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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 18, 1904)
New York's Biggest Task r (CoryrlBt. 15H by T. C. McClur.) V.W YORK In lust now niaklns N much ado over her subway, com I iilolofl at a pimI nf nhnut 140 000.- OHO. It Is, Indeed, a gigantic pub lic Improvement, but both It and Its cost sink Into Insignificance when com pared with the scope of and expenditure on another undertaking? that lias been going on steadily since 171 and will likely con tinue for several generations to come. This colossal work has hud atul will con tinue to have a pronounced effect on the commerce and general welfare, not only of the metropolis, but of the entire country as well. Kor. since New York Is America's greatest port, the rebuilding of Its entire Water front to meet the demands of com merce cannot but be felt throughout Amer ica In all lines of trade. Hut, while the Improvement has been go ing on for a generation, and upwards of $200,000,000 have been spent by the city therefor, It Is safe to say that of the cltl Eens of New York not one In a thousand knows anything about It, and certainly not that proportion outside the rity. Yet In all this time the city has gradu ally but surely remodeled the water front all the way from the llattery to Twenty third street on the North lllver, a distance of about two miles, where 11 Is now en gaged in building eight enormous piers that .will represent, when completed, an Investment of $15,00Q,0u0 dollars; and vari ous mote or less extended sections on the East River, where the demands of com merce required It, have also been Im proved. Hundreds of piers have been built by the city In this time, but there are hundreds more to be constructed, and the depart ment of docks and ferries does not contem plate quitting In the beginning, as it were, of Its task. In fact, it plans eventually to surround the entire island of Manhattan With a concrete bulkhead wall and to have running out from it the finest lot of piers that can possibly be built under the limi tations of the various pierhead lines set by the War department in Washington. At present no pier longer than SOO feet can be built In the North river from the Island.. The borough, as owner of nearly all of Its water front, desired to have the pier-head line set at 1,(100 feet, arguing that It would not be of such length that 1,000 foot piers would be Imperative If the com merce of the port, which is synonymous with the International trade of the coun try, was to be taken care of properly. The department feared that the river channel would bo narrowed too much, and the re quest was refused. Hut the city Intends to get around the difficulty. Instead of going out Into the river, it means to destroy square block after square block of the upland by dredging, and by putting the bulkhead Wall where rows of business houses now stand, thus securing 1.000-foot piers for the SOO nnd 800-foot ocean liners that will undoubtedly come In the near fulnre. This, however, will be no new move on the part of the clly along Its water front. S incest began the work of providing ample ' dockage for the ships that make the port. It bar bought scores of blocks of property by condemnation proceedings, torn down hundreds of business houses, and dredged away the land for piers and ships, or add'd portions of It to the great marginal Btreot. I7f. feet in width, that Is gradually encircling the Island. Sixteen square blocks, every square foot covered with rubstan'lil brick and stone buildings, were destroyed to make room for the half dozen latest piers, to bo completed at a cost of $15,000,0(0. which lie Just sonlh of the eight piers now being built on the North river, for which seventeen blocks, in whole or In part, were condemned and purchased at a cost of several millions of dollars. One million dollars was required to pur chase a gas plant that stood where ono of those piers begins, and it will not be long now before the great ocean liners will be berthed where three years ago great manufactories were humming and giving employment to thousands. In like manner the improvement will be carried clear around the Island, causing thousands of buildings to be razed and do creasing the land area of this already con gested spot by acres; $13, 0(0,000 is to bo Bpcnt to this end this year. Over a mile of the water front from above the Brooklyn bridge down to the Hattery along the Kast river Is shortly to bo Improved, a seel ion at a time, so as to interfere with the ship ping as little as possible, special legisla tion having been secured from tho state to permit of condemnation proceedings for the necessary land. Hundreds of blocks will be required, for In some stretches thero Is practically no marginal street, which will be from 125 to 175 feet wide. In or.ler to re lieve congestion caused by trucking; and It Is also planned to convert much of the upland Into pier and slip room. About thirty piers In all will b constructed. Heretofore the city has devoted nearly all of Its efforts In behalf of the big ships, ruch as the liners, but so great has been tho demand for better pierage accommoda tion on the part of the smaller ships that the authorities have turned to the section f the Kast river where the minor steam- PI i j J , Vvi n6' jhmiwmm: : ,"- ' T --'H t t --- v'. 