The Aquinas 1972-04-17

              Chamber I
struction of the library over such unsupported
ground would be. dangerous
and risky.
A Texas consulting firm, called in to
evaluate the situation, devised the
scheme which finally made construction
possible. Seventy-foot hollow ste.el
pipes (shown at right resting near piledriving
equipment on construction site)
were sunk into the ground to the floor
of the subterranean chamber; concrete
was then poured into each steel tube
through the open ends, which remained
above ground. Construction proceeded,
with the foundation of the library resting
directly on these steel and concrete
pillars.
While the. building remains solid today,
suspended on its seventy-foot-high
supports, there remains some question
about what effect acid mine waters in
the mining shafts may eventually have
upon the columns. If the ste.el should in
time be corroded, the concrete inside
each pipe would probably soon dissolve,
and the library would lose its
only real underground support.
Underground support was not the
only problem which confronted the library
contractors. Apparently the library
architect originally made no
provision for housing air-conditioning
equipment for the building - a blunder
which made it necessary at the last
minute to add the small trapezoidal
room on the roof of the library to hold
the machinery.
Today, both the houses and Platt Place itself are gone.
Unlike the old Spruce Street Bridge, which arched sharply
over the Erie-t.ackawanna Railroad tracks, the new bridge
complex, completed in 1969, was constructed by tunneling
into the railroad embankment. In the excavation required to
lower the ground level under the tracks, the land on which
the Platt Place houses stood simply disappeared.
These houses, which stood on land directly behind the
new library (notice back of houses in picture above), were
also given to the University by Worthington Scranton in
1941; for a time they housed various administrative offices
of the school.
The shadow on the front lawns is cast by the ornate steel
railing of the old Spruce Street Bridge, which the houses
faced across Platt Place.
THE' AQUINAS 17