POSTGLACIAL, FAULTS OF EASTERN NEW YORK 1 3 



A brick shop on the south side of Washington street shows a 

 decided drop on the west end of the building. Another building 

 on the same street shows a settling on the west end. A brown- 

 stone sill 8 inches thick is broken. 



Near the river the First Ward Free School building, a three- 

 story brick structure, on the northeast corner of River and 

 Liberty streets, also shows a strong crack gaping upward on the 

 south wall near the western end of the building. The western 

 third of the southern side appears to have been uplifted in relation 

 to the eastern part. The corner stone according to the inscrip- 

 tion on it was laid in 1867. Directly across the street in the north 

 wall of an electric power station, a building erected in 1886, a 

 crack has developed near the base in the same relative position 

 as that in the school building but nearer the ground. A straight 

 line from the crack in the powerhouse to that in the schoolhouse 

 has a course n. 44° e. 



The brownstone Episcopal Church on the corner of First and 

 Liberty streets exhibits cracks in the easternmost of the upper 

 windows on the north side of the building, but these cracks are 

 not detected from the street on the south side of the structure. 

 The houses opposite the church edifice on the north side of 

 Liberty street are out of plumb and overhang slightly to the 

 south. 



The nature of the ground upon which the above mentioned 

 structures are built is not exposed in the present condition of the 

 streets of the city. The following observations pertain to houses 

 resting upon the rock outcrops near the base of the sloping east 

 wall of the gorge north of the Poesten kill. Ferry street ascends 

 this steep hillside. Some of the older houses on this street have 

 their foundation walls laid directly upon a level cut in the slates, 

 the contact with which may be seen just above the sidewalk. 

 In none of these cases was I able to discover any trace of dis- 

 placement in the foundation of the house or in the leveled sur- 

 face of the slates. Any considerable movement amounting to 

 as much as even a few hundredths of an inch would, I think, 

 have been detected. The settling and fracturing of buildings 

 in Troy shows that a movement is taking place in the materials 

 of the low terrace upon which the lower part of the city is built. 

 Sometimes the eastern and at other times the western end of a 

 building appears to have settled. Where it is known that the 

 foundations of houses are on the bed rock no displacement has 



