VOL. LXIX. Copyright, 1900, by the AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS COMPANY, Boston, Mass. -Com Residence for Frank W. Simmons, Esq., Ottumwa, Ia. NOTES AND CLIPPINGS. THE 81 83 85 87 87 No. 1290. We were stantially, as we now remember it, that the opportunities for F this vast amount of Portland cement, building operations probably HE cataclysmal disaster that nearly overwhelmed Galveston last week is a reminder of more things than the uncertainties of daily life. Amongst other things it seems to show that the Weather Bureau officials are not yet quite able to predict the course of a storm nor, perhaps, able to state whether the disturbance will be a cyclone of wide diameter, or a storm cutting a path in a fairly direct line from begin- by engineers in building bridges, water-reservoirs, docks, ning to end, like a hurricane or tornado. It also suggests sewers, tunnels, road-beds and so on; and, as they use the largest strongly the advisability for those who own property in the quantity, it is the engineers' duty to concern themselves most "cyclone belt" of protecting that property by insuring it actively in studying the properties of the several brands and against damage from wind-storms in the same way that they suggesting to the manufacturers ways and means of improving protect themselves from loss by fire. The wisdom of insuring the material in desirable directions. Architects are quite against wind storms is shown by the fact that since 1889 [sic.], willing to accept and act on the deductions which are formuaccording to a statement made by the Continental Fire-insurance lated by the more scientific profession. In performance of this Company, three hundred and sixty-eight tornadoes have occurred necessary, if self-imposed, duty, the American Society of Civil in the United States, inflicting a property-loss of over twenty- Engineers is prosecuting an inquiry into the matter of the three million dollars! These figures, compiled before the occur- proper manipulation of tests of cements, and the committee in rence of this latest storm, are said to be from the official reports charge of the investigation has just published its preliminary of the Government, and they certainly afford cogent reason for a report, a report which is full of interest for many reasons, for large increase in this particular branch of the insurance business, none more, perhaps, than because it presents so many diverse so far as such increase would depend on the desire of prudent views. For this reason we may be thankful that only twentyproperty-holders in the cyclone belt to secure such protection. six out of the hundreds of members of the Society cared to It is not, however, a kind of insurance which we should care make answer to the committee's list of seventy-odd questions. to find any insurance company in which we were interested as One would think the list long enough to bring out all the inforstockholders indulging in. The intelligence and activity of The intelligence and activity of mation desirable, and yet there are two questions which we would man can fight against and often conquer fire, but before the ir-like to have had answered, and these two questions are: What repressible ravages of flood and wind man seems nearly powerless and profitable insurance a chimera. The St. Louis cyclone of a few years ago showed that even the best of modern buildings were not absolutely secure from damage, and who can know that a storm-pressure or a vacuum might not be at some time created that would lift or topple over even the strongest and heaviest of steel-frame structures. It seems a very risky kind of business for the directors of insurance companies to meddle with. At the same time we hope that the new form of insurance may become popular for the reason that it will give the insurance companies added reason for insisting on a better style of building in the properties they insure. It is only now and then that a great storm occurs which few structures could hope to survive, while the greater number of storms, which now cause such damage to property and life through the collapse of flimsy brick and wooden houses, are not powerful enough to injure well-built structures. is the true value of cement tests when regarded from the standpoint of the satisfactory meeting of practical requirements in average building or engineering construction? What becomes of the cement that is rejected at one job, because of failing to satisfy the tests of the engineer in charge? We believe that a true reply to the second question, a reply which could only be furnished by cement dealers under compulsion, shall we say? would go far to provide a true answer to the first. What becomes of all this mass of cement condemned by the voice of the engineering profession? In bulk it amounts to a good deal, and its manufacture has consumed much money. Its bulk is not to be dissipated by a breath of engineering disapproval, and cement dealers are not likely to leave unsold to a second party what a first one would not buy. It may be taken for granted, then, that condemned cement is nevertheless sold and used, by some one, for some purpose. If the use of cement that does not satisfy the appointed tests is so perilous, why do we not have to note the occurrence of a continuous train of constructional disaster in some degree commensurate with the bulk of the rejected cement? Supposedly, of course, rejected cement is sold later as second quality and used only for low-grade work where strength is not very material. Doubtless much of it is so used, but we fancy that not a few not over-scrupulous dealers, knowing how greatly tests depend on