City in Sound; Prudential Bldg

This is Jim Herbert bringing you the city and sound, tonight the sound of the rock. The rock in this case a familiar name for a building that puts a sizable dent into Chicago's famous skyline, the prudential building, floating in space over the Illinois Central tracks at the north end of Grant Park. It's a big building and keeping it operating is a big job, a 24 -hour a day job. Just ask the man who knows. Your name is Mike Sylvester. That's right. And Mike what's your title here at Prudential Building? Manager of the rental division. This is a tremendous building. How many floors are there actually? 41 stories. And how much floor space does that encompass? Better than a million square feet. A million square feet of floor area. That's a net rentable area. I suppose it takes quite a staff to keep this prudential building in operation every day for its tenants. Yes about 350 people. And that's all the way from the observation tower down to the sub basement. That's correct. How many tenants are represented all together on the list down in the front lobby? About 125 tenants. I suppose

that covers individual units that have just one office space and some of the used two or three floors. That's correct. How did the building happen to be named the prudential building? Because it was built by the Prudential Insurance Company of America and being built in this area we thought it right to be called the prudential building. Does a prudential have its own offices here in the building? Yes it has. How long did it take to build the building? Better than five years from the time that we sunk the first case on. Actually the building is built on case on, sunk down to bedrock. That's correct. It's also built over the Illinois Central Railroad track. That is also correct. Sort of floats in the air with the greatest of ease. That's right. 350 people working on the maintenance staff here at the building. What are the jobs that they do? Well we do everything from cars cleaning up and maintaining the area and good housekeeping condition to the fact to the point of running the necessary power equipment, power plant equipment, elevators, boiler plan, air conditioning

plan to keep this building in a good, comfortable condition at all time. Now we're down and what is known locally as the bottom of the rock. It's the man who is responsible for keeping this place and operation standing over here at the side of a maze of machinery. Your name is Roger Heine. That is right. Roger, what's your title? My title is manager of the Building Maintenance Division for prudential. That's a big job with a building of this size. Yes we have 41 floors of mechanical equipment to take care of. We're not down on the actual bottom yet are we? No there is a half -basement below this level which contains the ash pits for our boilers. Now why do you have to have ash pits for boilers? Well we have a multiple fuel steam plant. We can burn coal, oil, or

gas and there are times when it is advantageous for us to burn coal and of course we need a system to remove the ashes. Well this sub -basement three is loaded with machinery and it's certainly a ship shape and Bristol fashion to use a navy phrase as any warship could be. How do you manage to keep a room full of equipment like this is clean and neat as it is? Well we're always glad to hear people say that they think our housekeeping standards are good. We don't get this far without considerable effort on our part and the part of our mechanics but our procedures are pretty good now and the mechanics pitch right in by taking care of job cleanliness while they are doing the work and cleaning up after they have completed their work. As I came into sub -basement three Roger I noticed the maze of pipes that let in were marked by colors. There were red, yellow, red yellow and blue combinations but here I see pipes that lead in once as atmosphere and there's river water, there's river water

return, there's one over there that says condensate what is the purpose of this labeling of the pipes? Well this is a mark of progress we have found that the labeling of our pipe lines with the actual word description works better in tracing lines through this maze and it also helps us in troubleshooting so that we can quickly shut off services if it should become necessary. We talked about the business of the boilers using a multiple system of fuel but how about the refrigeration that in itself is a big job isn't it keeping this building cool? Yes we provide year -round air conditioning in this building we heat and humidify in the winter time and we cool and dehumidify in the summertime. These three large machines you see behind us here each represent 900 tons of cooling effect they're powered by a 900 horsepower motor each. These machines produce chilled water

which we circulate up to the fan systems throughout the building by the fans blowing air across coils containing this chilled water we are able to cool the spaces. I gather that this is sort of master master control for the old mechanical operation of the building down in this area is that right? Yes this is the mechanical vitals of the building we do have equipment spaces on almost every floor but the principal equipment as to refrigeration and steam generation are all located down here. How about all the elevators in the building? Where is the power for them originated here? We do not generate any electrical power we purchase at all and distribute it throughout the building from four transformer balls in the building. What else goes on down on these sub basements besides what you're talking about? Well this is the headquarters of the engineering section of my division. Down here we have a master control panel that enables

us to start and stop all the ventilating fans throughout the building. This is a wonderful feature because it enables us to start the building up in the morning and to shut it down in the evening very quickly and all from a central point. Roger what's the title of this complicated looking affair? Well we like to call this our supervisory data center we use it mainly for temperature control throughout the building although it has several other additional features. The section of the board on the left contains the start and stop buttons for all our fan apparatus in the building. It enables us to remotely start and stop all the fans in the building right here from outside the engineers office. This is a wonderful facility when starting up the building in the morning and shutting it down in the evening because all the on -off operations can be done from here without traveling through the building. Now on this section of the panel there are many very colored lights what are the lights mean? We have worked out a color coding

