At the tiffin meeting of the Rotary Club held on Aug. 3 at the Metropole Hotel, Mr. R. E. Lunkley of the Otis Elevator Ca. gave an interesting description, illustrated by' ims, of a unique building recently erected in New York, called—the Starrett-Lehigh Building, Mr. Hugo Sandor occupied the chair.
'The Starrett-Lehigh Building, said Mr. Lunkley, occupies an entire New }York' City Block, between 26th and j2ith Streets and th and. 13th avenues, some 125,000 sq. ft. of land area, about 17 mow, 13th Avenue is, ithe water front of the Hudson River. and serves as distribution ares for incoming and outgoing steamer an vail freight, The building provides what are eighteen separate factory in which each tenant may load his motor trucks ight on his own manufacturing. floor, For the building is more than fan industrial building devoted to \Night manufacturing, it is really a modern industrial utility " centre, [wherein many one storey' buildings fare placed one above the other and served by a vertical street with all the facilities—all the manufacturing jservices—of a horizontal thorough: fare, the speaker continued, Truck elevators are the vertical highway along which the many Jdependent factories are placed, These elevators carry motor vehicles direct from the city streets to every {floor and maintain a steady flow of traffic through the building. Because of this up-to-date transporta-system, the building is able to jeffer its tenants ground floor convenience on every floor, and therefore all the benefits of a separate, centrally located building and in an Javea where the cost of land would be prohibitive to most concerns; considerable saving in the cost of pro-unction by eliminating the time and labour consumed in transferring both incoming and outgoing freight the main floor; the absence of street jand lower floor congestion, with re-sultan veduetion in wasted time and labour, also the prevention of theft and damage of goods that would otherwise have to be unloaded, and frequently left standing on the pavements oF entrance areas of the plants. "All these facilities would be lof little value without the advantas of the motor truck elevators of the modern type shown, All truck lifts travel from the basement to the 8th foo lof 263 feet. A truck on entering the building proceeds down the basement, and stops patchers- booth. From there drives direct to its elevator and ear-ried to its d red floor and is backed Jacross the truck pit to the unloading platform and when discharged is returned to the street level.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.