(Published In 1894.)

The Metropolitan Building, at Madison Square and Twenty-third Street, New York City, occupies an area of about 120x140 feet and rises 10 stories above the sidewalk. Several entire floors are occupied by the offices of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the remainder is offered for rental as business and professional offices. The style and proportions of the building are imposing and it is constructed and equipped in accordance with the modern practice for great office buildings. The large interior court and the corner location promote the lighting and ventilation, and the fireproof construction and interior finish, high ceilings, light, abundant tiling, and exposed metal-work give an effective background for the exposed plumbing-work, especially in the airy and commodious subbasement, where the pumps, etc. are most attractively set.

The plumbing was executed by contract by John Toumey & Son, of New York, in conformity to the plans and specification of the architects, N. LeBrun & Sons. The system includes a filter plant, suction tank supply to boilers, toilet-rooms, and washbowls, and elevator system and fire lines, besides the waste, soil, and drip lines and trap ventilation, in all requiring about 10 miles of pipes, including 22 vertical sets of fixtures, most of them with risers about 200 feet in extreme height. The soil pipes from closets and urinals and a few other fixtures are extra-heavy cast iron, as are the trap vent pipes. All other waste and water pipes throughout are brass, tinned inside, and polished where exposed in toilet-rooms, etc. Nearly all closets, washbowls , slopsinks, etc. are fitted up with white marble slabs, white or cream ceramic tiles, oak cabinet-work, and polished brass fixtures and trimmings.

The soil and waste pipes serving each toilet-room are set just below the ceiling of the toilet-room beneath it, and all the angles of the different branches are commanded by cleaning screws at their extremities. All riser lines are set in recesses left for them in the exterior and partition walls, and are in some cases sealed up in plaster and in others are accessible by movable panels. The pump lines, fire lines, and distributing risers ascend through the ventilator exhaust shaft, which also contains the exhaust-steam pipe and elevator pipes. As the vertical lines of vent, soil, and waste pipes were completed, each was successively tested with hydraulic pressure of a maximum of 100 pounds by connecting the foot to a temporary steam pump and filling them with water.

Fig. 2.

PLUMBING IN THE METROPOLITAN BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY.

Which remained in all instances for several days without receding from the top.

The installation comprises 28 toilet-rooms, containing no water-closets, 25 urinals, and 75 washbowls; janitor's toilet rooms, containing four fixtures each; also 12 slopsinks and 175 separate washbowls with cold water only, in the office rooms; one private bathroom in the president's apartments, with a tub, closet, and washbowl; a bathtub and water-closet for the use of the firemen; a 3-inch fire line with a 2½-inch hose valve and a 100-foot reel of 2½-inch hose on every floor; two 3-inch Thomson meters; two No. 5 Loomis filters; a 3,000-gallon suction and a 6,000-gallon roof tank for city water; a 4,000-gallon roof tank for well water, and four pumps; a 400-gallon hot-water tank and a 250-gallon distributing drum in the subbasement; also a range, washtrays, and separate boiler in the janitor's rooms.

In excavating for the subcellar large quantities of flowing water was encountered in the bedrock, so a well or cistern 8 feet deep and about 20 feet in diameter was made there below the floor, and the concrete floor around it was laid on 2 feet of broken stone, which allowed free subsoil drainage into the well and provides a large quantity of water that is used to diminish the metered supply from the city mains. A 4-foot brick well is built at one side of the cistern, and through its walls the water percolates to the foot valve (about 1 foot above the bottom) of the suction pipe of a pump that delivers the water either to a tank or for street washing, or to discharge into the sewer above the tank, affording a supply for all flush tanks throughout the house. Safe wastes and overflows and leaders from the skylight over the court discharge into this cistern, but the drips from exhausts and the returns from the steam-heating apparatus are automatically pumped back into the boilers.

Figure 1 shows characteristic floor plans and indicates the general arrangement of rooms and location of washbowls, water-closets, etc. As a large number of women are employed by the insurance company, women's toilet-rooms are provided on three floors, similar to that shown in the third floor. ZZZ is the janitor's room, with a rim-flushing siopsinK, provided with hot and cold city water and cistern water for flushing. In one room there is a bathtub and in another a butler's sink for washing dishes from the women's lunch hall.

Figure 2 shows conventionally the arrangement of line U, which is an additional one put in after the completion of the original plans, to provide for three special womien's toilet-rooms, the fixtures in which are arranged on branches a b c as shown in the horizontal diagram. In the elevation branches b and c are shown as revolved into the plane of branch a, for clearness. In this Figure the soil pipes are shown by double lines, waste by single full heavy lines, and the trap vent pipes by heavy dotted lines.