VOL. LXIX.- No. 1289.]

ARCHITECTURAL INSTRUC

TION.

BOSTON, MASS.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE

OF TECHNOLOGY.

DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE. Options in Architectural Engineering and Landscape Architecture.

WHITTIER MACHINE CO.,

PASSENGER AND FREIGHT ELEVATORS.

53 STATE STREET

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,

BOSTON.

OOMIS FILTERS. ESTABLISHED 1880. Improved System. Simple and Effective. LOOMIS-MANNING FILTER CO., Main Office: 402 CHESTNUT ST., PHILADELPHIA. Baltimore. Boston. New York.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

LAWRENCE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL.

Twelve Departments of study leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Chemistry, Geology, Biology, An

FLYNT

BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION CO.

GENERAL OFFICE, PALMER, MASS.

We contract to perform all labor and furnish all mate-
rial of the different classes required to build complete
CHURCHES, HOTELS, MILLS, PUBLIC
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Also for the construction of

RAILROADS, DAMS AND BRIDGES.

We solicit correspondence with those wishing to place the construction of any proposed new work under ONE CONTRACT, which shall include all branches connected with the work. To such parties we will furnish satisfactory references from those for whom we have performed similar work.

Washington. The WINSLOW BROS. COMPANY,

"Norman Monuments of Palermo and

Environs."

81 Plates, folio and text. Price $12.00.

AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWs Co.

and General Science.

For Descriptive Pamphlet apply to

J. L. LOVE, Secretary, Cambridge. Mass.
N. S. SHALER, Dean.

NEW YORK, N. Y.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

CHICAGO,

Ornamental Iron and Bronze.

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BOOKS:

A hiatus of ten years occurs between the date of the 21st and 22nd volumes.

AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS Co.

BOOKS:

"Architectural Masterpieces of Belgium and Holland."

96 Plates, quarto. Price $10.00.

AMERICAN ARCHITECT AND BUILDING NEWS Co.

ROBERT C. FISHER & CO.

Successors to Fisher & Bird,

MARBLE AND GRANITE WORKS.

97, 99, 101 and 103 EAST HOUSTON STREET, Established 1830. NEW YORK.

"La Construction Moderne,"

LA journal of whose merits our readers have had opportunity to judge because of our frequent reference to it and our occasional republication of designs that are published in it, is the most complete and most interesting of the French architectural journals.

The fifteenth annual volume is now in course of publication.

Subscription, including postage. 35 francs.

Each weekly issue contains, besides the illustrations included in the text, two full-page plates, which by themselves are worth double the amount of the annual subscription. PRICE OF BACK ANNUAL VOLUMES,

:: 40 Francs. ::

Address for subscriptions and catalogues,

LIBRAIRIE DE LA CONSTRUCTION MODERNE,

13 Rue Bonaparte, Paris, France.

VOL. LXIX.

THE

HERE is one class of document issued by the Government of this country which we treat with scant respect. The announcements of examinations to be held by the United States Civil Service Commission always excite our indignation and are always thrown into the waste-basket without our taking any action on their subject-matter. Not that we do not believe in civil service, for we do heartily; not that we would not aid the Commissioners in procuring a good grade of public servant, for we surely would do so if we could do it without at the same time lessening our self-respect. But it so revolts us that the Government of a great and supposedly civilized country should treat one of its own bureaus in the shabby way in which the Civil Service Commission is treated that we will have no share in it, even if by so doing we prevent some worthy draughtsman from procuring a desirable berth. These announcements are sent out to publishers with an apologetic explanation that they must be published at the expense of the publisher, as the Government is unwilling to provide the Commissioners with an appropriation large enough to pay for the advertising which is legitimately necessary for the performance of its assigned duties. Is not this a nice condition of affairs? One of the official bureaus of a great and wealthy country forced to beg and cringe to the needy publishers of newspapers in order to get before the public announcements which must be made, if the Government's promises in the matter of civil service are in any degree to be made good! To deny publication to these notices is, of course, to hamper the work of the Commissioners, but we greatly prefer to do this than feel that we are joining with the Government in the execution of an action whose shabbiness is only equalled by its pettiness. The Government blandly squanders thousands and millions for all sorts of unworthy objects, and knows that it does so, and so, perhaps, there is nothing surprising in its treatment of a Commission whose purpose and aims are abhorrent to those in whom the power at present vests. It is shameful none the less.

