ons
back of Old Fort Point, the great guns in these being for the present
rendered useless. It will take much time and labor to restore their
delicate adjustment upon their carriages.

The buildings that collapsed in the city were all flimsy wooden
buildings and old brick structures, the steel frame buildings, even
the score or more in course of construction, escaping injury from the
earthquake shock. Of the former, one of the most complete wrecks was
the Valencia Hotel, a four-story wooden building, which collapsed into a
heap of ruins, pinning many persons under its splintered timbers.

SKYSCRAPERS EARTHQUAKE PROOF.

In fact, as the reports of damage wrought by the earthquake came in,
the conviction grew that one of the safest places during the earthquake
shock was on one of the upper floors of the skyscraper office buildings
or hotels. As a matter of fact, not a single person, so far as can be
learned, lost his or her life or was seriously injured in any of the
tall, steel frame structures in the city, although they rocked during
the quake like a ship in a gale.

The loss of life was caused in almost every case by the collapse of
frame structures, which the native San Franciscan believed was the
safest of all in an earthquake, or by the shaking down of portions of
brick or stone buildings which did not possess an iron framework. The
manner in which the tall steel structures withstood the shock is a
complete vindication of the strongest claims yet made for them, and it
is made doubly interesting from the fact that this is the first occasion
on which the effect of an earthquake of any proportions on a tall steel
structure could be studied.

The St. Francis Hotel, a sixteen-story structure, can be repaired at an
expenditure of about $400,000, its damage being almost wholly by fire.
The steel shell and the floors are intact. Although the building rocked
like a ship in a gale while the quake lasted, its foundations are
undamaged. Other steel buildings which are so little damaged as to admit
of repairs more or less extensive are the James Flood, the Union Trust,
the CALL building, the Mutual Savings Bank, the Crocker-Woolworth
building and the Postal building. All of these are modern buildings of
steel construction, from sixteen to twenty stories.

A peculiar feature of the effect of the earthquake on structures of this
kind is reported in the case of the Fairmount Hotel, a fourteen-story
structure. The first tw