so late and so low that the crops of cotton and rice would have been lost had it not been for the water stored in the reservoir, which assured such a satisfactory supply for irrigation that the cotton harvest was an excellent one.

THE SKY SCRAPERS OF NEW YORK

HE "Skyscrapers" of New York have already be

THE

gun to outlive a good deal of their disrepute, and indeed to command the credit that belongs to all strong and original building. Many of the lankiest of these buildings are beyond a doubt basely and irretrievably utilitarian; but from the beginning there were architects who perceived that "skyscrapers" were inevitable, and who set to work to design the most scientific, and architecturally the most noble buildings which the circumstances permitted. This, after all, is the true and common, if not the final, function of architecture, -to produce the most scholarly design which is appropriate to the uses the building will be put to, and which abides by the limitations of site and cost imposed by the architect's employers. The limitations of New York have long been strict, and they daily become stricter. The city is built upon an island from which escape can only be made by bridges, tunnels and steamers. The pressure at the business end of the city, which is at the point of the island, and therefore on the edge of the water, is intense and the value of building-land is fabulous. Geographical and financial reasons both prevent the business-houses

from expanding horizontally, and therefore they must extend vertically-towards the sky. When the necessity for this is recognized universally—and we should think it almost is by this time—a new era is certain to come in which taste will undergo a considerable revolution. The "skyscraper" will be more and more praised as a characteristic product of the American genius, and it will be judged in practice, not by the mere fact that it is a "skyscraper," but by the kind of "skyscraper" it is.

The great Singer building in New York-nicknamed the Singerhorn-has forty-five stories. This is a notable increase of height on the Park Row Syndicate building, which a few years since astonished the world with its twenty-six stories. Londoners may try to measure the Singerhorn by thinking of "Queen Anne's Mansions,” our nearest approach to a "skyscraper," which have at the highest part only fourteen stories. The cupola of the Singerhorn is six hundred feet above Broadway. But forty-five stories are by no means the limit. While the Singerhorn was being built, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company glorified its original plans for a new building and announced that it would build fifty stories, and that its tower would be nearly a hundred feet higher than the Singerhorn. The Metropolitan' is already in existence and still the competition continues.

The Metropolitan is 700.3 feet; the Singer Building, 612.1; Wash. ington Monument, 555; Ulm Cathedral, 546; Cologne Cathedral, 528; and the Eiffel Tower, 1,000 feet.