Office building

“ The Post-office building is one of the best of the Mullet-headed era of our national architecture—so good generally that one wonders that the architect thought it expedient to destroy the effect of the monolith columns by cutting them to resemble superimposed blocks. ”

“ When, in the year 1867, the plan for this new Post Office building in Small Street had been prepared and Treasury authority obtained for the expenditure of a sum of £8,000 in the erection of the building, the Inland Revenue Department asked for accommodation in the structure, and it was arranged that its staff should be lodged on the first floor of the new building. ”

“ How office buildings were gradually received into the realm of architecture and, by the end of the nineteenth century, had risen so high in that realm that few productions of the 1890s in other fields of building can compare in quality of design with the great early skyscrapers is perhaps more significant for western culture in general than the purely technical aspect of the story. ”

“ The treatment of our modern mercantile and business structures, particularly those ten or twelve stories in height, is more successful than any other work of the kind in the world; the planning of our office-buildings is unrivalled anywhere, and some of our apartment-houses will bear comparison with the best in Paris—which are the best anywhere—and are more interesting, on account of the more complex character of the services which we must provide for. ”

“ The Association in its office-building at 613–15 Lombard Street utilizes the first floor for its own purposes, and rents the two upper floors to careful tenants. The repair shop in the basement has been mentioned. All day long the tenants of every race, and condition come to pay the rent or to seek light upon the wide range of personal and social problems indicated in the preceding pages. They are given to feel that the office is their office, and that a deaf ear will never be turned to anyone who really needs and honestly deserves counsel. ”

“ Confining this examination to the particular matter under discussion, the neo-feudal architecture of our city streets, we find it to lack unity, and the reason for this lack of unity dwells in a divided consciousness. The tall office building is the product of many forces, or perhaps we should say one force, that of necessity; but its concrete embodiment is the result of two different orders of talent, that of the structural engineer and of the architectural designer. ”

“ Banks and insurance companies, and enterprises of a similar kind, to whom a prosperous façade was an advertising asset, were the first to use special structures, but the giant progress of modern business has made the building of great edifices like the Equitable and Woolworth buildings of New York a necessity. ”

“ On the Main Street, among many impressive structures, is the huge Ellicott Square Building, said to be the largest office-building in the world, housing a business community approximating five thousand persons. ”

“ Renting office space in a building exclusively set aside for an unrestricted variety of office work spontaneously satisfies the common understanding of what is local business and makes the employees of such a building engaged in local business. ”

“ The post-office was a yellow-painted building that leaned for support against a blue cigar store. Like the majority of shacks in the town, it boasted of only one story, and a long counter, whittled with the initials of those who had waited for their mail, was its chief adornment. ”

“ But the structural lines of the old Executive office building will remain. The artistic lines of the White House buildings were the creation of master builders when our Republic was young. The simplicity and the strength of the structure remain in the face of every modern test. ”

“ The society’s administrative and editorial offices, at Sixteenth and M Streets NW., were enlarged by an addition which extends its handsome and dignified headquarters along a 214-foot frontage. A commodious and modern office building at Third Street and Randolph Place NE., is used for mailing its magazine, maps, and communications to its world-wide membership. ”

“ OFFICE BUILDINGS. The construction of edifices designed for purely commercial uses has in modern times reached a development that has made it a field for architecture paralleling the erection of cathedrals in the Middle Ages. In this development America has greatly surpassed the countries of Europe, where the use of former dwellings for business purposes, and the use of dwellings for residences and business combined is still largely in vogue. ”

“ Not far from the old Courthouse stands another building typifying all that is modern—the largest office building in the world, a highly creditable structure, occupying an entire city block, built from designs by St. ”

“ The elegant structure in which they are arranged is one of design rather than execution, for there is but one side erected out of four, though the works are stopped. The Post Office is a very compact and very beautiful building. ”

“ My offices are on the top floor of a high building overlooking the East River and the harbor beyond—not one of those skyscrapers punctured with windows all of the same size, looking from a distance like huge waffles set up on end—note the water-line of New York the next time you cross the ferry and see if you don't find the waffles—but an old-fashioned sort of a high building of twenty years ago—old as the Pyramids now, with a friendly janitor who comes to me when I send for him instead of my going to his "Office" when he sends for me ”

“ Numbers of modern factory buildings are very beautiful to look at, trim white buildings set in close-cut lawns with tennis courts and swimming pools not far away, red brick buildings covered with ivy, sand-colored ones with roses climbing over them, and others like the one famous for its thousand windows, rather more comfortable than lovely. In our big cities there are office buildings that look like cathedrals, railroad stations that look like temples, and traffic bridges that look (from a distance) like fairy arches leading into the land of dreams. ”

“ Doctor Westbrook's offices were in the Nettleton Building in Court Street. It and its neighbor on the east, the Field Building, were of that solid old style of structure devoted to business, which knew not the elevator nor steam heat, nor any of the many devices that enter into the complexities, and often questionable conveniences, of the modern office edifice. ”

“ Every person who shall intend to erect any new building shall give notice to the urban authority of such intention by writing delivered to them at their office or at the office of their surveyor, and shall at the same time leave or cause to be left at the said office detail plans and sections of every floor of such intended new building, drawn to a scale of not less than 1 inch to every 8 feet, showing the position, form and dimensions of the several parts of such building, and of the watercloset, earth closet, privy, cesspool, ashpit, well, and all other appurtenances ”

