The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 96

Tagc Sine Tage Eight lelped Trace It New York's yhne an a Man Who New York Life Inrvravee Building Skvscrapcrs Aonc Arc Not Responsible for Congested Traffic Conditions, Says CoL Starrett, in Pointing Out That Even in Medieval Days Cities Were Crowded; Chicago Claims Honor of Building First Skyscraper Colonel W. A.Starrett, Well Known Builder and Author of "Skyscrapers and the Men Who Build Terms the Towering Structures That Seem to Touch the Clouds Typically American in Conception ill 55? liJIfiill it I Ilk iiiv J1 Ml 5 Si ill nr I il SlCf. i 1. 5 2 2 Of. U'.

Slarrctt, insert desks. But. all in all. the city has derided advantages to offer. And if we are to avail ourselves of these advantages we have to put up with some of the disrom- "I shouldn't like to be quoted as savins that I ran predict a city of the future with various graded levels.

That sounds too much like H. G. Wells and bis fantastic Vtopia. But right here in New York, at Grand Central, the use of crossing levels has eased the situation considerably, the separate grades passing over each other. I think that possibly there might be an extension of that kind of thing.

It is tried in several other cities. "Some people, dreamers, still further rex the question by talking of aviation and possibly airplane landings cn the roofs of buildings. These fantasies merely add another aspect to it- There remains the staggering problem of trallic, one which overshadows every other problem of importance in a big city. It almost threatens the existence of the convenient if complex living that our city so ideally serves in all other respects. "Seme theoriits are actually foretelling of the abandonment of the great cities and the ctmstruction of new centers to which we can travel with rwiftfness.

But those are theories, all of them, and the practical prob-" lems facing us are not aided by them." One of the most perilous tasks in connection with the building of skyscrapers. Colonel Starrett pointed out. is the work done by the steel workers. They work feverishly at the risk of their lives and limbs, with a fidelity to duty that would do credit to soldiers. Nothing is too hard for them to undertake, or too dangerous.

Every rkyscraper that rises in the air cost! attast one human lile. and some of them represent half a tiivzrn. Colonel Starrett is a rare personality. He speaks with modesty in a simple manner, jit with an insight into things that indicates the academic quality of intellectual makeup. He comes of a family of buiidf -rs.

Family tradition has it that his father's father was a bulkier, and his father before him. The present firm of Starrett Brothers, is a firm of five brother, all having spent uves tne ouuaing iraae. Over Colonel Starrett di sk hung a picture of a woman with a sweet, thoughtful face. When pressed to speak of Limst-lf and of his persona life, he pointed to picture and said: my mother I ewe anything I may have accomplished. She was a great educator in days when it was rare for a woman to venture cut-side her home.

At the close of the Civil War she went with my father, a schoul teacher bncle. to a Kansas frontier town. And tlx-re in the and simplicity cf that new country, ta rtraiier.cd finances, slic brought up a family of sewn and saw to it that we each hid a education. My father was a m.nister and in early days in Kansas money was a rare sul.t. Too often was the minister paid in supplies After seme years they moved to a suburb cf Chiearo and thcr they both took up hu rary work.

They established a little puprr which they called Tlie Weekly Magaune. We five boys grew up in and about Chicago, where the first skyscraper made its appearance. Considering the family traditions it was inevitable, I suppose, that we should have been ir.V.-jt need by it," Colonel Starrett lives in Madison, New Jersey. In his leisure he enjoys reading, and an ocxasltiiial gann of golf. Now and then he contributes truile to a magazine on various phases of the building tiatie and its problems, He is a gifted writer, evidenced by tlie clear style of liis recently publishe boc k.

He is a man of amu.ng energy, a tireless worker. When the writer buggoud that perhaps he lexied forward to tlie day when he might retire and devote himself to writing, he replied: "No. I really havenl any eh thought. I caul iee why it is net possible to continue fcusiiwss and write" It's almost unthinkable Ict cie to give up ronstrucUui really lonvuict-d tLal I can tit le do By Helen Herbert Foster WHISTLES shriek. Concrete mixes grumble.