4, - " ' j .-1 Tt V- - :-- . L: -A-t-j -..! i a- - i -.- :-fA.r?T.-' f -' ;'-" - --.-r . KlltST UIG P1EKS ONP: OF" THR CITY'S flllRAT PREDOKS HOWS OK UUSlNEtiS HOUSES AND ship lines dock. What will be the cost of this piece of the work no man can say. Even they hesitate to calculate who have It In charge and are engaged on the de tails preparatory to lh actual construc tion of the pi cm All they will say is: "Millions so many that we ourselves don't know jet. and can't tell until we've con demned all the property that we shall l.ei'd." They feel cert.iln, however, that it will add an enormous sum to the already respectable one of f- O.f im.OoO. So will the bulkhead wall of inncrelf when it is com pleted. Its cost so fir has been about $:!oO per running foot. The Island has a water front of about 2O0,) linear fi et. The wall will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of jGO.OOO.OoO, or $;o.uXi,(0 more than the' s-ub-way system ns It stands tod -y. The latest section of the wall to be finished-and it runs the length of only eight piers cost upward of $1,500,000. There Is another remarkable thing about this wall. It Is a floating will it floats In mud. The piles are driven down to a distance of about thirty feet, where the friction of the mud on their sides keep them practically solid in place, as If they were resting on rock bottom. Then im mense concrete blocks, each welshing ninety-two tons, are set on these floating piles, and you have the son wall. It has bcon found that the wall sinks very little. Rome sections have sunk an Inch or two In five years and then ceased altogether. If nny portion of the wall were to sink phenomenally, all that would be necessary to repair It would be more concrete blocks upon tho top of the others. It would be far less costly than to drive the p"OB to the rock-bed of the river. In some places several hundred feet below the mini. Tho old sea wall which is being displaced Is of tho ordinary crib variety. Although tho land and the sea wall of themselves are the most costly Items of this Improvement, the new piers nre by no means cheap affairs. Of the eight piers now under wjy each will cost on an aver age tL50,(00. These tilers aro each S00 feet long by 125 f.et wide, and each requires 700 reo foet of ordinary pine for decking, 900.000 feet of crensoted pine, and hundreds of barrels of creosote, 1.S00 cubic yards of reinforced concrete for the deck, 28il.0u0 pounds of Iron screw bolts, nnd a regular forest of trees for plies 2. TS:! plhs. to bo exact. Each pile must be capable of b, tir ing a weight equal to eluht tons, and as It must weigh two tons, it represents some king of the forest lovi lied for the benefit of the floating commerce of Amer ica The building of the piers nnd the dredging are tho only parts of the work that the city docs by contract; everything TO 1H 11U1UT BY TllM CITY-OCEAN REMOVING IJVND FOR P1-RS WHEHH. FACTOK1ES STOOD. else Is cared for by the department, which employs about 2,000 men, and has a plant, consisting of scows, pile drivers, derricks, tugboats, yawls, launches, machinery, ma chine shops, department yards and timber basins valued at conslch rably more than Jl.COO.eGO. The biggest timber basin Is con stantly stocked with 4.000,000 feet of lum ber and about Co.oih) plh-s. The city could easily become one of the largest lumber dealers In the country If ever It oared to embark in the business. To the lay mind it would seem that the mc tropolis Is going to an enormous expense to take care of the country's commerce when It is reckened that the very few miles of the water front that hive been im proved li ive taken the greater part of the J2I0.I' (1,1 'O cNpended to dale by the (lcpait inent. Hut an ther fact must be coiuhb red In connection with this ono, and that l.i that while the city, to d the woilt, Is nble to burrow all the nine y it wants nt 3 per cent, and semetimeM less, It Is also nble to lease t lie various piers at rentals that average a return of just twice ,,, Interest on the millions b irrowi d. And tho rentals are continually lucreasinu' in amount, while the tub rest rat' Is gradually lowering, so the city eventually stands to get at least $2 back for every one it has expended or will expend on its water front. New York is engaged in u clever b't of business, even while it is protecting its own