the personal equation, do not hesitate to sell the cement rejected by one engineer to his neighbor around the corner, and no very real harm seems to result. We feel that there is a good deal of unnecessary particularity in this matter of tensile tests for cement. every ten. HE answers set down in the committee's report reveal a state of considerable uncertainty, to say the least. To the question, How much cement may properly be accepted on the test of a single sample? even these twenty-six respondents give almost as many answers, and they run from a single barrel to a car-load, though a plurality favor testing one barrel in Chemical and microscopic tests are held by most to be needful only occasionally, in cases of inexplicable failure, or where adulteration is suspected. Crushed quartz is to be preferred to natural sands in testing cement mortars. Answers to questions relating to manipulation, proportions of ingredients, duration, and so on, are very various and often conflicting. In fact, the presence of the personal equation is everywhere conspicuous in the answers, many of them seeming to be based on mere acquired habit, pure and simple. The advisability of making compressive tests is admitted by a majority, it being generally stated that such tests would "correspond more closely to the conditions existing in practice" and that "there is no necessary relation between tensile and compressive strength," Professor J. B. Johnson, one of the most practical of scientific observers, going so far as to declare that there is "no necessity for tensile or cross-breaking tests." The utility of a bending test, in view of the many new uses of concrete, is advocated by seven of the thirteen members who answered the question. Finally, amongst many other interesting matters, the supposedly important question of using cement in low temperatures is treated as if it were not a matter of much consequence after all, the few answers quoted tending to show that the actual damage due to freezing is superficial, and can easily be negatived by ordinary precautions. Issue, while attempting to roof how Brickbuilder, in its last T seems to us that the editor of the Brickbuilder, in its last employs an unskilled architect, makes an unnecessarily ambiguous statement. He declares that property-owners often entertain the idea that they can be held blameless, no matter what accidents befall, if only they have employed an architect of some kind, and says that this view is not sustained by the courts, which have "decided that if an owner is not wise enough to pick out a good adviser, he has no one but himself to blame when the results of the advice are not satisfactory." From this the editor infers that this attitude of the courts will lead owners to be more circumspect in the selection of their architects, and so it would if it were altogether true, and as far as it goes it will be helpful to properly-trained architects. But the statement, as made, equally allows the reader to draw the inference that an owner is wrong in believing his architect can be held responsible for mishaps, and this misstatement is one to carry comfort and rejoicing to the incompetent or fraudulent architect. The tendency of our courts, and, even more, the Canadian courts, is to hold architects to an increasingly strict accountability, and though one of the cases resulting from the Ireland Building disaster, which, we fancy, must be one of the cases the editor had in mind, has been sent back for retrial on the ground that it was doubtful whether the owner had "a right to rely on his architect," it is not yet known how the matter will result, and the nature of the architect's responsibility is, we believe, still undetermined. THE fendant was not qualified by any previous studies, by any men. men. bad architects, for here is the New York Times saying: RANCE, however, seemingly does not have a monopoly of "New York is full of bad architects. To be assured of that, one has only to walk around the block, any old block, any new block. It is also full of, or at least it is fairly supplied with, obscure architects." Measurably this is true, but architects in other towns could hardly expect a metropolitan paper to admit the fact quite so bluntly, though in very truth no one could walk along even one face of a block without noting the work of bad and obscure architects; and, unfortunately, some of the bad architects could not be called presumptuous and notoriously inefficient for the reasons assigned by the French judge. The Times makes its allegation, or confession, while referring to the correspondence now being conducted in the daily papers between the architects of the new City Prison and the defenders of the firm of architects, certainly far from being the peers of Messrs. Withers & Dickson, whom Tammany officials evidently wish to have supplant them. It is Penelope's web over again. Messrs. Withers & Dickson finish one part of the work-in this case it is the boiler-room, just as before it was the substructure for the cells — and then along come the Tammany architects, who pull it down because it is too weak or too small, or too something else, and rebuild it according to their ideas and at large expense to the city, of Such procedure is irritating, certainly, and as the original architects have earned reputations, and reputation is about all an architect finds he has when he has reached the age of Mr. Withers, they naturally object, and, as the matter is more political than professional, it is natural that their protests should get into the newspapers, and so the public hear more than they care to. course. THE HE architects who are not in sympathy with