Popular Science Monthly 



833 



Madison Square Garden 



Metropol.lan Tov 



FlatironBuMdIng 



Cotikill Water v^lll a/ss wUhovt 

 ^;?.i.g' pumpino to thiS hc'ioht. 



\ 



PRCSSURE TUNNEL 



VAL.VE 



Water supplied to the city of New York from the Catskills rises two hundred and eighty five 



feet under its own pressure 



Water Rises to Three Hundred Feet in 

 New York Sky Scrapers 



A CITY possessing a pressure system 

 capable of elevating water a vertical 

 distance of nearly three hundred feet 

 above street level without pumping is 

 unusual. Yet New York's new Catskill 

 supply system will accomplish this feat. 

 Contrasted with the thirty or forty-foot 

 heights which the average city system 

 can attain, the performance is out of 

 the ordinary, to say the least. 



The artificial lakes supplying the water 

 to New York are high up among the 

 Catskill mountains, one hundred to 

 one hundred and twenty-five miles 

 north. In the case of the Metropolitan 

 tower, for instance, this height to the 

 supply enables the water to rise unaided 

 two hundred and eighty-five feet above 

 the ground level, or four hundred and 

 eighty-five feet above the pressure 

 mains, which are themselves two hun- 

 dred feet below the street surface. The 

 two hundred and eighty-five feet are 

 more than two-thirds of the way up the 

 occupied portion of the tower, so that 

 but comparatively little pumping is 

 necessary in order to reach the highest 

 offices. The case is typical of all the 

 large buildings in the city. 



Heads such as that mentioned mean 

 that pressures over two hundred pounds 



to the square inch have to be contended 

 with in the huge mains so far below the 

 surface. This condition necessitates 

 unusual construction. In fact, the 

 whole length of the mains from the 

 Catskills to the city is made up of diffi- 

 cult engineering feats. Over much of 

 the distance they are made of steel 

 tubing, lined and re-enforced with con- 

 crete. In places they bore through 

 solid-rock mountains, tunnel under rivers 

 and lakes, burrow far beneath city 

 streets and skyscrapers, all that the 

 city may be reached by the shortest 

 route consistent with engineering econo- 

 my. Smaller mains near the surface 

 care for the work of local distribution. 



War and Trade 



BECAUSE many foreign-owned ves- 

 sels, which formerly traded between 

 the United States and South American 

 ports, have been withdrawn for war 

 purposes, trade is thereby increased in 

 proportion for American vessels. It is 

 estimated that seventy per cent of our 

 commerce with Brazil, the Argentine 

 and other South American countries is 

 now being carried under the American, 

 Brazilian and Argentine flags. Of the 

 remaining thirty per cent only about 

 fifteen per cent is still carried in vessels 

 of the nations at war. 



