The January 18 , 1925 , Zanesville Times Signal ( Zanesville , Ohio ) ran an article about a proposed 88 narrative skyscraper in New York . Titled “ How We Will Live Tomorrow , ” the article imagined how New Yorkers and other urban center - dwellers might finally hold up in skyscrapers of the future . The clause talks about the amazing height of the proposed complex body part , but also orient out the various considerations one must make when live at a higher altitude .
The clause mentions a 1,000 foot edifice , which even by today ’s standards would be quite improbable . The tallest construction in New York City is currently the Empire State building at 1,250 foot . Until September 11 , 2001 , the North Tower of the World Trade Center stand as the tall edifice in New York City at 1,368 feet grandiloquent . Interestingly , the twelvemonth this article ran ( in 1925 ) was the year that New York overtook London as the most thickly settled city in the humanity .
The contemplated eighty - eight - story building , 1000 feet in top , which is to occupy an intact block on lower Broadway , may exceed in cuboid content the Pyramid of Cheops , hitherto the turgid structure put up by human hands .
The Pyramid of Cheops was earlier 481 understructure high , and its base is a square measuring 756 ft on each side . The Woolworth Building is 792 feet in heigh , but cover a relatively belittled region of land .
The advise construction , when it has been erected will offer to contemplation some rather remarkable phenomena . For instance , on the top floor an egg , to be decent boiled , will need two and a half second more time than would be call for at the street level .
That is because the air pressure will be less than at the street level by seventy pounds to the straight ft , and urine will boil at 209 degrees , instead of the ordinary 212 . In a saucepan water supply can not be heated beyond boiling point , and , being less hot at an altitude of 1000 feet , it will not cook an egg so quickly .
When one mount a mountain one finds modification of climate corresponding to what would be launch if one were to travel northward . Thus , according to the computation of the United States Weather Bureau , the mood on top of the contemplated eighty - eight - taradiddle building will gibe to that of the Southern Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts .
The newspaper ran a series of illustrations to play along the clause that demonstrate the communal features of skyscraper living and new consideration ( however ridiculous ) of living at 1,000 metrical unit . The skyscraper was guess to feature billiard rooms , parlors for saltation and bowling bowling alley . One of the illustrations explains that “ the housewife will be annoyed by no petty contravention with slaughterer and grocer over the accuracy of their accounts . ” The latter is a reference to the fact that repast will no longer be prepared at home , but “ buy at sweeping rates by a trough , or by a citizens committee representing the families of the blocking , and the James Cook and other servants apply to do the workplace lean to everything , relieving the housewives of all bother . ”
The article looked to history for position on what wonders the next hundred geezerhood of skyscraper life may bring :
Compare the New York of today with what it was a century ago . May one not suppose that a hundred from now it will have undergone a transformation equally remarkable ? Already the architects are planning , in a tentative way , building of sixty or seventy stories that are to occupy entire block , supply for all sorts of shops and other commercial enterprises , while affording place for the comfortable lodging of thousands of families . Such a building will be in effect a whole town under one roof . The New York of today has great number of flat houses . It has pack of family dwellings . The whole arrangement must before long undergo a radical change . A block organization of construction will supersede it , achieving an economy of distance which is an unrelenting essential . It is the only system under which the utmost potential usage of ground area can be obtained .
Predictions of communal kitchens in the future were quite popular in utopian novel of the late 19th century , like Edward Bellamy ’s 1888 tome “ Looking Backward . ” But this 1925 vision of tomorrow ’s kitchen shifts focus to the kind of ordering out that we may be more familiar with today . The instance contends that “ all the housewife of tomorrow will have to do is blue-ribbon the variety of meal she wishes and order it , just as she now telephone the butcher for a roast or fowl . ”
Interestingly , the pneumatic electron tube still rears its header in this vision of urban support in the future tense . TheBoston Globe articlefrom 1900 that we look at a few workweek ago included predictions of the pneumatic tube organisation Boston would employ by the class 2000 . legal transfer of everything from parcel to newspaper to food by pneumatic vacuum tube was a promise of the other 20th century that would intimately die during the Great Depression of the 1930s .
On a recent social occasion the possibility of the pneumatic tube for the transportation of eatables was satisfactorily demonstrated by the Philadelphia Post - power , which sent by this means a hot dinner party of several trend a distance of two mile . For the community block a tram arrangement might be preferred , with a shroud chut and right insulated receptacles , line with felt , will keep foods at a piping temperature for a 12 hours .
This C. W. Post originally appeared atSmithsonian.com .
1920sCookingFoodNew York CityOhio
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