Interests as a port and the Interlocked Interests of the country at large. The large piers, such as those In what Is known as the Oansevoort section, where many of the ccean liners now dock, rent nil the way from $70,100 to $mi,kii a year. The lessee rents for ti n years nt a stipu lated Bum nnd is allowed two renewals of ten yivirs each, each renewal to show an Increase of 10 per cent rental charges. Then tin: pier Is again put up at public auction and bid In by the highest bidder. The big sheds, which nre now a fenture of the water front, nnd which cover the greater portions of tho piers, nre erected by thi lessees and revert to the city on the expira tion of the original leases. So the city, 'through this agreement. Is destined' to come Into property Improvement the valim of which reaches up Into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, nnd which will not have cost'lt a cent. lYom all tills It Is easy to deduct that oven though this Oargintuan scheme eventually costs the city some $3,000,000,000, ns a department official roughly estimated, this vast sum will have been spent with tho certain knowledge that It will give back to the municipality double, perhaps treble- Ll.VEHS N(JV 1()CK HKKFI fold, as the oominoreo of the lwrt grow niul the Increased demand for dockage never light, runs up eicli rental thousands ttf dollars yearly tiiomas i. r.iMdisriii In an Antarctic Squall r.uddi lily the mist lifted, and the tem perature, which generally rose during a gale, by tills time bad fallen to 72 degrees of frost. The lir.it squall brought drift miow, and wo suffered greatly Irom frost bites while securing our little ennip. Our r Indeer bleeping bags, while warm from previous use had been packed on the sledge, where they became quite Hut and frozen hard, so that when the gale surprised us wo had to thaw ourselves gradually Into tho bags. Later on wo used tho dogs to thaw out the bags for us. They always liked to roil upon anything that was not now or he, even were It but a thrown away mitten; and they would turn round nnd round over it, Imagining that they ero warmer there than on the snow. When later wo threw our frozen bags on the siiow tho dogs generally clustered to gether on them at once, and soon after We could net into them. liy thiu lime the gale was over us In earnest, and wo took refuge In our sleep ing bags in the tent, from which wo were not able to extricate ourselves for the lie.xt three nights and days, in which time wo expected tho icy lloor beneafh us to break up at any moment. Our silk tent rapidly lilled with a dense fog, both from our breath and from the hvut given out by tho lantern; a thick layer of frost soon covered the inner walls of the tent, and beautiful snow crystals shown down on us through the ventilation hole In the bag. The drift snow burled tho tent and the snow pressure left us Just enough space for our sleeping bags. The dark little spot which We formed on those vast white fields was blotted out. Ah n, dogs and sledges all disappeared and the antarctic g.ilo as It raged over us found nothing but cold white solitude. Kor three days and three nights wo had to take turns In standing on all fours to prevent being smothered by tho pressure of the snow. Krom tie to time the Iips Joined in melancholy native hymns, the tin notony of which seemed in a remarkable derive to harmonize with the rage of the bli::isar! over our heads. We had brought a small aluminum cooking stove with us Into the tent, nnd with dilliculty we prepared a warm meal. But in tho cold the mclui stuck to our lingers, and it was not pleasant to have one's turn at cooking. Wu roasted the beait of a seal, but other parts we ate raw. The do;;s wire completely snowed under. Some of I hem laid eaten the straps of their harness in order to tree themselves, but they were still unable to move, being flozeu to the ice. Century Magazine. Quiet Little Game A New York woman who ha.s been spend ing the summer In tho Adirondack) tolls this story: "Tho colony of summer resl di nts consisted of ii dozi n apparently Mraitluced and mild mannered women who spent most of their time playing euchre. When they u.sked me to Join them I told them sure of my escape that I never played anything but jx,ker. " 'Why,' one of them whimpered, 'that's! Just what we like U'st. We'll have a quiet little game with a small limit. What do you say?' "When we sat down my hostess remarked casually that we would play a $" limit mid that my pile of chips represented $100. AVben we finished one of the older women bad won $2.5, another $1GG and tho third had lost $.:20. I considered myself lucky to get off with a loss of $125. As wo rose from the table the mild mannered old lady who had Invited ino to play leaned over and said, 'I 'am so sorry, my dei but how would you feel if we hud beenj ying for real money f "