A WEEKLY JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE AND DECORATIVE ART. VOL. LXX. - No. 1293.] ARCHITECTURAL INSTRUC TION. BOSTON, MASS. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1900. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE. as special students. SUMMER COURSES in Elementary Design and Shades and Shadows will begin July 5. Proficiency in these subjects will enable draughtsmen and students from other colleges to enter third year work, and give them an opportunity to complete the professional subjects in two years. For catalogues and information apply to H. W. TYLER, Secretary, Mass. Institute of Technology, Boston, Mass. 1827 & CO. TRADE MARK COATINGS ELEVATOR GATE CO., Furnish either full or half Automatic Gates on To the painter anything may be good varnish that will slick FLYNT 66 15" BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION CO. We contract to perform all labor and furnish all mate- CHURCHES, HOTELS, MILLS, PUBLIC Also for the construction of RAILROADS, DAMS AND BRIDGES. 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Tool Makers Model Makers Designers Manufacturers All say: Engineers "The best thing I've seen." HURD & Co. 570-576 West Broadway, New York Holophane Glass Co. No. 15 East 32nd Street, N. Y. The Genuine all bear our Trefoil Prism Globes and Shades. Illustrating the Yale Pin-Tumbler Mechanism. Trade Mark.* Builders' Hardware embraces door and window trim of all kinds; our line covers every grade and is the largest in the trade. It includes staple goods of all kinds and numerous mechanical novelties and specialties.* The Hardware of Ornament comprises decorative metal-work for doors, windows and cabinets; our collection of designs and patterns of this class is by far the largest in the world, and of the highest technical excellence* *Technical literature on this subject furnished to Architects on request. General Offices: 9, 11 and 13 Murray Street, New York City. "Maximum Light-Complete Diffusion-Minimum Glare" for all kinds of light. Send for catalogue and price lists. It's Out of Sight when the plastering is done, and makes a strong, neat corner that will last while the building stands. WOODS' STEEL For Plaster Walls Have you gotten a sample and booklet? Free on request. GARA, MCGINLEY & CO., Sole Mfrs., PHILADELPHIA, PA. Agents with stock in most of the large cities. VOL. LXX. Copyright, 1900, by the AMERICAN ARCHItect and BUILDING NEWS COMPANY, Boston, Mass. ILLUSTRATIONS: A Competitive Design for the Club-house of the Union Club, New York, N. Y.- Plans and Section of the Same. - House of Frederick S. Coffin, Esq., Brookline, Mass. Selected Design for the Lord Roberts School, Vancouver, B. C. - Pavilion of the Touring Club: Paris Exposition of 1900. Additional: The Condict Building, Bleecker St., New York, N. Y.-Cornice of the same Building. Walnut-St. Front and Entrance-hall: House of Frederick S. Coffin, Esq., Brookline, Mass.-Music-room and Dining-room in the same House. Design for the New Sessions House: Old Bailey, London, Eng. -Public Hall in the same Building COMMUNICATION: A Correction. NOTES AND CLIPPINGS. 1 3 3 No. 1293. eloquent to the average reader, but it makes the architect smile. What does the newspaper editor conceive to be the nature of the legislation which would prevent fires? If he has any notion about it in his head, why cannot he make it public? The architects have been at work for a thousand years in devising forms of construction which would resist the flames, and a draft of a bill which, when passed by a Legislature, would "prevent fires" would be an extremely interesting document to them, as well as to the community in general. Perhaps the newspaper editor would deign to add to the draft of his proposed legislation a suggestion as to the means of enforcing it. He would hardly expect to provide for the patrolling of all the country roads in the United States by an enormous army of inspectors, to see that his law was not disregarded, yet nothing else would give it any efficacy. We have before us the returns of the more important fires in the United States for the month 5 of August, the losses in which foot up somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen million dollars. Of these fires only four, with an aggregate loss of about half a million, were in cities which have anything like real municipal control of building operations. All the others were in country villages or provincial towns, where official inspection is impossible. The heaviest single loss was in the lumber yards at Ashland, Wisconsin, where property to the value of a million and a quarter dollars was destroyed. We quite agree with the newspaper editors that such a loss is deplorable, and that legislation that would "prevent fires" would be an excellent thing; but we await with anxious expectation the results of the labor of their invention on the details of legislation which would prevent the burning of lumber-yards. 