A yawning steam shovel snorts into the earth. Dynamite and drills dislodge granite rock. Rivet guns thunder and Jack hammers pound madly away, A skyscraper is being built. Another skyscraper, the most distinctively American thing in the world, will shortly rear its head among its towering neighbors, and add to the dramatic beauty of New York's skyline. The skyscraper is all American in conception.

It is all ours in design. If Americans never build another building, if we never produce another scheme or plan, posterity will have to accord us the creation of a great, new architectural style fixed beyond all changing. America, young as she is, has already won the title of the greatest builder that the world has ever seen. Tills is the opinion of Colonel W. A.

Starrett who together with his brothers, have built more skyscrapers than any other group of men, and have probably had a larger share than any one else in the successive advances of the building craft. Colonel Starrett is not only a great builder, but a scholar and student as well. He is the author cf "Skyscrapers and the Mm Who Build Them," and he belongs to that group of business men whose knowledge of and interest in the world extends beyond the borders of his own profession a thing, many critics declare not altogether characteristic of the American man ol business. How did the skyscraper start, and who were the men who brought it about? These were the first questions the writer put to Colonel Starrett as we sat in his private office on the fourteenth floor of a Park avenue skyscraper. With rare economy of words, and in a reminiscent mood he replied: "Oh, it began a short time ago.

Any one over forty-three years of age has seen it all, from its beginning to the present state. The first skyscraper, however, did not make its appearance in New York, as many believe. It was erected in Chicago. It was conceived and demonstrated by a little group of architects, engineers, and builders in that city. The great pioneers of the skyscraper were William LeBaron Jenney, Daniel H.

Burn-ham, John W. Root and William Holabird. Other Chi-oagoans contributed, of course, but these four, and in the urder named, were the four chiefs. "The first skyscraper, a skyscraper in the real sense of the word, constructed of a skeleton frame of stee' and covered with a curtain of concrete, was the Home Insurance Building, which still stands at La Salle and Adams streets, Chicago. It was started in May, 181 I saw it as a boy in Chicago going up and it was finished in the fall of the following year.

"If you ask me why it did not appear first in New York. I would say that it was because Chicago was younger and bold -and short on precedent. In New York, with a history of two centuries bhind it, the building code was rigid, men were more conservative, and no such i would have been permitted. Only after it had been tried and proved in Chicago did the New York Building Department appiove the plans for orn in New York the Tower Building on Broadway in For fifty-two years Trinity Church was the-zenith of the New York skyline, Colonel Starrett pointed out. It was built in 1841 and was unchallenged until 1893, when across the street, the Manhattan Life Insurance building, reventeen Mories and tower, thrust its pinnacle above Trinity spire, fifteen years after that Trinity steeple had sunk without trace beneath the soaring New York skyline.

"It's a fascinating game, this building of skyscrapers," continued the Colonel. "Those actually engaged in it It like stron? drink we pet so that we can't do without the strenuous activity of it. It's like Mi Tliompson-Blurrctt Co. Trowbridge Livingston. Ardutrcu.

New Etitittible Trust tower signed to get rentals with no consideration of beauty of line. "Y'et despite all this the skyscrapers today compel the admiration and awe off all who gaze upon them," said Colonel Starrett. "Who can look at the majestic skyline of New York in sunshine or shadow and not be moved, both by the tremendous power of its mass and the beauty and richness of its detail?" "The setback skyscraper, conditioned by the New York zoning laws passed in 1916, is the dominant theme in skyscraper design today. Like all great art forms it came into being because of a need in our social life. The law was passed to protect the rights of lesser buildings and to permit the sunlight to reach the streets a greater part of the day.

