BUILDINGS

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot … they builded.

—Luke 17:28

565 Largest, Highest Buildings

George and William Cecil owns the world’s largest private house in Asheville, North Carolina. It has 250 rooms and is worth $55 million. It was built in the late 19th century.

The Sears Tower in Chicago is the world’s tallest inhabited building, rising 110 stories to 1,454 feet. It has a TV antenna above, which makes the entire building 1,800 feet.

The Barrington Space Needle in Barrington, Illinois, however, has the most stories of 120, rising to 1,610 feet. New York’s World Trade Center has earned the distinction of being the world’s largest office building. It has a total of 4,370,000 square feet of rental space in each of its twin towers. One tower is 1,350 feet high.

566 The Winchester Mystery House

One of the strangest houses in America is located near San Jose, California. After nearly forty years of building, the house is still not completed, and material sufficient for another forty years construction is on hand in three large storehouses.

Estimated to have cost about five million dollars, the rambling structure has two thousand doors, ten thousand windows, and 150,000 panes of glass. It boasts forty stairways, forty-seven fireplaces, and thirteen bathrooms.

Because not a dozen of the 150 rooms are on the same level, the visitor must constantly go up and down stairways. There are all sorts of bizarre stairs to bewilder and mislead, but most of them have thirteen steps. Each of the steps is two-and-a-half inches high with an eighteen-inch tread. In one place it is necessary to walk up forty-five steps in order to ascend eight-and-one-half feet, and there are nine turns in the staircase. Some of the stairways are like dead-end streets; you climb them and find yourself against a blank wall.

Hallways are usually only two feet wide. There are trapdoors in many of the floors. Windows of all sizes and shapes are to be found not only in walls and ceilings, but also in chimneys; hundreds of art-glass windows open upon blank walls. Doors are built in the most unexpected places—some opening directly outwards from upper-story rooms, so that one could easily fall out.

Only the best materials have been used in the construction of this fabulous mansion. The floors are of the finest woods; no veneer is used. There are thousands of square feet of surfaces finished like a piano top. Art-glass gleams in windows and doors. Gold and silver chandeliers hang in many rooms. Gold and silver leaves decorate some of the walls. The ceiling of the ballroom was engraved by a famous artist so as to give the effect of actual cob webs.

Pushbuttons are found everywhere. Some are connected to gongs and bells; many others have no obvious purpose.

The grounds about the mansion are surrounded by dense hedges and a high fence, over which no one can climb. Within are lower gardens, trees, and shrubs brought from many parts of the world.

It was after her husband and her only child died that Mrs. Winchester came to California and bought a seventeen-room house then under construction. She was an ardent spiritualist and believed that she had received a message from the spirits telling her that as long as she kept building she would live; but if she should stop building, then she would die. So Mrs. Winchester began to work out her own salvation and hope for eternal life. She withdrew into her mysterious mansion and refused to see anyone.

In the thirty-eight years of her life in the house, she never visited another home, rode a train, or entered a public building. When President Theodore Roosevelt came to visit Santa Clara Valley, the San Jose Chamber of Commerce tried to get Mrs. Winchester to receive him, but she refused.

Mrs. Winchester finally died. Her patchwork mansion was purchased and opened as a public curiosity.

—Eric Bard

567 Henry Ford’s Mansion

Henry Ford’s mansion, “Fairlane,” still stands in Dearborn, Michigan, as a master example of man’s inventiveness.

For its location he chose the beauty of a gentle slope overlooking the meandering River Rouge. Fifty-five rooms spread over three floors for a total of 31,000 square feet. Eight fireplaces, one of marble thirteen feet high, stood ready to warm the inhabitants, while 550 switches provided light at the flick of a finger.

The impression throughout is still that of magnificent design, exquisite taste and perfect workmanship. The house’s cost in 1917, long before the shrinking dollar, was $1,057,000,

Henry Ford’s ingenuity even reached to the power supply. Determined to be independent of public utilities, he built his own power plant at a cost of $200,000, using finely machined turbines to feed electricity to the entire estate with enough extra to sell to the public utilities in an emergency.

However, when torrential rains lashed the Detroit area in April 1947, the River Rouge went on a rampage. Soon it crept into the furnace under the boilers and smothered the fire, causing steam pressure to fall. The turbines stopped and the electricity failed for the only time in forty years.

Paradoxically, that was the night Henry Ford lay dying in his bedroom. Though surrounded by an engineering marvel, he left the world as he had entered it 87 years earlier—in a cold house lighted by candles.

—Selected

568 Not Built In A Day

It took years to build the Taj Mahal, the greatest mausoleum on earth. Twenty thousand men worked on it.

It took seven-and-one-half years to build Solomon’s Temple. And one hundred and eighty-three thousand six hundred men worked on it.

It took seventy-six years to build the great Pyramid of Egypt.

It took many years to build Verdum into a fortress. This city-fortress the Crown Prince strove in vain to carry by storm during the World War. He marched his men in solid mass, shoulder-to-shoulder, and eight hundred thousand died. But the fortress-city was never taken.

569 Bubble Buildings

The newest thing in architecture is “bubbles.” “Bubbles” buildings of various kinds are appearing all over the country. They are nothing but thin fabric held in shape by internal air pressure. They are being used to cover swimming pools, tennis courts, stores, storage sheds, and just about anything. A religious group has even put up bubble churches that seat three hundred worshippers. In Akron, Ohio, David and Vickie Schumacher live in a bubble house that covers nearly half an acre. Near Cleveland, Dick Pretzer has a bubble greenhouse in which he grows lettuce and tomatoes.

Bubble buildings have some advantages over the more conventional types of structures. They are cheap and quick to construct, easy to relocate, and not too expensive to maintain. They have one drawback, however. Reduce their air pressure, and they slowly collapse and sink to the ground like wilted leaves. For this reason bubble buildings are not likely to become very common, at least not in our time.

—Gospel Herald

570 Mistake To Masterpiece

What was once termed Australia’s biggest “mistake” was later hailed as its greatest—although costly—masterpiece. This is the Sydney Opera House. The original cost estimate announced in 1957 was $7.2 million. The final cost in 1973 reached $110 million. Concerning this unique structure, the state premier of New South Wales said: “The cost has become a secondary consideration to the perfection of the achievement.”

See also: Zeph. 1:16.