system to conform to the operating hours for the various fans. Each color represents a number the number of hours that that fan will operate for example from six in the morning until seven o 'clock at night or continuous operation 24 hours a day. I notice one down here a light and a switch and a stop button that's marked gutter deisers put on of temperature is 35 degrees Fahrenheit or less and precipitation is predicted. What is that? That's kind of a vowel sound here. Well that's a protective feature. The space between our building and the surrounding viaducts is covered by an expansion joint. That joint is open so that in case of rain or snow water can leak through the joint to the ground below. We are not completely overground though. Part of our expansion joints are over the Illinois central station under the building. So

to protect the spaces below we have a gutter which would catch water dripping through this joint. The deicing cables are there to keep ice from forming in those gutters in cold weather which would stop them and prevent their functioning. So when the weather is cold and there's precipitation too or actually occurring we run these little melting cables to keep the water flowing out of the gutter. A very handy gadget among many handy gadgets down here. Over on this side of the panel those you have a lot of switches marked with floor levels and it says return air and supply air. Now what is this control? Well this is a wonderful remote control feature for a large fully air conditioned building. This board enables us to read the temperature of the air being supplied to or exhausted from any floor in the building. That we call remote temperature sensing. In addition

to being able to sense these temperatures we also thanks to electronics and change the output of the apparatus up in the building by turning the little dials that you see marked warmer. If we read the temperatures and find that those are improper for the floor involved we can change the output of the apparatus serving that floor all from down here at the engineers off. You mean here on this rotary dial on the middle of the panel you can actually read the temperature on a particular floor? Yes for example the 23rd floor I pushed the button and the indicator swings down to tell me that the air being exhausted from that floor is about 79 degrees. The air being supplied to that floor is about 64 degrees. I might point out that we are in theory always cooling in this building. That is we are introducing air to the interior areas colder than the space itself is and that is done to compensate for the people and the highlighting

intensity. Over well that's a centralized panel where we have combined all the trouble alarms for our vital equipment. In other words there are certain pieces of equipment which if they malfunction we want to know about it right away. Now for example we have a pump down in the basement which has an alarm on it. You hear it ring now I had one of the engineers tripping. Now that bell rings and the light lights. Now I can shut off the bell to stop the noise but I can't remove the light until we have cleared the cause of the alarm being sounded. Now you'll notice that we have about 30 different items which we consider as vital alarms so that if there's a malfunction at any one of these 30 odd points we will know about it both visually and audibly at this location. A great many things around the potential building are automatic including

information on how the elevators work. Here's a sign that says touch button here auto -tronic elevators story. Will touch the button. This is the elevator machine room of the high -rise passenger elevators in this the mid -America home office building of the are completely automatic in operation. The wishing room in which you are now looking contains the equipment for the high -rise elevators which are the fastings automatic passenger elevators in the world. I'm ready to get a speed of 1400 feet per minute. Now if your car made a nonstop trip from for your travel time was approximately 27 seconds. We found out about the mechanical operation of the building your responsibility is in somewhat of a different area isn't. That's right sir. Your name is

Alvin Armeschky. Oh Mr. Meschky what is your particular zone of operation in keeping this potential building going? Well I am assistant manager of building service division which consists of the security operation housekeeping window washing functions in the building. Just that business of housekeeping is a major operation in itself. Yes it is. How do you go about it in the building of this size? Well we have on our night staff roughly about 160 people cleaning the building at night. On the day staff about 36 this is custodial services. We have night supervisors who are in charge of our night staff under two assistant managers myself and Mr. Everly. Their responsibility is the entire cleaning operation at night. Window

washing, all tenant areas, building areas, washrooms and so on. When you clean the building what do the people do to do it? Do they vacuum the floor and pick up the waste out of the waste baskets and put the ash trays things like that? Is that part of the operation? Yes that's right. We have about a ton and a half of waste paper to dispose of every night in the week. How do you dispose of the waste paper? Our waste paper is disposed of by janitors who picked the waste paper up from the offices, put it into a bag which contains about 50 pounds of paper. This is dumped into a paper crate which is picked up by a paper company. So it actually leaves the building entirely every day? How about the dirt? I suppose with all the thousands of people that come into the potential building every day, a lot of street dirt is carried in. How do you get that out at night? Well our street dirt is confined to the main floor and our elevators mainly and especially

in very bad weather. We constantly are aware of this problem and have men on our main floor and our elevator cop. It's all day long and bad weather. To prevent a carry into the building of any such condition from outside. Normally all day long there are janitors who are assigned a number of floors in the building who will patrol the corridors and the elevators to prevent this being carried into tenant office areas. As far as the just the normal dust of a daily business in an office, how do you get rid of that? Our cleaning is done with chemically treated cloths. Our dust cloths, our special tool for dusting and our sweeping tool is chemically treated and all the dirt is picked up by these cloths and removed from the building each night. The window washing operation itself is rather unique in the potential

building. You know I've been going by this building every day since it was first open to the public. I don't think I've ever seen a window washer hanging on the outside. How do you work that? That is true. Our only outside work in this building is our observation deck where the window washer goes out on a catwalk. All the rest of the building is washed from the inside. See are you one of the window washers here in the building? Yes sir. What's your name? Sao Gugliardo. So Mr. Mesquite tells me that the window washing operation here is different than it is any place else in the city practically. It is much different. I mean you don't have to go outside and hang out on one of those roads. That's right. You wash the window from the inside. You're going to wash this window here now? Yes sir. How do you go about it? Well, why don't you just go ahead and do it now and tell me about it as you go? The window has is locked and it has to be open from the inside. You have a key to open the lock.

