Still more lofty edifices have been going skyward in other places. Already in New York there are a great number of lofty piles due to the introduction of the lifts or elevators, by which an office on the tenth floor is made as convenient as one on the second. These buildings usually receive the name of the owners of the structure, who occupy, perhaps, only one floor. To mention only a few. There is the American Tract Society building, with its twenty-three stories, 285 feet high, which is one of the latest and handsomest of these tall piles in the city. See Plate IV. Still loftier is the St. Paul building, fronting the New York Post-Office at the junction of Park Row and Broadway. This structure is splayed at the angle between Ann Street and Broadway, where its width is 39½ feet, while its _loftiest_ part has frontages of about 30 feet along each of these thoroughfares. The height is no less than 313 feet above the pavement, and the number of stories is twenty-five. This building is faced with light yellow limestone, and although it was commenced only in the summer of 1895, it was expected to be ready for occupation by the autumn of 1896. Even this great height is overtopped by the Manhattan Life Insurance Company’s building, rising 330 feet, and remarkable as perhaps beyond previous record of quickness in building a gigantic structure. Obviously, the foundations of such a building must be most seriously considered, prepared and tested, before the great bulk of the building is begun, and in the _New York Engineering Magazine_ one of the architects has given a full account, with complete illustrations, of all the works, from the rock foundation to the completed edifice. A description of the foundation work, though most interesting for the professional engineer, would probably have little attraction for the general reader; but its importance may be inferred from the fact of its having taken nearly six months for its completion, while the huge superstructure required only eight months. The eighteenth tier of beams was reached in “three months from the time the foundations were ready on which to set the first piece of steel, composing the bolsters that support the cantilever system.... The substructure, which starts in bed-rock and continues to the cellar-floor, consists of fifteen piers, varying in size from 9 feet in diameter, to 21 feet 6 inches by 25 feet square.... The number of bricks used in the piers amounted to 1,500,000. From this it may be seen that a good-sized building was sunk out of sight before any part of the superstructure could be begun.” An open court within the main structure, special framing for the arrangements of the company’s offices on the sixth floor, the great height and weight of the tower, and the requisite provision for wind-bracing, delayed in some degree a regular advance of the stories; but within three months no less than 5,800 tons were placed in position. There were girders weighing 40