Identifier: historyofrealest00durs (find matches)
Title: A history of real estate, building and architecture in New York City during the last quarter of a century
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Durst, Seymour B., 1913-, former owner. NNC Real Estate Record Association Union League Club (New York, N.Y.), former owner. NNC
Subjects: Real estate business Building Architecture
Publisher: New York : Record and guide
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: The Durst Organization

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stairs was not compensated forby the cheaper rents or other advantages of top-floor locations. Inmost commercial buildings tlie top floor was used for light manu-facturing or bulky storage and packing purposes. In office build-ings the inevitable janitor had his residence on this floor, his flowergarden, truck patch, back yard and summer house on the roof.In all the commercial buildings erected during this period therewere elevators, for freight, worked by hand, with a geared hori-zontal windlass that was suspended from a wooden frame at thetop of the elevator shaft. It was a slow affair, but it answered itspurpose without improvement for many years. But it was also thegerm of the present passenger elevator system, the main factor inthe most momentous revolution in building known to modern times. Two events happening at about this time l)rought the Frenchmansard style of that period and its nominal fire-proof methods ofconstruction to a test which it could not stand, and it was almost
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362 .-^ HI STORY OF REAL ESTATE, as su(l(lciil\- and coiiiplctely (lr()i)i)c(l as it Iiad leaped into favor fiveor six years before. The hrin^inj^ of the passenger elevator to con-ditions of )-)ractical utility threatened the future of hitjh-class com-mercial and hotel construction, before even the .qreat tire of Chi-cago, on October 9 and 10, 1871, subjected building materials thenin use to a crucial test, the result of which was to forever discreditsome forms of construction then extensively enii)loyed and to rele-gate some materials long held in high favor to inferior positions.Chicago at the time of its famous fire contained the larger propor-tion of wood construction connnon to Western cities, and a consid-erable amount of nondescript cheap brick and wood construction,but it had also at the time many nominal fire-proof buildings of theFrench mansard style, and more cast-iron front commercial build-ings, with wooden interiors and flat roofs. For her more preten-tious buildings she

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