Middletown transcript., 1904-02-13
"r1RE PROOF, CONSTRUCTION

found Structed or stone ana Orlck
walls, with struction with which
all our cities were early full and
at first wholly built of. The Bos-
ton fires of 1872 and 1889 tested
and again found wanting the
more solid edifices of a later gen.
Grafton built of stone and brick
walls, iron floor, beams and pill
lars and mansard roofs, often of
timber, and always possessing
much timber, even when the
framing was iron.
The Baltimore fire has again
tested and found inadequate the
| the construction Of the past de-
cade and of to-day in which steel
has taken the place of iron, and
in the two or three "skyscrapers"
gutted, rather than destroyed, q
steel truss is substituted for the
old wall, beam brick arch flooring
of an earlier period.
The lesson of all this is not
that ''fireproof" buildings are
not fireproof; but instead that
every building is a compromise
in construction, fittings and site,
and is always, if made for mod
ern use, not absolutely, but rela-
lively fireproof. When Roman
architect built an edifice Of brick
walls, faced with stone, turned
it's floors of low tile and cement
arches and covered his solid
doors and shutters with bronze
plates, he had built an absolute
fireproof building.
No modern man could or would
live in such building. He in
sists on and in most buildings
has a wooden floor and wooden
treads covering the cement, on
wooden doors and window cas-
ings, on host of partitions with
base boards and other wooden
filings, on furniture, also wood,
and on floor coverings, like lin
oleum, soft to the foot and easily
cleaned, but infiammable.
Collectively, in a great build
ing, in a store or in any business
block, these make the materials
of a fire. They turn the "fire-
proof" shell into a vast stove,
liable at any moment to be lit
from without. If the structure
is, like the "skyscraper," simply
a vast basket-like truss, set on
end, carrying the very weight of
the stone walls which seem to
support it, and only inclose and
decorate it, then when this in
fammable material burns like the
wood in a stove, the structure it.
self will be left stripped but
standing, as are those shown in
our panorama of Baltimore.
But with the older buildings,
constructed of stone and brick
walls, with floor beams and sup
porting pillars, the heat of a fire
instantly crumbles, destroys and
lays low. The experiments made
in Berlin in 1893, in 1896 by a
group of socities in New York in
terested in fire prevention, and
in 1899 by the British Fire Pre-
vention Committee, all united in
showing the amazing rapidity
with which iron and steel pillars
and beams bend and buckle if
brought to a red heat by very
moderate fire. Any office build
ing of the usual construction in |
use up to the "skyscraper" per.
iod has, even if "freproof,"
enough infammable material in !
it, if it's contents once take fire,
to twist its beams, warp it's pill
lars and bring it down a helpless
mass, of blazing doors. windows,
partitions, floors, fittings and |
furniture,
II the modern "business Sec
ton" were, however, built of |
even these two classes alone, its |
risk would be small and our fire
loss would not be 100000, 900 a
year, or four times the loss now
driving US aghast A block in a |
"business section" has many
mere timber, lath and pine floor
ed buildings Of from twenty-five
to sixty years old which are mere
tinder and bonfres. When a
great fire begins as these burn
they apply a fire which brings
down the larger and better build
ings, if OF iron, beams and pillar
construction, or gut with fire the
wood filings of a "skyscraper."
What we Americans have real
ly done is to build relatively fire.
proof buildings full of wooden
conveniencies, from a chair to a
floor, in among older bonfire
buildings, certain, if a big fire is