Jllly, 1887.] ELUOTT SOCIETY. 145 



served in the neigliborliood of Summerville had a direction North 65° East. 



The Churches and Public Buildings suffered very severely, with few excep- 

 tions. They are situated upon good subsoil, the best in the City. Architectu- 

 rally thay are not of a recent type ; churches like St. Michael's and St. Philip's 

 belong to the old English style of the seventeenth century. The First and Sec- 

 ond Presbyterian, St. Paul's, St. Mary's, and others, of a modified Tuscan de- 

 sign ; Westminster, Trinity, and Bethel, of the Greek temple character ; Cita- 

 del Square, Grace, St. Luke's, and St. Matthew's, of the various Gothic 

 orders. 



Generally all of them are damaged, the difference being only of degree. 



The Public Buildings were likewise well located as to nat- 

 ural foundation, the U. S. Custom House excepted, and, perhaps, the Post 

 Office. They all exhibited fractures, the least hurt being the Fire Proof 

 Building, but this structure is exceptionally massive ; it is of stone and brick, 

 and was specially designed as a place of safety for the public records of the 

 County. Here only the porticos were somewhat displaced, but the ancient co- 

 lonial edifice, built about A. D. 1768, as an Exchange and Custom House, and 

 now occupied as the U. S. Post Office, lying about three hundred feet from 

 the dock in the rear, suffered to such an extent as to require a complete system 

 of shoreing to sustain the rent walls. 



In observing the position of articles of furniture and objects of art and ele- 

 gance which were cast down by the vibration no new light was obtained, as to 

 the principal direction of the earth wave, it was very common to see that the 

 objects fell in the line of least resistance and the violent motion of the earth's 

 crust was not only a horizontal and vertical one, but also a most decidedly 

 compound movement. 



The effect of this compound motion may be partially illustrated by the new 

 position assumed by the collar-beam of the great bell of the Orphan House. 

 This bell is of a large size and is suspended from a beam (the collar) properly 

 bolted to a timber frame work in the belfry of the Orphan House tower. This 

 bell does not oscillate upon an axis, but is struck by a hammer operated by 

 electricity. The normal position of this collar beam is East and West, but af- 

 ter this shake it was found by measurement to have been shifted permanently 

 out of place to the North, the East end of the beam moving Northwardly two 

 and one-half inches, the West end one inch in the same direction ; a rotary ef- 

 fect was also perceived, for the bell turned on its axis sixteen inches to the 

 North and came back eight inches only. 



In some houses . . . framed pictures suspended by cords from 

 the walls were made to revolve completely around, showing their backs where 

 before their fronts were exposed. Those which showed this novel position were 

 hung with the longest sides of the parallellogram in a vertical direction and 

 their cords may be termed ornamentally lengthy. The swing of a door amply 

 illustrates their movement. 



Monumental shafts in the church yards also gave ample evidence of the 

 complexity of this earth wave, they fell from their die blocks with an indiffer- 

 VOL. n. 19 Published Sep., 1887. 



