If the architect has not been called in before this point is reached, he is now, for without him no further progress can be made. He may have been consulted first, but his work would not have begun any sooner; he would have engaged some real estate man to do all this preliminary study of the business anyway. When it is done, the architect goes over the financial estimates, taking the dimensions and form of the lot, looking up on his map the character of the subsoil to obtain an idea of the sort of foundation he has to build on, and making observations of the surrounding buildings. He draws roughly the plan of the new building to see what rentable space he can count on for each floor, and then he and the real estate expert compare notes and reckon out the height of the structure.

Assuming a certain number of stories, they multiply the rentable space on the ground plan by it, and that result by the market rate per square foot of rents in the neighborhood. From this they subtract the cost of maintenance, getting the income, which they compare with the interest at the desired rate on the cost of the ground and the estimated cost of the building. If the two figures do not balance in the investor's favor, a story or two is added. Increasing the height, however, may complicate the problem by the considerations of good service and foundation costs. Up to a certain height four elevators may be sufficient, but the car space has to bear a definite ratio to the rentable area, and one added story may just pass the limit of capacity of the assumed number of cars, so that more have to be allowed for. This means more room for shafts and a corresponding loss of rentable space. Again, a building of from eight to twelve stories will stand safely on a shallow, inexpensive foundation, while fourteen stories would have to be settled on the bedrock, seventy-two feet down at Broadway and Pine Street, New York, or have an elaborate and costly bed made for it, as in Chicago. Thus the rising calculations reach a point where the owner must change his scheme radically. Unless he is willing to venture a much greater amount of capital for a very high building, he has either to relinquish a little income or cut something, the quality of the material or the elaboration of finish; and if he chooses to reach high for the coveted income, he increases

the risk of having vacant rooms, since he may exceed the space needs of the neighborhood. For a structure that is built in twelve months, the consideration of these preliminary matters often lasts two or three years.

When they are decided, the architect begins drawing his plans, and continues to draw them till the building is completed. There are some forty sets necessary for a high building. The details are innumerable, and each one has to be fully conceived in imagination before it can be executed in steel or stone. All the possible uses of the building have to be foreseen; every pound of dead and live weight has to be calculated and prepared for; each particular beam, girder, pillar, and arch must be located and marked with its dimensions, material, and the load and lateral pressure it has to bear; the paths of a network of pipes and wires have to be traced through all their ramifications. But even to sketch the architect's work would be a long story in itself. It will have to suffice to indicate some of the features of it that bear obviously on the success or failure of the building as a business enterprise.

There are buildings close together that seem to the layman to be equally attractive for their purposes, but one of them will be filled with tenants, while others will always have vacant rooms and many removal signs outside. In one case of two such contrasting buildings, everybody who knew anything about it-clients, manager, and disinterested architects-said the failure of the building was the fault of the man who drew the plans. One architect will distribute his rentable space in stores or offices nicely adapted to the business of the neighborhood, another will have them too large or too small; one will grasp too much rentable space, another will be extravagant with halls and lobbies. Errors can be made either way on almost any point, and not be the fault of a careless study. The conflict of requirements calls for sacrifices of one set of considerations for some other. The elevators, with their first floor vestibule, should not take up valuable front space that is light, but they should be conspicuously in sight the moment the entrance is passed. The corridors may be inside, away from the daylight, but to leave them dark or dim is fatal. So insistent are tenants of the best

class on convenience and approachableness of their offices that they prefer to be in a "tower "building at any height than in a large building with intricate, half-lighted hallways, and this observation weighs in the balance for upward instead of surface expansion. The architect has to conjure up every conceivable need and whim of the tenant, and then, after providing for them, he has to arrange for changes after all. He plans large rooms, not too large, and small rooms, not too small; then specifies partitions that may be changed. He may have one front exposed to the light, or he may have two or three, but in any case, no matter what the depth of the lot, he is expected to have light and good ventilation for every room. When all else is done he may strive for beauty, or the owner's substitute.

Beauty absolute is believed by some critics to be incompatible with remunerative height. Most architects of enlightenment admit that the beautiful "sky-scraper" has not yet been designed, but their striving for it proves that they do not despair, and an acknowledged achievement would pay, for advertisement is the mercantile equivalent of applause. Conspicuousness helps rent a building. Men like to be in one so well known that the name of it is address enough without the street number, which is easily forgotten; and a corporation that erects a home for itself striking enough to be talked about, and pictured throughout the country, finds by actual experience that the investment, though a failure as a renting enterprise, pays astonishingly. Hideous ness, if recognized as such generally, is harmful, for the notoriety frightens off the best class of tenants, leaving the building to those who do not know or care and do not pay regularly and well.

