The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-29

rounding the house to see a car firmly anchored to the back of the cabin with the smoke of domestic fires rising from a fiue set rakishlyNin the top
 Aboriginal American Indians had the first apartment houses, the homes of the Pueblos perched high on the shelf of some canyon anticipating New Yorks towering tenements, and the Long House" of the Iroquois antedating Hel- con Hall and other communal houses of today. New York's first model tenement was built on Mott and Elizabethl streets in 1855 and housed hundreds of families. It later became 6 resort for thieves and better and more healthful apartment houses were built up until neal River side drive one finds the largest apart ment house in the world. In contrast to this is the smallest frame house in the world a piano box in which lives ''the hermit of St. Louis county" This box is set In the bushes on the road be- tween Clayton and Brentwood, Mo, and with a small stove just outside the box, and his shotgun to keep him in game, old Franz Mendel leads a care-free life. Once or twice stunning parties with the best intentions have been to see him, and once he was taken to a charitable institution in the hope of teaching him to mend his ways, but the call of the wild was strong and the old piano box too inviting to tempt him and he went back to his own again.
 Tree dwellers helped make history in prehistoric times, and with the national tendency to turn to outdoor life many country dwellers have built summer houses in the works of some giant tree, Miss Helen Gould's being possibly the most notable of these In her leafy study Miss Gould spends much time when at her country home, reading and diotating to her secretaries. A giant cedar stump in Washington has been transformed into a tiny. hospitable dwelling A house in Oregon less primitive than this one was made by it's owner all of one tree. An average fir was cut into lumber and from this he built a one-story cottage 40 feet square, a fence and a walk, and had plenty left to supply firewood for year. Tule, or basket fibre, is a common build ing material of Indians living in the village of Pochanga, less than 100 miles from Los Angeles Light and airy structures. beehive in shape, they oc- cupy the, bed of an old inland sea. There Is Mexican blood in these Indians as is evidenced by their adding adobe to the tule in making some of the huts
 Kiplng, with an Englishman's rever- ence for ancestral halls, once in derision declared that America was only a nation of campers-out. California and Arizona with their colonies of ten houses, their innumerable camps under the stars and the tendency to lead all the rest Of the country in crusade against too much indoor life, are helping to prove the truth of the statement with vigor that re- moves the sting that Kipling intended. These only help to further vary the ar- chitecture of houses that Americans live in and give a novel page or two to the nation's home building records. American architects are said to lead the world in the knowledge of proper heating, light ing and sanitation in buildings, and awith physicians to urge a fresh air gospel along with this, we may later be healthy and wise as well as wealthy.
 Tomorrow: About Notable Americans