The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-10-04
rLATS RNTMEREp R0NE.

How IN old Roman would laugh
ii he should suddenly pep in here and
hear us talk about the apartment
house as Il product OF modern civiliza-
tion." said the scholarly appearing
man with glasses as he sQuinted at IL
Very ornate apartment building In
process OF erection.
Get up to date he would proha-
bly, say. Why. We had apartment
houses as early as ass B. c., and big
ones. too. some of them 80 or 20 feet
high. Why don't YOU thing of some
thing new
Those apartment houses were call
ed insulae Gsiandsl, and very APP
propriate name it was. considering
that they housed a floating population.
The tenants had their trouble. too,
just as they have today. for many OF
the insulae We're poorly built and
there were probably kicks about the
poor woodwork the faulty ventilation,
clumsy stairways and the thinness OF
the partitions.
Yes. and there We're the janitors,
too. for the mobiles who owned such
real estate employed agents. called in
su!arii. to care for these buildings and
look after the collection of the rents.
Rents were very high and thrifty souls
would hire a whole apartment and
sublet rooms. just as a thrifty New
York woman who must earn her own
living does today.
There was the same hue and cry
then about the height of the buildings,
and in the time OF Augustus there WIS
law restricting the height of dwell
ing houses to 20 feet: but this law was
evaded with all the impertinence of
of the twentieth century The Offend
ers went unpublished. for there we're
in Rome at the time of Augustus more
than 000.OO0-which was crowding
the city some-and of course the nat
ural tendency was to build up rather
Than out.
AS for skyscrapers. Well. those old
Romans knew something about them
The pediment OF the Temple OF the
Sun rose about 26O feet above the
Campus Martius, in which it was sit
uated. The palace of Septimius Sever
us rose to height of more than 225
feet above the arena OF the Circus
Maximus
Another thing that would make an
old Roman howl with delight is the
| enthusiasm with which we call at
iention to the glorious future in store
Tor concrete. We point out that
houses of great excellence are to be
built of it, that roads are to be paved
with it, that it is to enter widely into
manufacturing processes, that it has
| properties of endurance never before
dreamed of in a building material
An old Roman would probably
shout: The future of concrete?' My
| dear fellow, don't you know that con-
I! crete has glorious past and that it
was the agent that made Rome an
! eternal city, Don't you know that al
though al, ;hc rest o. Rome decayea
and crumbled away its wonderful con-
crete structures remain today as sub
stantial as when they were built?
The stories of the destruction of
temple after temple of magnificent
marbles. brilliant mosaics and massive
foundations always conclude with
only the concrete base remains This
concrete was made by mixing pozzol-
ana. a volcanic dust, with coarser
| pieces intermingled. and lime, made
by burning travertine. This made a
cement of tremendous power, which
would set even under water.
Now, the Roman temples were set
on high foundations of this cement,
called podiums. The podium consisted
of four stone walls forming box into
which concrete was poured even with
the top. These podiums you will see
now in Rome, but nothing but ruins
remain of the magnificent structures
which were set on them"
The scholarly looking man settled
his spectacles little more comforta-
| bly, on his nose.
There is nothing which will so take
the wind out of the sails of our boosted
uptodateness as little contemplation
| of ancient Rome he said as he
lodged into his own insula.