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 When Building a House 
 
 READ 
 
 The Swiss Chalet Book, 
 
 By William S. B. Dana. 
 
 Rumford Fireplaces and how they are 
 made, By G. Curtis Gillespie. 
 
 Two Family and Twin Houses, 
 
 By William T. Comstock. 
 
 Garages and Motor Boat Houses, 
 
 By William Phillips Comstock. 
 
 Wall Papers and Wall Coverings, 
 
 By Arthur Seymour Jennings. 
 
 American Renaissance, a Book on the 
 History of Domestic Colonial Archi- 
 tecture in America, 
 
 By Joy Wheeler Dow. 
 
 THE WILLIAM T. COMSTOCK CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 23 WARREN STREET NEW YORK CITY
 
 THE 
 
 HOLLOW-TILE 
 HOUSE 
 
 A book wherein the Reader is introduced to Hollow-tile 
 in the making, is told how it is wrought into houses 
 and is shown how these houses look and from 
 what foreign ancestry their appearance 
 is an heritage. Its Key-note is 
 tuned to the Concert- 
 pitch of Progress. 
 
 BY 
 FREDERICK SQUIRES, A. B., B. S. 
 
 With 215 Illustrations 
 Chosen from Foreign and American Sources 
 
 THE WILLIAM T. GOMSTOGK GO. 
 NEW YORK
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1913 
 
 BY 
 
 THE WM. T. COMSTOCK CO.
 
 Zo 
 ARTHUR HARRIS 
 
 THIS BOOK IS 
 AFreCTIONATEir 
 DEDICATED Ji
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE history of hollow-tile speeds along like moving pictures 
 and to-day's news is but the foundation for tomorrow's for- 
 ward progress. The field was well-nigh untrodden, when 
 I set forth upon its exploration and in its trackless ways, my feet 
 have led me over deserts as well as lands of promise. 
 
 When my articles appeared in Architecture and Building they 
 were often valuable as a means of stating that which I sought to 
 prove, and of recalUng later what part of it I found to be unprofit- 
 able, but at the end of some of these early statements I now may 
 write, "Quod erat demonstrandum." These I have collected in 
 the following pages which I humbly submit to you in the selfish 
 hope that tile's swift progress may not outstrip its printing press 
 and antiquate its new-born chronicle. 
 
 I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to those good friends 
 who have aided me with picture and experience in this story of a 
 material to which they all are partisan. In particular, I thank my 
 partners, past and present, whose drawings and pictures, col- 
 lected the world over, have furnished the high lights for the illus- 
 trations. Then, too, there are manufacturers, Fiske & Company 
 and the National Fire-proofing Company, who have lent photo- 
 graphs in the same spirit of public education which marks their 
 business policy. Publications like Concrete-Cement Age, the 
 Architectural Record, and Architecture and Building, have en- 
 couraged me to spin my yarns, and now that I have collected them 
 between these covers, to them I make grateful acknowledgement. 
 
 Frederick Squires. 
 December, 1913.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Intkoduction 17 
 
 Chaptee I. Tile-Making 23 
 
 Chaptek II. Old World Stucco 33 
 
 Chapter III. About Construction 43 
 
 Chapter IV. Counting the Cost 57 
 
 Chapter V. The History of the Use of Hollow Tile 
 
 FOR Houses 67 
 
 Chapter VI. Architects^ Tile Houses 91 
 
 Chapter VII. Building the Other Man's House . . 103 
 
 Chapter VIII. Floor Building 109 
 
 Sand Moulds 110 
 
 The T-Beam 116 
 
 The Beveled Block 125 
 
 The Plaster Block 128 
 
 Chapter IX. Tile in Stucco Surfaces 137 
 
 Chapter X. Tricks of the Trade 144 
 
 Chapter XI. Tile and Concrete, Partners .... 159 
 
 Chapter XII. Texture and Scale 165 
 
 Chapter XIII. The Flat-Roofed House 183 
 
 Chapter XIV. An Interesting Experiment .... 189 
 
 Chapter XV. The House of Three Inventions . . . 201
 
 THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Texture- Tile House Frontispiece 
 
 Fig. 1 26 
 
 Figs. 2, 3, 4 27 
 
 Fig. 5 28 
 
 Fig. 6 26 
 
 Fig. 7 28 
 
 Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 117 
 
 Figs. 13, 14, 15 118 
 
 Figs. 16, 17, 18 119 
 
 Figs. 19, 20 120 
 
 Fig. 21 122 
 
 Figs. 22, 23 123 
 
 Figs. 24, 25 124 
 
 Figs. 26, 27, 28 129 
 
 Figs. 29, 30, 31 130 
 
 Figs. 32, 33 135 
 
 Gate of Justice of the Alhambra 21 
 
 Inner Court of the Alhambra 22 
 
 California Mission of Spanish Times 22 
 
 Typical Hollow-Tile Factory 25 
 
 Capri from the Mediterranean 31 
 
 An Arched Sidewalk at Ravello 31 
 
 The Villa Medici and the Villa Borghesi 32 
 
 Architecture and Sculpture in Plastics 35 
 
 Ulm, from the River Danube, and from its Streets . . . 36, 37 
 
 Strassburg 38 
 
 Capri from Amalfi 38 
 
 An Outside Stair at Chartres and Overhanging Gables at 
 
 Strassburg 39 
 
 13
 
 14 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Picturesque Stucco at Chartres and at Rouen 40 
 
 Church and House of the Pages of Francis I 41 
 
 An Old English Farm House 41 
 
 Chiddingstone, England 42, 45 
 
 A Nearby and a Distant View of Cockington, England . . 46 
 Details of "Natco" HoUow-Tile Walls .... 49, 50, 51, 52 
 
 Plans of the "Black Forest House" 54 
 
 Mr. Adams' House in Course of Construction 55 
 
 Stucco and Tile Exterior Surfaces Contrasted 56 
 
 Canterbury from the River 59 
 
 Entrance to Hampton Court 59 
 
 Nature and Plastic Art 60 
 
 Plans of Kendall Banning's House, and House at Bogota . . 62 
 
 Two Stucco Covered Tile Houses 63 
 
 Pioneer Hollow-Tile Houses 64 
 
 Stucco Houses Adapted from English Design . . . . 65, 66 
 
 J, J. Adams' House at Upper Montclair 69, 71 
 
 J. P. Taylor's House at Tenafly, N. J 70, 72, 73 
 
 Home of William C. Calkins, Jr., at Flushing, N. Y. . . .74 
 
 Fireproof Bungalow at Seagate, N. Y 76, 77 
 
 "Bow-Marchioness" 78 
 
 Stucco- Covered Tile House at Greenwich, Conn. . . . 79, 80 
 Combination of Small Houses at Forest Hills Gardens . . 83 
 
 An American Home 84 
 
 Plans of a House for J. William Clark 86 
 
 House of Thomas H. Kerr 87 
 
 House of Mr. Winthrop, Siosset, L. 1 88, 89 
 
 A Terrace Pool 90 
 
 Home of Mrs. D. F. Wendehack 93, 98 
 
 Home of William Adams Delano ... .... 94, 95 
 
 Home of W. Leslie Walker 96 
 
 Winter Scenes at Forest Hills Gardens, . . 99, 100, 101, 102 
 
 A "Black Forest House" 105 
 
 An Enghsh Fireproof House 104, 105
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 15 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Pioneer Fireproof Houses in Newark, N. J 106 
 
 Stucco and Half-Timber at Forest Hills Gardens .... 107 
 
 Forest Hills Gardens 108 
 
 St. Paul's, Rome 113 
 
 An Elaborate Ceiling 114 
 
 Leatherstocking Falls 136 
 
 Tile Decoration of an Exedra 139 
 
 Tile in Classic Design 140 
 
 Tile Set in a Stucco Wall 141 
 
 Tile Enlivening the Stucco of a City House 142 
 
 "The Whole Bag of Tricks" . . ' 145 
 
 The House Built Around a Tree 146 
 
 An Architect's House Before and After Redesigning . . .151 
 
 Another Redesigned House 152 
 
 House and Church Decorated with Concrete 155 
 
 Vygeberg Farm, the Residence of Edward D. Page, 156, 157, 158 
 
 Roman Brick in the Palatine Arch 161 
 
 Mausoleum of a Shah at Samarkand . . 162 
 
 Ruins of St. Botolph's Priory 163 
 
 San Stephano at Bologna 164, 167, 168 
 
 Fifteenth Century House at Lindfield, Sussex 169 
 
 Brick in the Decoration of a Modern House 170 
 
 Shingles in the Scale of Texture-Tile 173 
 
 Leatherstocking Farmhouse 174, 175 
 
 Dutch Farmhouse at Leonia, N. J 176 
 
 Old Church at Broglie 179 
 
 Gargoyle Gate at Williams College 1 80 
 
 Large Scale in Brick Work 181 
 
 Chateau de Bizj'- at Vernon 182 
 
 Morgan Art Gallery 183 
 
 Petit Trianon 183, 184 
 
 Residence of William G. Mather, Cleveland, 184 
 
 Whitney Studio 185 
 
 House at Greenwich, Conn 185
 
 16 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Residence of Murry Guggenheim 186 
 
 Residence of Horace D. Lyon 191, 192 
 
 Brick Laid with the Side Exposed to Get a Larger Unit . . 193 
 
 Residence of Mr. Patterson 194 
 
 Residence of R. C. Gambee 195, 197 
 
 Residence of Henry B. Newhall 198, 199 
 
 Residence of Mr. Atwood 196, 200 
 
 Residence of K. B. C. Smith 200 
 
 Elevations in Texture-Tile 202 
 
 Residence of Lewis Squires 203, 204, 205 
 
 Units of Texture-Tile 206
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 OLD-TIME French novelists followed the daring custom of 
 outlining the plot of a story in its introduction, gallantly 
 relieving the curiosity of contemporary ladies without the 
 embarrassment of a peep at the final pages. They believed that 
 each page should be so written that it would hold the reader's at- 
 tention to itself, despite the fact that he knew exactly what was 
 going to happen. He would thus be the more intimately inter- 
 ested in the development of a tale the outcome of which was to him 
 foreknown. Following this ancient and honorable custom, I am 
 going to tell you the plot of hollow-tile and then elaborate by pen 
 and picture in the desire to lead you page by page to the one marked 
 Finis. 
 
 There would never have been a book on hollow-tile if some- 
 body in this modern generation, as much a genius at hole-making 
 as Peter Newell with his Hole-Book, had not discovered a new 
 way to burn pieces of clay by hollowing them into thin partitions. 
 From Egyptian and Assyrian times to the day of this Peter Newell 
 of hollow-tile, the fact that only brick-sized building clay could be 
 successfully burned had been accepted as incontrovertible. Now- 
 a-days the limit in size is set not by the burning limit, but the weight 
 limit, a difference of many hundred per cent., which has made 
 possible this new construction and this new book. 
 
 Our tile houses first appeared in plaster finery, as have ma- 
 sonry houses of many other times and lands. In fact, wherever 
 you find charm in house-clothing, in that country you will find 
 stucco-covered houses, and so struck was I with this thought that I 
 
 17
 
 18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 have selected pictures from Spain, Germany, France, Italy and, 
 best of all, from England, to illustrate the point and show artistic 
 influences on dwellings of to-day. 
 
 How are our houses built?, is a question which pardonable 
 curiosity propounds, and a few pages on this subject will not be 
 amiss even if I have to bring in short descriptions of such com- 
 panion materials as are required under the roof of this house with 
 walls of tile. 
 
 Do the arguments for hollow-tile that appeal to the home- 
 builder convince as well the man who builds for sale? Does the 
 architect who knows all kinds of building materials choose tile for 
 his own abode? Such are subtle questions and I am not going to 
 answer them here, but near the middle of the book you will find a 
 chapter which might well be called "Physician, heal thyself!" 
 
 Not only may stucco surfaces be pleasantly diversified by the 
 treatment of the plaster itself, but they may be embellished with 
 ornamental tile, and this possibiUty is illuminated in a chapter of 
 its own. 
 
 I remember, as a boy, the joyful work of "branding" when 
 we were called upon to throw back on top of brush-pile fires the 
 burned-off brands which formed dead circles round them. The 
 path of the blaze was upward, not outward, and I have often 
 thought of this when I have seen a so-called fireproof building with 
 fireproof outside walls and fuel floors placed right in fire's natural 
 path. Against such absurditj^ a chapter on fireproof floors is 
 aimed, wherein are shown systems for placing real blankets over 
 flames. In this, the sand-molded ceiling gives sparkle to a tech- 
 nical description. 
 
 "Tricks of the trade" is the burden of a chapter on the de- 
 signer's art. In it are given away all those clever tricks by means 
 of which the architect charms beauty out of sticks and stones. 
 After you have read it you can go and do likewise — perhaps — or 
 at least appreciate artistic efforts in your behalf. In it, also, is 
 heard Nature's protest against the atrocities of the untrained hand 
 of man; and in it is shown how a trained hand may still her cry.
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 Painting with so big a brush into Nature's background demands 
 description even in a tile-book. 
 
 Along with such digressions I will essay a word on the subject 
 of concrete and the way architectural embellishment holds its place 
 by means of it beside advances in construction. In fact, for many 
 parts of fireproof buildings, concrete is the necessary partner of 
 hollow- tile. This is particularly true in beam work, and it applies 
 to many of the minor but important parts of buildings. It is 
 through the growing use of concrete as an accessory to other build- 
 ing materials that concrete has made its greatest gains in house 
 construction, and here I will digress from the main topic to explain 
 its partnership with tile. 
 
 Will structural innovations change the aspect of architectural 
 design? The question is so hackneyed that it is with reluctance that 
 I ask it, especially since I do not know the answer. Merely as a 
 suggestion, I will write a chapter on flat-roofs. If you have read 
 the book to this point, you may stop and write your own answer to 
 the aesthetic question just propounded. I'm sure it will make, for 
 you at least, better reading than would mine. 
 
 Tile is the big brother of the brick. Up to this point in tlie 
 story its real identity as an external has been covered up, but 
 though long obscured, it will come into its outward own in Texture- 
 Tile. In order to explain it I will call on brick, both very old and 
 very new, to illustrate its aims and point out its ultimate goal, and 
 for this purpose, brick-work from Assyria to America will be 
 shown, and after bricks' lesson has been taught, I will apply its 
 deductions to Texture-Tile. 
 
 I've alread}'^ taken more than my allotted space in telling you 
 about old stucco buildings, stuccoed tile and its treatment, floor 
 making, tricks of the designer's trade, brick and its big brother, 
 Texture-Tile. There will be no chapter marked "Conclusion," 
 for my whole book is but a Genesis. 
 
 So I have finished my French introduction. You have the 
 plot. I will now set out on the more difiicult feat of keeping your 
 attention to the pages which follow. "Eyes in the boat," I used to
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 hear the coxswain call to his oarsman in the Fall eights on the 
 Hudson. Fortunately, I have a chance to hold the attention of 
 those eyes of yours by means of pictures chosen from the whole 
 known world and all time.
 
 21
 
 THE INNER COURT OF THE ALHAMBRA. 
 
 ^■•%^^'?^»^ 
 
 
 Pi;ol^5i?»'ixv^;^., 
 
 
 
 A CALIFORNIA ill.SSlOX HAVING THE FAMILY HERITAGE OF SPANISH BEAUTY'. 
 
 22
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Tile-Making. 
 
 WHEX one needs must begin there is no better rule than 
 to begin at the beginning. Since I know little of geol- 
 ogy, earth-building, and the like, my beginning may 
 go no further back than the clay of which the tile is made, but if 
 I start you in beside a clay bank and bring you out beside a fire- 
 proof house, you will have travelled quite as far as these pages 
 ought to carry you. 
 
 Distributed all over the United States are clay deposits and 
 New Jersey, around Perth Amboy, where these pictures were 
 taken, is made of nothing else. Figure 1 shows a typical clay-pit 
 and the miners who work it. They have paused a moment for the 
 picture, some with their picks and shovels in their hands and others 
 standing beside the httle cars which carry the clay along narrow- 
 gauge tracks to the factory. When the cars are filled they are 
 hauled back, run up an incline to the upper story of the main 
 building where they drop their load through openings between the 
 elevated tracks into the proper bins on the floor of the story be- 
 neath. From these the lumps of clay are shoveled on belt conveyors 
 which bring them to the grinder where grog of broken tile for the 
 hard blocks or saw-dust for the porous blocks, is added to the mix- 
 ture. After this stage it is carried upward on inclined conveyors to 
 the head of the mixer, shown in Figure 2. Water is added and the 
 ground clay, thus rendered plastic, is squeezed by a powerful auger 
 through the die and comes out in a smooth, continuous stream onto 
 the cutting table, shown in the same photograph. It is Colgate's 
 tooth-paste tube enlarged. The man in the photograph with his 
 hand on the cutter, forces the cross wires back and forth at right 
 
 23
 
 24 TILE-MAKING 
 
 angles to the stream, cutting it into blocks the same shape as the 
 finished product. The man with the jaw and the man with the 
 smile take the blocks off and load them on the three-shelved car, a 
 good picture of which is shown in Figure 3. This car has traveled 
 some little distance from the die, and the clay blocks, not yet hard 
 enough to stand erect in the kilns when piled high, are about to be 
 run into long drying compartments where blasts of hot air harden 
 them to stand the strain of pihng in the kiln. Burning, the most 
 interesting part of the whole process, is about to take place in 
 Figure 4, where a car load of dried blocks is just entering a kiln, 
 there to be piled from the floor to the top of the dome, with the 
 cores vertical, as illustrated in Figure 5, and then burned into tile. 
 
 I will go back over the whole process to show how automatic, 
 labor-saving and consecutive it is. The course of the clay has been 
 in a straight line from pit to kiln. It has been handled once when 
 it was mined and loaded on the car, a second time when it was 
 shoveled on the belt conveyor to the grinder, a third time when it 
 was shaped on the cutting table and put on the drying car, and a 
 fourth time when it was piled in the kiln; only four times in all. 
 Every step has been straight forward, most of the labor unskilled, 
 and not a process but which handles materials in big quantities. 
 
 The kilns, most of which are down draft, are heated to such 
 a temperature that to one looking through the little peep-holes, 
 the inside seems almost white. The burning causes a shrinkage 
 of an inch to the foot in the clay. The kilns shown in the illustra- 
 tions are the isolated kind. Another type I noticed consisted of a 
 series of kilns connecting in a circle with a floor above, on which 
 is a supply of coal, and the fire dragon is made to crawl from 
 kiln to kiln by dumping its fuel food before it. There are so many 
 of these kilns that the first is cooled, emptied and refilled before 
 the flame has got around to it again, and this flaming cycle never 
 ceases. The burned block, now terra-cotta tile, is taken out of the 
 kiln and follows a straight hne for dehvery by land or water, into 
 the cars shown in Figure 6, or the hghters in Figure 7. Figure 6 
 shows how the stock on hand is piled, as well as a distant view of
 
 25
 
 
 FIG. 1. THE CLAT PIT. 
 
 FIG. 6. FOR SHIPMENT BY RAIL. 
 
 26
 
 FIG. 2. WHERE THE CLAY STREAM IS CUT INTO BLOCKS. 
 
