The American Architect and Building News,
Entered at the Post-Office at Boston as second-class matter.
October 3, 1891.
Summary:—
The Death of M. Felix Narjoux.— Contractors’ Portraits as Gargoyles. — How Coal-tar should be used on Iron. — A Chinese Putty. — How Diamonds are Artificially Colored. — The Manufacture of French Bank-bills.—The Excursion of the French Archaeological Society.—A Story about the
Late Grand Prize Competition........................................................1
Pulpits.................................................................................• •................................... 3 Architect, Owner & Builder Before the Law.—IX. . . 5 The Italian Specialties in Decoration and the Industrial
Arts. — III..............................................................................................7 Colonial Work at Sackett’s Harbor..............................................................9 Comparative Municipal Building Laws.— III.........................................11 Public Bath-houses at Berlin.............................................................................13 National Aid to Art....................................................................................................14 Illustrations:—
Staircase Hall of the John Hancock Building, Boston, Mass. — The Sackett House and Woolsey House, Sackett’s Harbor, N. Y.— Details of Old Colonial Work, Sackett’s Harbor, N. Y. — New Court-house for Chester County, Pa. — The “Hill- Ton,” Northup Place, Portland, Oregon.— Madison Barracks. Additional: House in Bernheimer Court, Munich, Bavaria.—
A Grille at Nancy, France. — Clustered Column in the Cloister of the Cathedral, Monreale, Sicily. — Drawing
room, 52a Berkeley Square, W., London, Eng. — Hall, 52a Berkeley Square, W., London, Eng. — All Saints’, Leek, Eng.: Painted Decorations in Church. — House at Bed
ford, Eng. — Another View of the Same....................................15
Notes and Clippings.................................................................................................15 Trade Surveys....................................................................................................................16
O
UR French Exchanges announce the death of M. Felix Narjoux, an architect of ability and reputation, particularly
in the design and construction of school-buildings, who was, however, principally known here by his pleasant and interesting hooks, some of which have, we believe, been translated into English. M. Narjoux was fifty-seven years old. Ileliad been for many years one of the architects to the city of Paris, and was a member of the special Commission appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction to study the planning of schools. His conspicuous attainments in these matters gained for him membership in the Legion of Honor, and his most useful books have been on school-building. At the time of his death, he had one or more new books in preparation, and it is to be hoped that they may not be lost to the world.
A NEW idea, which architects will, in some cases, welcome
heartily, is to be derived from the work on the great church of the Sacred Heart, at Montmartre, in Paris, which is now approaching completion. The style of the church, like nearly all modern French churches, is a sort of cold Romanesque, but M. Abadie, or more probably his successors, MM. Garnier and Rauline, have warmed up the cornice by the addition of a number of fierce gargoyles, which, although more Gothic than Romanesque in idea, accord very happily with the the round-arched arcades over which they project. The mere adoption of gargoyles, however, to enliven a Romanesque silhouette, would not be remarkable, if it were not that the architects have had the monsters endowed with faces which are portraits of the principal contractors ; so that, let us say, the plumber, in the guise of a harpy, keeps watph of the faithful who wander beneath ; while a vulture, with the features of the cement-contractor, eyes the pointing falling out of the stonework around him. In some cases, the portrait-gargoyles are furnished with inscriptions, as in the case of one which resembles M. Riffaud, the contractor for the masonry. This bears the sentence, “ Much will be pardoned him, for he has sinned much.” Whether contractors among us would endure such levity on the part of architects is very doubtful, but perhaps a beginning might be made by representing them as angels, to which they could not well object; and a little personality of this sort would not only stimulate the interest of architects and the public in new buildings, but do much to develop the skill of our stone-carvers, which is now, we hope, at its lowest ebb. The only instance that we remember where a portrait of a
living person has been introduced as ornament into a building in this country is in Trinity Church, in Boston, where one of Mr. Richardson’s daughters, then a pretty little girl, was painted as a cherub in a lunette in the chancel; but it was always oue of Mr. Richardson’s favorite ideas to “ add interest ” to buildings in this way, and one cannot help regretting that his own portrait could not have been so preserved.