The fundamental æsthetic problem talked of in the great architects' offices is to design the exterior to express in some way the character of the construction. To have a light, airy, all-supporting steel cage veneered with a stone that suggests enormous weight and massive walls, is an ugly lie. The conventional notions of the owner may be an explanation of the architect's appointment of such monstrous atlantes as those on page 46 that are pretending to carry a thirty-story building. But the economy of simplicity would excuse sav

ing this expense, and clear the façades for the study of the real question, which the serious architect is trying to answer, to wit: how to make his building look as high as it is, and light and graceful besides. The necessity of a fireproof wrapping for the metal frame is one obstacle; the other is the centuries-old preconception of beauty of proportion. Business interest makes for the destruction of the latter; the former is falling before tireless ingenuity.

While the architect is wrestling with light and space, the contractor begins his race against time. He joins the building committee, and either undertakes for a fee the execution of the plans or offers to do it for a lump sum, taking all risks and making such profits as he can. If he is to finance the construction, he competes for the contract by bidding on the architect's specifications, which are a big book of particulars, prescribing the materials to be used, the amount and quality, the date of completion, and a clause exempting the owner from responsibility for damages by accidents to life or property and the builder from the loss of time in strikes. On some of the specifications the builder estimates for himself, taking the masonry if he is a mason-builder, the wood-work if he is a carpentry-builder, but most of them he has to sublet to specialists: the manufacturer of steel, the plumber, the tile-maker, and the roofer. When all the estimates are in, the builder adds to the sum his profits, and sub.. mits the total with a stipulation for periodical payments, one when so many beams are set, another when the iron work is in, another when so many floors are down, and so on to the end, when the balance, including fifteen per cent. withheld from each part payment, is paid. Thus the builder, who is rarely a capitalist, is enabled to arrange for the payment of his labor and the contractors under him. Sometimes a contract on a set of specifications is sublet several times; the hardware contractor, for example, giving out the locks and door-springs to patentees. But the owner knows only the builder, who conducts the whole and has all the responsibility.

If the builder is engaged for a fee, the architect, or, now and then, the owner, lets the contracts and manages the finances of the operation. The builder furnishes his trained office force, his staff of experts, his

plant, and his own executive ability, and distributes the payments of labor and contractors on the order of the financing agent. His duties are the same; he is the captain of industry. He orders the movements of thousands of men and thousands of tons of material, according to a plan of campaign that he lays out carefully in advance. With a small space of ground to work on, and a limited time, he has to foresee precisely when each beam and each man shall come and go. The sixth-story piers must be delivered when those of the fifth are in place, and they must not be a day late, for the girders of the seventh come then, and there is no room to store anything, since the masons are there at work on the lower walls, and the ground is occupied by their materials. Each squad of workmen follows another, and if one is late, all that come after are delayed, and the completion of the building is not on time.

That means a loss to the owner, and disarranges the whole scheme, for, from the time the old building is torn down to the day the new one is opened, a large amount of capital is earning nothing. The period of construction when no interest is coming in is reckoned in the cost of the building, and, counting on its coming to an end at a certain date, the rooms are rented from that time long ahead. Even the tenants are inconvenienced and may be lost by any failure of the builder's plans.

To hurry at first is the rule now. The builder has to know how long it takes to manufacture the materials, and he gets out the orders for the difficult work first, and all as soon as possible. With the acceptance of each contract there is a clause binding the contractor to deliver at the date fixed by the builder, no sooner and no later; but the builder informs himself from time to time whether the promise is to be kept, whether the cornice-maker, for instance, who is to be ready a month hence, has begun the work that will take a month to do. That is to say, the builder watches the progress of his building, not at the scene of construction alone, but in the shops and factories also. While the borings are making for the foundation he sends one of his staff up to the quarry to see if the stone is being taken out of the ground, and to report whether the vein is of the quality that was shown when the surface inspection was

made.

A year is the time allowed to erect the highest buildings, and the foundation and labor difficulties are the only elements of doubt provided for in the contract. Dividing the year into twelve periods, the builder reduces it to days, and appoints a clerk of the work and a timekeeper to enforce the schedule. Each load of cement, iron, piping, or brick is examined as it arrives, and if it is "up to specifications" is receipted for and turned over to the workmen who put it in place. As the construction proceeds, reports are made to the master-builder, who sometimes has photographs taken to save himself a personal inspection. If the masons are lagging, the mason contractor is called upon to put more men on his job, and some other contractor, the tile man perhaps, is asked to begin a day or two earlier to make up the loss.