 FIGS. 3 and 4. WHERE THE CLAY BLOCK IS DKIKD AND BURNED. 
 
 27
 
 FIG. 5. AFTER FIRING 
 
 FIG. 7. SHIPMENT BY WATER. 
 
 28
 
 TILE-MAKING 29 
 
 the kilns. Another picture shows a comprehensive view of the 
 whole factory taken from a water-covered clay pit. 
 
 The thing that impressed me particularly about the manufac- 
 ture of hollow- tile was its simplicity. Practically nothing is added 
 to the clay from start to finish. All the steps of the process are 
 simple in themselves, absolutely straight forward, with little wasted 
 energy. It is easy enough to believe that anything which should 
 interrupt this orderly procession would add a tremendous percent- 
 age to the cost of every block. On the other hand, some features 
 of the process seemed so crude that I believe brains and machines 
 could do the work of many men. 
 
 Tile-making ought to appeal to every one with any of the 
 child left in him. It is machine-made mud pies. No one can handle 
 plastic clay without modeling it. As a matter of fact, the Bible 
 intimates that it was a desire to model something distinctly novel 
 out of clay that started the human race "in the beginning."
 
 CAPRI FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. 
 
 AN ARCHED SIDEWALK AT RAVELLO. STUCCO TONED WITH SUXSHIXE. 
 
 31
 
 THE VILLA .MEDICI AT RO.ME. A STUCCO COVERED BUILDING ALTOGETHER LOVELY. 
 
 THE VILLA BORGHESl IS SUPU'ASSED ONLY BY I'ERFECTION. 
 
 32
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Old World Stucco. 
 
 THE first hollow-tile houses were always stucco- covered, and 
 since they might follow nearly all of the older stuccoed 
 architecture, they sometimes looked for precedent to the 
 white houses of the Spanish Renaissance. I have illustrated the 
 Alhambra and its gardens and an interior court whose pool reflects 
 the white arcade. On native soil are the Capistrano Mission and 
 San Diego, which hark back to Spanish relatives and hand down 
 an heredity of Spanish beauty. In these Mission buildings, as 
 with the senoritas, the light and dark are tellingly contrasted. 
 
 Italy contributes far the most studied stucco, for here they 
 use it in the treatment of the most monumental buildings, whence 
 Italian examples are our inspirations rather than our copy-books. 
 Capri is shown, colored in soft tones and as softly mirrored in the 
 Mediterranean. Far above the water and looking seaward over 
 Capri, Ravello stands, a lovely rival. Its arcaded street leads our 
 imagination on to Rome where the villas of Medici and Borghesi 
 are the Mecca of our quest for plastic beauty. There is a charming 
 loggia in the gardens of the Vatican, and at Florence a domed 
 church with a perfect porch. 
 
 Germany shows wonderful personality in her treatment of 
 skyline and roof, along with clever ways of tooling stucco surfaces. 
 The old town of Ulm is shown from the Danube in the first picture, 
 and below it a charming street scene, doubly told by its reflection in 
 the water. Plain stucco surfaces, half timber, roofs and gables 
 here co-operate. Another scene on a winding street, a charming 
 habitated bridge, and we are through with Ulm for Strassburg, 
 whose architecture is so quaint and free that we are tempted to 
 forget the stucco in devotion to its general charm. When we con- 
 
 33
 
 34 OLD WORLD STUCCO 
 
 fine attention to it there is revealed a very skillful handling of the 
 plaster, and picturesqueness in its combination with roofs and 
 timbered surfaces. 
 
 The French examples, one at Chartres, "La liaison du Sau- 
 mon," and an old house near the Cathedral at Rouen, are worthy 
 inspii'ations. The most dashing in composition, so startling as to 
 seem Hke one of our own well-beloved perspectives, is the Church 
 and House of the Pages of Francis I. at Chenonceau. The ma- 
 terials here are stone, rubble and cut, interspersed with stucco wall. 
 A bold stroke is the winding stair at Chartres, dark-timbered and 
 set in a foil of white. Two scenes are chosen from Beauvais. One 
 is a street, full of interest, in the Rue Sainte Catherine, by the 
 Cathedral of Saint Rombaut at Malines. 
 
 But when all is said and done, it is to England we Anglo- 
 Saxons turn for plaster houses, best-liked and most transplantable. 
 Chiddingstone is introduced with four scenes worthy of any urban 
 architecture. "The Crossings," at Letchworth, once visited by a 
 friend of mine, has served him as inspiration for a successful stucco 
 house. Cockington Village for picturesqueness in roof and wall we 
 may not hope to equal. 
 
 I have sifted over a drawerful of foreign buildings for these 
 few pictures. You may have many of those I couldn't use for 
 want of space. But even these pages may well inspire many a 
 native house. Call up reminiscences of your travels, for you may 
 have seen these very places. Translate them into our finer con- 
 struction and transplant them to our fairer soil. We are leaders 
 in invention and adaptability. Let it be said that in its years 
 alone Europe presents the insurmountable. The dress of our new 
 buildings need not be Hke Eve's, extemporaneous, but cut after 
 patterns from the good old fashion-books of Europe, selected from 
 the vantage point of our age-long perspective to meet the needs 
 of now.
 
 o 
 
 <! 
 
 7i> 
 
 ' o 
 

 
 ULM FROM THE BLUE DANUBE. A CITY OF LIGHT. 
 
 ULM FROM ITS STREETS. STUCCO IN VARIED DETAIL. 
 
 36
 
 IBC: 
 
 rLM FROM ANOTHER STREET. TEUTONIC ROOFS AND PLASTER WALLS. 
 
 AFTER ULM, FOREST HILLS GARDENS? 
 
 Z7
 
 THE STRASSBURG ARCHITECT LOVES XO VIGNOLA LIKE HIMSELF. 
 
 BEAUTY LOOKS OUT ON LOVELINESS." CAPRI FROM AMALFI. 
 
 3S
 
 Via 
 ■-« 
 
 no 
 
 « 
 0< 
 
 a" 
 
 Zot 
 
 a 
 
 'J 
 
 •J 
 
 39
 
 THE MAISOX DU SAUMON AT CHARTRES. STUCCO PICTURESQUE AND RULELESS. 
 
 AT K(,iLt;N. .srnCO, AGE AND NATURE. 
 
 40
 
 HLKfil AXli IHE Hul'-Sii oF THE PAGES OF FRANCiS I. AT CHENOXCEAU. 
 NO RULE COULD BETTER ITS ACCIDEXTAL COMPOSITION 
 
 AX OLD FARM HOUSE IN EXCI.AXD. 
 
 41
 
 FULL. OF PROPHESY OF TRANSPLANTATION. 
 
 THE FORGE, WHERE NOTHING IS TOO SMALL FOR CHARM. 
 CHIDDINGSTONE. ENGLAND. 
 
 42
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 About Construction. 
 
 WE need not greatly concern ourselves in a tile book with 
 the carpenter, the plumber, or the electrician. The car- 
 penter does not like our type of work anyway, because 
 it reduces the output of his tinder-box factory. It is about the 
 mason that this chapter centers. 
 
 One of the first men you will meet will be the man who digs 
 the cellar, and his duties are obvious. Where is he going to put 
 the dirt? That's an important question. Have him put it where 
 it will stay put. If you don't it is out of your pocket that the 
 cost of moving it will come. When he is through you cannot have 
 too much observation directed to the hole he leaves, for he may be 
 the grave-digger for the corpse of your content. Look out for 
 water! It has done more harm at the foot of foundations than 
 anything else. Now it is easy to correct excess of water even in 
 a water-tight and water-holding soil, for a drain properly placed 
 will lead it off. But when undrained walls are up, the difficulty 
 increases tenfold, and the tendency to inertia in the bones of every 
 one of us argues to let matters stand just as they are in spite of a 
 frog pond in the cellar. 
 
 When the concrete work is started you are in the hands of the 
 contractor, for it's as hard to make good concrete as to keep good 
 resolutions, and as easy to make bad concrete as to break them. 
 It is absolutely necessary to count on the honesty and ability of the 
 contractor and his satisfaction with his contract, for right here the 
 matter of the contract comes up. 
 
 The competitive-bidding method by which the builder is usually 
 selected is full of evils. On carefully prepared plans and specifi- 
 cations it is usual for bids to vary more than twenty per cent., which 
 
 43
 
 44 ABOUT CONSTRUCTION 
 
 is far greater than the profit which any bidder has figured. It is 
 therefore impossible to believe that this method is free from the 
 fatal fault of guessing. The work properly done is bound to cost 
 a certain sum of money. There is no guess about that, but no two 
 bidders have the same opinion as to what this sum will be. The 
 average owner thinks that contracting for a house is like buying a 
 jack knife, and expects to get the highest guesser's quality at the 
 lowest guesser's price. Unlike the jack knife deal it is only too 
 easy to get a house under contract for less money than it will take 
 to build it. and since the house-building contractor is seldom able 
 to stand any real loss, and although he poses as a principal is 
 really fitted only to be an agent, when the crash comes the 
 owner may pay twice for his jack knife. Bonding the contractor 
 is some protection, and is valuable insurance. It is as good nerve- 
 protection as hollow- tile is fire-protection, and just as necessary. 
 The fatalities among too-low- contractors overshadow the fire- 
 hazard. But before the company on his bond will undertake to 
 complete your house the contractor must have gone into bank- 
 ruptcy and the ghost of a bankrupt builder is a dull guest at a 
 house-warming. Therefore, don't take the lowest bidder, but the 
 best builder. 
 
 Cement for concrete is next to be considered. Pray over it; 
 that's all you can do. It is a mouse-colored powder, and all cements 
 look as much alike to the layman as mice to the ladies. Then see 
 that the bags have a well-known name on them. Sand, to be good, 
 must be clean. Press it in your hand to see if it soils your fingers. 
 Stone is easy to pass on, but its substitute, gravel, is full of insidious 
 snares Clay in it will stop the setting of cement. Concrete mixing 
 has lost most of its terrors now-a-days, because of the general use 
 of accurate mechanical devices. In earlier days when the god of 
 the machine was of Irish or Italian extraction, the proportions 
 often varied in inverse ratio to the weight of the ingredients. Con- 
 crete, well made, is powerful; ill made, is dangerous. Set watch 
 over its making the good safeguards Inspection and Intelligence. 
 
 Tile is a more readily determined factor. Its color often is
 
 NO WONDER THEY LIKE TO PAINT IT. 
 
 ?i\m-- 
 
 
 EVERY HOUSE IS A PICTURE AND I'AP.T OF A PICTURE. LET THE AMERICAN 
 STREET STRETCH A CANVAS FOR IT. 
 
 CHIDDINGSTONE, ENGLAND. 
 
 45
 
 A VILLAGE OF DOLL-HOUSES, DONE IN STUCCO AND THATCH. 
 
 NEARER BY THE HOUSES LOSE NO WHIT OF CHARM 
 COCKINGTON. ENGLAND. 
 
 46
 
 ABOUT CONSTRUCTION 47 
 
 sufficient indication of its quality. Weakness is usually due to 
 cracked blocks which are easily detected and eliminated. 
 
 The part of the wall on which the wooden floor beams rest 
 would seem, at first thought, to be the weakest part, until one sees 
 the tile plates which cover the wall and distribute the load coming 
 from the beam-end over the whole block. When the floors are to 
 be constructed fireproof, the first method used was the formation 
 of beams by pouring concrete over metal rods placed in troughs 
 between rows of tile fillers. This has been improved by schemes 
 for using isolated blocks as a means of forming a gridiron of cross- 
 mg concrete beams and is of such interest that I have devoted a 
 later chapter to its consideration. The tile and concrete floor must 
 be supported on a false staging until it has set and acquired full 
 strength. Even then a part of the centering is left for some little 
 time. 
 
 Efflorescence sometimes shows on the inside of tile walls, dis- 
 coloring the plaster as would dampness. To prevent this you will 
 often see the mason covering the inside of the wall with a black, 
 sticky paint before the plastering begins. The wall is usually made 
 of single blocks running clear through, and since the blocks vary a 
 little in thickness both the exterior stucco and the interior plaster 
 must be of generous thickness to level up all inequalities. If this is 
 not done the inequalities will not show plainly until the wood work 
 is applied, but then they will be painfully evident. 
 
 The hardness of masonry floors presents to the electrician, 
 plumber and steam-fitter difficulties which they have not encount- 
 ered in working with pierceable wooden beams. To provide space 
 for their pipes, shallow wooden strips are laid on top of the con- 
 structive slab and, after the pipes are in place, cinder concrete is 
 filled in between them and the floor nailed to the wood. In some 
 instances the wooden floor is omitted and a plastic floor is applied 
 in its place. I believe that this is the thing to which we are finally 
 coming with advance in fireproofing methods. Granulated cork 
 forms an excellent binder for cement and I submit that this mix- 
 ture will some day be widely used as a flooring over masonry con-
 
 48 ABOUT CONSTRUCTION 
 
 struction. Cork has many of the qualities lacking or opposed in 
 cement; it is warm to the touch, holds nails, is waterproof and 
 resilient. While this book is being printed I am going to experi- 
 ment with it. 
 
 Other materials and work are influenced by fireproof construc- 
 tion, and I offer suggestions which may prove of assistance in 
 understanding them. 
 
 The carpenter provides for his nailing by plugging the walls 
 with wood or directing the mason to lay porous tile blocks at the 
 points where trim, base, shelves, wainscots or any woodwork must 
 be secured. He is careful not to pierce his outside walls with 
 brackets and other wooden decorative features, as they are sure to 
 cause leaks. 
 
 When the carpenter sets up the temporary forms for floors, 
 he crowns them in the center and securely braces them to prevent 
 the dead load of the floor construction and the weight of the work- 
 men walking about on the floor before it has set, from causing a sag 
 in the forms which will be reproduced in the finished concrete beams. 
 He is especially careful not to remove the girder forms too soon, 
 as the shear-resisting strength of concrete develops more slowly 
 than its compressive strength. Windows and doors are carefully 
 detailed to reduce the chances of leakage at these vulnerable points. 
 
 Wood will always shrink away from concrete, and this fact has 
 to be taken seriously into account. In general, too much emphasis 
 cannot be laid on extreme care and thoroughness wherever masonry 
 and woodwork come in contact. 
 
 The sheet metal worker must provide carefully against leak- 
 age, as water is the greatest enemy of tile construction. Metal 
 protection against leakage, called flashing, is difficult on account of 
 the large size of the tile compared to the brick to which the work- 
 man is accustomed. Cap-flashing should be built into the tile-work 
 as it goes up, and every architect knows what a difficult thing it is 
 to get this done, because the sheet metal man is not permanently 
 on the job at that stage of the operation. Heating, lighting and 
 plumbing involve the same difficulties, those of cutting the walls
 
 49
 
 50
 
 51
 
 52
 
 ABOUT CONSTRUCTION 58 
 
 and crossing the pipes on the floors. Nothing is so heartbreaking 
 as to see a carefully erected tile wall cut all to pieces by these three 
 trades. Such cutting may seriously weaken the structure, and one 
 is tempted to lay down the general rule, however radical, that all 
 vertical heating and plumbing pipes must be exposed or put in 
 chases provided in the wall as it is built. If the walls must be cut, 
 it is the business of your architect to consult with the sub-contractors 
 and work out the places where the cutting will do the least struc- 
 tural damage. The horizontal pipes are apt to be crossed on top of 
 the floor slabs and greatly increase the amount of cinder fill neces- 
 sary to cover them. Heating pipes that run covered in concrete 
 should have loose sleeves to allow for their expansion and contrac- 
 tion. If the electrician, plumber and heater provide rough piping 
 plans, all difficulties may be avoided, and a great deal of trouble 
 averted. It may be remarked here that the heating contractor may 
 figure less heat loss through hollow-tile walls than in any other 
 known construction. 
 
 I have now given you a few ideas on the construction of tile 
 houses of the stucco type, and will here let the matter rest until 
 we have taken up the subject of Texture-Tile. Enough has been 
 written to give a little insight into the methods which enter into the 
 construction of your unburnable home.
 
 54
 
 House for Mr. J. J. Adams. 
 
 BUILDING WALLS OF HOLLOW-TILE. 
 
 55
 
 's ft 
 
 H 
 m 
 
 < 
 
 H 
 H 
 
 56
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Counting the Cost. 
 
 THAT no man starts to build without first counting the cost 
 is as true as gospel. The first question which a chent raises 
 and the hardest to answer is this question of counting the 
 cost. Because of the number of items involved and the great 
 variation in cost of these and of labor in different localities, the 
 final cost until a contract is signed can be no more than an approxi- 
 mation. Most of the disagreements, broken hearts and dead-broke 
 owners have resulted from lack of proper information on this all 
 important truth. I suggest, therefore, that each owner be his own 
 approximate estimator and I will give him a rule-of -thumb to use 
 in making estimates, and the illustrations in this book will show 
 him what he will get for his money. 
 
 The safest way to estimate the cost of a building, short of the 
 contractor's method of actual cost of materials and labor, is to 
 figure its cubic contents and multiply the result by a price per cubic 
 foot determined by averaging the cost of a large number of houses 
 of the same particular class. You go about cubing a building in 
 this way: Get the floor area of each section of the building where 
 different sections vary in height, and multiply this square foot re- 
 sult by the distance from the bottom of the cellar to that point, 
 usually half-way up the gable, which would account for the full 
 contents of the cellar, floors and attic. This height is thirty-three 
 feet in the average two story, cellar and attic building. This cubage 
 should include all porches measured from the bottom of their foun- 
 dations. One may try this out for practice on the working drawings 
 of the Texture-Tile house in the later pages of this book. 
 
 57
 
 58 
 
 COUNTING THE COST 
 
 Applying these rules to some of the buildings which form our 
 illustrations, we have compiled the following table which will help 
 the man who wants to cut his garments according to his cloth. 
 
 Cost per 
 Owner. Location. Construction. cubic foot. 
 Gambee, Englewood, N. J. Texture-Tile walls, frame floors and roof... .171 
 Marshall, Tenafly, N. J. Hollow-Tile walls, frame floors and roof... .163 
 Atwood, Tenafly, N. J. Texture-Tile walls, frame floors and roof... .188 
 Lyon, Englewood, N. J. Texture-Tile walls, frame floors and roof... .18 
 Squires, Plainfield, N. J. Texture-Tile walls, floors and roofs part ma- 
 sonry and part frame 20 
 
 Average cost $6739, average cubage 37,441, average cost per cubic foot 18 
 
 Cost per 
 Owner. Location. Construction. cubic foot. 
 
 Page, Orange, N. J. Hollow- Tile walls, masonry floors, stairs and 
 
 partitions, asbestos shingle roof 199 
 
 Page, Orange, N. J. Same construction 20 
 
 Clark, Newark, N. J. Hollow-Tile walls, masonry floors and par- 
 titions, slate roof 18 
 
 O'Malley, Newark, N. J. Hollow-Tile walls, masonry floors and parti- 
 tions, tile roof 26 
 
 Lough, New York City. Hollow-Tile walls, fireproof floors, part ma- 
 sonry and part frame partitions, frame 
 roof 19 
 
 Average cost $9167.50, average cubage 45,858, average cost per cubic foot 20 
 
 The tables show that fireproof floors add ten per cent, to the 
 first cost of a house. You can arrive at the same result in a different 
 way. Wood floor-beam construction costs ten cents a square foot 
 of floor surface and fireproof floors about thirty-five, a difference of 
 twenty-five cents for every foot of floor in the building. The 
 average cost of the non-fireproof buildings in the list is about seven 
 thousand dollars, and they would cost if fireproof, seven thousand 
 seven hundred by the application of the second table for building 
 with fireproof floors. Their floor areas average three thousand 
 feet, which at twenty-five cents a foot would come to seven hundred 
 and fifty dollars, corresponding very closely to the extra cost indi- 
 cated by the table. 
 
