A Few Gleanings from the History of Structural Engineering

The remarkable expansion of the typical American city during the course of the past twenty years has inevitably brought congestion in its wake. An increasing demand for building sites within metropolitan areas has given rise to unprecedented land values, and in order that a building may be made to yield a reasonable financial return upon the initial outlay involved, it is necessary to exploit to the utmost every available unit of floor area, and to economise in the cost of real estate at the outset by extending in a vertical direction, thus evolving a tower-like structure capable of accommodating numerous tenants, from which the required revenue may be derived from the pooling of comparatively low individual rentals. W.A.Hakin