Presented with two construction bids, one twice as high as the other, Manaus's 19th-century rubber barons chose the more expensive.

The final designs will be set after construction bids are opened this month.

The scandal, she said, "gave us the impetus to look a little harder at our construction bids."

The city announced it would no longer run construction bids or other official notices in the newspapers because of the rate increases.

The construction bid came in at $20,796, which Roosevelt found untenably expensive.

By late May 1912, Cox's plans were complete and a call was made for construction bids.

After spending more than $200,000 on planning for the dormitory and soliciting construction bids, the board voted Feb. 24 to abandon the project.

The big trouble arrived two years ago, when construction bids came in.

Although Dutch suffered from dyslexia, he could add long columns of numbers in his head, and used a slide rule to calculate construction bids.

When construction bids were higher than expected, the price tag went up to $8 million; the project was then postponed to allow for planning to reduce costs.