 The owner must bear in mind a further fact. Your architect 
 is not and should not be an estimator. The range of his practice
 
 FROM CAXTEKBURY ON KIVEH STOUlt. STUCCO WALLS DESIUXED WITH TIMBER 
 AND CASEMENTS. BRIGHTENED WITH FLOWERS. 
 
 THE WHITE ENTRANCE TO HAMPTON COURT. 
 
 59
 
 60
 
 COUNTING THE COST 61 
 
 covers so much other work on buildings of so many kinds that it is 
 beyond his power to tell accurately what each would cost. The 
 builder's training is along estimating lines and his existence depends 
 on his ability to work out accurate costs. It is no disgrace to the 
 architect that he is not a builder and has not the builder's knowledge, 
 but the client usually thinks he ought to be as versatile as a janitor. 
 If he devoted his time to becoming a good estimator he wouldn't 
 have any left to be a good designer. He is your proper agent for 
 reducing your house desires to paper and of finding from experts 
 what they will cost. If he is not made responsible for the cost when 
 given the desires and vice versa, he will be most valuable to you in 
 cutting your garment according to your cloth. In the matter of 
 costs, don't try to make him work the miracle of getting your 
 fixed desires within your fixed price. The days of miracles are 
 past.
 
 ^5ECO^;I> TLOOIO PLXW. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF MR. KENDALL BANNING. 
 
 riLST TLOOV '1.*>N 
 
 . SCC0^45 rLOO»_?lA.M. 
 
 THE HOUSE AT BOGOTA. N. J. 
 
 62
 
 1 
 
 From "Building Progress." Squires & H'yiikoop. Architects. 
 
 AX EXPOSITION OF VARIOUS USES FOR STUCCO-COVERED HOLLOW-TILE. 
 
 Barnard & Wilder, Architects. 
 A WELL PLACED TILE HOUSE AT RIVERSIDE, CONN. 
 
 (A
 
 Squires & Wynkoop, Architects. 
 
 A COTTAGE AT INTERLAKEN. N. J. ONE OF THE FIRST TILE HOUSES 
 
 IN THE EAST 
 
 Squires & Wynkoop, Architects. 
 
 THE FIRST TERRA COTTA HOUSE IN NEW YORK. DR. ROUGH'S HOME AT NEW YORK 
 
 UNIVERSITY. 
 
 64
 
 Squires & Wynkoop, Architects. 
 
 A HOUSE DESIGNED FOR MR. KENDALL BANNING, AFTER WALNUT-TREE FARM 
 
 HOUSE IN ENGLAND. ^^'^cj rAiiivi 
 
 
 I'F^iSB^ 
 
 T^X;* '^ . I 
 
 A HOUSE AT BOGOTA. N. X. GIVING ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE IN TERMS OF 
 AMERICAN CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 65
 
 66
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The History of the Use of Hollow- 
 Tile for Houses. 
 
 THE previous illustrations have shown foreign applications 
 of plaster to various forms of masonry and are examples 
 from which designers of stucco houses in America have 
 freely drawn. Many modern conceptions are unworthy their solid, 
 foreign precedents. The one American development in fireproof 
 construction which marks an advance over foreign building is not 
 the outer wall so much as it is the masonry floor. The outer walls 
 in both old and new are equally fireproof. The American hollow- 
 tile, so long as it is stucco covered, is similar in appearance and no 
 more fireproof than the foreign wall of sohd masonry. It was the 
 introduction of fireproof floors, and sometimes roofs, which marked 
 our first real forward step in fireproof progress. A simple illus- 
 tration of the relative value of fireproof floors and outside walls is 
 this. There is an occupation, half work, half play, called "brand- 
 ing" brushwood fires which country boys are often called to do. 
 These fires, however fierce, need constant care to insure complete 
 burning of all the brush. Starting at the bottom of the pile, the 
 flames heat the wood above them and savagely ascend, consuming 
 everything in their upward path. But the outer edges of the pile 
 are constantly dying out and the burned-off brands must be thrown 
 back on top of the flame. In other words, the tendency of flame 
 to spread upward is far greater than its tendency to spread 
 outward because the heated air rises and cooks the food for the 
 following fire. Wooden floors resting on fireproof waUs offer a 
 terrible temptation to fire which is but following its very nature 
 to burn whatever is placed above it. To oppose this law horizontal 
 rather than vertical surfaces should be the real fire bar. The fire- 
 proof walls are well enough in their way, but foot for foot give 
 
 67
 
 68 HOLLOW-TILE FOB HOUSES 
 
 infinitely less protection than fireproof floors. It is only within the 
 last few years that this phase of fireproof house construction has 
 been appreciated. 
 
 It is possible, with this innovation, to build a home absolutely 
 unburnable, so far as its structural parts are concerned. The walls, 
 floors, door and window frames, and even the roof, may be made 
 impregnable against fire. The contents of a room — furniture, up- 
 holstery, bric-a-brac, everything — may be consumed and yet the 
 next room be untouched, and this is the real virtue of fireproof con- 
 struction, the prevention of the spread of flame, especially its 
 upward trend, and by this virtue has America advanced home- 
 building progress. 
 
 As might well be expected, the pioneer work has been done 
 in the neighborhood of the great cities, where people are always on 
 the lookout for something better. The most important cities are 
 far away from the supply of wood and this affords a powerful 
 reason for the use of fireproofing materials, for the freight rate on 
 lumber has to be added to its cost. So it is that in the suburbs 
 around New York, Philadelphia and Boston indestructible ma- 
 terials are most widely used. 
 
 The most startling manifestation of the new movement is Mr. 
 Edison's plan to have "moulded" homes for workingmen. His 
 scheme is to build a set of moulds, put them in place, and pour into 
 them the liquid mixture of rock, sand and cement. The mixture 
 once in place and presto, change ! behold your house of rock ! The 
 same moulds will be moved on to the next lot, and another house 
 constructed in the same way. Of course this plan would not leave 
 much room for originality, since every house in a line would be 
 like every other. Mr. Edison's purpose in suggesting this was not 
 an aesthetic but a practical one — it was to save the workingman's 
 money. 
 
 Now it is agreed among experts that this scheme will not soon 
 be materialized. There are certain physical difficulties, due to the 
 present limitations which surround concrete construction, which 
 would, until overcome, prevent the moulding of a unit house. But
 
 si t 
 
 St 
 
 69
 
 
 House for Mr. J. P. Taylor, Tenafly, N. J. ."^quires & Wcndchack, Architects. 
 
 A SHADOW-TEXTURED ROOF WITH TRUNCATED, TEUTONIC GABLE. 
 
 70
 
 HOLLOW-TILE FOB HOUSES 
 
 71 
 
 the proposal is worthy of the thought the inventor has spent upon 
 it, even if it does nothing but stimulate interest in fireproof con- 
 struction. Adaptations of the idea have already proved practical 
 and there are many concrete houses — though they are not made in 
 the Edison style — and there are many more houses in which con- 
 crete is used in combination with other materials. 
 
 Hollow-tile is the material for fireproof construction which has 
 made the greatest advances. Until recent years it was employed 
 almost exclusively as a metal protecting material, pure and simple 
 — that is, it was used to fireproof the steel structural parts of high 
 
 HOrSE FOR MR. .1. J ADAMS. 
 
 buildings. Hundreds of thousands of tons of these hollow blocks 
 are used in skyscrapers. It was found, first by accident and then 
 by elaborate tests, that hollow terra-cotta blocks when used in walls 
 independent of other materials than mortar, would support greater 
 weights and strains than could ever be imposed upon them in houses. 
 They are laid into walls like big brick. Engineers have devised 
 methods for their use in floors, in combination with concrete beams ; 
 and they are also used in roofs in the same manner. They possess 
 the advantage over ordinary brick of having weightless hollow 
 spaces which act as non-conductors of heat, these voids being cost-
 
 72 
 
 HOLLOW-TILE FOR HOUSES 
 
 less as well as useful. In the architect's hands the material has 
 been most successful, and I am going to tell you why this is true. 
 
 One reason is that the plaster houses abroad have provided 
 artistic inspiration for plaster covered hollow-tile, but it is yet to 
 be entirely explained why the construction has taken so strong a 
 hold on our best country house designers. The answer to this may 
 be found in the effect on design of its structural perfections. A 
 
 HOUSE FOR MR. J. P. TAYLOR. 
 
 building with masonry outside and inside walls and floors and roof 
 is a masonry cube in itself and practically indestructible. It is 
 hard to crush an ordinary box. If this box is made up internally of 
 a lot of little boxes entirely filling it, the only way to destroy it is to 
 burn it up. A fireproof house is a box filled with little boxes, and 
 you can't burn a fireproof house. Flame has no terrors for it, nor 
 have time and the elements. This permanence makes the design 
 of the house a serious and important matter. Such a building is a 
 monument, a thing that will last through many a change in style
 
 House for Mr. J. P. Taylor. 
 
 HALF-TIMBER PARALLELS THE TREE-TRUNKS AND A TWENTY-DOLLAR STONE 
 WALL PROVIDES THE CONTRASTING LINE NEEDED TO SATISFY 
 THE COMPOSITION. 
 
 7Z
 
 Home for Mr. ll'iu. C. Calkins. Jr., Flu.diing, N. Y. Frederick Squires, Architect. 
 
 BRICK USED TO ENLIVEN STUCCO SURFACES. 
 
 74
 
 HOLLOW-TILE FOR HOUSES 75 
 
 and passing fancy, and will hold its own as a design only by in- 
 trinsic worth. Permanent works have always been the most beauti- 
 ful. It is then true that the knowledge of the permanency of 
 masonry adds seriousness to its conception in design and results in 
 simplicity and beauty in execution. The designer grasps eagerly 
 at the opportunity to work in these permanent materials, because 
 he knows from historic examples that with them the most worthy 
 results may be obtained. It is this reason, beside foreign precedent, 
 on account of which designers have devoted themselves whole- 
 heartedly to hollow-tile. 
 
 It is a mooted question whether this masonry construction will 
 result in an entirely new style of house. It is easy to borrow from 
 almost every style and adjust to it. The English country house, 
 the Georgian, the Italian villa, the Spanish patio, all the white 
 buildings abroad, have served for suggestions. The feature in this 
 construction which may lead us away from all precedent and tra- 
 dition is the masonry roof. In many cases, the difficulty of design- 
 ing a masonry roof in a traditional style has led to the abandonment 
 of the masonry roof and the retention of the traditional style. 
 Sometimes a masonry roof has been designed in spite of its diffi- 
 culties and in spite of the fact that the resulting roof does not 
 suggest its permanent character. The characteristic masonry roof 
 is a flat roof. Characteristic design of fireproof houses with a flat 
 roof is a thing not yet accomplished, but should it be accomplished 
 and popularized, there would be created immediately a new style 
 due to this masonry construction. 
 
 There are many kinds of buildings, to which the fireproof 
 quality of terra-cotta tile is even more important than it is in the 
 home. In the first instance the scheme scrambled from the sky- 
 scrapers to the cottage, overlooking in its haste its intervening 
 opportunities. Now, however, its fireproof qualities are being 
 called into play in the school, the hospital, the hotel, the apartment 
 and the factory. In all these buildings, fireproofness is an asset 
 of first importance, and the fire hazard is multiplied many times 
 over its danger to the home. It is with a feeling of considerable
 
 5ZCOND rtOOJOf LAN • >* 
 
 rrK-ST TLOOK-iL/^- 
 
 PLANS OF THE HOUSE AT SEA GATE, N. T. 
 
 76
 
 A SK\ Si'JiAl'IM ; JU'M ;.\i,' i\\ 
 
 House at Sea Gate, N. Y. Squires & U'yiikoop. Architects. 
 
 FIREPROOF THE SUMMER COTTAGE AGAINST THE FIRE RISKS OF VACANCY! 
 
 77
 
 ■i 
 
 Joy JVIieeler Dow, Architect. 
 
 IN THE BUILDING OF 'BOW-MARCHIONESS" THE DESIGNER HAS LOST NO PART OP 
 THE TRADITION BY WHICH HE WAS INSPIRED. 
 
 78
 
 * Z 
 
 <s > 
 
 5 O 
 
 a 
 
 79
 
 
 ^^m ^i^^HHi 
 
 
 
 
 House at Greenwich, Conn. 
 
 Delano & Aldrich, Architects. 
 
 DETAILS WHICH EMPHASIZE THE MANIFOLD ADVANTAGES OF 
 KNOWING MORE THAN "YOUR UNITED STATES."
 
 HOLLOW-TILE FOR HOUSES 81 
 
 content that a mother sees her children go to a fireproof school. It 
 is not a difficult feat to convince a factory owner that it is good 
 business to insure his main investment of machinery and stock by 
 means of the small extra cost of a fireproof building. He prefers 
 fire prevention to insurance collection. It is in these buildings also 
 that the reduced cost of upkeep is a convincing argument. The 
 requirements of the layout of such buildings are easily met in hol- 
 low-tile construction. 
 
 Lest this discussion prove discursive, I am going to pin it down 
 to realities by illustrating with photographs and drawings of 
 modern houses, the points which I have tried to make. The first 
 is an illustration of a house designed purely for the purpose of 
 illustrating various uses of hollow tile. Today such a house would 
 not be the last word in this construction, but when it was designed 
 some few years ago, such questions as exposed tile and flat masonry 
 roofs had not become insistent. It will not be hard to find its prece- 
 dent among the foreign illustrations. Its simplicity makes it easily 
 eonstructible in tile. 
 
 The very pioneer in the East was the DeVillaverde house, 
 which is the first photograph, and but shortly behind in time of 
 construction was the Lough house. 
 
 The thing which I recall most clearly about these early houses 
 was the financial difficulties in which the builders usually found 
 themselves before the work was completed, although they re- 
 ceived more money for them than would be necessary to finance 
 their construction today. These men had the right idea and the 
 courage of their convictions, but met the fate which befell the 
 Englishmen who tried to tunnel the North River and the French- 
 man who started to join the oceans at Panama. Although they 
 were victims, they lacked only the power, not the courage of their 
 convictions, and others, less originally initiative, won the battle of 
 their starting. Crowds of interested spectators used to watch the 
 construction of these early houses, people who today would not 
 stop to look at a similar operation, so often have they seen them. 
 
 It is interesting to follow the steps in the design of the Bogota
 
 82 HOLLOW-TILE FOB HOUSES 
 
 building. The half-tone shows the Banning house, an adaptation 
 of Walnut Tree Farm House in England, which was restudied, as 
 shown in the photographs of the completed building. Structural 
 features of unusual interest are the treatments of the ceilings and 
 floors. Projecting concrete beams were cast between the hollow 
 tile fillers and the finished floors were of plastic composition with 
 no wood covering at all. I believe that this method will some day 
 come into its own in the general use of a combination of cork and 
 cement, which bonds and makes a warm and noiseless floor. This 
 house was an advanced construction in the day of its building. 
 
 The house at Upper Montclair, N. J., is a good example of 
 the extent to which site may influence plan. At the foot of a pali- 
 sade and itself remarkably elevated and overlooking New York 
 in the far distance, this building was elongated in plan to take 
 advantage both of the view and the contour of the site. Every 
 room looks forward to New York and back to its garden at the 
 mountain-foot. An interesting constructive feature is the corbell- 
 ing of the gables, learned from Mr. Joy Wheeler Dow. I always 
 feel when looking at this house that it is but an unobtrusive incident 
 in a well-staged scene. Where you can't fight you had better fol- 
 low. An obtrusive house at the foot of this rock-ribbed crag 
 would be only fussy in its indignation. Such an unequal contest 
 between the stolid and the stuccato would recall Kipling's lines : 
 
 "For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles 
 And he weareth the Christian down." 
 
 That heathen crag could smile his rocky smile over and around the 
 importunities of any upstart domicile of man and keep on smiling 
 while its roof tree rotted, but the right kind of a house would nestle 
 at its feet and gain protection from its greatness, just as this house 
 has tried to do. 
 
 "Made in Germany" is the trade-mark of the Tenafly house. 
 Even the stucco tooling is Teutonic. The charm of the house, aside 
 from a setting among straight tree trunks which parallel its half- 
 timber, is the happy combination of its colors. The roof shows 
 green and brown with a "texture"' about which you will hear later.
 
 83
 
 
 S O 
 
 f ■ M 
 
 s H 
 ■$ 1-1 
 
 (J g 
 
 05 
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 84
 
 HOLLOW-TILE FOR HOUSES 85 
 
 Buff stucco and natural-colored cypress fit the ischeme of the 
 house itself and its surroundings. 
 
 It would be well to read the chapter on tile decoration of 
 stucco surfaces before looking at the Calkins house. Rough sur- 
 faced brick in intricate design has been used to mark the openings 
 and to elaborate the frieze. Red tile, brown brick, grey stucco and 
 tan wood are the palette of its colors. The house is a little different 
 from anything else in these pages, and a helpful feature is the big 
 tree standing like a lofty guard above it, and softening too rigid 
 outlines with its grateful shade. Character in plan is accomplished 
 by a large living-room several steps lower than the rest of the first 
 floor. 
 
 Closeness to precedent does not mark its neighboring illus- 
 tration, a house at Seagate, which reminds me of the Dutchman's 
 remark about a "rather mountainous valley." The owner wanted a 
 bungalow but he wanted it three stories high. The building pre- 
 sents the singular spectacle of a simple roof set down over an 
 irregular plan and cut off regardless at its intersection with the 
 walls.
 
 86
 
 
 87
 
 .*^ t 
 
 Home of Mr. Winthrop, Siosset, L. I. 
 
 Delano & Aldrich, Architects. 
 
 THE DESIGNERS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED A BIG. WELL-MANNERED HOME. YOU WILL. 
 
 NOTICE THAT THERE ARE NO DORMERS AND THAT THE HOUSE IS NOT 
 
 ON THE HILL TOP BUT PARALLELS THE SLOPE.
 
 Home of Mr. Winthrop, Siosset, L. I. Delano & Aldrich, Architects. 
 
 IT'S JUST AS PERFECT NEAR BY AS AT A DISTANCE. 
 
 89
 
 House of Mr. Thomas H. Kerr. Albro & Lindeherg, Architects. 
 
 "A PLACE FOR REFLECTION." 
 
 90
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Architects' Tile Houses. 
 
 "T^HYSICIAN, heal thyself," might be the title of this chap- 
 ^ ter, although the way and why the architect doctors his 
 design is not always the best way and why. I have 
 worked for several who are high in their profession, and it is curious 
 that no one of these men, some of whom were capable designers, 
 spent much time on the design of his own house, although each gave 
 careful thought to its construction. Since they excel in these it is, 
 therefore, rather toward the constructive features than the archi- 
 tectural that I would direct your attention in the following pages. 
 Herein have architects cured building ills. 
 
