(Published In 1895.)

Among the costly and magnificent residences which are being extended along the east side of Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park, New York City, to form practically a line of superb private hotels facing the lovely park landscape and comprising the most elegant modern city architecture and sumptuous and elaborate equipment that has perhaps ever been concentrated in a group of so many different houses, there have been several whose construction or installations have been carefully described in The Engineering RECORD, among them the residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt, C. P. Huntington, J. J, Astor, Mr. Brokaw, and Elbridge T. Gerry. As Mr. Astor's new residence on the corner of Sixty-fifth Street progressed towards completion a member of the RECORD's staff made the notes and sketches from which the following description of some features of the plumbing has been prepared.

The house really consists of two separate and distinct establishments adjacent under one roof, with complete and independent equipments that, though generally of corresponding appearance and arrangement, are designed to be entirely separate in their operation and maintenance. The house, 125x150 feet, occupies the northeast corner of Sixty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, and has five floors. The lowest one or basement is devoted to servants' rooms, storerooms, kitchen, etc., the next to social purposes, and the upper ones to chambers, etc. All of these are shown, together with the location of bath and toilet rooms, closets, and washbowls, in the plan diagrams of Fig 1. The plumbing system comprises the supply and filtration of the water, its elevation to roof tanks and distribution throughout the house, the system of hot-water heater and supply, the waste and drain pipes, and the local and trap-vent system, together with the installation in the stable and carriage house adjoining. The cast-iron pipes are extra heavy and not coated with tar. At each joint in cast-iron pipe 12 ounces of lead is used to each inch of diameter of the pipe. All wrought-iron pipe used for the drainage system is thoroughly coated with asphaltum and all its joints are made with red lead. All branch lead soil, waste, and vent pipes, including bends, have the following weights per lineal foot: 1½ inches, three pounds eight ounces; 2 inches, four pounds; 3 inches, six pounds; 4 inches, eight pounds. All connections of lead with iron pipes are made by heavy brass ferrules of the same size as the lead pipe, set in the hub of the branch of the iron pipe and calked in with lead. All the soil, waste, drain, and vent pipes and supply lines were subjected as soon as set to a hydraulic test of about 30 pounds pressure maximum, and after the fixtures were all set and the drainage system completed it was tested by the plumber with the " smoke test." The house drainage is discharged into the public sewers through three lines of 6-inch extra-heavy cast-iron pipe, run at a uniform grade of one-fourth inch per foot, trapped just inside of the area or vault walls and having fresh-air inlets 5 inches in diameter on the inlet side of the house traps extended up flush with the sidewalk near the street curb and covered by a cast-brass grating leaded into the flagstone. The cellars are not to be connected with the house drains, but are drained into water tight brick cesspools and catch-basins I2"xi2"x18" at different points in each yard, cellar, area, and light court. These cesspools are connected to 3-inch and 4-inch pipes trapped into the house drain.

Fig. I. - PLUMBING DETAILS IN THE RESIDENCE OF JOHN JACOB ASTOR, NEW YORK CITY.

Each line of water-closets and adjacent fixtures is connected by Y's and short lengths of iron pipes to a 5-inch wrought-iron soil pipe, connecting with the house drain by a Y branch and one-eighth or one-sixteenth bend and extending in full caliber 2 feet or more above the highest part of the roof or coping. Near light shafts or ventilating opening soil pipe is extended 5 feet above it. Three-inch wrought-iron waste pipes connect the basins, urinals, bathtub sinks, and washtubs with the soil-pipe lines, and are extended to the roof, above which they are increased to a diameter of 4 inches. The fixtures are connected with them by Y branches and short lengths of 1½-inch and 2-inch iron pipes. All branch soil and waste pipes have a fall of not less than one-fourth inch per foot. For all water-closets and adjacent fixtures there is a 3-inch wrought-iron vent pipe, connecting by short lengths of 2-inch brass pipe with the branch of each water-closet trap, and by 1½-inch brass pipes with the crowns of all other traps. The pipe is enlarged to 4 inches above the roof and has an inverted 2-inch Y branch in each story. The traps of all other fixtures are vented by 2 inch wrought-iron vent pipes connected by short lengths of iron pipe 1 ½ inches in diameter, with the crown of each trap. The main vent pipes extend above the roof separately, and are enlarged to 4 inches in the same manner as the soil pipes, or are connected with the waste pipe above the highest fixtures. There are 11 soil and waste and 11 vent pipes extending above the roof of the building.

Each water-closet bowl and waste pipe to urinals and slopsinks is vented, by a 2 inch local vent pipe made of 18-ounce sheet copper, with locked and soldered seams, and branched into vertical lines constructed in the same manner, the area in cross-section of which at all points is equal to the total area of the several branches counted therewith The vertical lines are connected on the attic floor with round ventilating flues, as shown in Fig. 2, constructed of No. 24 galvanized sheet iron and terminating above the roof in a cowl. Each of these flues is provided with a Blackman air propeller, operated by an electric motor specified to be of sufficient capacity to insure a current of at least 10 feet per second at the inlet of each branch. All vent pipes are graded so as to discharge water collected by condensation to 0 single point at the bottom, where it is connected with a drain, soil, or waste pipe. The inside diameter of traps is as follows: For water-closets, 4 inches; urinals, 2 inches; slopsinks, 3 inches, sinks, 2 inches; basins, 1½ inches; baths, 1½ inches; wash-tubs, 2 inches. Brass floorplates are used with the water-closet traps and the joints made permanently secure and gas-tight by means of bolts and red lead. The enumeration of the total number of fixtures in the house shows their distribution as follows: