December 4, 1909.





RECORD  AND   GUIDE





993





plot 65 ft. front by 95 deep, Tbe house is being erected from
plans of Walter B. Chambers, of 35 Wall st, and will contain
duplex apartments and the fine conveniences characteristic of all
of Mr- Taylor's houses. The maximum rent will be about
.^5,000.

A 15-story co-operative apartment house is being put together
at the southea.st corner of Olst st and Park av by the Thomp¬
son Starrett Company, Irom plans by Herbert Lucas, the archi¬
tect who designed a very successful house of that kind which





was recently erected in Gramercy Park. This house on Park
av will also be owned co-operatively,—by a corporation headed
by Howard Mansfleld, of Lord. Day & Lord, President; Henry B-
Platt, of the Fidelity Trust and Deposit Company, Vice-Presi¬
dent; C. Loring Brace, Treasurer. The apartments in this house
will not follow any typical plan, but will be arranged to suit
the owners' needs and will almost invariably be duplex and as
closely resembling a large private house as possible under the
circumstances.





CONCRETE APPLIED TO DWELLING  HOUSE

CONSTRUCTION.





By ROSS F. TUCKER,* M. Am. Soc. C. E.





THE next step in the extension of the use of concrete will
be its adaptation to the construction of dwellings. With tlie
army of block machines that are on the market and the great
quantity of output from these machines, the bulk of which goes
into dwellings, the step above-mentioned has already been in a
manner taken, although in the writer's opinion, the technique of
the method of'manufacture to whicli many block makers are
restricted, renders it difficult to manufacture a wholly satisfac¬
tory product. The percentage of water used In mixing will
not sufflciently lubricate the aggregates to produce the greatest
possible density and strength. All the rammnig and tamping
in the world, all the pressure that can be exerted by hydraulics
or otherwise will not compress a dry, poorly-made concrete into
a dense, water-tight block. The particles of aggregate arch
themselves and cannot be forced to flll the corners and inter¬
stices without sufQcient water to allow the faces and surfaces
of the aggregate to slip on one another.

It is curious that so many people have taken to block-making
as if there were something new about it- Artificial stone was
made thirty years ago, and in a manner similar to the block
machine method of to-day, and the resultant product had many
of the defects of these later productions—a soft, absorbent,
spongy mass, of low compressing strength, requiring all sorts
of treatments to make it waterproof. The whole practice is
wrong, and the only difference between the old method and that
of to-day lies in the numerous mechanical devices, which, with
greater or less ingenuity, reduce the labor and mold cost to a
minimum. All walls buiit of such material must be so con¬
structed as to avoid the dampness that such concrete must neces¬
sarily acquire, and the very softness of the stone precludes any
surface treatment that can be called interesting or satisfying in
any degree.

AU concrete, to be strong and sound, must be wet concrete,
far too wet to be delivered from its mold for considerable
periods of time. The best artificial stone made in this country
to-day is manufactured in Boston by the wet process- The selec¬
tion of aggregates, together with intelligent mixing, secures
results that in the flnished product are astonishing and are not
attained by any process block machine yet devised.

Again, solid wall construction is very limited in its appli¬
cation to dwelling house work. While we have about solved
the problem of the mill and factory btiilding, both structurally
and economically in reinforced concrete, the same cannot be
said at all of dwelling houses. In the mill and factory structure
we have a relatively large amount of concrete as compared
with the lumber and labor involved in tbe making of the forms,
whereas, in the dwelling house, with the cut-up surfaces and
irregular openings, the ratio of the cost of forms to the con¬
crete is out of all proportion and places concrete practically out
of the running in comparison with other material- Moreover,
the internal stresses, particularly the shrinkage of concrete in
mass, are such that the walls arc almost sure to crack. They
must be furred or an air space formed, otherwise they will be
damp and extremely unsatisfactory. In the fall and spring there
is a likelihood of condensation on the inside of an uninsulated,
concrete wall, and, last of all, it is a difficult matter to give a
solid wall any ai-chitectural treatment that can be called satis¬
factory, except at a very considerable expense.