 The Wendehack house was designed after a most careful 
 study of individual needs. The drawings were made in Rome 
 where their designer spent many months of a stay abroad. The 
 plan is nearly ideal for a house of its size, and the construction also 
 is particularly well studied. The Walker house was completed by 
 its architect- owner, and is as well constructed as it is obviously 
 beautiful. 
 
 Every building consists in its final analysis of uprights resting 
 on the earth, supporting floors and roofs, and filHng between these 
 uprights, to keep out the weather and to surround the windows 
 and doors. The supports may always be regarded as posts. Logic- 
 ally, they should be thicker or at least stronger than the curtain 
 walls, but in most instances, in order to avoid breaks in the wall 
 surfaces, the piers and walls are made of a uniform thickness. The 
 scheme of permanent tile forms here comes into play as in the 
 Delano house, in order to obtain a pier and a curtain wall with 
 strength relative to their respective loads, and yet maintain a flush 
 wall inside and out. It is obvious that this may be done in tile walls 
 
 91
 
 92 ARCHITECTS' TILE HOUSES 
 
 by grouting the piers and leaving the curtain walls hollow. When 
 a floor level is reached it is obvious that there should be some way 
 to carry the part of the floor weight which comes over the window 
 and door openings to the powerful piers, and this may be done by 
 a U-shaped continuous wall girder. 
 
 These U-shaped lintel and wall girder troughs may be either 
 poured full of concrete on the ground and set in place as is best 
 practice with the lintel, or set in the wall and poured in place, as 
 is best done with the wall girder. The floor load will then have a 
 strong continuous support irrespective of the openings under it. 
 
 It is the limitations of tile manufacturing which give us a 
 hollow building block with the physical aspect in which we find it 
 at the building. Were it not for the manner of moulding and 
 burning clay, the block might be any other shape then cellular. 
 Given, then, a large building block with cells running in one direc- 
 tion only and open on two of its six sides, our problem is to make 
 the best use of it as building material. It would seem to be the 
 best way to lay these blocks in a wall on their closed sides so as to 
 get a good mortar bed, but on closer observation it is apparent 
 that by so doing a part of the terra-cotta would be resting flat and 
 not working to hold up the weight above. The block must have its 
 webs vertical in order to be entirely onto its job. But when set 
 vertical the mortar bed must be on the webs of the lower block and 
 not on its flat side, and we are, therefore, confronted with the 
 difficult feat of balancing mortar on a five-eighth-inch web and 
 bedding a forty-pound block on this precarious footing. It is 
 apparent that unless this feat is successfully performed the blocks 
 will come in contact vertically only at points and not all along the 
 webs, and that not all of the webs may be coimted on to be doing 
 work. This causes no inconvenience in the house where the wall 
 is far stronger than required for the load, but it becomes a problem 
 to be taken into account in heavily loaded piers. 
 
 Although the placing of the blocks in the wall with the cores 
 vertical does not present a very good mortar bed, yet it invites a 
 far more powerful construction than any combination of mortared
 
 THK l'l:uHLKAl (jK i:\Ki;V IXCii \\ A.S .STIUIEU AND StjLXliLi. 
 
 Howe of Mrs. D. F. IVcndcUack. 
 
 "MUT>TUM IX PARVO. 
 
 Squires & ll'ciidchacl:. Arcliitccts. 
 AX ARCHITECT'S FIREPROOF HOCSE. 
 
 93
 
 WM. ADAMS DELANO'S COUNTRY PLACE AT SIOSSET, L. I. 
 
 HE HAS COVERED THE TILE WITH STUCCO HAND-MODELED LIKE 
 PARGED STONE WORK. 
 
 94
 
 THE COURT OF JtR. 1 n: I. A xi is iPMsi;. AX .\];'i"i s'i"s A\iii:iv AS ^\i;i,i. as ax 
 
 ARCHITECT'S. 
 
 95
 
 Ho 
 '"el 
 Pi 
 
 H 
 
 Cn 
 go 
 
 oa 
 
 Kg 
 
 Cu Eh 
 
 OH 
 
 O 
 
 a J 
 
 96
 
 ARCHITECTS' TILE HOUSES 97 
 
 units, namely, the introduction of grouting or filling with liquid 
 concrete. Just as the cores must be vertical in the process of manu- 
 facture to allow the fire to take its characteristic vertical course, 
 so the cores must be vertical in construction work to let the liquid 
 concrete take its characteristic downward flow. This grouting 
 makes it possible to count on the strength of every particle of tile. 
 It is, of course, necessary'' to design the webs so that when blocks are 
 placed one upon another with the joints broken, the webs and 
 cores will correspond and the vertical channels be uninterrupted. 
 I have noted the value of the air-space in the hollow wall as a non- 
 conductor of changes in temperature, in other words, its furring 
 value. Now, it would seem that I am advocating the destruction 
 of this furring in order to obtain greater structural strength, but it 
 is easy to retain both in the same wall, although in general practice, 
 the advocates of each are apt to neglect or omit the other. It is 
 quite practicable to design a block, some of whose cells, either on 
 the inner or outer side of the wall, shall be grouted and the re- 
 maining cells left open for furring. Since the floor loads are more 
 easily applied to the inner than to the outer surface of the wall, the 
 furring space may better be designed for the outer surface of the 
 block. Where the construction is a bonding wall, as in Texture- 
 Tile, the Texture- Tile block forms an ideal furring for a grouted 
 backing. Texture-Tile, where the cores are horizontal, forms a 
 better insulation than vertical cores, the air in which is apt to be in 
 circulation, owing to the opportunities offered to the heated air 
 to rise in the vertical chambers and its physical tendency to do so. 
 The bonding course can readily be designed to tie in with the 
 grouted backing. In designing a block for vertical grouting it is 
 well to make a double web in the center to provide a bearing for 
 the webs above with an allowance for the joints between the blocks. 
 Permanent hollow-tile forms for concrete offer the additional 
 advantage of a positive surface for plaster and stucco. In the case 
 of floors they give depth to the beam, lightness to the construction 
 and strength to the actual structure. As lintel and girder forms 
 they permit speedy work in erection and in the case of the wall-
 
 98 
 
 ARCHITECTS' TILE HOUSES 
 
 girder may be built on before the concrete is set. The strength of 
 the pier may be increased by grouting without wasting material 
 on the curtain walls, or piers may be dispensed with and a wall of 
 uniform thickness, but of varying bearing capacity be readily pro- 
 duced. Also adequate furring spaces may be retained. All this 
 may be done — strong, light floors, quickly erected girders and 
 lintels, powerful piers, sure plastering surfaces — and in the end the 
 finished product will stand the final test of economy.
 
 POSTER ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 99
 
 SNOW TESTS THE COMPOSITION. 
 
 102
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Building the Other Man's House. 
 
 WHEN you build to sell to another man the temptation 
 surely is to spend all the money where he can see it. 
 Yet that hidden value is sometimes the part of wisdom 
 has been shown in many successful and at least one famous case. 
 
 The reason a new firm in London has such hard sledding at 
 the start is that the old firms have established a reputation for 
 giving value seen not on the day of purchase, but years later when 
 shoddy would have shown. They give hidden value. It is too true 
 that Americans do not try so hard to keep long-satisfied cus- 
 tomers. It is also true that the gay tinder box is more often seen 
 among our real estate offerings than the simpler fireproof structure. 
 These wooden houses, like some of their habitants, are content with 
 a short life and a merry one. To be gay rather than safe, to be 
 great rather than good are the axioms of the average real estate 
 agent. Let me show you a few houses wherein there is hidden value. 
 
 The Fireproof Village in New Jersey is the work of a man 
 who has been a decade before his time in many lines of thought. 
 The Black Forest house, seen on page 105, is built in a way its 
 second owner would never have had the experience or courage to 
 attempt. Concrete floors, concrete stairs, tile side walls, asbestos 
 roof, every one costs more than its usual substitute, and no one of 
 them would add a dollar to many a buyer's offer. Forgotten would 
 be the fact that this house will be permanent when its substitute 
 will have perished. Forgotten is its fire protection, safe-guarding 
 the family day and night. But not by all forgotten, for many an 
 American knows gold from dross wherever he sees it, and the 
 gold of the permanent home is not unknown coin in every investor's 
 currency. 
 
 103
 
 104 
 
 THE OTHER MAN'S HOUSE 
 
 The gabled house is another of this group to which a similar 
 description applies, but I will remark it only in passing, as it will 
 have its quota of comment elsewhere. 
 
 To set the pace on a beautiful tract overlooking Branch Brook 
 Park, the Clark houses were erected. Concrete combined with 
 steel rods for beams, tile for walls and floors, slate for roofs — how 
 little it reads like the average speculation. How little the pictures 
 look like the flaunting fronts of competing clapboard castles. The 
 present owners are the kind of men who buy government bonds. 
 
 The buildings at Forest Hills Gardens are built of hollow-tile, 
 and this group so broadly conceived and well designed, has stamped 
 
 THE PLANS OF THE ENGLISH FIREPROOF HOUSE. 
 
 the material with the approval of the Court of High Decision. 
 When from its safe haven, I look over the financial wrecks which 
 strewed the first-discovered shores of house-fireproofing, I see that it 
 is really the forgotten grave-stones of lost fortunes which have be- 
 come the cornerstones of this Foundation, a foundation upon which 
 will be reared all over America better structures than she has 
 known. The Sage Foundation will become not only at Forest Hills 
 but country wide, a strong foundation for homes of honesty and 
 permanence as well as character and charm. With this in mind 
 I bid you drink a silent toast to those who sought this shore as 
 well as those who found its haven.
 
 MR. PAGE BUILT FOR SALE A 'BLACK FOREST HOUSE" AT MOUNTAIN STATION. N. J. 
 
 Squires & W'ynkoop. Architects. 
 AN ENGLISH HOUSE WAS ITS FIREPROOF NEIGHBOR. 
 
 lO.")
 
 Squii-iTS &■ IVynkoop, Architects. 
 
 J. WM. CLARK STARTED HIS REAL, ESTATE TRANSACTIONS AT NEWARK WITH 
 FIREPROOF HOUSES. IN THEM WERE SOLVED MANY OF THE EARLIER 
 STRUCTURAL DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 106
 
 
 liiiii., .. 
 
 ^^-^<%L.2u^asieBl^~ 
 
 Aymar Embury II, Architect. 
 A COMPOSITION OF MUTUAL ADVANTAGES AT FOREST HILLS GARDENS. 
 
 Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 
 THIS IS A MOST STRIKING EXAMPLE OF WHAT MAY BE DONE BY COMBINING THE 
 INTERESTS OF SEVERAL OWNERS. 
 
 107
 
 
 108
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Floor Building. 
 
 TRADITIONS stick, and a new material is often used for a 
 long time in very much the same way as was the material 
 which it has superseded. It is therefore not surprising 
 that when concrete took the place of wood for floor construction, 
 concrete beams followed wooden images. 
 
 I am showing, as my first illustration, the form of concrete 
 floor construction now most generally used. This is an advance 
 over flat slabs of concrete which are neither so Ught nor cheap. The 
 beam is more economical than the slab because the strength of a 
 concrete beam depends on its depth, and for this reason the same 
 quantity of concrete and reinforcement, divided into separate paral- 
 lel beams connected by a thin top slab, will carry a far greater 
 load than an equal amount in a solid slab, which is really a series of 
 contiguous, shallow beams. Furthermore, because they cross- 
 bridge each other, the same quantity of concrete in beams crossing 
 at right angles, will carry more of a load than an equal amount in 
 parallel beams. A beam is a better way of distributing concrete 
 than a slab because of concrete's peculiar combination of strength 
 and weakness. The forces of compression and tension in a work- 
 ing beam are equal, and concrete has great power to resist destruc- 
 tion by compression, but little or no strength in tension, for which 
 reason it must be provided with steel where subjected to tension, in 
 order to make it efficient. Now, the space occupied by sufficient 
 compressive concrete to balance the tensile steel is as one-hundred- 
 to-one, and as the compression occurs in the top and the tension 
 in the bottom, a rightly sectioned beam is a very top-heavy affair. 
 x'Vbove the neutral axis concrete is providing compressive strength, 
 which it is physically best qualified to do; but concrete in the ten- 
 
 109
 
 110 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 sion zone is quite unfitted for any job except the light labor of 
 tieing the steel tension rod into double harness with the compression 
 concrete. 
 
 It will thus be seen that in a solid slab there is a great amount 
 of idle concrete which is reduced in the beam method by the amount 
 of the voids between them. An ideal design would provide just 
 enough concrete in the lower half to properly cover the steel and 
 sufficiently fireproof it, which is a far cry from the waste which 
 occurs in slab construction. Of course the slab on top of the beams 
 is concrete strictly onto its job, doing good compressive work. As 
 I have said, this condition is due to the fact that, in the balancing 
 of the equal and opposed compression and tension forces, it takes 
 one hundred volumes of compressive concrete to take care of one 
 volume of tensile steel. 
 
 There are two ways of making crossing concrete beams, 
 described in the next few pages. The first is to produce them by 
 removable moulds and the second by permanent forms. Under the 
 first I will describe sand-moulding, under the second show how 
 T and V-sectioned beams are formed by tile blocks and then how 
 a plaster ceihng may be used for forms. 
 
 Sand Moulds. 
 
 AXIOMS of architectural design unchanged since Roman 
 times are combined in sand-moulding with engineering 
 principles new as the use of reinforced concrete. The 
 coffer found expression as an architectural principle in Roman 
 ceilings, and still exists in our best work. This span of time is 
 tellingly illustrated in the ceilings of the old Basilica of St. Paul 
 at Rome, and the newly finished New York Post Office. 
 
 Much effort has been directed toward obtaining flat ceilings 
 for plastering. Either tile blocks are required, or when plastering 
 is to go directly on concrete, the aggregate for the concrete must 
 be cinders, a very questionable material for constructive purposes. 
 That such indirect methods should be used in the interests of
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 111 
 
 plaster presupposes it to be the most desirable material for ceiling- 
 covering, and such was the case up to a recent date, but it is no 
 longer true, because concrete has been so far beautified that its 
 appearance is now better than plaster. Compare a plaster cast 
 with its duplicate in concrete. The plaster is cold and cheap and 
 lacks the color, the texture, the solidity which belongs to the con- 
 crete image. Architects have gone so far as to leave off the smooth 
 finishing coat of plaster and roughen the final coat by mixing it 
 with sand in order to avoid its staring, dead-white surface. When 
 not so roughened, plaster must be tinted to make it presentable. 
 
 When the question of elaborating the six surfaces of a room 
 is considered, it is always the ceiling which receives the most atten- 
 tion. This is true alike in the public building — as witness the 
 ceilings of the New York Public Library and the waiting-room of 
 the Pennsylvania station — and in the city and the country house. 
 It is an accepted principle of design and decoration. The designer 
 of the public work may execute his ceiling in stone, the city mansion 
 designer in moulded plaster or carved wood and color, and the 
 country-house architect in moulded wood, but each in his own way 
 puts the greatest emphasis of his interior on its ceiling. 
 
 With the discovery of light-colored cements, concrete ad- 
 vanced rapidly in beauty. Since it is a combination of stone with 
 cement and sand, it is easy to retain the natural beauty of stones 
 by using them in the mixture. Reproductions in concrete of marble 
 statuary are results obtained every day. The difference in cost 
 and the similarity in result between pouring a liquid into a mould, 
 and chiseling the same form out of rock, is to the disadvantage of 
 the graven image. Lovely colors are obtained and the exposed 
 surface is dull, and so may display soft tones. Thus concrete — a 
 material which is part stone, and which may reproduce their beauti- 
 ful colors, and which gives its best structural results in coffered 
 forms — is the partner to sand moulds in this discussion. 
 
 This invention of mine involves the elaboration of the ceiling 
 and the casting of the constructive floor in the same operation. It 
 is the placing of temporary forms of moulding material on wooden
 
 112 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 centering, the placing of reinforcement in both directions in the 
 spaces between the moulds and the concreting around and over 
 these forms and the subsequent removal of all the temporary work, 
 including the sand, leaving the completed concrete ceihng in the 
 inverse image of the moulds. In the plasticity of moulding sand, 
 the consecutive fluid and solid nature of concrete, and the wide 
 range of beautiful stones which may constitute it, rest the possi- 
 bilities of the scheme. One can divide the ceiling into myriad 
 forms, practically kaleidoscopic. Add to this that the method wel- 
 comes all compressive forms, such as the classic dome and Gothic 
 vault, and the possibilities multiply. 
 
 There is a wide range of aggregates, marble, limestone, granite, 
 quartz — Nature's rough jewelry — which may be used to make up 
 the concrete itself, and it may be covered with applied ornament by 
 insertion into moulding sand mosaics of glass or tile which will be 
 held and displayed in the finished ceiling. Architectural forms like 
 the rosette may be cast separately and inserted into the moulds and 
 so arranged as to bond in with the slab after the removal of the sand. 
 The forms may be sprayed with a liquid mixture of cement and any 
 sparkling material such as broken glass, and a shell of it formed 
 over the moulds which will be the visible part of the slab when the 
 forms are removed. 
 
 Another way to enrich them is by blowing upon the dampened 
 ceiling a mixture of cement and color, which becomes literally a 
 part of it. Colors may be applied directly to the top of the moulds 
 by pouring a film of the liquid coloring material and cement upon 
 them, and allowing it to set a little before the commoner materials 
 of the bulk of the slab are poured. The obvious method of forming 
 panels of cement or plaster and using them as permanent forms has 
 been tried, but lacks the fascination of the fluid and has some 
 physical disadvantages beside. 
 
 Rather than bewilder you with a thousand suggestions for its 
 application, I will explain the process itself by means of photo- 
 graphs and leave it to you to realize how wonderful are its oppor- 
 tunities.
 
 ST. PAUL'S, AT ROME. 
 
 113
 
 ^ 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 U 
 
 
 
 
 ^/ 
 
 ± 
 
 
 * 
 
 O 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 
 
 S 
 
 X 
 
 Ij^ 
 
 u 
 
 'J 
 
 In 
 
 114
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 115 
 
 For over a year I tried experiments in moulding materials 
 before I settled on moulding-sand as the best. Clay gave results, 
 but had to be covered with paper in order to keep its outlines under 
 the softening influence of the wet concrete. Plaster was next con- 
 sidered and abandoned because its undercutting did not readily 
 release from the concrete. The moulding-sand method proved best 
 and is shown in these pictures. 
 
