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Fifth avenue is the route of the great civic and military parades, and the reviewing stand is usually placed opposite the Worth Monument.
METROPOLITAN TOWER.—On the east of the Madison Square rises the tower of the Metropolitan Insurance Company's home. From the booklet given to visitors we quote: "The dimensions of the Tower are 75 feet on Madison Avenue and 85 feet on Twenty-Fourth Street; the total height is l00 feet. In general design and outline it is modeled after the famous Campanile of St. Mark at Venice, which was taken as a prototype, but with such deviations as were necessary to have the Tower in architectural harmony with the main building. "The highest lookout is reached
at the balcony of the fiftieth story, 660 feet above the sidewalk level, from which vantage point a most comprehensive and unique panoramic view may be obtained. Within range are visible the homes of over one-sixteenth of the entire population of the United States."
Tower CLOCK.—One of the interesting and unique features of this building in Madison Square is the mammoth clock, the largest four-dial tower clock in the world, located 346 feet above the sidewalk, and visible far and wide over the city.
The dials are built up of reinforced concrete faced with vitreous blue and white mosaic tile. Each dial is 26 feet 6 inches in diameter. The figures on the dial are 4 feet high, and the minute marks TWA inches in diameter.
The minute-hand measures 17 feet from end to end, 12 feet center to point, and weighs i,000 pounds; the hour-hand measures 13 feet 4 inches from end to end, 8 feet 4 inches from center to point, and weighs 760 pounds. The hands are built on iron frames, sheathed with copper, and revolve on roller bearings.
The driving-power of this huge mechanism is electricity, none of the many devices connected therewith requiring any manual operation, the entire installation being automatic.
The master clock, located in the Directors' Room on the second floor not only controls the entire tower clock outfit, but about too other clocks throughout the building, as well as several program instruments for sounding various schedules of bells in the different departments.
Through the medium of a special transmitter, minute impulses are sent to the tower clock mechanism on the twenty-sixth floor, keeping them in exact synchronism with the master clock; and at each quarter-hour electrical impulses are transmitted to the electric hammers on the forty-sixth story, and simultaneously are heard the notes of the old historic Cambridge chimes, composed by Handel. Following the fourth or last quarter, the hours are sounded on the 7,000-pound bell, with an impact of about 200 pounds. This blow, struck on such a large bell, may be heard many miles away.
The chime comprises four bells, the largest weighing 7,000 pounds (key of B flat) ; the second, 3,000 pounds (E flat) ; the third, 2,000 pounds (F natural), and the smallest, 1,500 pounds (key of G). They are mounted on pedestals between the marble columns outside the forty-sixth story, and are said to he twice as high above the side-walk as any other large bells in the world.
As the evening darkness draws near, at any predetermined hour for which the mechanism may be adjusted, hundreds of electric lights appear back of the dial numerals, the minute-marks and the entire length of the hands, all of which are brilliantly illuminated with splendid effect—a feature never produced by any other clock in the world.
Simultaneously with the illumination of the hands and dials, an automatically actuated switch lights up a great electric octagonal lantern, eight feet in diameter, located at the top of the Tower, from which powerful electric flashlights, marking the hours in the evening, may be seen for a great distance, far beyond any possible transmission of sound, the time being signaled there from as follows:
Each of the quarter-hours is flashed in red and the hours in white light. One red flash for the quarter, two red flashes for the half, three red flashes for three-quarters, and four red flashes for the even hour—these latter flashes followed by a number of white flashes marking the hour.
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