is occupied by a large commercial building which Instead of being undesirable helps to protect that end of tho block from what might bo an objectionable corner High to the north of this block hang the girders of the new bridge At the foot of the height on which tho houses stand flows the river which hero as elsewhere Is a picture of incessantly changing life An Iron fence alone stretches along the top of I the terrace Within two minutes walk I Is trolley connection with all the lines In the city This terrace shows every sign of neglect on the part of the public that similar streets in other ports of the city do To Let signs are frequent In any other part of the world homea with such an outlook with such a contrast to the usual pro pecteOf city life would be snapped up in a minute But New Yorkers IIIJJ a rule dont care anything about such localities The Indifference of artists to ouch quar ters was attributed by the agent to their Ignorance of them There could be no more charming localities for settlement of artists than the place Indicated The most notable attempt at an artist setUement ever made In New York was In Ablngdon Square and that did not meet wlt enough success to encourage others to mike another move in the same direction But the painters who bought and altered heir houses there found that the Invest1 ti VfV XK round like a long spool of thread Yes that is weather protection winding but it is not done until the superstrnotura of the bridge has been added and the strain of its weight has stretched the cables Then wo apply to each cable wrapping or winding of wiro round and round as you uy and paint it and make each cable weatherproof in that way But until the superstructurei 1 workmen are finished the cable hangs a wo have stretched it thirty ryea strands each composed of 356 wires I The superintendent explained further what he meant by this being strictlytand hall respects a suspension bridge Every foot of tho bridge that is the structural i which pedestrians and vehicles of all klndq will use even the highest part of that struoW I lore will be below that is suspended fromi tho lowest part of the cable I The effect will bo artistically an Improvement even upon the beautiful Brooklyn Bridge and tho superintendent added that if the cables were kept freshly painted their long suave curve will always clearly defined and be things of pormanoatbeauty and grace The stretching of the cabwt ho thinks will be completed in six months from now and as the contractors for the superstructure moreproperly speaking the suspended structure will have their 1 plant ready by that time work will proceed without interruption to the final coin pletion of New Yorks latest and Boost beautiful bridge 1 Although the Interesting superintendent has his own plant ready and when this published will probably have begun weaving his mighty cables from little wires work is still being done on the ponderous base of the steel towers Jw tho designers speak of them the towers on each aide consist of four towers Those are hollow and mad i of steel plates bolted together il The day the reporter lted the bridge I men were at work unloading canal boata of gravel and cement and making concrete This vas being poured into the hollow bases of the iasrers which will thus be solidly filled for a space of about sixteen feet The tops of those cement pillars within the towers will bo made into gutters and connected with openings through the sides of the towers thus forming a drainage for alj moisture within the towers In the I same way a cement casing will be formed around the outside of the base of the towers to protect all exposed surface where plates have been bolted together and fill In all recesses of the steel work ment paid In recent years artists have been busy investing their earnings In cooperative studio buildings I came the other day the agent went on across a very unusual block of small houses which would be ideal for young couples of moderate means were it not that they lie too far out of the beaten track They are within five minutes of Madison avenue by car and In the Eightiej I dont know how the owner ever cams to think of such an out of the ordinary way of building He has put up a block cf three story red brick houses and has run abroad court down the centre He has carried the houses down this alley and they face each other for half the block i As the court is private property and none but occupants of the houses and their i friends are allowed to use it there Is unusual I privacy secured in this way Two of tha houses face on the side street which is one of the broadest in the city So far as I could see everyone of those houses was to let although they are supplied 1 with electric light and every convenience And their windows overlook one of the most beautiful of the small parks in the city with a distant prospect of the East i River and Long Island but as I told you before New Yorkers want the convention 1 thing when it comes to a dwelling and they tare willing to give up atmosphere and everything else in order to be in with the parade that moves ever northward 1I AFTER TIlE LAFAYETTES Pjers and Bulkhead crowded With Fishers of All Ace and Conditions The dock fishing season Is orf full force All the piers alone the Hudson especially in the upper reaches off Harlem are orowdel with anglers Men women and children are among the fishers There are fathers of families mothers of the same and the families themselves all engaged hi attempting to soars lafnyettes pronounced layfyetts The lafayette isnt a Urge fish but is very nice eating and as be hangs out li all sorts of places whether muddy or not I 1 is likely to be taken by almost any sort of fisherman 1 1 There are few among the pier fishers who use a rod Just an ordinary line usually run through Tine of those wire uprights with a bell on tho end This is the Ideal form of dock angling because it insures to the fisherman a chance to root between bites Whole families gather on brick barges breakwaters and coal scows to angle Down at the 190th street ferry slip everyday there are hundreds of anglers who furnish an interesting show for tho pas Bongera in the half hour waits between boat Chief among those Harlem fishers are the proprietors of small stores in the neighborhood who seize a chance In the slack I times to take a meal from the waters of the Hudson There are too manynesroea among tho fishers because the negro of old time taa famous trapper and hunter of fish Hitherto his prey ha been more often the oaUUh and the eel but the mam haaestup fotblaj new Ideals I 4 jI 1 iib.