 I devised it while watching childi*en playing on the beach. They 
 grooved the hard sand in a gridiron pattern with their hoes and it 
 struck me that these mounds were strong enough to receive concrete 
 without losing shape. After experiments with beach sand, and 
 observation of the iron-moulders, the idea of highly decorated sand- 
 moulded ceilings became a conviction. After a winter of experi- 
 ments, the first floor was modeled and poured, and the following 
 photographs were taken during the process. The matrix shown in 
 Figures 8 and 9 was made from the same design as the one used 
 for obtaining plaster forms for a previous experiment. It is a posi- 
 tive, made of plaster reinforced with cloth to the exact size of the 
 coffer to the center of the beam all round, with projections on two 
 sides for handles. Where less decoration is required the matrix is 
 wood-and-plaster combined. The cheapest matrix is illustrated 
 here with photographs of a wooden one, empty, sand filled and 
 covered with a palette — Figures 10, 11, and 12. The process of 
 making sand moulds from the matrix is simple. The matrix is set 
 on two parallel two-by-four studs laid on the floor and the dampened 
 moulding-sand is heaped into it with a shovel and tamped hard by 
 gentle blows from a sand-bag shown in Figure 9. When full, the 
 top is leveled with a straight edge and covered with a wooden 
 palette made just the size of the matrix. The moulder overturns 
 the two, setting the palette on the two-by- fours and freeing the 
 matrix from the sand by a rap with the sand bag. Then the matrix 
 is lifted and the palette with its sand-mould is set on the temporary 
 centering ready for concreting as is illustrated by Figure 13. 
 
 Figure 14 shows the reinforcement laid in place in the channels 
 between the moulds; the plank pouring platform and the ladders
 
 116 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 on which the concrete is raised, are also shown. Part of the concrete 
 is seen akeady poured at the extreme left of the picture, Figure 15. 
 
 Figure 16 shows the concrete mounting up along the sides of the 
 sand moulds and has completely covered some of them. None of 
 the moulds were injured by the concrete, which was poured from 
 pails, and the only special care taken was in directing the stream 
 along the beams and not directly upon the top of the sand moulds. 
 
 Panels of ceilings done in sixteen inch coffers from the elabor- 
 ate plaster matrix are shown in Figure 17, and Figure 18 shows the 
 result when the sand-moulds were made from a simple, wooden 
 matrix. A metal matrix in bold relief would produce sharper 
 results than any I have shown. Sand moulding is most engrossing 
 and opens a new field in design for every thoughtful architect. It 
 will tend to greater freedom and originality in the application of 
 ornament because of the ease with which it can be modeled and the 
 delightful texture of the sand finished surface. 
 
 The T-Beam. 
 
 AN inventor of airships was recently heard to say that if he 
 ever had to give up his contests with the birds, he would 
 concentrate on concrete. The greatest of all inventors 
 has often turned aside from electrical research for the delight of 
 delving into the far-seen, measureless possibilities of stone-creating. 
 It is significant that its call has been heard by these men of might, 
 for it shows that in the conquest of concrete is the breeding of giants. 
 Though its study absorbs great minds, concrete itself is but a homely 
 thing, and it is not with the thought of an Edison but with the 
 brains of a builder that this chapter most concerns itself. 
 
 I will now describe the floors made with permanent fillers and 
 will begin with a combination of tile blocks which produces crossing 
 T-shaped concrete beams. 
 
 The builder had been thinking while he poured concrete, and 
 devised a beam sectioned like a T by means of parallel rows of tile 
 blocks which were themselves on their closed sides inverted Ts. He
 
 FIG. 10. THE WOODEN MATRIX. 
 
 S^B^ 
 
 -^TUfgnay- 
 
 FIG. 11. THE WOODEN MATRIX. SAND- 
 FIEI^ED. 
 
 FIG. 8. THE PILASTER MATRIX. 
 
 THE WOODEN MATRIX, WITH THE FIG. 9. TAMPING THE SAND INTO PLACE IX 
 
 PALETTE COVERING IT. THE PLASTER MATRIX. 
 
 117
 
 THE SAXD MOULDS WITH THEIR PALETTES SET ON 
 TEMPORARY CENTERINGS. 
 
 FIG. 14. THE REINFORCING BARS PLACED BETWEEN THE SAND 
 
 MOULDS. 
 
 FIG. 15. THE CONCRETE PARTLY POUKED. 
 
 118
 
 KIG. ll,. THE FLUID CONCRETE IS POURED BETWEEN THE SAND 
 MOULDS AND RISES AND FLOWS OVER THEM. 
 
 51 
 
 t' 
 
 FIGS. 17 AND IS. CONCRETE CEILINGS CAST OVER SAND MOULDS. 
 
 119
 
 THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GROUTED WALL. 
 
 PIG. 19. THE BLOCKS ASSEMBLED FOR THE 
 TWO-WAY T-BEAM CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 FIG. 20. THE CONCRETING WITH AND WITH- 
 OUT TOP SLAB, SHOWING DOUBLE AND 
 SINGLE T-SECTIONS. 
 
 120
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 121 
 
 worked this out first for parallel beams and adapted it later to 
 crossing beams, and I have noted these as its most obvious good 
 quahties. The T-shape is a good section for a concrete beam, be it 
 one-way or two- ways, because it puts the emphasis where it belongs. 
 A T-section provides a mass of compressive concrete where concrete 
 is needed and cuts down tensile concrete because it has little value. 
 
 Mr. Vought's block is an inverted T on the closed sides, and 
 the same section is provided on the other sides by placing loose 
 members similar to the flange of the T along the lower halves of the 
 open sides of the block. See Figure 19. When the beams are 
 poured, the concrete comes into permanent contact all around the 
 top of the block in the compression area, even entering the open 
 ends. There are no dry tile joints to reduce the value of the com- 
 pression. Dry joints occur, it is true, in the lower part, but here 
 they do no harm, for the tile and concrete are subjected to tension 
 only, and such force is amply taken by the steel. A glance at Figure 
 20 shows all concrete excluded from the open ends below the neutral 
 axis by the fillers where it would be a dead load and allowed to run 
 into the open ends above the neutral axis, where it solidifies the com- 
 pressive section. This scheme of closing the right part of the open 
 ends of the block is a recommendation. It is noteworthy also that 
 the method is developed so that it does not require tight centering. 
 
 It is seen, then, that the T beam presents the advantages of a 
 section which is in conformity to the physical strength and weakness 
 of concrete, that it makes the tile do actual work in the slab, induces 
 concrete into the compressive and excludes it from the tension part, 
 permits open centering and produces an all-tile ceiling for plaster- 
 ing. Not such a bad showing for a builder's invention ! 
 
 The Corr-tile floor is shown in Figure 21. A rectangular tile 
 with flanges on its closed sides is used in connection with channels 
 placed along its open ends to form repeatable square fillers, making, 
 when assembled, forms for crossed concrete beams between them. 
 It has many manifest advantages, not the least of which is the all- 
 tile ceihng produced thereby. 
 
 This construction is the result of a process of elimination and
 
 NATCO HOLLOW TILE, 
 WALL. THE PEOOeC- 
 -TINQ DOVETAILS 
 AR£-5CORED 
 FOR, STVCCO 
 AND ■PLASTEE.. 
 
 3" PACING 
 TILE. 
 
 CONJCaETe SLADOVEe 
 TIL£ WHEM NECESSARY 
 TO INCREAOE. STRENGTH 
 
 HOLLOW 
 TILE 
 
 Concrete £>EAMe> 
 
 ^^ WIDE l& OM CElTrtR-S> 
 
 EeiNrOR.CED WITH TVfSTEJD 
 
 OE, COaaVQATED 3TEEL.BARS 
 
 I50METR1C PEee>PECT\VE: 
 or CX:>ME)1NAT10M TLOO^ COM5- 
 -TT^\/CT10N 
 
 out rooT 
 
 DETAIL OP WALL CONSTRUCTION OF NATCO HOLLOW TILE WITH FIREPROOF 
 
 FLOOR OP HOLLOW TILE AND REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAMS. THIS FLOOR 
 
 CAN BE CARRIED SAFELY OVER VERY LONG SPANS. 
 
 FIG. 21. CORR-TILE CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 122
 
 FIG. 22. THE EXPERIMENT WITH ONE-INCH STONE 
 
 FIG. 23. THE RESULT WITH FINE GRAVEL. 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF THE CONCRETE BOND BETWEEN 
 BEVELED BLOCKS. 
 
 123
 
 FIG. 24. THE BEVELED BLOCKS PARTLY CONCRETED. 
 
 25. THE CONTACT ALL ALONG THE BOTTOM MAKES EACH BLOCK 
 IMMOVABLE AND PRESENTS AN ALL-TILE CEILING. 
 
 124
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 125 
 
 development and has stood the test of use. Many of the newer New 
 Jersey schools owe their fireproof quality to Corr-tile. Its prede- 
 cessors were the Faber system and another only slightly less suc- 
 cessful product of the same inventor, a prolific originator named 
 Ferdinand Burchartz. Too much praise cannot be given to this 
 system and the impressive energy of those who have fought its bat- 
 tles to a successfid outcome. 
 
 The Beveled Block. 
 
 THE next scheme to be considered is the two-way floor formed 
 with beveled blocks. It is a construction of single tile units 
 which are beveled on all sides so that they may be placed 
 with their lower edges in contact and thus form between adjacent 
 blocks crossing V-shaped channels as containers for reinforcement 
 and moulds for concrete beams. I will show this block in process 
 of manufacture as well as its use in the floor, and will demonstrate 
 that it is a stock product no more complicated than the common 
 rectangular block. 
 
 The idea of beveled blocks to contain between them intersectino- 
 V-beams, came to me after a talk with Mr. Asher Atkinson as to 
 the ideal section of a concrete beam for such work. This, he said, 
 should be above the neutral axis almost a parabolic curve. Up to 
 that time, hollow tile had been a successful form medium, but no 
 combination of blocks had ever approached a parabolic curve, be- 
 cause of the many and strenuous difficulties in departing from the 
 angular in tile manufacture. The parabolic curve could only be 
 approached by a form made up of straight lines. I had a general 
 knowledge of accepted forms of tile-and-concrete floor construction 
 and of the ingenious, but often complicated, methods in use to pro- 
 vide tile containers for beams. The problem did not seem to be 
 solved because of the difference between the theory and the practice. 
 
 Now entered chance. I had designed a bottling house in 
 Amsterdam, the owner of which was a very knowing kind of man 
 by whom the superintendence of an architect was not considered
 
 126 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 necessary. (This kind of a man is familiar to every architect who 
 reads these pages.) The floor construction of his bottling-house 
 was the common, one-way, tile-and-concrete beam method, and it 
 was not mentioned in the specification, as being too obvious, that 
 the tile in the rows forming the confines of the beams should touch 
 each other on their open ends and should present their closed sides 
 to the concrete. The cHent, not knowing the accepted practice, and 
 feehng that the concrete would not bind the tile in place strongly 
 enough in this way, decided to set the tile with the open ends to the 
 concrete. He then proceeded to pour his beams and slabs. 
 
 Some time later I had occasion to be in Amsterdam and saw the 
 position of the tile in the unplastered basement ceiling of the com- 
 pleted building. I called my client's attention to the fact that he 
 had a considerable dead load of concrete in the open ends of the tile. 
 This he denied. "You can't make half-inch stone float, and the 
 cement and sand won't leave it." His observation was that the 
 concrete had not run far into the open ends of the tile — in his own 
 words, "Just enough to hold the blocks in place." 
 
 There had been piping suspended from the basement ceiling by 
 means of puncturing the middle of the bottom web of the tile block 
 and hanging wires from nails laid in the tile above the bottom web 
 and across these small openings. At such places it was possible to 
 measure the exact distance to which the concrete had run into the 
 open ends, and investigation proved that the owner was right. The 
 suction of the porous tile had impeded the flow of concrete so that 
 it had run into the block but little at each end, leaving the middle 
 of the tile untouched and dry as a bone. From observation of this 
 error of a novice client and contractor and linking it with the advice 
 of Atkinson about the ideal section of a concrete beam, came the 
 conception of an open-ended beveled block as solving the problem. 
 
 Some of the difficulties in the way of the beveled block are 
 laughable now that they have been overcome. A prominent floor- 
 designer, consulted during the theoretical stage, said that a tile 
 so shaped could not be manufactured. So set was he in this idea 
 that even when he sees the photographs of it, he will say, like the
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 127 
 
 farmer who went to a circus and saw a giraffe for the first tinie, "It 
 ain't possible! There ain't no such critter!" A tile manufacturer 
 said that you couldn't pile them on end in a kiln. The scheme of 
 reversing the faces as shown in Figure 9, had never occurred to 
 him. 
 
 A "doubting Thomas" is one of our sincerest citizens. "I'm 
 from Missouri and you've got to show me," is one of the best senti- 
 ments in the world if it isn't uttered by the farmer who saw the 
 giraffe. The things I have had to show have been that the suction 
 of the block checks the concrete, that the rod is abundantly sur- 
 rounded with concrete and the beam section itself follows engineer- 
 ing principles. It is self-evident and need not be shown even to 
 those from Missouri that the scheme of setting repetitions of a 
 single sjinetric unit is simple, that it puts the top of the block 
 in compression, and furnishes an all-tile ceiling. 
 
 When the block came on the job the principal question was in 
 how far the concrete would enter the open ends, and in order to 
 satisfy ourselves on this point we made a number of interesting and 
 conclusive experiments shown in the accompanying photographs. 
 Several of the blocks were sawed in half from open end to open end 
 and put in their regular position in a small section of floor, a board 
 was sawed to the slope of the sides of the adjacent blocks and fitted 
 up close to the cut block. Concrete was then poured into the chan- 
 nels, as shown in Figure 22, and after it had set the board was 
 removed. Two experiments were tried, one with one-inch stone 
 concrete and the other with the finest gravel concrete. After the 
 boards were removed pictures were taken as indicated in Figures 
 22 and 23. The concrete of one-inch stone had hardly entered at 
 all, and the concrete of fine gravel had worked in less than enough 
 to form a square beam. I know of no better test, or more scientific, 
 that could have been applied to settle this critical point. The open- 
 ings may be entirely closed with sand if this refinement is desired. 
 
 After these experiments were successfully concluded, the floor 
 slab shown in Figures 24 and 25 was poured with cinder concrete. 
 You will note that the photographs were taken to show two methods
 
 128 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 of construction, one in which the concrete is not intended to go above 
 the tops of the blocks, the tile itself taking its place in compression, 
 and giving a result which would be sufficient for moderate spans 
 and loads. A concrete top slab is shown in the corner of one illus- 
 tration, a method which would be used with longer spans and 
 heavier loads. 
 
 In this description of a new use of tile in floors, I feel quite 
 sure that I have interested you with the pictures and I hope I have 
 interested you by showing how advances in building progress some- 
 times come. One man may know but one thing well, as the tile 
 manufacturer expertly knows his tile, and another man may know 
 another thing well, as Mr. Atkinson knows his engineering. Once 
 in a while a third man who doesn't know nearly as much about either 
 subject as its own specialist gets a chance to talk to each and welds 
 the triple information into an invention. 
 
 The Plaster Block. 
 
 I HAD been impressed while looking over various schemes for 
 providing forms for crosswise reinforcement, that the problem 
 
 had been approached almost entirely from the point of view 
 of deriving a two-way system from some well-known one-way 
 scheme. This was especially noticeable in hollow tile, whose manu- 
 facture required that each block must be open on two sides so that 
 the two-way adaptations were practically inventions in closing the 
 open ends. Searching around for a material which should not have 
 such limitations, I ran across the sand moulding process, a descrip- 
 tion of which has just appeared in these pages, and while experi- 
 menting with it I went through the whole range of moulding 
 materials, and in this way became acquainted with gypsum, from 
 which the plaster block is made. I found immediately that it was 
 subject to none of the limitations as a form for crosswise reinforce- 
 ment that are inherent in hollow- tile. 
 
 Having thrown away tradition and having found a material 
 which could take a closed form on all sides, it then seemed timely to
 
 FIG. 26. THE TEN DOLLAR FACTORY. 
 
 FIG. 27. THE SLOTTED PLASTER BLOCK. 
 
 FIG. 28. CASTING THE HOLLOW PLASTER BLOCK IN HALVES. 
 
 129
 
 FIG. 29. MAKING A HOLLOW PLASTER BLOCK BY CASTING THE DOME IN ONE PIECE 
 AND PUDDLING THE BOTTOM IN. 
 
 FIG. 31. CT.OSED B0TT0:MEL) I'LASTKR BLOCKS ON THE FORMS. 
 
 FIG 30. A TELLING ILLUSTRATION OF ECONOMY IN FORM WORK. THIS SHOWS THE 
 UNDERSIDE OF THE SLOTTED PLASTER BLOCKS. 
 
 130
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 131 
 
 work, no longer on the material of the forms, but on the ideal shape 
 into which to mould the concrete. I was confident that this would 
 not be the outline shown in existing two-way tile or iron form 
 systems, which would unquestionably be limited by the rigid make 
 of the materials. It seemed obvious also that the outline of the 
 concrete beam, with its one per cent, tension and ninety-nine per 
 cent, compression volumes, could be nothing like the outline of a 
 wooden or iron beam which is homogeneous, yet had been copied in 
 the existing tile-schemes. 
 
 If I could once settle what this outline should be, I had at 
 hand a plastic material which I could make conform to it and later 
 as a mould produce a similar outline in the concrete itself. Mr. 
 Asher Atkinson plotted the ideal outline of a concrete beam as a 
 double parabolic curve starting at the neutral axis and rising on 
 each side until it met the top slab. He modified this slightly to take a 
 mean course between this curve and an ellipse having the same axes, 
 so as to take care of concentrated loads. To simplify the idea and 
 get clear of geometric terms, let us consider the beam to have curved 
 sides instead of straight. This line is a far cry from anything that 
 can be made up out of hollow-tile blocks but is perfectly easy to 
 produce in gypsum. 
 
 Plaster is easily channeled on its lower surface for electric con- 
 duits and may be cut to fit around pipes, columns, or any other 
 obstruction. Concrete does not affect it, nor yet did it cleave to it, 
 so it seemed desirable to obtain a sure mechanical bond between the 
 two. Each being a material that goes through consecutive fluid and 
 solid states, such a mechanical bond was one of the simplest possible 
 things to obtain. 
 