THE Wiener Bauindustrie-zeitung gives some characteristicallv useful information in regard to coal-tar. This
substance is used abroad, even more than here, as a waterproof and preservative coating for wood, iron, brick, and other materials, but every one does not know how it should be employed. Chemically, crude coal-tar consists of about six parts of naphthalin and liquid hydro-carbons, mixed with three parts tar-asphalt, and one of carbolic acid. The last ingredient is an active acid, and readily corrodes iron, so that iron, either cast or wrought, painted with crude tar, soon rusts under the tar, and, in time, the flakes of oxide scale off, carrying the tar with them. With engineering works, such as iron bridges, this result is anticipated, and provision is made for renewing the coating twice a year or so. By this means, the bridge is kept looking neat, but the iron is found to lose weight by the successive flakings of the surface, and, in course of time, the waste of the metal may become serious. The proper way, therefore, of treating iron with tar is to heat the pieces to be coated, so that the tar boils when it is applied. This boiling drives off the carbolic acid, which is the most volatile portion of the tar, leaving the residue neutral, and so without action on the metal ; and it is found that iron so treated retains its coating for many years unaltered. Where it is inconvenient to heat the iron, the tar may be boiled in the open air, and the carbolic acid will gradually be driven off; but it is a useful precaution, before the operation is comjileted, to make sure of neutralizing the last traces of acid, by adding to the boiling tar two or three per cent of air-slaked lime. If the boiling is continued too long, the tar becomes thick, and it may be necessary to thin it with turpentine before it can be used. When tar is to be applied to wood, the carbolic acid is not only not injurious, but rather beneficial, as it tends to preserve the wood, and the crude tar is better for this purpose than the distilled.
ANOTHER receipt, which may be useful, is borrowed from China. The Chinese, we are told, employ an admirable
putty: which they call schio-liao, and which serves also as a strong cement, suitable for uniting gypsum, marble, porcelain and stone. The schio-liao is made by mixing thoroughly fiftyfour parts, by weight, of pulverized slaked lime, six parts powdered alum and forty parts fresh blood, until they form a paste. When made thinner, the same mixture can be used as a waterproof paint, and is much employed by the Chinese for painting their houses, and for coating the inside of barrels in which oil is to be transported. The use of blood for mixing with cements or limes is not new, and egg albumen, which corresponds closely with the serum of blood, has long been employed for mixing with calcareous cements for mending crockery ; but the addition of a small dose of alum, which would seem to make the putty a selenitic cement with an albuminous component, appears to be new.
I
T will be remembered that, while M. Fremy, the most expert scientific man living in such matters, has been for years trying to make artificial rubies large enough to be used for jewelling watches, rubies of considerable dimensions, exactly resembling the genuine mineral in color, brilliancy and chemical composition, but showing, under the microscope, little bubbles, as if they had been melted, have been sent to the Paris market from Geneva, and sold to dealers as genuine rubies, as indeed, they are in every respect, the only difference being that the Geneva stones have evidently been made artificially, by some process known, probably, only to the manufacturers, instead of being picked laboriously out of the sand in the river-beds of India. It now appears that the same combination of educated ingenuity and desire for gain which has produced salable rubies is devoting itself to experiments, not only on the artificial manufacture of diamonds, but on the artificial improvement of natural stones of defective color. As
Entered at the Post-Office at Boston as second-class matter.
October 3, 1891.
Summary:—
The Death of M. Felix Narjoux.— Contractors’ Portraits as Gargoyles. — How Coal-tar should be used on Iron. — A Chinese Putty. — How Diamonds are Artificially Colored. — The Manufacture of French Bank-bills.—The Excursion of the French Archaeological Society.—A Story about the
Late Grand Prize Competition........................................................1
Pulpits.................................................................................• •................................... 3 Architect, Owner & Builder Before the Law.—IX. . . 5 The Italian Specialties in Decoration and the Industrial
Arts. — III..............................................................................................7 Colonial Work at Sackett’s Harbor..............................................................9 Comparative Municipal Building Laws.— III.........................................11 Public Bath-houses at Berlin.............................................................................13 National Aid to Art....................................................................................................14 Illustrations:—
Staircase Hall of the John Hancock Building, Boston, Mass. — The Sackett House and Woolsey House, Sackett’s Harbor, N. Y.— Details of Old Colonial Work, Sackett’s Harbor, N. Y. — New Court-house for Chester County, Pa. — The “Hill- Ton,” Northup Place, Portland, Oregon.— Madison Barracks. Additional: House in Bernheimer Court, Munich, Bavaria.—
A Grille at Nancy, France. — Clustered Column in the Cloister of the Cathedral, Monreale, Sicily. — Drawing
room, 52a Berkeley Square, W., London, Eng. — Hall, 52a Berkeley Square, W., London, Eng. — All Saints’, Leek, Eng.: Painted Decorations in Church. — House at Bed
ford, Eng. — Another View of the Same....................................15
Notes and Clippings.................................................................................................15 Trade Surveys....................................................................................................................16
O
UR French Exchanges announce the death of M. Felix Narjoux, an architect of ability and reputation, particularly
in the design and construction of school-buildings, who was, however, principally known here by his pleasant and interesting hooks, some of which have, we believe, been translated into English. M. Narjoux was fifty-seven years old. Ileliad been for many years one of the architects to the city of Paris, and was a member of the special Commission appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction to study the planning of schools. His conspicuous attainments in these matters gained for him membership in the Legion of Honor, and his most useful books have been on school-building. At the time of his death, he had one or more new books in preparation, and it is to be hoped that they may not be lost to the world.
