This is a structure, not yet complete, but to be of huge proportions, the foundations of which are imbedded deep in the earth, there resting on masses of stone, from which, as they rise from the ground, they ascend in columns and arches of iron. It is situated near the upper part of Broadway, in the city of New York, not far from the Astor library, the Bible house, and the fine building of the Mercantile Library Association. Like the Bible house it covers a whole block, and extends on every side as far as the streets which surround will allow. The space inclosed is nearly three-quarters of an acre. The ground is excavated to the depth of twenty-five feet, to lay the broadest foundations, and also to furnish space below the level of the street for a large hall, which may be used for public assemblies. Here, under one corner, is to be a complete apparatus for the manufacture of gas, and also for warming and ventilating the whole building. From the pavement the edifice rises to six stories, reaching a hight nine feet above the Bible house. The lower story, which, from its long row of iron arches, presents a noble appearance, is intended for stores, the rent of which will be a perpetual endowment for the support of the institution. The second story is to be fitted up for offices, which will also be a source of revenue. With the third story, commences the portion of the edifice devoted strictly to scientific purposes. Here, occupying the body of the building, is a hall, which will hold four thousand people, and will probably be found the best place for lectures in the city, being much more spacious and elegant than the Tabernacle. It will not be quite so large as the Academy of Music, which is out of all proportion with ordinary speaking and hearing; but it will hold as large an audience as can well get within the sound of one man’s voice. On this floor, a room of ample dimensions is set apart for a school of design for ladies. This is an admirable feature in the plan. It will furnish hundreds of young women, who have a taste for drawing, with facilities for becoming perfect in that accomplishment, and also with a means of support for such as wish to teach. Another spacious apartment is devoted to Egyptian antiquities. The fine collection brought to this country by Dr. Abbott has been secured, and will form one of the attractions of the Cooper Institute. Here will be placed the famous bulls, and all the wonders brought from the land of the Nile. Other divisions of the building will contain collections of natural history, of beasts, birds and reptiles. Thus will be formed a grand museum, bringing together what is rare and curious from the earth, air and sea. Here, too, the mineralogist and the botanist will find a place for their collections, and the chemist be furnished with his laboratory. Connected with these departments, there will be professors and courses of lectures. The design of the benevolent founder is to furnish to young men, free of expense, an education in any branch of science or art. In many of its features, this institution is modeled after the Polytechnic school in Paris. To every young man who has a thirst for science, is here afforded the means of satisfying it. The fountains of knowledge will be open to him, and he may drink freely. We doubt not, many will avail themselves of this opportunity. Sir Humphrey Davy once said, the greatest discovery he ever made was the discovery of the poor Irish boy, Michael Faraday, now the world-renowned professor of London. May not such a one yet be picked up in the streets of New York, who will here find open to him a path to science and to fame. Many a country lad, whose desire for knowledge can not be satisfied in a district school, will here find an ampler field of study. In future years, the dwellers in that part of the city will often see, at midnight, the lights gleaming in those high windows, where ardent youth pore over books, exploring that world of science then, for the first time, opened to their gaze. In another year, i. e., by 1856, we hope to see it in full operation. A structure so immense, of course, can advance but slowly. It has been delayed, also, for want of stone, and in order to have made, specially for this building, iron girders, which take the place of wood, and which give greater strength and security. It is guarded against fire, in every possible way, and built in the firmest manner; and when completed, it will be a huge mass of rock and iron. It is built to last for ages, and will stand as a monument to the liberality of a private individual, who, having, on this very spot, begun life himself as a poor boy, and risen, by a long course of industry, to be one of the merchant princes of the land, desired to found an institution for the benefit of the young men of his native city.
VERGNAIS’S HERCULEAN BRIDGE.
VERGNAIS’S IMPROVED BRIDGE.
