The Runaway Skyscraper

In Short

When a structural flaw settles into the fourth dimension, the Metropolitan Tower slips backward through centuries, stranding two thousand Manhattan office workers in an untamed aboriginal wilderness. Faced with panic, vanishing resources, and the reality of a pre-industrial earth, young engineer Arthur Chamberlain takes charge alongside his stenographer, Estelle Woodward. Through organized hunting, fishing, and bartering with local Native Americans, the castaways adapt to survive. Meanwhile, Chamberlain works to engineer a return to the twentieth century. This early science-fiction novella endures for its blend of high-concept time mechanics, workplace romantic comedy, and resourcefulness under pressure.

The Story

The ordinary routine of midtown Manhattan collapses when the giant clock on the Metropolitan Tower groans, shudders, and begins running backward. While clerks, stenographers, and business callers initially resume their duties, the world outside rapidly accelerates in reverse. Day and night flicker like an early motion picture, nearby skyscrapers disintegrate into older structures, and modern civilization vanishes. Engineer Arthur Chamberlain realizes that a flaw in the bedrock beneath the foundation has caused the building to settle into the fourth dimension rather than downward into the earth. Within an hour, the tower drops back roughly four hundred years, coming to a halt in an unrecorded era of virgin forest along the Hudson River.

Inside, two thousand soft-bodied city dwellers awake to a harrowing plight. Cut off from modern infrastructure, they face immediate starvation. Chamberlain steps forward to lead the castaways, establishing food commissions and organizing the terrified crowd. Supported by bank president Van Deventer and stenographer Estelle Woodward, Chamberlain rallies the occupants to improvise survival tools. They organize fishing parties on log rafts, harvest wild plants, and collect hundreds of wood-pigeons stunned by hitting the tower's lit windows at night. When local Native Americans approach, the castaways establish a peaceful barter system, trading picture wire, light bulbs, and a broken typewriter for corn and fresh provisions.

As weeks pass, the building's occupants adapt to wilderness life, replacing depleted coal with hand-burned charcoal to keep the water and lighting systems running. Chamberlain continues analyzing the strange mechanical forces acting upon the foundation. He determines that an underground dimensional geyser caused the displacement and deduces that "soaping" the geyser through a hollow concrete pile will reactivate the flow. After careful preparation, Chamberlain's crew injects a sirupy soap mixture under high steam pressure into the sub-basement bedrock. The chemical reaction successfully triggers the dimensional reversal, launching the entire building forward through time.

The Metropolitan Tower lands back in modern New York at the exact hour, minute, and second from which it vanished. The bewildered occupants pour out into Madison Square, astounding onlookers. In the aftermath, scientists study the event, books are published, and one opportunist attempts to claim legal ownership of Manhattan based on an Indian land deed secured during the trip. Having successfully saved the castaways, Chamberlain marries Estelle, turning his focus to securing the tower's foundations and enjoying married life.

How It Unfolds

The clock runs backward An ominous creak echoes through the Metropolitan Tower as the giant clock hands reverse direction, initiating a silent shift that sends the skyscraper slipping backward through time.

Civilization dissolves outside Arthur Chamberlain and Estelle Woodward watch through their office window as days turn to flickering light, skyscrapers disintegrate into smaller buildings, and New York turns into pristine primeval wilderness.

The castaways organize Realizing two thousand people face immediate starvation, Chamberlain addresses the panicking crowd from a newsstand counter and forms committees for rationing, hunting, and fishing.

An unexpected feast Night falls and a massive flock of wood-pigeons collides with the brightly lit tower, providing hundreds of stunned birds that are quickly prepared in the building's restaurant kitchens.

Adapting to the wilderness The occupants establish log rafts along the Hudson River, burn charcoal to power the basement boilers, and trade novelty items with local Native Americans for vital supplies.

Soaping the geyser Chamberlain formulates a plan to reactivate the subterranean dimensional geyser by injecting thousands of gallons of boiled soap under high pressure deep into the foundation bedrock.

Return to Madison Square The dimensional reaction succeeds, restoring the tower to modern Manhattan in its exact moment of departure, leaving the survivors to reintegrate into twentieth-century life.

The People

• Arthur Chamberlain is a young, underfunded engineer who struggles to pay for his office furniture. When the catastrophe strikes, his practical intellect and commanding presence come to the surface. He wants to keep two thousand trapped office workers alive while devising a scientific method to return them to their own time. Through his resourcefulness, he transforms from an easygoing debtor into a decisive leader.

• Estelle Woodward is Arthur's twenty-one-year-old stenographer. Fastidious and skeptical of New York men, she initially believes she is destined to be an old maid. Trapped in the past, she keeps her head while others panic, helping Arthur organize survival efforts, managing food resources, and providing emotional stability. She comes to trust Arthur entirely, eventually falling in love with him.

• Van Deventer is a cheerful, grey-haired bank president and confirmed bachelor. Having spent thirty years tied to business, he views the wilderness displacement as a thrilling adventure. He uses his authority, security team, and bank weapons to maintain order, guard food supplies, and prevent panics among the castaways.

In Its Own Voice

"The speed of the earth's rotation can't have been increased, because if it had to the extent we see, we'd have been thrown off into space long ago."

As the landscape outside the window disintegrates into a flickering blur, Arthur relies on cold physical logic to explain to Estelle that their building is sliding backward along the fourth dimension.

"There is practically nothing in the place. We couldn't make sandwiches for half the women that are caught with us, let alone the men."

Evaluating the skyscraper's single restaurant stock, Van Deventer delivers the grim reality facing two thousand urban castaways stranded in a pre-industrial forest.

"Metal paper-knives bought huge quantities of provisions from the eager Indian traders, and the story was current in the tower that Arthur had received eight canoe-loads of corn and vegetables in exchange for a broken-down typewriter."

In the weeks following the arrival, the modern captives adapt to their environment by establishing a thrive-and-survive economy with the native population using office surplus as currency.

What It's Really About

Beneath its pulp-adventure premise, the story explores the fragile dependency of modern urban human beings on industrial civilization. Stripped of grocery stores, supply lines, and basic utilities like matches, two thousand city dwellers are forced to confront their total lack of primitive survival skills. The narrative examines leadership under crisis, contrasting helpless apathy with practical engineering and communal organization. It also touches on the ingenuity of human adaptation, suggesting that modern technical training and organizational structures can master primeval challenges when properly applied. Finally, the story satirizes real-estate and commercial values, demonstrating how a typewriter or light bulb holds immense worth in a bartering economy, while a legal deed obtained in the past can disrupt modern property ownership.

Why Read It Today

This work offers readers an entertaining time-travel adventure filled with early speculative enthusiasm and lighthearted workplace banter. Murray Leinster constructs a brisk narrative that balances high-concept science fiction with practical logistical problem-solving. Readers who enjoy survival fiction, alternate timelines, or early twentieth-century speculative literature will appreciate how the story treats a massive office building as an isolated island ecosystem.

The story reflects the period attitudes and genre conventions of its 1919 magazine origins. Readers will encounter dated social dynamics—particularly regarding traditional gender roles and simplified depictions of Native American tribes—alongside period workplace culture. However, these elements do not obscure the core appeal: a fast-paced tale of human ingenuity overcoming an absurd cosmic catastrophe. The novella remains a fun, accessible artifact of early American science fiction that reads quickly and leaves a lasting impression of optimistic problem-solving.