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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."