The Army supply bases at Brooklyn and at Boston are examples of the immensity of the expeditionary depots built along the Atlantic seacoast. The base at Brooklyn has approximately 4,000,000 square feet of storage space in its two huge 8-story reinforced concrete warehouses. One of these warehouses is 980 feet long by 200 feet wide and the other is 980 feet long by 300 feet wide. In addition to these, the installation at the base consists of three double-deck piers, each 150 feet wide and 1,300 feet long, and one open pier 60 feet wide and 1,300 feet long. In its railroad yards there is storage space for 1,300 cars at one time. The capacity of the base is 700,000 tons of supplies, or the equivalent of about 100 shiploads. Twelve ships of 8,000 tons, dead weight each, can be loaded at one time, and the loading of these vessels can be completed within 24 hours, so vast and complete are the facilities at this project.
Construction started at the site on May 15, 1918. More than 7,000 workmen were engaged on this job at one time, and the entire project was to be completed before July 1, 1919, while it was to be in partial operation by January 1. When the armistice was signed, 4,387,360 square feet of floor space had been completed and 187,173 cubic yards of concrete had been poured.
The base at Boston is 8 stories high, built of concrete, and gives 2,750,000 feet of storage room. Its wharves are 4,000 feet long. The work on it was started May 14, 1918, and ended October 3. In that time 200,000 cubic yards of concrete had been poured, 22,000 tons of reinforcing and structural steel put into position, 3,000,000 brick laid, 30,000 piles driven, 1,500,000 cubic yards dredged, and 30 miles of track laid. In all, 7,000 carloads of material were handled in this building.
The Norfolk base is located at Bush Bluff, 4 miles from the city. The chief feature of this project is a group of eight 1-story concrete buildings providing 2,000,000 square feet of storage space. The pier sheds are built of concrete blown by compressed air upon steel lath. The docks total a mile in length. The base can handle 600 cars of supplies in a day. In addition to the storage and shipping buildings themselves, the Construction Division provided quarters for a regiment of stevedores and a battalion of guards. A 120-bed hospital was erected at the project. The wharfage front was made of concrete piles weighing 12 tons apiece, and 217 acres of land were made by dredging outside of the piles and filling in behind them. The work was started in May and was nearly finished when the armistice was signed.
The Norfolk and Hampton Roads district has the distinction of being the center of more war construction than was conducted at any other point in the United States. There were located here the Navy arsenal, the Navy yard, the Navy training station, and the great Norfolk naval base. The largest construction project of all at Norfolk was the quartermaster terminal which the Construction Division built there. But in addition to these there was the Pig Point ordnance depot, described above, Camp Stuart and Camp Hill, both embarkation camps, the Artillery school at Fortress Monroe, Camp Eustis, and the Langley aviation field of the Army.
With so many construction undertakings going on at once, the labor problem proved to be an early embarrassment at the Norfolk quartermaster terminal job. However, good quarters and good food for the construction gangs at the terminal largely solved this problem. At one time in the development on the shores of this part of Chesapeake Bay, the street car and electric lighting system of Norfolk broke down under the strain. The Government thereupon took the power house and operated it thereafter for the duration of the emergency.
The interior storage depots of the Quartermaster Department provide 12,000,000 square feet of storage. They are all of permanent construction. They range in size from the one at Pittsburgh, with 184,000 square feet, to that at Schenectady with 2,500,000 square feet.
The depot at Chicago was built by the Central Manufacturing District as contractor on a site sold by its trustees to the Government. This structure, costing $3,000,000 and giving 29 acres of storage, was built completely in the period between March 4 and September 15, 1918.
MOTOR TRANSPORT CONSTRUCTION.
There was extensive construction for the Motor Transport Corps. Few civilians perhaps realize the size attained by this branch of the Army, with its more than 3,000 officers and 100,000 men in the United States and abroad. The Construction Division designed a standardized repair shop to be used in this country or to be transported overseas as desired. There were three centers of repair, shipment, and the training of men for the Motor Transport Service, the largest being Camp Holabird at Baltimore and the others, Camp Jesup at Atlanta, and Camp Normoyle at San Antonio, Tex.