FIR IRST came architectural recognition of terra cotta hollow tile for the basic construction of residences, apartments, schools, stores, factories and all buildings of the moderate-sized class. The idea presented itself as a distinct advance in building methods. Its development demanded a standardized form of hollow tile adapted to the new purpose. This standard was realized in NATCO· HOLLOW TILE after exhaustive detailed study of the requirements by this Company's engineers, based on twenty years' leading experience in hollow tile development. NATCO HOLLOW TILE is correctly designed, perfectly modeled of the best and finest ground clays, burned uniformly in the latest pyrometer-equipped kilns, and every stage is supervised by graduate ceramic engineers. In hollow tile for use in moderate-sized structures, NATIONAL FIRE PROFING COMPANY PITTSBURGH, PA. BUILDING PROGRESS O THE WHITEHALL BUILDING By MONTGOMERY SCHUYLER NE is almost ashamed to repeat that tritest of platitudes, how it would astonish the early settlers of an American city if they could revisit the scene of their settlement. And yet one can hardly help repeating it when a spot connected with the earliest history of the city is given over to an ultramodern use. That is eminently the case with the new Whitehall Building, at the foot of Manhattan Island. It derives its name from the residence which Petrus Stuyvesant, governor of New Amsterdam, built for himself in 1658, six years before the surrender to the English. It was called "Whitehall," but evidently after Stuyvesant's time, or the Dutch time, since the name corresponded with that of what was then the residence of the king of England, but had no associations with Holland. The official pamphlet of the new building sets forth that it stands "almost on the site of the old White Hall, or Governor's House," but to make that true one must give the word "almost" a large and loose signification. Stuyvesant's White Hall, in fact, stood on what is still Whitehall Street, at the extreme east of the Battery, as the Whitehall Building is on the extreme west. Perhaps "Battery Building" would be more to the point. The actual name, all the same, carries us back to the last of the Dutch governors, and suggests that very hackneyed and obvious philosophical reflection with which we set out. The suggestion is irresistible. Stuyvesant would be paralyzed with astonishment. The New York which he surrendered to the English so much against his will contained, according to the estimate of the time, "about fifteen hundred people." The new building contains, all told, twelve hundred offices. According to the common computation of six persons to an office, the population of the Whitehall Building will be nearly five times the total population of New York at the time when the original Whitehall was built! And, indeed, a comparison of only one decade instead of two centuries and a half gives startling results. It is just about ten years since the original Whitehall Building, the nucleus of the present building, was projected. It was then as much "the last word" in commercial architecture as the Whitehall Annex is at this writing. Its twenty stories were then very near "the record," and might very well have seemed also "the limit." The design of Mr. Hardenbergh, its architect, was particularly in |