4 567 7 7 7 HE heat and dryness of the summer has had, probably, something the unusual extent of reported within the past four months, and great conflagrations caused by riotous laborers seem to have begun to add their contribution to the total. As usual, the newspaper editors and insurance men have begun to discourse upon the matter, to repeat the ancient fallacies and bring forward the same old plans for meeting the evil that have been proposed, without effect, for half a century. It is needless to say that the insurance men think that the first thing to be done is to raise premium-rates. Not one insurance man in a hundred cares how many fires there are, provided the premium rates are high enough to pay the losses, and liberal salaries to the officers of insurance companies in addition. As it is the underwriters who fix the rates, the outsider finds it difficult to understand why they should not themselves apply their panacea; but one of the New York papers affords us a glimpse of the explanation, by observing that "general rate advances are difficult to obtain, and reforms are impossible without concerted action in profitable territories." Obviously, a profitable territory for the underwriter is one in which risks are small, and rates high in proportion to the risk, and the "concerted action which the business needs means, apparently, a combination to raise the rates on solid and well-constructed buildings, owned and occupied by careful and conscientious persons, which are already far higher than they should be, in order to offset the losses of the companies from insuring, in competition with each other, at inadequate premiums, buildings and property owned by reckless and irresponsible persons, who can make money by an occasional conflagration. As, obviously, this manner of carrying an insurance business discourages the careful people, while it favors the reckless ones, the suggestions of the average underwriter in regard to fire-protection, which usually take the form of calls for higher rates, or for additional legislation for the control of building-operations, are of much less value than those of the architects, whom the underwriters affect to despise, but who have no private ends to serve in the expression of their views, and who are not afraid to call attention to the actual ratio between the premiums aud the losses in different classes of buildings. IN N this matter, as in many others, self-enforcing legislation is the only kind which will ever be of any use, and we are U. C. Crosby, President of the New Hampshire Fire Insurglad to see that another distinguished insurance man, Mr. ance Company, has begun to realize the immense influence on building of the European principle of neighborhood liability. "In France," as he says, "the party on whose premises the fire originates is liable for all the damage extending outside of his own property." This is not quite adequately stated, for the law is the same in Italy, Spain and Austria as in France, and the consequence is to be seen in the extreme rarity, even in the rural districts of those countries, of a destructive coneditor, that buildings in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, Lyons, flagration. It is not true, as we are told by one newspaper sity fireproof buildings," or that "their areas and height are or Marseilles, or in any other Continental cities, "are of necesrigidly limited." On the contrary, the art of real fireproof building is little understood or practised on the Continent, and, although limits are placed upon the area and height of structures, they are so liberal that the average height of buildings in York or Boston. Paris and Rome is far greater than the average of those in New The example of the great Printemps department store, which, although all of iron and stone, burned lives without stopping to get their coats; of the Charité Bazaar, so rapidly, some years ago, that the clerks had to run for their which no American inspector of buildings would have permitted to be opened to public use; and, we might add, of the buildings of the present Exposition, which, notwithstanding the admirable provision of danger-exits and extinguishing apparatus, form, with the wooden bridges, trestles, "passerelles and fences among which they are crowded, a group from which the architectural visitor from the United States emerges with thankfulness for his escape, and with a devout hope that the great and splendid fair may be brought to a conclusion without a catastrophe, shows how little scientific fire-prevention is thought of in Europe; and the undoubted truth that "what we should term a conflagration practically never occurs on the Continent, outside of Switzerland and Russia, simply shows householder and tenant to fill-in between floor-joists with that the system of neighborhood liability, by leading every mortar, or even with loam; to make cellar ceilings of brick or tile arches, and to cover kitchen floors with tiles, has effected, what no legislation could accomplish, the separation of blocks and buildings into small isolated risks, fires in which are easily controlled. The same end might be accomplished here by the same means, and there is no reason why they should not be |