And that factor has produced the style so widely acclaimed throughout the world. Even in cities where no such zoning laws exist setbacks go up. The new Philadelphia Electric Building not only is stepped fiom choice there is no such zoning law in that city but multi-colored flood lights make the setback tower a rainbow by night a unique and striking experiment that is likely to be adopted elsewhere." Colonel Starrett is a remarkably easy man. He speaks simply and with a fund of information at his disposal that seems almost unbelievable. "Is not the skyscraper responsible lor traffic congestion?" he was asked.

"I think it is quite wrong to blame any one tiling for the traffic problem, which, has become, perhr.ps. our great problem in metropolitan life," Colonel Starrett said. "There are those, of course, who will have it that the skyscraper is the villain of alone responsible for it all. It is true that a building housing 10.000 workers aggravates the traffic problem for blocks around. Y'et the high building is only one factor in a condition practically inescapable in modern city life.

The motorcar is a worse offender than the tkyscrapt-r, as is demonstrated every day in such cities of relatively low fkyline as Los Angeles. London and Paris both have rigidly limited skylines and relatively fewer motorcars, yet their traffic problem is similar. 'Cities always have been crowded. Ancient and medieval cities were swarming hives. We forget that pedestrians died daily under horses" hoofs in the traffic of the HO's; that horse cars were slow, cold, smelly, infrequently and abominably crowded In the rush hours; that workers toiled up as many as sue floors to their 3SS t.4 VX i k.

curresy Courtesy Thompson-Starrett Co. Trinity spire luried among lower New York's tall buildings Colonel Starrett declared that for forty years it was the object of abuse and patronage of critics, many of them architects of note. A hideous thing, they wailed. "Woe unto a people who could produce such an abomination! A dry goods box, purely commercial in character, de- playing a game which taxes your ingenuity to the utmost. Foundations are planned away down in the earth alongside of towering skyscrapers already built.

Water, quicksand, rock and slimy clay bar our path to bedrock. Overhead traffic rumbles along in crowded streets. Subways, gas and water mains, electric conduits and delicate telephone and signal communications demand that they be left alone, lest the nerve system of a great city be deranged. And all this is done without the movement of so much as an inch, and with accuracy of position that regards the variation of an eighth of an inch as the very limit of allowable error." Colonel Starrett believes that most of the tall buildings now being erected, if they are not torn down to make room for still taller ones, will last indefinitely. There is no longer any talk, he says, that they will collapse.

Their steei is so well protected that it does not disintegrate, and they are far too sturdy to be blown over. They even survive earthquakes and fires. "Is it true that buiMing in the old days was of a higher order, that tilings were made more carefully with greater concern for durability?" was the next question we asked of him. "Of course." Colonel Starrett replied, "all of us hear about the good old We are told that the making of a door, for example, was something we don't appreciate today. That it was made of 'solid mahogany' and that the panels were finished separately, etc.

But as a matfr of fact such a door couldn't stand up under modern conditions. For that door was 'mortised and ter.oned' and clamped after gluing with the best glue available, which at best was uncertain. Modern doors are built of selected veneers, of woods picked out by a specialist. They are made with lock-jointed corners, with dovetailed splines between the alternated grains of wood in the cores, and are glued with scientifically prepared glue that is mixed to formula after painstaking' research. And they are, believe me, much better than the grand old darlings, as much better than electrics are better than sperm lamps.

"Consider masonry before the days of Portland cement. Laying was done in lime, the best mortar then available. That would not pass the strength tests of any modern building department. Bricks will shake out of lime mortar like peanuts from their shells. As proof of this you can see how easily they are cleaned and sold at secondhand.

But brick laid In cement is a tsiMK yeto ferua 1 aaagrLJ Courtesy ol Spencer, White Prentis, Inc. Corner of National City Bank Building, showing underpinning for William st. Subway different affair. Brick walls have to be torn down, breaking across the bricks more often than at the Joints, fend are carried out to sea great masonry chunks, be dumped as so much dead ware." Then speaking of the architecture of the skyscraper,.