Here it has a lock on one side and the latch on the other. Yeah. Now inside this the window frame is a a tube. An air tube which blows up and keeps the window seal from air coming inside. It's like the valve on a bicycle tire, that's right. That goes around the whole window frame, is that it? That's sure. That keeps the air out, huh? That's right. And after it's exhausted, what do you do? When the air is completely out you open up the latch and give it a little push and the window revolves. And it turns the outside to the inside. Uh -huh. Then what? Then we set a rug on the window seal. Get our ladder next to the window.

Get our compressor into a position here. Now you can talk about a compressor. What does that do? Give your compressed air, is that it? Yes, it compresses 20 pounds of air just about the right amount to keep the tube inflated so that it'll be tied against the frame of the window. What does it sound like? That gives you the air pressure to pump up the window frame again. That's right. 20 pounds of air inflates the window, the tube inside the window frame. Well as far as the actual window washing itself is concerned, you used to use the regular tools that you would if you were hanging outside there on a safety belt, is that right? Yes, sir. All the paraphernalia of a window washer, except for the belt, the safety belt. Were you a window washer before you came here? Yes, that's a building. Yes, and you actually hung on the outside on that safety belt? Yes, sir. How does it feel up there anyway? Well, it's a feeling you have to get used

to. Well, I think that's the understable of the year. Are you married, sir? Yes, sir. Got children? Two children. Imagine your wife is very glad you're working on these kind of windows, isn't she? Very glad. You're the chief of police here, right? That's right, sir. What's your name? WP Simmons. What's the WFOR? William. William P Simmons. I understand you're an ex -marine. That's right, sir, I am. Is that good background for being a chief of police? Well, it's a good training program anyhow, affiliated with the job. How many men do you have working under here, chief? Approximately 47. What are some of the problems of security for our police chief in building as big as the potential building? Well, it's to minimize any sorts of accidents that can occur on property. We're here to assist in any way possible, the tenants, the public who enter into the building for business purposes, and to prevent damages or anything that may

occur on the property or surrounding property. Do you have an actual traffic problem inside the building? During our summer months, why we have a great volume of visitors to the observation deck, yes, we do. And then, of course, you have the people coming in and out of the building all the time. That's right, visiting the various tenants for business purposes. Well, chief, you're standing by a stairway here, or the metal door in a sign, and it says the only exit from this stairwell is the first floor. You're up on the 41st floor, be a long walk down if a person got in there, right? That's right, sir. Well, how do you know when people just wander into the thing? Well, I grab the door and show you what happens. Oh, you've got an alarm button. That alarm button will alert the man on the floor below, and they'll notice that there is someone entering the stairwell, and he will intercede immediately. You can get him out at that point. That's right, we'll get him out at that point. But I suppose you do have people who'd actually walk down the stairs from other floors. Yes, we do, but we also have other ways mechanically to detect them people in the stairwell.

This is a very handy thing to know about it. That's right, sir. Do you like this job over here? Very much so. That's a lot of challenges, huh? It does. It carries a lot of challenges. Do you have a ticket? No, $0 .25 for a ticket. If you want to change, you can join my engine. Now, we're up here at the top of the rock, the observation floor, at the potential building, and we're going to go through ourselves. How much does it cost, ma 'am, to go through? 50 cents for our delts, 25 cents for children, 6 through 12. No charge for children under 6. I'm over 6. I'm over 12. There's my 50 cents, and what is your name? Marianne Elliott. Marianne, how long has the building been open? We had the dedication, December 8, 1955. You must get a tremendous number of people up here at the observation deck, right? We do, sir. How many of you had? We're working on our second million. Over a million and a half already, then, huh? What do the people say when they get up here? What do they look for? Oh, they ask all kinds of questions. Like what? Like, oh, they're amazed at the beautiful view, and the fact that

they can see four states on a clear day. Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. What happens when it's a foggy day? Well, we warn the people. We tell them just about how far they can see, and if they insist on coming in, they must have a ticket. Do you get your money back of a foggy? No, we warn them. No rain check. No fog checks. No. What can you see how the glass is over here? The binoculars? You can see a little bit further through the binoculars. They get a lot of use? Yes. You have a lot of school groups that come up here? Yes, we do. Let's just walk over here now and talk to, hi, have you looked through the binoculars yet? You're up with the diamond. If you look in there, tell me what you see. Nothing. Nothing. We'll go to turn this lever. That's the reason. Now, what do you see? I see the city. What do you see? Can you hear the city from up here, too? Or just see it? I could just see it. What building do you see now? I see.

I don't know. Is this the highest up you've ever been? Is it? Yeah. Do you know the name of this building? Yeah. What is it? Credential. The Credential Building. That's right. Jim Herbert holding the microphone. George Wilson Lee Engineer.