 Being convinced that there was a chance for a plaster block as 
 a fireproof, permanent mould for concrete, there remained only 
 the casting and building of it into an actual operation. I knew 
 that plaster had been used as a mould for the most delicate kinds 
 of ornamental concrete work, so I foresaw that there could be no 
 difficulties arising from difl'erences in the expansion or contraction 
 of gj^psum and concrete in a big slab. It was at Oakland, N. J.,
 
 132 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 that the first opportunity came to use plaster blocks in a fireproof 
 building. We shipped the material to the site and with it the blue 
 print, from which a carpenter made the moulds shown in Figure 26. 
 Four of these were made and they were all the machinery used. 
 Two Italian laborers turned out, at the rate of a hundred and 
 twenty a day, such blocks as are shown from top and bottom in 
 Figure 27. You will note that the block far more nearly approaches 
 the parabolic curve recommended by the engineer than any previous 
 form. The mechanical bond is produced by an inward sweep near 
 the bottom of a block at the point where the bar will come when the 
 block is put on the form and serves the double purpose there of 
 binding the block into the concrete slab and of surrounding the bar 
 with a plentiful amount of concrete. It also shows the lath effect 
 which may be readily plastered. In our later work, however, this 
 block was made in halves, as shown in Figure 28, or made hollow 
 and a bottom puddled in, as shown in Figure 29, and in both cases 
 the block required only a white coat, after it had become a part of 
 the ceiling. Figure 30 shows the form work and the blocks sup- 
 ported on it. You will notice that it is very open and obviously 
 inexpensive. Figure 31 shows the closed blocks on the forms. 
 Figure 32 shows the blocks on the forms and the rods in position. 
 These blocks proved to be very strong and were not affected at all 
 by stormy weather or the walking and trucking which took place 
 on them. They were well aligned, the reason for which may be 
 readily seen by glancing back at the blocks themselves. Since all 
 the blocks were made in the same mould, they must necessarily be 
 perfectly true on all their lower edges and surfaces, so that when 
 they are put edge-to-edge on the form you cannot move one without 
 moving all. For this reason the concreting was easy and sure. 
 Figure 33 shows the concrete over the top, and the insert shows that 
 the plaster holds nails, and I have cast floors in which the concrete 
 was brought only up to the level of the top of the block and the 
 rough floor nailed directly to it. This is possible, of course, only 
 because of that other quality of the plaster block that it can be 
 grooved on the under side for electric conduits. If it had been
 
 FLOOR BUILDING 133 
 
 necessary to put these conduits on the top of the slab it would also 
 have been necessary to have provided sleepers and fill as in the usual 
 construction. This feature of the material saved two or three inches 
 in the thickness of the slab. After the forms were taken down, a 
 plaster ceiling was presented by the blocks themselves, which was 
 readily finished with a very thin coat. 
 
 The main advantage which appears in plaster block is cheap- 
 ness, due to these reasons. First of all, the materials are shipped 
 in bulk to the site, a very economical procedure, especially since 
 every job requires plaster any way. Then the moulds are very 
 simple and have a very low first cost, the working of gypsum is 
 known to thousands of laborers, the pouring of the liquid gypsum 
 into the mould and the opening of the mould and removing the 
 block eight minutes later is a fool-proof operation. The fact that 
 gypsum sets up quickly is the salvation of the whole scheme, as four 
 moulds will keep two men busy, and two men can turn out, when 
 pushed, a hundred and fifty a day. The type of labor that knows 
 enough to go in when it rains has all the intelligence required. 
 
 The form work for the plaster consists only of three-by- fours at 
 the junction of each row, supported in turn on two-by-tens about 
 five feet on centers running in the opposite direction. The blocks 
 line up so true that there is no waste of concrete through the joints, 
 which makes for economy in that material. A ceiling such as shown 
 in the photographs, and more particularly a ceiling where an entire 
 gypsum surface is presented, is the most economical kind of a sur- 
 face on which to plaster, for it is literally a rough plastered ceiling 
 before the plastering is begun. An ornamental coffered ceiling of 
 any degree of elaboration may be obtained by casting plaster blocks 
 in an ornamental mould as is shown in Figure 14, but I have been 
 an architect long enough to know that anything which aspires 
 towards beauty is signing its own death warrant when it obtrudes 
 itself into an engineering problem. 
 
 I am now at the goal for which I set out. I have a form which 
 fits an engineering theory. To the best of my knowledge the beam 
 produced by it is exactly what the engineer told me to produce. The
 
 134 FLOOR BUILDING 
 
 form is but a form. It takes a good explainer to get away ^^-ith 
 some of the other present-day forms. The plaster block starts with 
 the theory of the outUne of the concrete beam and modestly conforms 
 thereto. Having done so, it must follow that the concrete is exactly 
 where it belongs, in other words, that the minimum of concrete is 
 doing the maximum of work. 
 
 I would say in closing that it has long been considered good 
 engineering to reinforce a concrete slab by a series of parallel rods 
 crossed by a second parallel series laid at right angles to the first in 
 order to carrj^ the load equitably to all the four supports, and it has 
 long been known that such a slab could be improved by cutting out 
 the idle concrete in the lower part. The forms to do this work had 
 suffered much in efficiency on accoimt of the physical limitations 
 of the materials from which they were made, and it was not until 
 the plaster block was developed that a permanent form was found 
 which could perfectly section the resulting beams. One of the 
 requirements was a flat plaster ceiling, and the plaster block is flat 
 and it is plaster. It is easy to make and easy to use, and both in 
 manufacture and construction spells "economy."
 
 FIG. 32. THK l;i:iM'i M;i l^.MEXT IX i'LAc'i; 
 
 FIG. 33. THE :\i:.KiiLi COMPLETED SLAB. 
 135
 
 LEATHERSTOCKING PALLS. 
 
 136
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Tile in Stucco Surfaces. 
 
 THERE is hollow- tile and there is a kind of tile which is 
 thin and flat, good for floors and the protection and em- 
 bellishment of other surfaces. Since their names are so 
 similar but their uses so divergent, lest there be confusion of 
 tongues, I'll turn a little from my way to describe the use of decor- 
 ative tile and then suggest a way to wed decorative to structural. 
 
 To the designer, tile offers opportunities in the enrichment of 
 his buildings by fprm and color. In the present illustrations the 
 design shows plainly and needs little more description; but color, 
 not being visible, requires elaboration. 
 
 Tile works advantageously with a wide range of other things, 
 but always as the decorative spot or band, a small part only of the 
 surface. The growing popularity of brick work gives a wide field 
 for tile design in its connection. It has been used effectively with 
 marble, and its rich tones harmonize with the wood work and 
 hangings of interiors. The growing popularity of cement covered 
 buildings, due to their fireproofness, has introduced for their en- 
 richment a new problem in design, one which is well solved by the 
 application of tile to their exteriors, and it is about such applica- 
 tions that I have written this description. 
 
 A glance at the illustrations shows the general principles of 
 tile design in stucco surfaces. Panels, band-courses and scattered 
 patterns, covering a small percentage only of the surface, are the 
 rule. Such parts of the severer forms as would be treated with 
 carving under strict interpretation may be treated less formally 
 in tile. It must be held in mind, however, that in the great ma- 
 jority of cases, this tile is of commercial size and color, and design 
 with it is a matter of selection. That is to say, such elaborate archi- 
 
 137
 
 138 TILE IN STUCCO SURFACES 
 
 tectural forms as coffers and rosettes must be avoided and flatter 
 features used. Design becomes a matter of selection from obtain- 
 able forms and their proper combination with each other and with 
 the surface of the building to be treated. This method of design, 
 as well as the cement field-material itself, leads into a new realm 
 of inventiveness and has already, and will continue to produce 
 unusual results. To apply the principles just stated to the illus- 
 trations, it will be seen that the exedra and the bank are classic forms 
 of which the usually decorated parts are treated, not with classic 
 ornament, but tile. One would expect the inner surface of the 
 half-dome to be coffered and decorated with rosettes, in a classic 
 model, but the same general effect is produced by insertions made 
 up of small flat tile. The cylindrical form below is paneled with 
 flat inlay, at a distance recalling very nearly the effect that its 
 classic designer would produce. What would have been a classic 
 column becomes an ornamented pier, where the classic would require 
 carved decoration. The bank portal, although executed in cement, 
 is classic in its members, and here again the tile applies in just the 
 places where the earlier artist would have used relief. Specially 
 modeled forms have been introduced, such as might be expected 
 in terra-cotta, and these designs may be produced in loveliest colors 
 where their magnitude permits. More personal are the appli- 
 cations of tile to the entrance and upper treatment of the cement- 
 covered house. A highly modeled water spout, interrupting a 
 continuous band, marks the center of the entrance wall, which 
 guards a double flight of steps leading to a doorway. 
 
 The lower stories of the city house are designed and decorated 
 to produce charm without extreme originality. The circular- 
 headed windows are merely surrounded with bands of tiny tile and 
 between them are decorative spots of faience figures. The whole 
 composition is in low relief and color. 
 
 It may then be concluded that tile design may take the place 
 of the usually decorated parts of classic composition, or on more 
 personal and orginal conceptions, may properly occur in panels, 
 bands and scattered ornaments.
 
 "^£3^-. 
 
 TILE DECORATION OP AN EXEDKA. 
 
 139
 
 fel.'-.f*1 
 
 '■l*t/ ■ •, 11* 
 
 TILE USED TO ORNAMENT SURFACES IN CLASSIC DESIGN. 
 
 140
 
 H 
 
 141
 
 TILE IN THE STUCCO SURFACES OF A CITY HOUSE. 
 
 142
 
 TILE IN STUCCO SURFACES 143 
 
 Among the lost arts, but soon to be revived, is color in our 
 buildings. Because the light is less intense, color may be used 
 more safely for interiors, but Capri and many other old world cities 
 show that it is not amiss out-doors. We know that color is per- 
 missible in Spain and Italy and even as near home as Mexico, but 
 on account of some subtle difference in our atmosphere we are 
 warned that it may not be used at home. How may we reconcile 
 with this negation, the beauty of our green fields and forests, our 
 purple hills and autumn leaves? Who cavils at vine-covered 
 churches or rose-bowered doorways? Surely bad taste in its 
 application, rather than any quality of North American atmos- 
 phere, has hurt the fair name of native out-door coloring. 
 
 I think the difficulty is more in a matter of texture than color 
 and that, as a fact, if sufficient roughness were introduced into the 
 surfaces of our buildings they would stand a deal of proper coloring. 
 It will be noticed in the brick work of today that the faces of the 
 successful buildings are rough and that where this is done there is 
 made possible ample color in the field itself, and brighter accents. 
 In our chosen stucco, it is easy to get texture and even color. But 
 the neutral gray of its natural surface makes the strongest cry for 
 color decoration. It is a field in which colors find harmonious 
 resting places. None are more rich and lovely than those of un- 
 glazed and mat-glazed tile, and none blend better with a stucco 
 surface. You may ask why colored glazes are not applied to struc- 
 tural tile itself, and I will answer that this is being done. Next 
 year may see charming mat glazed hollow tile structures. 
 
 In color there is always a far distant Grail for painter and 
 designer, and the difficulty of attaining its perfection has discour- 
 aged many from its quest. There is, however, the safe middle- 
 ground of the well tried, and here the designer may begin. He is 
 aided by the generous hospitality of the grey stucco field for color, 
 and if the number is kept small the task is far more safe and 
 simple. With each success a little more may be attempted until 
 at last a rich-toned building maj' take an honored place in the color 
 harmony of nature.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Tricks of The Trade. 
 
 IF you are curious to account for the charm of the building shown 
 in these photographs and plans, you may be willing to read this 
 
 explanation of the methods by which it was accomplished. I 
 have shown by the pictures the points which give it interest, and in 
 the text I shall try to describe them. 
 
 The house is a fireproof building of hollow tile, part of whose 
 interest in design is due to imagination and personal feeling for the 
 right thing in composition, but while it is picturesque, much of its 
 effect is due to certain broad architectural principles which apply to 
 this and many another building and which I shall call "tricks of 
 the trade." 
 
 The most obvious trick is the use of repetitions of a unit, for 
 you will see that all the window sash are made up of equal panes of 
 glass and the window groups themselves are made up of sash of 
 equal size. The masonry opening is small, giving a sense of in- 
 creased size to the whole building; for instinctively we judge the 
 size of the general mass by the size of some part of it which is nearly 
 constant, such as a window, a door or a step, and by minimizing these 
 well-known measurements we can maximize the general mass. It is 
 a trick like stage-perspective. Similarly, the size of the ground plan 
 of a building is judged largely by comparison with its height, for 
 plan sizes have no standard and cannot be mentally computed, while 
 the story heights are nearly standard and quite obvious. In this 
 house the standard has been reduced by keeping the general rooms 
 very low, not over eight feet, thus making the building have the 
 effect of exaggerated ground space, which is augmented by con- 
 taining the porch under the main roof and setting the building itself 
 low in the g;round. The observer does not realize that all the 
 heights have been reduced below the usual standard of comparison. 
 
 144
 
 145
 
 146
 
 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 147 
 
 The porch increases this effect by the smalhiess of its entrance 
 door, and the lowness of the solid rail. These give a sense of scale 
 because such things have a well known relation to the size of the 
 human figure. When the building has reached this stage in design, 
 its impression of ample size is assured. The remaining tricks are 
 additions to its charm. 
 
 It will be noticed that the ridges of all the gables intersect, so 
 that from whatever point you see the building, it has a long roof 
 line, a trick picked up in England, where it is quite generally prac- 
 ticed. The high chimney hails from England also. Its position 
 was fixed by combining economy of plan and composition of ex- 
 terior, and the plan and the picture show how well the single chim- 
 ney fulfills its double mission. 
 
 The roof is the main feature of the house, and to accomplish 
 its outline considerable adjustment in plan was required, and it is 
 such ingenuity to shift a room to the point in plan where it will 
 help the elevation without damaging its relation to the other rooms 
 that marks the difference between the designer and the draftsman. 
 Every house must have certain rooms, and each particular house 
 must have particular rooms of almost fixed sizes and locations. 
 Size, site and sun may not be gainsaid, but it is always possible to 
 adjust the plan and elevation to the general advantage. In this 
 house the dining room had its size and location fixed, and the living 
 room must be of about a given size and on a given street. By ad- 
 vancing the dining-room for a gable and keeping the porch line 
 flush with its front wall, it was possible to start the ridge of the 
 gable over the living-room, level with the dining-room gable-ridge 
 and bring its roof line over the porch. The center of the big gable 
 is not over the center of the living-room, but no artistic difficulty 
 is thereby experienced, owing to the way the window grouping is 
 adjusted by centering the sash and not the masonry openings. 
 
 The groups of windows in the dining room gable are diminished 
 in each higher story according to the needs of the plan as well as 
 the best appearance of the exterior. A refinement in the vnndow
 
 148 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 
 
 frame will be noticed in that the woodwork forms a imiform 
 band around each sash and becomes literally a frame. 
 
 When this house was built, not a tree was cut down. The big 
 chestnut in the angle at the rear had much to do with the aspect 
 of the plan, and now the red roof gets a tone-intensifying back- 
 ground of green leaves from every point of view. This question of 
 site is a most important trick, for there is no use deluding oneself 
 with an impossible paper presentment in one's office, when the prob- 
 lem is not a picture at all, but a real house on a real lot. Money can 
 do much toward correcting the site to fit the house, but it is wiser 
 to make the premises the premise. 
 
 One of the tricks of the trade is the proper use of materials. 
 Here they were decreed to be fireproof hollow-tile and asbestos 
 shingle, which present about the same problem in design as any 
 masonry, stucco covered red roofed house, except that the roofing 
 material is thin and the color more rosy than a red slate and this 
 rose requires browner and rougher stucco than would be 
 used with other reds. Also the fireproof nature of the house 
 argues with no httle logic for a minimum of wooden decoration. 
 It was necessary then to get all the interest in the building by 
 composition and by such tricks of the trade as I have just de- 
 scribed. 
 
 It would seem natural, that, with all these schemes for accom- 
 plishing exterior interest, the plan would have been mutilated, 
 but such is not the case. Turning to it, you will see a house with 
 the plan reduced to its lowest terms and you might suppose that 
 here the designer had freest hand. What strikes the eye immediate- 
 ly, is the generous living room with its floor below the general 
 level of the house. But you may also notice that the plan is so 
 arranged as to require but one chimney and one stair case branch- 
 ing to the kitchen. There is no hall downstairs and upstairs only 
 enough for communication with the various rooms. The closets are 
 found under the long slopes of the roof or under stairs. In the 
 gables above are the servants' rooms and in the basement is the 
 laundry. Instead of the waste and confusion which an English
 
 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 149 
 
 plan for so much designed a house would show, one finds here 
 only economy. 
 
 But it is in the rejuvenating of old buildings that one finds 
 the best place to try the whole bag of tricks. The fact that the 
 house of thirty years ago was seldom designed by an architect, 
 but was well and soundly built by carpenter or mason, gives the 
 redesigner a chance to be the wonder worker who gives new lamps 
 for old. The carpenter's house, for very lack of attempt at any 
 architectural design, was of simple form and outline, and this 
 simplicity lends itself gracefully to modern adornment by skilled 
 hands. 
 
 The reader readily recalls such types as the rectangular house 
 with simple gabled roof and that very popular type of thirty years 
 ago, the square house with a flat roof, yet lofty withal and sur- 
 mounted by a cupola. "Let well enough alone", is the best rule for 
 the true Colonial houses, work of craftsman carpenters. It was 
 not until attempts were made to follow a complicated style, such 
 as the mansard roof, that houses were built which were so complex 
 as to be almost impossible to improve by redesign. It is then tnie 
 that, on account of simplicity of construction, the builder's house 
 of thirty years ago is nearest the fountain of perpetual youth. 
 
 The interior of an old house seldom presents any serious 
 difficulties as its beauty is largely a question of tones of color, well 
 chosen rugs and hangings, and good furniture. The plan, to be 
 sure, may be improved by the removal of partitions and the addi- 
 tion of a new fireplace, more wood work and new floors but many 
 a beautiful result is the work of a decorator availing himself of no 
 change in plan whatever. It is on the exterior that the architect 
 may work his magic, by changing outlines, colors, and natural 
 surroimdings, or, in bigger words, by redesigning, redecorating, 
 and landscape gardening. The redesigner may improve the build- 
 ing by removing or covering its manifestly objectionable parts, 
 by giving it scale and interesting outline with low additions and 
 by bringing it into harmony with its surroundings. 
 
 It is safe to say that the cupola may always be removed to
 
 150 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 
 
 the betterment of the house, most of the old porches also come 
 under the ban, and the sawed-wood decorations, product of over- 
 ingenious and ill directed artisans, find a more fitting function in 
 the wood-pile. Fortunately, the newest developments of plan re- 
 quired by modern living, the first floor laundry, the breakfeast- 
 porch, the servant's dining room, and the sleeping porch, are the 
 greatest help in redesign. A porte-cochere properly managed is 
 a helpful adjunct, as is also the end porch in distinction to the old 
 front porch. The fact that we are beginning to enter the house on 
 the road side and Uve out-doors at some other point, often in the 
 seclusion of a garden at the rear, gives opportunity for terraces and 
 steps, httle refinements which help immensely. Lattice for vines, 
 flower boxes and pergolas are useful and ornamental in themselves 
 and invite that greater charm of flowers. Low sweeping roofs, 
 extending the old gables, may give just the needed invitation to 
 summon home a hovering charm. 
 
 I have just explained that by varying the dimensions of well 
 known parts of a house, the conception of the size of the unknown 
 parts may be influenced. Thus an extra low step or extra small 
 door, or a series of little windows may make the building itself 
 look larger than it is. Similarly, one story additions at the sides 
 of a building increase the apparent size of the central part. These 
 low parts may be so arranged as to give interest to the outline of 
 the building, and so, not only improve its scale, but its actual form 
 as well. Although it is difficult to affect the scale of an old building 
 by steps and windows which are usually fixed in the old work, yet 
 terraces, entrances and low additions are usually possible and 
 always effective, and the present-day niceties of service-wing, break- 
 fast room, conservatory and end porch, may help in this way to 
 rejuvenate the house born two-score years ago. 
 
 Here it may be well to tell the advantage one has in adapting 
 an old building to its site over starting anew. In the old days such 
 a fijie point as building neighborly to nature was never considered. 
 A house was a house ; the same house, on a hillside, in a valley, in 
 the woods, or on a plain and it was just dumb luck if it happened to
 
 =b 
 
 Co C3 
 
 151
 
 THE OLD BOWXE HOUSE AT TENAFLY BEFORE IT WAS REDESIGNED. 
 
