THE MODERN SKYSCRAPER 



sold for $600 per square foot the highest price ever 

 paid for real estate anywhere in the world. 



Thirty years ago a ten-story building represented 

 about the limit of habitable structures. Ten years later 

 there were buildings having twice that number of 

 stories. To-day the fifty-story structure the Metro- 

 politan Life tower is an accomplished fact. What 

 is the limit to lofty construction? An answer to this 

 question is found not in the matter of strength or weak- 

 ness of the structures themselves, as Mr. O. F. Semsch 

 who designed the steel work for the Singer tower has 

 pointed out, but a clause in the Building Code, at 

 least as regards the City of New York. 



The Singer tower, the dome of which stands 612 

 feet above the sidewalk, measures only 65 feet on each 

 side. Mr. Semsch finds that, even by keeping well 

 within the restrictions of the Building Code, a building 

 2,000 feet high might be erected with safety on a lot 

 200 feet square. Such a building would have about 

 125 stories, would weigh over 500,000 tons, and cost 

 about $60,000,000. The engineering problem to be 

 met in constructing such a building assumes propor- 

 tions quite beyond the grasp of the layman even if 

 stated in plain figures. Those of the Singer tower, which 

 has only one-twentieth of the weight of the hypotheti- 

 cal building in question, are sufficiently staggering. 



Thus, "the wind pressure at 30 pounds per square 

 foot exercises a total overturning moment on the whole 

 tower of 128,000 foot-tons. Although the total weight 

 of the tower is 23,000 tons, the wind pressure would 

 have a tendency to lift the windward side of the build- 



