(Published In ]886.)

The accompanying illustrations show the baths of the New York Athletic Club. Figure 1 is a ground plan of the main floor of the building, which is devoted to office and bathing purposes. The second story contains a cafe, dining-room, reading-room, parlor, and public and private billiard-rooms. The third floor has a private dining-room, 1,024 private lockers for the members, a boxing-room, fencing-room, douche and shower rooms, lavatory, and water-closets and urinals. The fourth floor is entirely occupied by a gymnasium, the gallery of which is a running track of 21 laps to a mile, and the kitchen is in the top of the house. In the basement are four public bowling alleys and two private. A repository is also provided for bicycles or tricycles, and 84 lockers are here provided for the use of the help The building is 100x75 feet, the greatest length being on Fifty-fifth Street, and it is on this front the main entrance is. The staircase hall is a square of about 21 feet, open to the top of the building. On the left is the office, and beyond it a committee-room. Opposite the main entrance is the coat-room, 14x18 feet, and adjacent to both stairways. The remainder of the floor is devoted to bathing. There is a large swimming bath, 66 feet long by 22 feet wide, lined with glazed brick, as is also the whole room, and shown in perspective in Fig. 2. At one end the depth of water maintained is about 4 feet 6 inches, at the other about 6 feet 6 inches. To the left of this bath are the dressing-rooms, and on the right is a position for spectators. Light is admitted through skylights over the spectators' gallery. The temperature of this room is maintained at from 65 to 70 degrees in cold weather. At one end of the spectators'

Fig. 1.

To warm the water in the swimming bath or plunge the exhaust steam from the pump and electric-light engines can be used, but the principal mode of tempering the water for the swimming bath is to pass it through a coil of 16 1-inch pipes. 30 feet long, arranged in the boiler smoke flue so the waste heat of combustion can be utilized. This is a header coil within a long iron smoke flue, and the Croton connections are so arranged that the water in flowing to the swimming pool, after passing a filter, can be either passed through the coil or to the pool direct by the manipulation of two valves in the engineer's department.

The architect was Mr. Charles W. Clinton, and the plumbers Messrs. Locke & Monroe, all of New York.