 Squires & JVyiikoop, Architects. 
 WHITEHALL, TODAY. THE HOME OF MR. W. H. NOYES. 
 
 152
 
 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 158 
 
 hit it off in its surroundings, however well Old Time toned down its 
 incongruities. But trees and vines and turf need time, and time 
 the old building has provided if nothing else. 
 
 So the redesigner has the rare opportunity, not possible in 
 new work, of studying a building in connection with matured sur- 
 roundings. His wider survey helps him to see its faults and over- 
 come them. He can clip a lofty gable or tie down a towering mass 
 by means of low wings or porches on its sides and then with har- 
 monious colors, paint the whole building into its back ground of 
 verdure and with trees and vines cover what he cannot cure. He 
 can model, paint and plant, at the very site, hfe-size into the final 
 picture. 
 
 Long ago there was built at Tenafly, a tin roof and cupola 
 creation with a one story porch on the south and east. For some 
 unknown reason the entrance was made on the side and not on the 
 street, a scheme successful enough in picturesquely straggling 
 dwelhngs, but never in one of so mathematical a make-up. Around 
 it, as if to cover its disgrace, splendid trees had grown and the 
 lines of its site had fallen in pleasant places. When the redesigner 
 started to improve this building, the task seemed will-nigh hopeless 
 because a regular arrangement of windows was its only saving 
 grace. "It is a shame that the whole thing cannot be covered up," he 
 said, in peevish desperation. The words were his clue and his clue 
 was a colonnade for that is the only architectural way to cover up 
 a building. Look at the two pictures. Instead of its bald and ugly 
 walls, there is nothing now to see but a classic order hiding the old 
 monotony under deep and interesting shadows. The shaggy ever- 
 greens accentuate the crisp gradations of light and shade and 
 shadow which have ever modeled classic contours. 
 
 Just as bad in itself and without the advantage of good natural 
 surroundings, was the Plainfield house. This is chosen as an ex- 
 ample of that type of buildings of mid-Victorian persuasion so 
 common thirty years ago. A brutal plan, broken by narrow bays 
 carried to an awful height, and the whole too lofty mass covered 
 with a tin roof without form and void, and shrieking thence via
 
 154 TRICKS OF THE TRADE 
 
 cupola to heaven, has for its only saving sense a solidity which has 
 paid httle toll to thirty years of usage. The redesigner first stripped 
 off its worst features, the band-sawed-porch and cupola appendix. 
 Then he made a little entrance at grade and invited you to enter 
 through a lich gate. He mitigated the severity of the side walls 
 by carrying them out to form the profiles of the porch and by 
 lengthening it gave the impression that the house rested soHdly on 
 the ground and had lost that avidity for aviation which had always 
 marked it. A httle lattice work to reduce its height by division 
 into frieze and field and the trick was nearly done. A finishing touch 
 with the warm color of lime-stone over the stucco and olive-green 
 over the wood work, and the house has been lifted out of the dark 
 ages. It has been given scale through lich gate and low entrance, 
 interest through porch profiles and charm through restful colors 
 and now all's well, though ninety-nine per cent, is the work of a 
 builder, long since taken to a just punishment from the scene of 
 his misdemeanors. You see then that it is by tricks of the trade that 
 the designer guides his hand, and nowhere is his intimate trade- 
 knowledge better seen than in "new lamps for old."
 
 
 .S,;uiics & n .v,W,,/,-/. .hcli.tccls. 
 
 A HOrSE AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ASSISTED BY 
 CONCRETE DECORATION. 
 
 
 Squires & U'yttkoop, Architects. 
 
 IX THE CHURCH OF ST. LUKE THE EVANGELIST AT ROSELLE, THE HORIZONTAL 
 
 BANDS ARE CONCRETE. 
 
 155
 
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 ■G < 
 
 2 
 
 I "^ 
 
 ■5 O 
 
 5 H 
 
 .2> H 
 
 > Ptj 
 
 :± o 
 
 * o 
 
 1 g 
 
 156
 
 THE ENTRANCE TO THE LIBRARY AT VYGEBERG FARM IS AN EXAMPLE OF 
 ADVANCED CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 157
 
 158
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Tile and Concrete Partners. 
 
 THE more I have studied hollow-tile, the more I have been 
 impressed with the necessity for its collaboration with con- 
 crete. For wall-building, to-day's laurel goes to the mor- 
 tared unit hollow block and up to now the victor is the hollow tile. 
 But where bending strains are present as in all forms of floor con- 
 struction, reinforced concrete is the only available masonry. Dec- 
 oration of the tile walls is often best in the more plastic concrete 
 and so here and elsewhere there should be co-operation rather than 
 contention between the two materials. This article argues amono- 
 other things for concrete columns to take the place of wood. It 
 seems not reasonable that the structure of the walls should have 
 advanced in permanence beyond the point to which have gone their 
 architectural embellishments. The costly and conspicuous should 
 not be the evanescent. 
 
 The Church of St. Luke the Evangelist, at Roselle, signifies 
 much in these pages because it was the success of its hollow walls 
 of brick which encouraged me to try the same principle in hollow- 
 tile. The permanent decorations of this church were the ornamental 
 bands so clearly seen on the exterior, more effectively used within. 
 A noteworthy comparison in the price of stone and ornamental 
 concrete exists between the limestone altar and these mural decor- 
 ations for the little altar cost more than all the concrete. 
 
 In the Keiser house, shown on page 77, the piers are masonry 
 and a good deal of structural concrete has been used in floors and 
 girders. Large cement areas are provided for porch floors and 
 steps. Here hollow-tile and concrete conduct a very even partner- 
 ship. Sand-moulded slabs show concrete doing more than its share 
 
 159
 
 160 TILE AND CONCRETE, PARTNERS 
 
 as decoration. In such buildings as the Schaeffer house on page 56, 
 concrete is doing structural work. 
 
 The Newhall house, on pages 199 to 203, shows the most ad- 
 vanced ideas in hollow-tile and one of the most recent thoughts in 
 concrete in its use in porch columns. 
 
 Most important architecturally is the poured concrete column. 
 Fourteen of these were made in place in a single plaster mould at 
 a less cost than ephemeral wood. It is a demand of logic that isolated 
 supports should be of a material more powerful than continuous 
 walls, and here we have heard the call and answered it. I consider 
 this substitution of a more permanent material at a lower price to be 
 the kind of forward step which marks true progress in construction. 
 Having improved the structure of the shell, we have drawn even 
 with it by improving to a similar extent the solidity and permanency 
 of its structural and architectural adornments.
 
 TEXTURED ROMAN BRICK IX THE PALATINE ARCH. THE ITALIANS WERE FAMILIAR 
 WriH MOST OF OCR MODERN DISCOVERIES (!) IN BRICK MAKING. 
 
 161
 
 PERSIA KNEW THE VALUE OF TEXTURE IX CERAMICS AS WELL AS IX RUGt 
 SILKS. SHE WOVE MASONRY DESIGNS INTO THIS MAUSOLEUM OF A 
 DEAD SHAH AT SAMARKAND. 
 
 162
 
 < 
 
 ^^ 
 
 a- 
 
 CCtX 
 
 OQ 
 
 163
 
 164
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Texture and Scale. 
 
 TEXTURE is a fundamental part of all things beautiful. 
 Nature displays it in green trees, waving grain, snow, sky, 
 and sea. Texture is infinite variety. Natural beauty de- 
 pends on texture, and all art by the hand of man must do the like, or 
 by its loss fall short of Nature's standard. 
 
 It is then but a thing of course that the artisan must follow the 
 artist and so we see texture produced by the maker of tapestry, by 
 the rug weaver, the fabric spinner, the metal worker, and him who 
 fashions for the building craft. 
 
 In ceramics as in fabrics beauty depends on texture of color 
 and of surface. Color texture is the ensemble of small units varying 
 each in a small degree from its neighbor. The general tone is a 
 blend of all of them, but always with the interest of the contrasts. 
 Sm'face texture is a thing of shadows. It is the play of hght and 
 shade upon a roughened surface and it is enhanced if the units of 
 the surface and their dividing Hnes make up a pleasing pattern. 
 
 To illustrate these truths, I have chosen pictures of brick 
 work, both ancient and modern, to which I shall refer in my story 
 of the hollow-tile house, both where the house is covered with brick 
 work embodying these features, and when these principles have 
 been embodied in making and using the hollow-tile itself, for hollow- 
 tile has lent itself so well to a textured surface that when exposed 
 I have called it "Texture-Tile." 
 
 In all brick, old and new, the method of its making has 
 been the same. Solid lumps of clay have been burned and their 
 limit in size, has been determined by that of the single piece of build- 
 ing clay which could be burned through to the center without de- 
 stroying its outer surfaces. A simple modern invention has cut this 
 
 165
 
 166 TEXTURE AND SCALE 
 
 Gordian knot and now the size of the burnable clay unit is restricted 
 only by its weight, for the clay has been made cellular, and although 
 the thickness of burnable clay remains as limited as it has for the last 
 two thousand years, yet a cellular block can be produced many times 
 brick size. This larger block is far more economical in every way 
 than the brick which it is destined to surplant, so that the problem 
 which the designer has to face is not how to avoid this big building 
 block, but how to use it. 
 
 The brick size was not a deliberate artistic choice but on the con- 
 trary was settled solely by the limitations of brick-making. Bound 
 down to the fixed size of brick, the wonders worked by the designer 
 and the craftsman so well shown in the photographs, have been 
 wrongfully attributed as virtues of the size of brick rather than 
 viewed as trimnphs over limitations as is the very fact. A brick 
 is the smallest structural unit ever used. Were a talented designer 
 given an outline drawing of any building and told to divide it into 
 the most pleasing building-units, his resulting lines would never 
 indicate divisions but three inches high. I say again that were it 
 not for the physical limitations and the inertia of tradition, the brick 
 size would never be a free choice as a unit of design. This claim is 
 not confined to brick work, for it has been proved by every other 
 building material as well, that a larger unit is in better scale. 
 
 Shingles show best when laid wide to the weather and I will 
 show and describe several such buildings. The Best house would 
 have lost all charm with three-inch shingles, but with a covering of 
 wide spaced shingles it had a chance. I will say a few more general 
 words about it for its other interests are due to a picturesque en- 
 vironment and the very difficulties of the rugged lay of the land 
 have required, in overcoming them, a building of some character. 
 The site is a narrow ridge of rock, the highest point anywhere about, 
 and to keep the house from looking like the Ark stranded on Ararat 
 was a problem. Furthermore, the only approach is by road along 
 the north side, although the best view and exposure are opposite. 
 A sheer fall of rock at all the other sides completes the unfortunate 
 round.
 
 SAN STEPHANO. 
 
 THE NEARER TO THE SURFACE THE GREATER ITS 
 RESEMBLANCE TO A FABRIC. 
 
 167
 
 SAN STEPHANO. CLOSE AT HAND THE WORK IS KALEIDOSCOPIC. 
 
 168
 
 THERE IS TEXTURE IX STONE, BRICK. SLATE AND VINES IN THIS FIFTEENTH 
 CENTURY HOUSE AT LTNDFIELD, SUSSEX. 
 
 169
 
 Carrere & Hastings, Architects. 
 
 NEW-OLD BRICK EFFECTS. 
 
 170
 
 TEXTURE AND SCALE 171 
 
 Porch over the rock, entrance hall and porch straight on the 
 centre of the view, living room and dining-room tm'ned toward the 
 sun, kitchen isolated and all perched along a narrow ridge of rock 
 a hundred feet long and only one room wide, such was the solution 
 of the site. It is well to notice that the success of the plan depended 
 on placing the rooms so that the long side of each was at right 
 angles to the long side of its neighbors. The result is that one feels 
 a pleasing contrast in form and direction when passing from one 
 room to another. It was endeavored to make the house look as 
 though it was rooted in the rocky ridge and had not been merely 
 marooned by a receding tide. Here also was a new consideration 
 in composition. The bold contour of the rock required a house of 
 rugged build to hold its own. The general outlines mount up like 
 the hill. The low porch and kitchen flank the three stories of the 
 main house and the transition is made by the long outer sweep of the 
 gables, making the building pile up to the centre. The high part of 
 the house takes in three rooms, and the porch and kitchen wing one 
 each, which you may trace in the exterior. The ingle-nooks form 
 two additional parts, very much smaller than the others, between 
 the big and little masses, and their expressions on the outside in 
 narrow windows between the chimneys and the high part of the 
 house, gives by contrast a sense of additional size to the whole 
 building. 
 
 The materials and colors as well as the contour bind the house 
 to its environment. The stone for walls and chimneys came from the 
 rock on which the building rests. The brown of the woodwork, the 
 tarnished silver of the shingled side and the leaf green of the roofs 
 are wood colors like the woods around. 
 
 Leatherstocking Farm House is another example of the advan- 
 tages of large sc^le in shingle units and is as well one of the most 
 interesting works on which I have ever been employed. I'll take a 
 recess from tile and tell you about it. 
 
 The Indian Story Teller has made so familiar to us the haunts 
 of Pathfinder and Deerslayer, that it is like going back to boyland 
 to read again of Leatherstocking, and it is satisfying to find that
 
 172 TEXTURE AND SCALE 
 
 the region of those all entrancing Indian tales, is still of romantic 
 beauty. Otsego, a glimmering lake, densely wooded and set in a 
 hollow of the hills, still whispers to storied shores as it did in the 
 days of Leatherstocking, although the Indian is gone and Deer- 
 slayer lives only in his bronze effigy on the village green. 
 
 One rides to-day from Cooperstown along the splendid lake 
 road to get to Leatherstocking Farm. All along the way are familiar 
 Indian names like Otesega. Your guide will point out to you 
 places, whose very names bring back the delightful shivers of a 
 story read ten or twenty years ago. Two miles along, we leave the 
 road and climb the hill top and our first sight of the farm is Leather- 
 stocking gorge. At its end, seen through a vista of long-stemmed 
 trees, is the bold leap of Leatherstocking Falls, whose cavernous 
 voice has given the sight increasing mysterj^ while our dizzy height 
 above its jagged water-bed, lends just the needed touch of fear to 
 make its picture permanent. The music of plunging waters, with 
 ever changing outline, following many a fighting force, is a perfect 
 prelude for the great opening scene. 
 
 We cross the bridge above the falls, pass through the trees 
 that fringe the brook and emerge on a never-to-be-forgotten sight. 
 A few steps into the open and we are at the focus of the view. It 
 it as though Nature had put a compass point right here and with 
 the other, struck off segments of great, ever widening circles. We 
 look far down to the lake and up again to our own level on the 
 distant horizon. Right in front, at our feet, is a greensward, falling 
 away and terraced with ledges of outcropping rock. At its end, with 
 our station point as a center, swings a black circle marking the 
 wooded course of Leatherstocking Brook, then a circle of green 
 meadow, divided from the glistening waters of Otsego by a fringe 
 of blackest pines. Then, miles away, sweep the great wooded curves 
 of the lake's further shores, and from them, hills rising to horizon, 
 circling arcs of natural loveliness, ever widening, each successor 
 grander than its neighbor, lawn, meadow, lake and sky outlined by 
 bands of noble trees. 
 
 A part of this is Leatherstocking Farm. It runs from hill top
 
 ^ < 
 
 173
 
 TEXTURE AND BIG SCALE IN THE STONE AND SHINGLE OF LEATHERSTOCKING 
 
 FARM HOUSE. 
 
 Squires & Wynkoop, Architects. 
 TEXTURE IN TREE-COVERING AND HOUSE-COVERING. 
 
 174
 
 NATURE'S NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR. 
 
 xuaK*M»rjH»-l _:> 
 
 FAR AWAY A GLIMMERING LAKE. 
 
 175
 
 5pq 
 
 
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 i-:ao 
 
 «So 
 
 XWtJ 
 
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 -OO 
 
 2^ 
 
 OH 
 
 176
 
 TEXTURE AND SCALE 177 
 
 to lake. Leatherstocking brook strikes one border at the upper end, 
 crosses the farm and enters Otsego at the lower border. Opposite 
 the brookside is a grove of lofty pines, and on their edge is Leather- 
 stocking Farm House. Let us forget that center of sight, the 
 wonderful point-of-view where nature encircles us with grandeur. 
 Consider for a moment a modest house on the edge of a wood. 
 Placed on a hillside, and rather large, it had to take a long form so 
 that it could find a level place to rest on. The most obvious feature 
 of its external appearance is its outhne. A low service wing and a 
 casino flank a high central mass still further accentuated by chim- 
 neys at its gable ends. This effect of central height has been achieved 
 by considerable ingenuity in plan, for the second story of the serv- 
 ants' wing has been depressed below the line of the main building 
 and has no third floor at all, while the center boasts the height of 
 four. 
 
 The fall in the ground from front to rear has been used to 
 give the big rooms and porch a lower floor and greater height 
 than the small rooms, while the kitchen and casino are kept at the 
 lower level. It is by such means that in appearance the house 
 sticks firmly to its sloping site, yet has a varied skyline. A^Hiat holds 
 it naturally to its environment of outcropping rock and rearing pine 
 are its materials and colors. The stone was blasted out of the cellar 
 excavation and the roofs are pine-green. You could cover them with 
 green pine needles, and never see the difference. The cypress 
 shingles on the house are wood's color, like the dead pine needles of 
 the forest's floor. Half in the shadow of the woods, wood's colored 
 and old-fashioned, Leatherstocking Farm House is Nature's next 
 door neighbor. 
 
 From inside, every window frames a picture. One is a mul- 
 lioned panel of deep green pines, one is a landscape of sky and dis- 
 tant lake seen through pine boughs, another a long painting of tree- 
 bordered Leatherstocking Brook, beyond a terrace of jutting rock, 
 topped vdth green lawn and splashed with a water-fall of fern. 
 Best of all, no picture is long the same, for every hour the sunlight 
 changes, turning green pine to black, or the wind blows the silver
 
 178 TEXTURE AND SCALE 
 
 powder off the lake, or dapples it with foam. There have been a 
 thousand pictures in these dozen frames, and never one %at was 
 not lovely or mysterious. Wild creatures creep or fly into the fore- 
 ground or appear, half hidden, in the background, always in har- 
 mony with the other colors in Nature's accidental composition, add- 
 ing beauty of swift movement, or sweetness of wild music to her 
 visible perfections. I know of nothing that could better teach a 
 child, than to steep him in Leatherstocking tales and let him spend 
 an afternoon in the play-house with the rain falhng on roof and 
 woods, with wild and mysterious things in the forest in front and 
 home just beyond the cloistered passage. 
 
 It is the work of an artist to build a house and then conform a 
 landscape to it. It is no less an artist's task to take a God-made 
 landscape and slip a house into it and not disturb a tree, a view nor 
 a tradition. 
 
 I would call this full measure of success: if a receptive man 
 might follow along the gorge and past the falls, view then that out- 
 look which woke stories out of Cooper's heart, and glimpsing 
 Leatherstocking Farm House, take but casual count of it in his 
 harmonious impression. 
 