“ The Underwood office was arranged much like the other bureaus in the building. The door led into a small outer chamber inhabited by a switchboard operator and a typist. Back of a wooden railing were four small doors, side by side. ”

“ The rapidly extending business of the office requires more room, and although additional room has been provided during the year by the transfer of the Pension Office clerks to another building, the Patent office is still without sufficient room for the transaction of its business in a satisfactory manner. ”

“ The growing business of the office has made it necessary to make so many additions to the structure, that it is hard at present to distinguish the original plan of the edifice. The building is much too small to accommodate the business required to be transacted within its walls, and efforts are being made to secure the erection of a larger and handsomer building, at the lower end of the City Hall Park. ”

“ The war office site is inadequate and totally unsymmetrical, the boundary of the building being settled by the boundary of the street curb, and the inner courtyards are of very mean proportions compared with the great courtyard of the home and foreign office. ”

“ He hired a front room in the first floor of the new building, had it hurriedly furnished as a private office, and on the second morning of his discovery was installed behind his desk at the window commanding a full view of the opposite house. There was nothing strange in the South American capitalist selecting a private office in so popular a locality. ”

“ The office buildings are city office buildings, and in the downtown section they are sufficiently numerous to look very much at home, instead of appearing a little bit exotic, self-conscious, and lonesome, as new skyscrapers do in so many cities of Atlanta's size. ”

“ The top floors of office buildings and hotels would be immediately less desirable. In tall buildings the multitude of messengers and the frequent passing in and out would demand the increase in elevator facilities and even the enlargement of halls and doorways. ”

“ Post-Office buildings which are in effect warehouses for the economical handling of transportation of thousands of tons of mail have been made monumental structures, and often located far from the convenient and economical spot. In the actual construction of the buildings, a closer scrutiny of the methods employed by the Government architects or by architects employed by the Government have resulted in decided economies. ”

“ Sitting here by the office window, with the smell of ink in one's nostrils, with the steady monotonous clatter of the linotypes in the ears, and the whirring of the shafting from the press-room in the basement throbbing through one's nerves, with the very material realisation of the office around one; we feel that only a small part of it, and of the life about it, has been set down in these sketches. Passing the office window every moment is someone with a story that should be told. ”

“ In this wing of the house, office follows after office; they are all on the ground-floor, and receive their light through the ceiling; they are all constructed in a grand style, and many of them are fit for a king’s banqueting-room. ”

“ On the first floor are the business-office, a very handsome and spacious apartment facing Washington Street, and finished in mahogany, rare marbles, and brasswork; the delivery and mailing rooms, whence the editions are sent out for distribution at the Williams-court door. On the second floor are the reception-room, the library, and the apartments of the editor-in-chief, managing editor, and department editors. ”

“ It is equally possible to expect a reasonably high standard of design in the other buildings erected under a local authority: its schools, libraries, and so on. Nor ought one to find unworthy architecture produced by any Government Department, whether it be a post-office, a telephone-exchange, a military barracks, or a coastguard station on a lonely cliff. ”

“ The room into which the office door, which is of opaque glass, opens, is the smaller of the two and serves to house a receptionist, three not-too-comfortable armchairs, and a disorderly, homogeneous mixture of Life's, Look's and New Yorker's. ”

“ Ireland and his family, therefore, occupied the whole of it.
"As for the business premises, they were, and, in fact, are, of the usual pattern; an office with its rows of desks, clerks, and cashiers, and beyond, through a glass door, the manager's private room, with the ponderous safe, and desk, and so on.
"The private room has a door into the hall of the house, so that the manager is not obliged to go out into the street in order to go to business. There are no living-rooms on the ground floor, and the house has no basement. ”

“ The flooring space occupied in the interior, including first floor, basement and galleries, embraces more than twelve acres, and all this immense space is occupied with such goods as everybody, at some time in life, feels the necessity of purchasing. The general arrangement and classification of goods from all nations (there being over fifty separate and distinct departments) , suggests a reproduction of the Main Building of our late great Centennial Exposition, with the Department of Public Comfort added. ”

“ The business office occupies the smallest corner, as if it was of the smallest importance in a hall so replete with ornament and so devoted to comfort and luxury. The telegraph and ticket offices are also in the rotunda, and everything that pertains to the more prosaic business ideas—but they do not intrude upon the dreamy existence that obtains from the antique surroundings. ”

“ We find the whole place, hall, corridors and offices, crowded with busy people, some soliciting, others solicited, all hurrying hither and thither. With the exception of some few buildings of several storeys grouped round the palace and in the main street--the post-office, the clubs, the banks, the hotels and the large shops--all the houses are little one-storey cottages surrounded by gardens. ”

“ This evidence is interesting, as the worst conditions that could possibly exist in the lofty rooms of a Government office, where everything is on a big scale and there is a certain standard of comfort, must be superior to the majority of commercial offices, especially in London, where space is so expensive. Think of four girls taking shorthand notes by telephone in a room with thirty typewriting machines working at once! ”

“ Goldsmiths’ Hall, and other buildings which command the entrances to the Post Office, will be occupied with our people. These preparations, and the excitement they produce, are a sad hindrance to business. ”

“ Almost every foot of space, not only in the halls and corridors, but under stairs and arches, and in nooks and corners from the basement to the roof of the building has had to be used for storing papers and records. ”