Various plans have from time to time been formed, for giving strength and security to bridges; the history of which, from the time when streams were first crossed by rude logs or trees thrown over them, up to the latest inventions, would be full of interest. One of the latest improvements in this department, designed and invented by an ingenious French engineer, M. Vergnais, is presented in the preceding cut. It was originally intended to be thrown across the river Seine, at Paris. Some years ago, a wire suspension bridge at Angiers gave way, while a body of troops was crossing, precipitating an entire regiment into the water, with a terrible loss of life. Since that dreadful catastrophe there has always been a feeling of aversion in France, toward the erection of suspension bridges. The ingenious improvement here presented is designed to relieve all possible danger of breakage, and yet allow of the construction of a bridge of gigantic proportions, without in the least impeding navigation. In the ordinary suspension bridge, the main cables sustain the entire weight, and should the connection between the bridge and the cables give way, or either of the cables break, a most melancholy end awaits all who have happened to be trusting their lives to its security at the moment. In the application of Vergnais’s improvement, the utmost security is afforded. A monster arch of iron is thrown across from shore to shore. This arch is composed of such strong materials as not to require great bulk, so that it presents an aerial appearance. The flooring of the bridge is suspended from the arch by innumerable pendants of iron, so that the weight of a body, in crossing the bridge, is brought to bear gradually upon the structure, and when it reaches the center, where common bridges are the weakest, under this invention it reaches the strongest part, for it is directly beneath the arch. Besides, should any of the pendants give way, the entire bridge does not yield, for it is impossible for all the pendants to break at once. This plan is certainly a new and novel one, so far as suspension bridges are concerned. We hope that the inventor will be encouraged to erect them in this country. Railroad companies will find them to be in every way advantageous to their interest, since the cars may run across them at the highest speed, with perfect security.
RAILROAD BRIDGE AT PORTAGE, NEW YORK.
A group of natural and artificial wonders more varied and magnificent than at Portage, N. Y., is not to be found in this land of sublime scenery and rapid improvement. It is destined to be a Mecca of travel, only to be classed with the White mountains, Niagara and the Mammoth cave. No descriptive language will appear exaggerated to one who visits the scene, or studies the measurements and details now presented. These do not tell half the story; a complete account would require a guide-book of pen-and-pencil sketches. The small village of Portage lies on the Genessee river, at a point where it enters a stupendous gorge, which continues seventeen miles, in a north-east direction, to Mount Morris. Here it flows into the famous Genessee valley, which extends from Dansville to Rochester, and is a level tract of rich farms and shaded meadows, that are said to resemble English park scenery more than anything in our country. The river enters the lake a few miles below the Rochester falls, thirty miles north of Mount Morris. To begin back, just below Portage village is a noble aqueduct of the Genessee canal: this is built of hewn limestone, and is much like the high bridge at Harlem, in size and appearance. Passing this and advancing into the river-gulf, with the Genessee on one hand, the canal on the other, and two hundred and fifty feet of wooded declivity inclosing both, a short walk brings you suddenly to the new bridge of the Buffalo and New York city railroad. The first and last look at this bridge must be one of dumb amazement. It is the crystal palace of all bridges. How any mortal ever conceived, or having conceived ever dared to attempt carrying it into execution, passes our comprehension. Resting on six heavy stone basements in the water, and as many more on the land, it rises to the immense hight, for a bridge, of two hundred and thirty-four feet, and is eight hundred feet long, lifting its immense net-work of timber, as if a whole village of house-frames and rectangular streets were raised up and set perpendicularly on edge. The first fall of the river, a sidelong, broken descent of sixty feet, is a few steps below the structure, and visible from its top, long before reaching which the ascending mist is dissipated. One and a half million feet of timber, being the product of two hundred acres of land, together with thirty tuns of iron spikes, were required for this climax of modern engineering. The cost is estimated at one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Before the work had reached its completion, the railroad passengers were taken in carriages two miles around from one end of the bridge to the other, a very comfortable hotel having been erected at the eastern extremity. Below the monster bridge and its waterfall, the river chasm widens into a deep basin of hills, with a pond in the center, and the second fall, a descent of eighty feet, at the lower extremity. This grand natural temple of cliffs, has thus at each end an organ with a shining range of silver pipes; on the left side are several galleries in the shape of canal aqueducts of wood, built to avoid the incessant slides of quicksand; and, at the upper entrance, the six-story bridge furnishes fifty rostrums for as many orators. Connected with the lower falls is a singular semicircular chasm, and, at its base, a cave, worn by water, which, as a matter of course, has been afflicted with a Satanic name: it is of difficult access. Here begin the imposing precipices of three hundred feet in hight, forming, at this point, a mighty amphitheater, around the eastern brink of which winds the canal, protected by a stone parapet. A gigantic tunnel was first constructed, and still remains in part; but the rock proved so insecure, that the overhanging roof was thrown off, at great expense, into the river, and the bed of the canal laid in cement. Nearly the whole array of these wonders could be brought into one view from a high point on the western bank, where the artist Cole, when this scenery was in its pristine wildness, once took a sketch for a very large autumnal picture, which is now in the possession of Hon. W. H. Seward. Some distance below the places now described, is a third fall, very grotesque in its features, and made remarkable by a tall natural tower, left by the wearing of the river and surmounted by a crown of foliage.