A NEW idea, which architects will, in some cases, welcome
heartily, is to be derived from the work on the great church of the Sacred Heart, at Montmartre, in Paris, which is now approaching completion. The style of the church, like nearly all modern French churches, is a sort of cold Romanesque, but M. Abadie, or more probably his successors, MM. Garnier and Rauline, have warmed up the cornice by the addition of a number of fierce gargoyles, which, although more Gothic than Romanesque in idea, accord very happily with the the round-arched arcades over which they project. The mere adoption of gargoyles, however, to enliven a Romanesque silhouette, would not be remarkable, if it were not that the architects have had the monsters endowed with faces which are portraits of the principal contractors ; so that, let us say, the plumber, in the guise of a harpy, keeps watph of the faithful who wander beneath ; while a vulture, with the features of the cement-contractor, eyes the pointing falling out of the stonework around him. In some cases, the portrait-gargoyles are furnished with inscriptions, as in the case of one which resembles M. Riffaud, the contractor for the masonry. This bears the sentence, “ Much will be pardoned him, for he has sinned much.” Whether contractors among us would endure such levity on the part of architects is very doubtful, but perhaps a beginning might be made by representing them as angels, to which they could not well object; and a little personality of this sort would not only stimulate the interest of architects and the public in new buildings, but do much to develop the skill of our stone-carvers, which is now, we hope, at its lowest ebb. The only instance that we remember where a portrait of a
living person has been introduced as ornament into a building in this country is in Trinity Church, in Boston, where one of Mr. Richardson’s daughters, then a pretty little girl, was painted as a cherub in a lunette in the chancel; but it was always oue of Mr. Richardson’s favorite ideas to “ add interest ” to buildings in this way, and one cannot help regretting that his own portrait could not have been so preserved.
THE Wiener Bauindustrie-zeitung gives some characteristicallv useful information in regard to coal-tar. This
substance is used abroad, even more than here, as a waterproof and preservative coating for wood, iron, brick, and other materials, but every one does not know how it should be employed. Chemically, crude coal-tar consists of about six parts of naphthalin and liquid hydro-carbons, mixed with three parts tar-asphalt, and one of carbolic acid. The last ingredient is an active acid, and readily corrodes iron, so that iron, either cast or wrought, painted with crude tar, soon rusts under the tar, and, in time, the flakes of oxide scale off, carrying the tar with them. With engineering works, such as iron bridges, this result is anticipated, and provision is made for renewing the coating twice a year or so. By this means, the bridge is kept looking neat, but the iron is found to lose weight by the successive flakings of the surface, and, in course of time, the waste of the metal may become serious. The proper way, therefore, of treating iron with tar is to heat the pieces to be coated, so that the tar boils when it is applied. This boiling drives off the carbolic acid, which is the most volatile portion of the tar, leaving the residue neutral, and so without action on the metal ; and it is found that iron so treated retains its coating for many years unaltered. Where it is inconvenient to heat the iron, the tar may be boiled in the open air, and the carbolic acid will gradually be driven off; but it is a useful precaution, before the operation is comjileted, to make sure of neutralizing the last traces of acid, by adding to the boiling tar two or three per cent of air-slaked lime. If the boiling is continued too long, the tar becomes thick, and it may be necessary to thin it with turpentine before it can be used. When tar is to be applied to wood, the carbolic acid is not only not injurious, but rather beneficial, as it tends to preserve the wood, and the crude tar is better for this purpose than the distilled.
ANOTHER receipt, which may be useful, is borrowed from China. The Chinese, we are told, employ an admirable
putty: which they call schio-liao, and which serves also as a strong cement, suitable for uniting gypsum, marble, porcelain and stone. The schio-liao is made by mixing thoroughly fiftyfour parts, by weight, of pulverized slaked lime, six parts powdered alum and forty parts fresh blood, until they form a paste. When made thinner, the same mixture can be used as a waterproof paint, and is much employed by the Chinese for painting their houses, and for coating the inside of barrels in which oil is to be transported. The use of blood for mixing with cements or limes is not new, and egg albumen, which corresponds closely with the serum of blood, has long been employed for mixing with calcareous cements for mending crockery ; but the addition of a small dose of alum, which would seem to make the putty a selenitic cement with an albuminous component, appears to be new.
I
T will be remembered that, while M. Fremy, the most expert scientific man living in such matters, has been for years trying to make artificial rubies large enough to be used for jewelling watches, rubies of considerable dimensions, exactly resembling the genuine mineral in color, brilliancy and chemical composition, but showing, under the microscope, little bubbles, as if they had been melted, have been sent to the Paris market from Geneva, and sold to dealers as genuine rubies, as indeed, they are in every respect, the only difference being that the Geneva stones have evidently been made artificially, by some process known, probably, only to the manufacturers, instead of being picked laboriously out of the sand in the river-beds of India. It now appears that the same combination of educated ingenuity and desire for gain which has produced salable rubies is devoting itself to experiments, not only on the artificial manufacture of diamonds, but on the artificial improvement of natural stones of defective color. As