The advantages of the plan can be enumerated briefly as follows:  The main engines, combined with their alternators, lie in a single row along the center line of the operating room with the steam or operating end of each engine facing the boiler house and the opposite end toward the electrical switching and controlling apparatus arranged along the outside wall.  Within the area between the boiler house and operating room there is placed, for each engine, its respective complement of pumping apparatus, all controlled by and under the operating jurisdiction of the engineer for that engine.  Each engineer has thus full control of the pumping machinery required for his unit.  Symmetrically arranged with respect to the center line of each engine are the six boilers in the boiler room, and the piping from these six boilers forms a short connection between the nozzles on the boilers and the throttles on the engine.  The arrangement of piping is alike for each engine, which results in a piping system of maximum simplicity that can be controlled, in the event of difficulty, with a degree of certainty not possible with a more complicated system.  The main parts of the steam-pipe system can be controlled from outside this area.

The single tier of boilers makes it possible to secure a high and well ventilated boiler room with ventilation into a story constructed above it, aside from that afforded by the windows themselves.  The boiler room will therefore be cool in warm weather and light, and all difficulties from escaping steam will be minimized.  In this respect the boiler room will be superior to corresponding rooms in plants of older construction, where they are low, dark, and often very hot during the summer season.  The placing of the economizers, with their auxiliary smoke flue connections, in the economizer room, all symmetrically arranged with respect to each chimney, removes from the boiler room an element of disturbance and makes it possible to pass directly from the boiler house to the operating room at convenient points along the length of the power house structure.  The location of each chimney in the center of the boiler house between sets of six boilers divides the coal bunker construction into separate pockets by which trouble from spontaneous combustion can be localized, and, as described later, the divided coal bunkers can provide for the storage of different grades of coal.  The unit basis on which the economizer and flue system is constructed will allow making repairs to any one section without shutting off the portions not connected directly to the section needing repair.

The floor of the power house between the column bases is a continuous mass of concrete nowhere less than two feet thick.  The massive concrete foundations for the reciprocating engines contain each 1,400 yards of concrete above mean high water level, and in some cases have twice as much below that point.  The total amount of concrete in the foundations of the finished power house is about 80,000 yards.