The wooden house is, of course, highly inflammable and
should be only built as a last resort. Such a house covered with
metal lath and furred has some excellent architectural possi¬
bilities, but when well-built, will not be found to be cheaper than
a rough brick wall, for the frame raust be sheathed, papered,
metal furred and lathed and covered with scratch coat of
mortar before it is in condition to receive the stucco. This will
be found to approximate closely the cost of brick work. Much
has been said about the faults of stucco work, but like many
another failure in the use of concrete, they are traceable to the
ignorance of the user rather than to the fault of the material-
Stucco has been greatly abused but it will do good service every
time if properly made and applied. I have placed ornamental
stucco on the exterior of a power house on the St. Lawrence
River, on tile, brick and lath surfaces where it has been subjected

•President, Concrete Association of America, New York, N. Y-
A paper read before the National Association of Ceinent Users.





to a yearly- range of 120 degree temperature for ten years, and
it is as good to-day as when applied, although the plastering
on the inside, made exactly the same way, of tJie same material,
came off in pieces a yard square on the same walls within two
months after it was applied,

HOW STUCCO SHOULD BE MADE.

Stucco should be made of selected material, not of dirty,
clayey bank sand. There are great possibilities in the future
of stucco when properly handled. But for this development
must come a cheap wall. The writer had occasion to make a
study of this problem of a cheap wall construction for stucco
application for the late Stanford White, who. had he lived, would
have taken some steps to show what could be done in decora¬
tive stucco. But all existing methods have been too expensive
and we must devise a cheap dry wall before we can make ma¬
terial progress in dwelling house work-

The nearest approach to the ideal wall for concrete dwelling
houses seems to have been worked out .through the method of
placing wet concrete into steam jacketed molds and rapidly
hardening it by a controllable heat. This method has proven
economical and seems to have solved the problem of handling
wet concrete and producing a dense, strong building unit at a
very low cost. Considerable building has already been done
with these blocks, and the development will be watched with
great interest. With such a wall, the extension and possi¬
bilities of concrete decoration are unlimited and the future will
give us fireproof homes of high structural and architectural
value at low cost- The method is so simple, the requirements
of skilled labor are so greatly reduced, that houses of concrete,
fireproof throughout, may be constructed at a price to compare
favorably with wood, and upon the walls may be produced a
great variety of color and texture effects, in stuccos made of
many materials, enlivened with masses of color in Faience
and Mosaic, that give the architect great opportunity for the
exercise of his artistic abilities- It will create a school of
design adapted to the material and be productive of a style
Of dwelling possessing individuality and character combined
with durability and permanency such as we know little of
thus far in  our suburban architecture.





DISCRETIONARY   POWER   IN   THE   BUILDING
DEPARTMENT.

(Continued from page 990-)

different boroughs, and a Board Of Appeals to whom we can
take our cases when we feel that we have not been accorded a
square deal. We will not tolerate a continuance of the con¬
ditions under which we have suffered during the last four
years by the principles advocated in the article referred to and
the consequences of which were so vividly illustrated in the
conditions made possible by these methods put into effect by
the Tenenient House Department and the Tenement House Com¬
missioner who is and has been for the past four years persona
grata  with   these  principles.                                   j,   H.  JONES.

(Chairman,   Tenement   House   and   Building   Committee   of
the  North Side Board of Trade.)





WINDOW BOXES AND THE LIKE.-It is well known that
the use of window boxes to brighten stern facades is much
more common in Europe than in America, and that the Ger¬
mans especially have carried this form of exterior decoration
to great lengths. A German writer in a German magazine—
"Der Stadtebau"—bas recently given in notes of travel some
interesting examples. He speaks of the Town Hall in Karlsruhe
as the best known instance of the decoration of a public build¬
ing in a large way by this means. Every window of the struc¬
ture has its box and a long box extends across the recessed
balcony of the central pavilion. "I do not know," the writer
says, "whether the same plants are used every year, but this
year it was the new blue petunias whose color and size were
distinctive. There are in each case two boxes, one placed above
the other, the petunias in the upper box falling over the plants
in the lower one, and standing upright are geraniums."