HE

Americar e a reputation

for the country in no more spectacular matter than in the moving of great buildings from place to place, and foreigners seem never weary of expressing their wonderment at and often their entire disbelief in the accounts that are published in the daily papers and technical journals. At home here, we see nothing remarkable in moving a building onto scows and towing them across, say, the bay of San Francisco, or placing one on runners and drawing it across a New York lake, or building special railroad tracks and moving a great hotel several hundred feet back from the encroaching sea by the agency of forty locomotives, as was done in the case of the Hotel Manhattan. Even the migration of the buildings of an entire town on wheels, such as we chronicled a few weeks ago, seems to us merely an amusing, but not a particularly unusual, event. Perhaps the longest journey a building ever took was when the

No. 1289.

old stone jail was moved from this city to San Francisco, but in this case the building was taken down stone by stone and freighted to the Pacific Coast round the Horn. This event was interesting, too, because it was found, we believe, that the stones were joggled together with cannon-balls. The name of the Hotel Pelham, Boston, will always be familiar in the annals of building, as that was the first large masonry building that was moved horizontally from its old to its new foundations, although the vertical jacking-up of masonry buildings was not a novelty. So, too, the fame of the Carnegie Library building, at Pittsburgh, is likely to be similarly remembered, if its projected removal is actually carried out, for it seems hardly likely that an attempt will ever be made to move so large and complicated a building so great a distance under circumstances so little advantageous. In speaking of these audacious undertakings we must not forget that amongst the most dangerous and delicate of them all are the movings of several great mill chimney-stalks, and, perhaps, there should be included in the same category the moving, floating to position, and sinking of the caissons for light-houses, as at Diamond Shoals, Cape Hatteras, and elsewhere. It is in the performance of such feats as these that the architect is the first to appreciate and applaud the skill of the engineer.

T

HE latest to join the ranks of peripatetic buildings is the Hotel Wollaton, Brookline, Mass., a structure that has had a most disastrous career, although a short one - it was begun only in the year 1897,—it having already once been moved back on its lot for a distance of twenty feet owing to a relocation of the street building-line. As the architect of the building is a man far from unfamiliar with the duties involved in the safe erection of a heavy building, it is fair to suppose that he, knowing the site was marsh-land, made all proper soundings and wisely prepared suitable foundations. Indeed, it is supposed that the troubles that overtook the building were in some way a consequence of its first forced removal. Be that as it may, the unusual character of the operation attracted the attention of the public as well as the local building department, and criticism soon became frequent, as structural defects due to uneven settlement began to declare themselves. Finally, the matter caught the attention of the State Inspector of Buildings, with the consequence that the tenants of the building, an apartment-house, were required to vacate it while further attempts were made to restore it to usefulness. These proved fruitless, and after the unfortunate building had consumed over a hundred thousand dollars of the owners' money, it was, after standing deserted for months, abandoned to the mortgagee, who has just sold the property to new owners for about a third of its cost. An attempt is now to be made to move the building, which weighs some forty thousand tons, through a distance of one hundred and thirty odd feet, to a new foundation prepared for it on a somewhat better site. So far as the moving of the building is concerned there are no unusual problems involved except those required in bracing and tieing together a somewhat dislocated structure. The main interest centres on the possibility of preparing a permanently good foundation, and as the new owners have got the property at bargain rates, they have a large margin to consume on moving-operations and the new foundations before their investment passes the fair incomereturning limit, so the structure is likely to have a long and useful career yet.

TH

HE pocket nerve is so very sensitive a measure of what, from a pecuniary point-of-view, it is well to do that insurance men are very keen observers, and as there are nowadays so many different kinds of insurance which each yields deductions of so many varied kinds, a great deal of curious and useful information can be obtained from a careful reading of the insurance journals. Thus, a certain plate-glass insurance company has forbidden the writing of risks on glass in doors, windows or inside partition-sashes which have either been wholly painted over, to secure opacity, or any considerable portion of whose surface is occupied by painted decoration or lettering. The reason for this rule lies in the alleged fact that glass so treated retains heat longer than the plain glass, and so is likely to splinter under the unequal contraction due to a sudden change of temperature. Another curious fact is that burglary insurance, which was introduced here eight years ago