The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1922-02-14
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC J. RAsKIN. Director.
Washington, D. @.

4
( of the factory-made house is distinctly
F., here, at least around New York. There
is tremendous demand for it in all
of the outlying suburbs. in some OF
! which you can now find practically
whole streets that have been shipped
] + o. b. from some factory in the mid
die west. Some of the houses are OF
! the light, portable type, and some are
/ of the cut-and-fitted kind, which are
unpacked and put together ike pieces
! of a jigsaw puzzle, and some look as
| If they had bean transported whole
/ like motor cars, to their destinations.
| By exempting new homes from taxa
1 ton for a period of several years, the
state has managed to give a tremen-
dous impetus to building so that the
| building trade, handicapped by in
ternal dissension, is far behind on its
contracts. Some builders declare that
anyone wanting to build house cost
! ing less than $4,000 cannot even get
1 the foundations dug before next Au-
gust. Hence, people who are impa-
tent for homes are buying them from
| the factories or department stores.
| Not long ago, for instance, New
York business woman, who was ex,
tremely weary of paying what seemed
| to her TO be excessive rent, decloeo
that she wanted her own home.
/ TITS not only the rent" she ex-
| planned in developing her new idea,
/ tits the noise. The only way you can
achieve quiet in New York is to nave
a place of your own on a lot sufficient
! ~ far out of the city and sufficiently
| isolated to avoid near neighbors.
am looking for such a spot, and IN
| tend to find it and be dwelling there
I in great contentment by spring Wheh
! New YORK opens all its windows.
| The real estate agent, who had
! heard of many such ambitious quests
before, shook his head discouraging-
| ". and told the woman that she would
/ have a hard time finding, isolation ac-
companied by modern gas and water
pipes Yet, two weeks later, he was
| willing to acknowledge that the i'm
possible had been accomplished. The
woman had her lonely lot, which she
had bought at bargain price at a
real estate auction. Then, upon the
| she arranged with a large Chicago
mail order house for the purchase OF a
two-story "cut-and-fitted" house con-
| tanning eight rooms.
| A Rival of Aladdin.
! I'm a few weeks" said the real es-
! tate agent, 1.-The house began to ar
rive, coming in pieces, the framing
! and other principal parts first. She
| immediately hired few men to put it
| together, and I know it was not more
| than ten weeks from the time she
| bought the lot and ordered the house
| until she was living in 1t.
| "These new department store houses
are going up on every tract of land
I've sold this year." continued the
agent. There are hundreds of them
under way or completed on Long Is
| land and in Westchester county.
! They're just as attra ctiYe and com
| Portable as those that are built slowly
! by hand, and they are, I believe, the
| greatest remedy that has yet been
found for the housing problem"
Statistics indicate that there are to-
day in this country 1000, 900 families
who hope to own their own homes as
/ soon as building conditions permit.
This is the large surplus of wouldbe
| home -oWners created by the war when
private building operations were en-
tirely at a standstill. To this may be
/ added a normal shortage of 1900, 600
! houses, as we'll as the annual demands
I of our multitude of neWly-Weds, who
row average 1000, 600 couples a year.
! 1t is a situation that clamors for
| speed in the production of houses, and
! the ready-made house appears to have
arrived just at the right moment.
THE building of houses says a
New York engineer, lis one of the
last things to be industrialized, and it
should have been one of the first.
! Home-building today-especially the
| building of small homes-is astonish-
ingly wasteful. We are still using the
same methods employed in the time of
Marcus Aurelius or of Alfred the
Great 1t is less expert than the max
ing of pins.
Quantity Production Aim Now.
Before the introduction of machin-
cry, a single workman, unaided, could
make only a few pins a day, while
now the daily product of workman,
assisted by modern machinery, is 49,
| 000,0 900 pins, complete and stuck in
! paper. The same thing can be done
/ in regard to houses. 1t is being done
From now on, people can buy their
houses in the same department stores
where they buy pins"
| This is not quite the case as yet
\ even in New York where the demand
! for the readymade house is so vigor-
Gus, but you can choose your home
| by mail thru the aid of a catalog.
Most of the real estate agents have
these new house eatalogs, and the
New York public library did have a
large collection which has almost dis
appeared owing to frequent .thefts.
Prices of the houses range usually
! from 81, 500 up, according to the num-
1 Der of rooms and the elaboration of
detail In the light, so-called port
/ able" type there can be obtained any
thing from a two-room shack to a
large Sunday-school building or a
| garage.
The portable structures are par
| ticularly des,rab BILE for use on prop
erty which is tied up by litigation
/ Placed on untransfera BILE lots. they
can be rented at a good profit and
as soon as the property is free. they
can be taken apart and easily re-
moved to another location.
| One of the most interesting of the
new types of factory houses is a solid
poured concrete house, made on the
unit plan, and delivered complete to
| the purchaser by means of a huge,
iten-wheel truck which carries the
house on a structural, steel cradle
and is equipped with hoists and other
machinery for lifting it gently on and
off. 1t is said that two men can
load, deliver and set up such a house
complete within a radius of so miles
of the factory in one day.
One-Piece Concrete Houses.
The architectural features of the
house are even more amazing. The
one-unit, which is the smallest type,
for instance is described as DOsseSS-