92 COMMISSION ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



The Waldorf Building, for instance, on West 32d street and West 33d 

 street, has been emptied by using all elevators in less than 8 minutes— the 

 average lapse of time there is 14 minutes. The older buildings with highly 

 insufficient elevator capacity take from 20 to 40 minutes, if the elevators 

 alone are used. 



In the modern building the elevators are of the rapidly moving type, 

 have roomy cars, while in the old buildings the elevators move slowly and 

 do not accommodate more than ten persons on each trip in each car. 



Freight elevator congestion and traffic delays 



In modern buildings the freight elevators are more than adequate to 

 handle the raw materials and goods in the garment industry, but blockades 

 occur when freight is delivered to or shipped from various floors simul- 

 taneously. No freight can be handled in the morning hour or during lunch 

 time because all the freight elevators are crowded with operatives going 

 to their places of work or going out for lunch. 



Truckmen wait from 15 minutes to one hour and a half, according to 

 the time of the day when they make their deliveries. It is impossible to use 

 the freight elevator before 8:15 A. M. and between 12 M. and 1 :15 P. M. — 

 the freight elevators are then busy transporting the workers. Outside of 

 these periods the fact that the incoming and outgoing freight is of relatively 

 small bulk, but comes from a variety of sources and goes to a multitude 

 of destinations, leads the individual truckman to consider it quick work if 

 not more than 45 minutes elapses from the time he is ready to transact his 

 business until he has finished it. There are occasionally from half a dozen 

 to a dozen truckmen waiting at the same place to deliver or to receive goods, 

 the number usually depending upon the height of the building and the num- 

 ber 'if concerns doing their manufacturing there. 



Traffic blocks, lasting from five to twenty minutes, occur quite fre- 

 quently. As far as there are men available special traffic posts are main- 

 tained by the Police Department in the streets lined with tall factory build- 

 ings. These policemen are kept busy straightening out the multitude of 

 traffic tangles caused by the large number of trucks engaged in receiving 

 or delivering goods to and from the factories. 



Since most of the warehouses and practically all railroad and coast- 

 wise steamship freight terminals are located at the waterfront in the lower 

 part of Manhattan the length of haul would be materially reduced by having 

 the factories farther downtown and nearer the waterfront instead of 

 having them centrally located as they are now. 



Percentage of floor area devoted to manufacturing 



Regarding the percentage of floor area usually required for manufac- 

 ture. I might say that I know of no department store which uses even as 

 much, as 15 per cent of its aggregate floor space for factory purposes. 

 Dressmakers and milliners often need 25 per cent, of their floor space for 

 manufacturing; custom tailors use a little less. In a few instances dress 

 and millinery houses, doing exclusively a retail business, occupy at the 

 present time more than 25 per cent of their floor space for manufacturing. 

 This holds good particularly in the case of about eight concerns, most of 

 whom are the sole occupants of their respective buildings. However, the 

 tendencv is growing to devote more and more of the available space to 

 selling and to locate the manufacturing department away from the selling 

 department, retaining onlv enough help in the building to do the necessary 

 fittings or alterations. 