 I have just ridden past those twenty mile stones from Phila- 
 delphia westward, marking the most beautiful of all our suburbs. 
 I lay a large share of their unquestioned charm to the fact that most 
 of the houses are built of stone. They have texture and scale as 
 titles to distinction. The size of the ashlar puts the moulded wood- 
 work and the muntined windows in interesting relation, an effect 
 heightened by the pleasant color of the stone. 
 
 By way of sprightly contrast, yet still within our study of 
 scale, let us look at the little old Dutch farm house. It owes its 
 charm to the largeness of the brown-stone ashlar of which its inter- 
 esting walls are made. The charm of every one would diminish 
 with any reduction in the size of its covering units. Therefore the 
 size of Texture-Tile.
 
 
 
 THE NAVE OF THIS OLD CHURCH AT BROGLTE IS BUILT OF 
 
 STONE NOW USED FOR THE THIRD OR FOURTH TIME 
 
 AND CUT DOWN IN SIZE BY EACH REFITTING. IT 
 
 IS NOAV HALF WAY BETAVEEN BRICK AND 
 
 STONE AND HAS JtTST THE SCALE 
 
 OF TEXTURE TILE. 
 
 179
 
 THE GARGOYLE GATE AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE 
 MOUNT GREVLOCK." 
 
 Squires & IVynkoop, Arcliitccts. 
 IN SCALE WITH 
 
 180
 
 
 Grosicnor Atterbuiy, Architect. 
 
 THIS IS AN EXCELLENT ILLUSTRATION OP THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A SCALE 
 
 LARGER THAN COMMON BRICK. HRRE THE SIDE NOT THE EDGE OF 
 
 THE BRICK IS EXPOSED. 
 
 181
 
 THK 'Jll...'i.--L L:^: iJlZ-' ..T 'VL.: 
 
 THE EAST FACADE. 
 
 182
 
 McKiin, Mead & White, Architects. 
 THE MORGAN ART GALLERY. 
 
 THE PETIT TRIANON AT VERSAILLES. 
 
 183
 
 PETIT TRIANON. SIDE TOWARD THE GRAND TRIANON. 
 
 diaries A. Piatt, Architect. 
 RESIDENCE OF WILLIAM G. MATHER, CLEVELAND, OHIO. 
 
 184
 
 Delano & Aldrich, Architects. 
 
 THE WHITNEY STUDIO AT ROSLYN, L. I. A FLAT-ROOFED BUILDING 
 
 OF HOLLOW-TILE. 
 
 Carlyeiiter & Blair, Architects. 
 
 HOUSE AT GREENWICH, CONN. 
 
 185
 
 ?; ^ 
 
 186
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 The Flat Roofed House. 
 
 IT has been claimed that architecture should express its purpose. 
 Architects are urged to so design as to tell the truth, the whole 
 
 truth, and nothing but the truth. Yet, in spite of all such 
 warnings, the critic is sometimes called upon to expose the tour de 
 force, to tear pretty mask from haggard visage, and such like 
 cruel things. How refreshing, then, to find a material in some of 
 whose uses it is harder to lie than to tell the before-mentioned truth. 
 Such is concrete for roofs. Since all concrete is at one time fluid, 
 and since all fluids seek their o^vn level, a law of physics aids the 
 critic and enforces his teachings of architectural rectitude. 
 
 Since a concrete roof or a tile and concrete roof needs must be 
 nearly flat, the designer cannot lie about it, so he evades the issue. 
 He designs a building fireproof up to the eaves-line, and thus far 
 takes his client carefully along the straight and narrow path with 
 arguments for safety and stability to get him so to build. What 
 then? Behold, he turns about ! 
 
 "My dear client, here is the roof. A building must have a 
 visible roof. The figure must have its hat. The design demands it." 
 
 "But is this also fireproof?" 
 
 "Why, all but its wooden frame." 
 
 "Well, why do not the arguments by which you won me to 
 fireproof construction hold as well for the roof?" asks the tedious 
 client. 
 
 Now, if our architect is honest, he will say that his conception of 
 this particular building requires a picturesque skyline of dark-col- 
 ored slate or rich-colored tile, and that he can't build that kind of a 
 roof fireproof, for a reasonable cost. If he is very frank and honest, 
 he will say that the flat roof is the only inexpensive fireproof roof, 
 
 187
 
 188 THE FLAT-ROOFED HOUSE 
 
 but he doesn't like a flat roof, and whether the roof be inflammable 
 or not he is going to stop his logic at the eaves and get the artistic 
 effect that he desires, defensible or not. The client, not dominated 
 by such artistic dictation, must needs have his faith in fireproofing 
 most rudely shaken when he finds that its very sponsor has not the 
 courage of his structural convictions when it comes to discarding 
 a merely artistic effect. 
 
 Now, if an architect will not design a flat-roof house, he must 
 have a good reason for such refusal. It must be a real reason, 
 because nothing else could force a man into the position of logic- 
 only-to-the-eaves, and I believe that his is an honest prejudice which 
 depends on the fact that as a designer he does not wish to originate 
 in a new material, after having seen the many bastards so conceived. 
 But he has overlooked fair architectural precedent which I am striv- 
 ing by a few illustrations to recall to him. 
 
 The flat roof is almost universal in the commercial buildings 
 we see about us. Irrefutable arguments of cost and building law 
 have pinned the architect to the flat-roofed type, and accepting the 
 conditions, he does creditable work. The other illustrations, chosen 
 at home and abroad, suffer httle from the uneventfulness of their 
 skylines and their precedent is unimpeachable. In no one of them 
 was a flat roof a necessary condition of structure, but a deliberate 
 artistic choice. I haven't tried to show fireproof roofs, but just 
 good architecture. 
 
 It will be remembered that many a building shows a roof in 
 elevation which shows nothing above the cornice when looked at 
 from the ground. If such a building is successful, it would be 
 equally successful if the vanished roof had never been. Many a 
 good designer has been scared away from logic-above-the-eaves by 
 the exotic results produced by incapable men in trying their hands 
 at expressing a new material, but that there is plenty of precedent 
 for serious, scholarly design the illustrations prove. 
 
 Look over the photographs you bought the last time you were 
 abroad, and ponder prayerfully whether artistic requirements above 
 its eaves will wreck the logic of your next fireproof house.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 An Interesting Experiment. 
 
 THE house shown in these pictures is the pioneer in Texture- 
 Tile. Its unusual form is the outcome of an unusual situ- 
 ation. From the side of the hill opposite its approach circles 
 a panoramic view bounded only by the distant horizon, and the 
 wings of the house are folded back so that every room commands it. 
 In so far as this description is concerned, however, it is the structural 
 aspect of the building which will be considered. 
 
 This house was designed originally to be stuccoed, and the 
 cost of the entire structure was twenty cents a cubic foot. A wall 
 of Texture-Tile was substituted at no additional cost over the 
 stuccoed wall. In other words, this contractor estimated Texture- 
 Tile to cost the same as the older construction. 
 
 Great care was taken in the office and all the drawings were 
 laid out to exact tile dimensions, both horizontally and vertically, 
 so that no Texture-Tile should be cut, and the two lowest courses 
 were laid dry all around the building before work was begun, to 
 show how it should work out. This kind of planning resulted in an 
 accurate and rapid piece of work. Three sizes of Texture-Tile 
 were used — the stretcher, the half-stretcher, and the corner block. 
 The last was L-shaped, showing a stretcher length on one side and a 
 half-stretcher on the other, and has since been abandoned in favor 
 of a simple rectangular corner block like a brick. 
 
 The openings in the stretchers are horizontal, but in the corners 
 had to be vertical so as to show no exterior apertures. 
 
 In this instance the Texture-Tile was made from a Jersey 
 clay, the rough surface being obtained by mixing broken tile with 
 it and then shaving the surface with a taut wire before the blocks 
 were put in the kiln. More successful is the use of shales, such as
 
 190 AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT 
 
 those from which the western and Pennsylvania rough brick are 
 made. This tile should find a use in the most dignified building ; and 
 schools, hospitals, hotels and minor public buildings, the stuccoing 
 of which combats a popular prejudice, will be cheaply and effectively 
 executed in Texture- Tile. This material will remove the last objec- 
 tion from the minds of those architects who do not favor the use 
 of hollow terra-cotta tile as a material for the outside walls of 
 buildings. It is also interesting to note that it is always possible 
 to make brick at the same time and from the same clay as Texture- 
 Tile, which allows a unit of new size for use in the design with no 
 unpleasant variation in color or texture. 
 
 As is to be expected in a pioneer, there are defects in this first 
 house. The corner blocks were fired twice because the first firing 
 did not burn them dark enough, but the second firing burned them 
 too dark. Where the piers are narrow these corners nearly meet 
 and make unpleasant stripes. There is a trifle too much variation 
 in the colors of nearby tile which even the rough-surfaced, neutral - 
 colored joint does not entirely overcome. But, all things considered, 
 the result is highly successful for the artistic test is the answer to 
 the question as to whether or not one would stucco the building, and 
 to this, for all who have seen it, the answer of architect and layman 
 alike is an emphatic "no." 
 
 The greatest charm is its color, for it looks like a rare old 
 Oriental rug. The ensemble is solid and dignified and looks like a 
 house there to stay, and there is no possibility of mistaking its real 
 construction. 
 
 The wall has the charm of all things put together by hand, the 
 craftsman look. The variation in thickness of the joint, the surface 
 of the joint itself, the slight variation in courses, all combine in a 
 pleasing result. 
 
 An examination of the photographs will give an idea of the 
 texture of the surface and even its variations in color, for all the 
 principles of texture have been applied to Texture-Tile. In many 
 cases there is a decided change in color in the unit itself, and where 
 it is hard in brick to get sufficient variation of color, it is easy to
 
 Btutgaloiv fur Mr. Hunicc I). Lyon, Biiglciuood, X. J. licdcrlck Squires, Architect. 
 
 THE FIRST BUII-DING OF TEXTURE TILE. 
 
 THE ARTICI'LATIOX OF THE SURFACE CARRIES A GREAT DISTANCE. 
 
 191
 
 A WALL, LIKE A BOKHARA RUG. 
 
 Bniiijalo-iK.' firr Mr. Horace D. Lyon, Englewood, N. J. 
 
 EVEN THE COLOR TEXTURE IS APPARENT. 
 192
 
 Albro & Lin.u .j^. ,, , .t,\.,ii 
 
 WHEX BRICK IS SET WITH ITS BIG SIDE OUT IT GIVES A HAPPIER APPEARANCE 
 THAN- IX AXY OTHER WAY. 
 
 Grosiciior Attcrbury, Architect. 
 
 THERE IS A TEXTURED SURFACE FOR EVERY INCH OF THESE 
 IXTERESTIXG HOUSES. 
 
 193
 
 o 
 
 ^ III 
 
 194
 
 AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT 
 
 195 
 
 get too much in tile. As to the economy of the large unit, there is 
 no chance there for argument, for a mason can lay a Texture-Tile 
 block in the same time it would take him to lay a brick, for the 
 block is small enough to be handled with one hand. The cost of 
 the houses here mentioned, furnish ample proof of the economy of 
 labor and material. 
 
 The detail of the outside of the porch is noteworthy in that the 
 texture of its wall holds its own with the little evergreens — a most 
 
 MtM fLOOt PLAN • 
 PLAN OF HOUSE SHOWN ON PAGE 197. 
 
 velvety kind of foliage. The picture indicates the variation in color 
 of adjoining blocks which could not be more happy if the blocks 
 were carefully selected instead of being used as they happen to come. 
 There is to the pictured wall, a velvet tone from the millions of tiny 
 shades and shadows cast by the roughened faces of the blocks. The 
 wide, uneven joints made with cement and cinders, are in character 
 with the wall itself, and their neutral gray tones down the contrast 
 of the colors.
 
 196 
 
 AN INTERESTING EXPERIMENT 
 
 The picture of the inner porch wall does not do justice to the 
 charm of the reality. It is colored like a Royal Bokhara rug, and 
 its surface varies from that of the rug only in the pattern of the 
 rough, gray mortar joints. 
 
 The working drawings of a Texture- Tile house should show 
 the position of the facing and backing, figured to tile sizes. A set- 
 
 PLAN OF HOUSE SHOWN AT THE TOP OF PAGE 200. 
 
 ting plan should accompany it, showing the exact number of tile 
 and which tile are omitted for door and window openings, them- 
 selves always in tile dimensions. The elevations should show the 
 number of tile in the building, but the setting plan proves of greater 
 service to the builder. 
 
 It is not every experiment that has such a happy ending as this 
 first house of Texture-Tile.
 
 SUCH MASONRY NEEDS LITTLE HELP FROM WOODEN DECORATION. 
 
 House of Mr. R. C. Ga:i b:e at Englewood, N. J. .'\quires & IVendehack, Architects. 
 
 •IHE WALL LOOKS LIKE THE NATIVE ASHLAR. 
 
 197
 
 House of Mr. Henry B. Newhall, Jr., Plainfield, N. J. ' Squires &■ Wendehack, Architects. 
 
 THE WALL. IS OP TEXTURE TILE IN ALL THE WOOD COLORS. 
 
 198
 
 THE PLACE IS CALLED THE "BIRCHES.' 
 
 M.^: ■ ^-V\ .;,;; 
 
 
 LU. 
 
 1^- ^if': " ■. 
 
 ^m. 
 
 
 THE BIG TULIP TREE i.-- AK.vKLY AS CHARACTERISTIC. 
 
 199
 
 Hlouse of Mr. Atzvood, Tcnafly, K. J. Squires & Wendehack, Architects. 
 
 TEXTURE TILE WITH WIDE MORTAR JOINTS. 
 
 H-usc ui Mr. K. B. C. Siintlt, Icnatly, X. J. 
 
 Aymar Embury II, Architect. 
 
 HERE THE RESULT IS VERY LIKE THE LOCAL STONE WHICH IT WOULD HAVE 
 
 BEEX NATURAL TO USE. THIS HOUSE IS REVOLUTIONARY IN MORE 
 
 SENSES THAN ONE. 
 
 200
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The House of Three Inventions. 
 
 THERE are historic houses, houses famed for some association, 
 and houses famous for themselves. My historic house is 
 the one which shows in color in the frontispiece and in 
 photographs around these lines. 
 
 Every architect builds more or less of his life into his houses. 
 Most of his hours have been spent on them, and these hours are 
 gone, lost forever or immortalized. The client can never reahze 
 how much the architect freely gives for which he expects no other 
 reward that the fulfillment of his vision. *'The zeal of thine house 
 hath eaten me up" has sometimes been his true though uncarved 
 epitaph. The zeal of his house devours the days of each sincere 
 designer. The extent to which he puts himself into his work is the 
 true measure of his success. All have limitations, but one produces 
 results nearer to his abihties than another. The real test of making 
 good is the span between abihty and accomplishment. The archi- 
 tect magnifies the width and depth because he confuses abihties with 
 desires, and there is forever a great gulf fixed between artistic 
 aspiration and its accomplishment. 
 
 The Texture-Tile house will always be one of my landmarks, 
 not because it is a good house, for it is full of faults, but because 
 it is honestly ambitious. It is not desirous of looking other than it 
 is, but it is ambitious to exemphfy those principles of construction 
 which it has set up as its ideals. Choosing not the stucco garment 
 of conventional fashion, it has appeared in its own proper person 
 in honest coat of tile. Long before it was built, its dress was 
 designed in the colored drawing which forms the frontispiece of 
 this book. This was the house's first invention. Day by day, the 
 fight was fought to materialize the vision, and although not first 
 
 201
 
 ELEVATION OF THE TEXTURE TILE HOUSE. 
 
 • ¥ M 
 
 FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF TEXTURE TILE HOUSE. 
 
 OR:— 
 
 Bungalow for Mr. Horace D. Lyon, Englewood, N. J. Frederick Squires, Architect 
 
 ELEVATIONS SHOWING ARTICULATIONS OF TEXTURE TILE. 
 
 202
 
 House for Lewis Squires at Netherwood, N. J. Frclcrick Squires. Architect. 
 
 A GRACIOUS INTRODI'CTrOX. 
 
 
 <i r 
 
 -.^^' 
 
 
 ,-Kiir?.^.'KH' 
 
 FRAMED IX OAK. 
 
 203
 
 A SHARP PICTURE LIKE THIS IS THE ACID TEST OF TEXTURE TILE. 
 
 TILE IS THE BIG BROTHER OF THE BRICK. 
 204
 
 THE PORCH AND PLAYGROUXD ARE OX THE SOUTH. 
 
 205
 
 SURFACE TEXTURE IS THE RESULT OF JIILLIOXS OF MINUTE SHADOWS. 
 
 THE BONDED WALL. 
 
 THE HALF STRETCHER. 
 
 THE STRETCHER. NOTE THE 
 ROUGH SURFACE. 
 
 THE CORNER AND JAMB BLOCK. 
 
 206
 
 THE HOUSE OF THREE INVENTIONS 207 
 
 accomplished here, for the quicker moving operation just described 
 carried off the pahii, yet this building, taken in stretch of time, from 
 conception to material completion, was the leader. 
 
 Although following tradition in the gabled roof, it has the 
 courage of less con. irvative convictions in the flat roofs on either 
 side. From its wings to right and left, the inventions of Beveled 
 Block and Sand Mould made their debuts upon the stage of pro- 
 gress. It is my selfish hope that real advances in building may look 
 back on this little house of Texture-Tile as the source of their suc- 
 cess. In its short span a hundred houses, a railroad station and an 
 office building have followed its teaching of externals. The beveled- 
 block and sand-mould ceilings found quick success within its walls, 
 and fireproof roofs were shown in it to be inexpensive and attractive. 
 For these potent reasons it is as yet the farthest milestone along my 
 architectural journey. 
 
 The Texture-Tile house is a monument to the materialization 
 of theories. If a man is convinced that a theory is practicable, it 
 teaches him to put it into practice. The chances are that his theory 
 will work. If I believe that ground cork and cement may be mixed 
 and spread smoothly over fireproof floors, trowelled true and 
 smooth, and that this surface will have the good qualities of cork 
 and the well-known advantages of cement; or if I believe that a 
 hollow-tile may be mat glazed like beautiful ceramic tile, I should 
 put it to the actual test. The chances are that it will succeed from 
 the start, but if it does not work, another trail will open straight from 
 its trial to success. It is sure that if I never try the theory, if I keep 
 it stored in a dusty corner of my mental attic where moth and rust 
 doth corrupt, it will disappear in dust or reappear in the completed 
 work of someone less inert. I will confess that many new things in 
 these pages are not the original thought, but the offspring of that 
 thought. There is an old saying that "God will take care of the 
 babies." He will take even better care of the babies of your brain, 
 but not until you give them birth. 
 
 We live in days of progress. Make of them days of building 
 progress! Two million women vote! The moving picture talks!
 
 208 THE HOUSE OF THREE INVENTIONS 
 
 We telegraph through boundless space I Then shall we use Egyp- 
 tian bricks? Shall we make Roman concrete, without steel? Shall 
 we exhume our house plans from Pompeii? The day and gener- 
 ation cry advance! They crown initiative! And if architecture 
 and building are to reflect the spirit of th se stirring times, let 
 their dead past bury its dead and their pulsing present build monu- 
 ments to progress.
 
 
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