the mosaic decoration with which Sir William Richmond is embellishing the interior of St. Paul's have once more addressed a letter to the Dean, in which they declare unabated interest in the building and reiterate their lack of sympathy with the work that is going on. As amongst the signers of the letter occur the names of Brydon, Belcher, Collcutt, George, Scott, Brooks, Champneys and Stevenson, it seems that this should be a protest that even a stiff-necked ecclesiastic could heed. The letter, after expressing the hope that the recent experi HE employment of competently-trained architects is greatly ments on the dome may be abandoned as being "out of symto be desired, but we think that even they need not seek to pathy with the character of the building and injurious to its have placed upon their shoulders any responsibility that dignity," becomes a protest against a "red and gilded iron can be avoided, and as there are no present means of always railing now being placed upon the main cornice." The protest knowing who is trained and who is not, neither owners nor seems both justifiable and consistent. The purpose of the railjudges should be blamed for holding that there is no greating is to enable tourists and other sight-seers to obtain in safety difference between the good and the bad. In France, where these differences are better understood, and where the accountability of the architect in cases of building-accidents is assessed under very precise and severe rules, the judge in a recent case, where eight lives were lost, used this bitter language in rendering his decision in a suit for damages brought against the owner, the contractor and the architect of the collapsed building; speaking of the architect, he said: "Seeing that this de a closer view of the new decorations, while it is the common contention of the critics of the Richmond decorations that they are too bright, too coarse and garish, and that their only chance of becoming acceptable is through being toned down by time and dirt, or through being seen from the greatest distance the limits of the building allow. The protestants believe that to shorten the distance between the view-point and the decorations is unnecessary and illogical. b EPIDNRUS Fig. 203. Greek Corinthian Angle-volutes: a from Athens; b from Epidaurus. R OMAN art, in adopting the externals of Greek columnar architecture and adapting them to its new requirements, found in the Corinthian column a feature peculiarly suited to the growing love of splendor of the Roman taste. The final form had been given to the type by a Roman architect, Cossutius, in the colossal temple of Zeus, at Athens; and this type, adopted a century later for the rebuilding of the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter at Rome, remained throughout the whole history of Roman architecture the most conspicuous and characteristic element in that art. Endless variations of detail were attempted from time to time, but rarely, if ever, did they depart from the general proportions and typical arrangement of the original model, so far at least as the capital was concerned. Whereas it is hard to find in late Greek architecture two Corinthian capitals from different buildings alike, for instance, in the way in which the corner volutes and the acanthus - leaves under them are treated (the differences being oftentimes fundamental, as instanced by the two capitals shown in Figure 203), there are comparatively few departures in Roman design from the accepted arrangement first perfected in the Temple of Zeus at Athens, and elaborated with consummate skill in the well-known and magnificent capital of the Temple of Castor and Pollux at Rome. Fig. 204. Typical Roman Corinthian Capital, from In this accepted type, shown in Figure 204, a slightly bell-shaped core, supporting a quadrilateral moulded abacus with concave sides, is almost wholly concealed by two encircling rows each of eight acanthus leaves, occupying together two-thirds of the total height of the bell, and by eight pairs of branching scrolls, springing from caulicoli, or acanthus-leaf nests, whose stems are set between each pair of leaves of the upper row. The scrolls meet in pairs of volutes Fig. 206. Console, North Dcor Fig. 207. Typical Greek Acanthus-leaf. of Erechtheum. minor buildings; and the Composite capital was invented, late in the first century, as a variant of the Corinthian, and used chiefly on triumphal arches. But the Corinthian order, as used in Greece, was not a complete order. It had neither a base nor a cornice especially fitted to its slender proportions and rich detail, and these the Romans (or their Greek artists for them) supplied. The Attic base was modified by dividing its scotia into two with a double bead between them; and the Ionic cornice enriched by adding to the denticular bed-mould a This came as near being an outbracket-course under the corona. and-out invention as any in the history of architecture; it was a wholly successful and praiseworthy innovation. The Roman bracket, or modillion, was a combination in a new form of the two elements we are discussing, the scroll and the acanthus-leaf (Fig. 205). The reversed double scroll, or S scroll, gave form to the outline of the bracket, while its under side was covered by a single acanthus-leaf, curled over at the outer end. This conception was not unknown to Greek art, as the celebrated consoles of the north door of the Erechtheum at Athens testify (Fig. 206). But the acanthus plays here only a very subordinate rôle, a small leaf, omitted on the cut, being applied under the console, of which it really forms no part; and neither this nor any other form |