The architect also keeps tally on the work, for the builder's reports of progress have to be countersigned by the designer before any payments are sanctioned by the owner. These architect's certificates play another part in the financial scheme if the owner is building on credit. In that case he has negotiated for a loan which, when the building is done, becomes a mortgage on the whole property, but interest is saved to the borrower by receiving the money only as it is needed to pay the contractor's bills, in parts timed according to the advancement of the work. The whole loan may be of an amount for which the ground would not be a sufficient security, so, as the improvements increase the value of it, the lender, assured by the certificates of builder and architect, advances the sums that carry on the scheme till, at the end, there is a general settlement by which the owner gets his building, the capitalist the mortgage, if there is one, the architect and the builder their fees or profits, and the manufacturers and labor the capital invested.

But that does not end the business." The completion of the building is the materialization of the architect's plans, but those of the financier culminate in the management, which begins now to realize the expectations of the enterprise as a whole.

In the days of the old buildings, this was easy. An agent sat with his feet up

on a desk, scrutinizing loftily or lazily the applicants who approached him, credentials in hand, with a request for a place on the waiting list for the offices that might fall vacant from time to time. He accepted those who seemed to his fancy to be up to the mark, rejecting the others in the line with slight courtesy. He rarely went to the building. A tyrant ruled there, some pensioner of the owner, whom all the tenants addressed respectfully as "Mr. Janitor." Sometimes he was a good-natured ignoramus who became a "character;" oftener he was a peevish, useless hanger-on, whose sole purpose was to grind as much as he could out of his natural prey, the creatures given him with the building by his patron, the owner. All the tenant's lease included was the office, the daylight the carpenter failed to exclude, the right to pass up and down the stairs and halls, and, in the finer offices, a gas-jet or two and a fireplace. There was water on the lower floors. Fuel the janitor provided, for an extra fee and a share. Gas or lamp light the tenant arranged for himself. The cleaning was done by some woman hired through the janitor.

Competition and the high buildings changed all that. It is the tenant's turn now to scrutinize and reject the offers of the line of agents, who have taken down their feet to run about, "hustling" to fill their gaping space. The janitor was hard to subjugate, but he is passing away. The cross old autocrats had to be discharged; the young men who harbored the traditions of their office had their salaries cut in half, and, if that did not reduce their insolence, were put in livery and called headporters. The owner had set a new example, and he had to choose between the janitor and the spoiled tenant.

Now the lawyer or business man who has been induced to come into a modern sky-scraper has the cab-door opened by a uniformed giant, who escorts him (under an umbrella, if it is raining) across a clean sidewalk to the revolving storm-door. Inside the janitor's ghost salutes him, a detective sees that no thief slips in to pick his pocket, or pedler or beggar to annoy him, while the hall-man indicates the one of several elevators that is waiting to shoot him to his floor so swiftly that it can make no appreciable difference in time whether

He

he is on the third or the twentieth story. But, lest a second may be missed, there is an express elevator that does not stop at any floor below the fifteenth. His room has been swept, dusted, and put in order by a staff of servants he never sees. touches a button to fix the temperature of his room; another to turn on the electric light, if the day is dull or the hour is late, otherwise the daylight will stream in gloriously, for there are "no dark rooms." The dust of the street he may rinse from his hands with hot or cold water, and on his rack are fresh towels, which come he knows not whence. Telephone, messenger-calls, and mail-chutes are conveniently near. In the latest of the new buildings there is an internal telephone system that connects through the first floor switch with any other room in the building or with the city service. They furnish also a bathroom on each floor, and a private bath if desired. One of the latest conveniences is a bicycle storage-room in the basement of a building not finished at this writing. Libraries for the use of tenants are not so new, but running ice-water and bachelor apartments are.

This last feature makes it possible for a business man to live in a building day in and day out. The manager arranges to have a restaurant somewhere within his walls, on or near the roof, if possible, and some large buildings run their own kitchen, to be sure of first-class service. In the corridor are cigar, news, and bootblacking stands. Elevators do not stop, as they used to, at six o'clock, but take turns running all night. For society, the tenant has the club, which is coming to be a feature of the high building. The bedroom was all that was lacking, when a New York business man recently called the attention of a manager to the omission, and suggested one for himself. He thought of the fine view of cities and rivers and harbors from his office-window near the roof, imagined the cool, fresh air of that altitude, and recalled the hot and lonely summer months when his family was out of town, and he asked why he should go five miles to an abandoned home every night. The manager said he need not. A bedroom was drawn in the plans, and finding other tenants charmed by the idea of chambers, he adopted them