Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1890 — CHICAGO’S TOWERING TEMPLE. [ARTICLE]

CHICAGO’S TOWERING TEMPLE.

An Eighteen-Story Building That Will Look Like a Monster Tower. Chicago Herald. Norman T. Gassette, prime mover in the big project o£ the Masonic temple, said: "The grand structure will have its halls and corridors on the various floors named as are the street* and avenues of a city. The reason of this is to do away with all idea of altitude. Suppose a timid woman wants to see some one whose office is on the eighteenth floor. - She will draw along sigh, murmur ‘Eighteenth floor,’ and probably go back home without seeing the person, or perhaps try to cover the case by telephoning. But if she is told by the elevator boy that her friend is up on Morris street, why, of course, there is no idea of altitude; she steps into the elevator and is shot up to the eighteenth floor. There will he sixteen streets in the temple. They will be named after men who have prominent in Masonry. The first street above the main floor we will name Gurney, in honor of the late T. T. Gurney, at one time City Comptroller of Chicago, who wa6 in Masonry Past Grand Commander of Illinois as well as Past Grand Master. That’s the only name yet selected.

•‘The foundation will be of steel rails. Each floor will be like a span of a cantilever bridge. They will be drawn together with red-hot bolts, so that there can absolutely be no vibration. The atmospheric pressure has been figured in an exaggerated way. So has the velocity of the wind. To particularize: This temple will be built so as to resist the wind at a velocity of 135 miles an hour. Such a wind would level all the ordinary business blocks of the city. The weight of the people on each floor has been overestimated. We have provided to sustain a weight of as many people as could be packed in solid as sardines on every foot of space on every floor. We have also exaggerated the weight of the beams and of fireproofing. The upper floor will be as strong as the lower. They will so depend on each other as to be of uniform strength. Built on this principle it could be safely made forty stories high on that foundation. The only objeetion|would be.it would require too much,, room for elevators. We now will nfcve fourteen elevators, eightfoot cars, all arranged in a circle. That’s more elevators than there are in any other building in the city. The superstructure and foundation are alike solid. Externally the four sides of the temple will be exactly alike. Even the alley sides will be a duplicate of State and Randolph street sides. It will appear exactly the same, no matter from whatdirection viewed.

i “The general appearance of the temple will be that of a gigantic monument. The lower five stories in terra cotta, forming the base, then rising in smoothfaced brick, will gleam the shaft, while the frieze or top comes out in terracotta.- It is to be, you see, monumental. It will be the grandest structure in the city, famed for its great buildings. The temple will be completed and occupied on May 1, 1892, an even year before the World’s Fair opens.”