THE BRITANNIA TUBULAR BRIDGE.
This wonder of modern engineering, a view of which is given in the cut, forms part of the railroad from Chester to Holyhead, and is thrown over the Menai strait which separates Caernarvon, in Wales, from the island of Anglesey. This strait appears to the eye as a beautiful river, half a mile wide, through which the tide, which here rises twenty and twenty-five feet, rushes with great rapidity and force. The tubular bridge over it is one hundred feet above high-water level, and formed of long, hollow, rectangular tubes, one for up, and the other for down trains, composed of wrought-iron boiler-plates riveted together, and resting on huge and massive towers of masonry. Of these tubes or galleries, eight in number, four for each line, the four shortest are each two hundred and thirty feet, and the four longest each four hundred and seventy-two feet in length. The middle and largest pier or tower, is sixty-two feet by fifty-two at the base, and rises majestically to a hight of two hundred and thirty feet. The workmen engaged upon this bridge, with their wives and families, were equal in number to the population of a moderately sized town, and had the usual provisions for large communities, of a clergyman, schoolmaster, surgeon, etc. The entire cost of the stupendous structure, was about three million, five hundred thousand dollars. The number of rivets used in fastening the tubes of this bridge was over two million; and the entire length of it is eighteen hundred and thirty-four feet. Silliman says of this immense and ingenious structure, that it “is wonderful. To construct,” he adds, “a vast tube of iron strong enough to admit of railroad trains passing safely through it; to build it in separate pieces down on the common level; to float them to the site, and there raise them to their elevation of one hundred feet, and place them on firm pillars of masonry as supports, and then to unite them into one continued tube, as part of the grand railroad connection between London and Holyhead and Ireland, is an achievement which must forever place the name of Robert Stevenson above all praise.” To show the immense strength of this bridge, he goes on to say, “An enormous weight of between three and four hundred thousand pounds, caused a depression of the level only three inches. The ordinary pressure of the railroad trains produces a depression of one-eighth of an inch, or even less, discernible only by instruments. A pressure of more than six hundred thousand pounds produced a deflection of less than an inch and a half. As works of art, this bridge, and the one next to be mentioned, are triumphs of mechanical skill and science, and they not only establish the connection which has been named between Wales, Anglesey and Ireland, but they afford the prospect of a still more important connection from Galway, in Ireland, to Nova Scotia, by steamers, thus bringing Europe and America within a week of each other. The most massy stone pier, the Britannia, was erected upon a firm rock which is in the middle of the river. The term tube, as here applied to the body of the bridge, may convey an erroneous idea; for instead of being round, it is square. It is an immense iron corridor, or parallelopiped, closed in, forming a horizontal iron gallery, or passage, in which the rails are laid. It is thirty feet high in the middle, and twenty-two feet toward the ends.
