Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1935-10-12
BOOM Of MODERN
BUILDING IS SEEN
Magazine Author Claims
Construction Era of EOS
to Be NuIIified.

very Few houses such as were
erected during the 2os will be put up
during the building boom which
should get started next year." Fortune
Magazine predicts in its October issue,
which appears today.
THE keynote of the new building
boom will be modernism, featuring
completely new conception of the
functions to which building can be
put. And houses in the new style will
cost 80 per cent less than COM
parable house in the tradition style"
Fortune bases its forecast in part
upon a detailed survey of opinion in
all parts of the country and among all
economic levels, which indicates that
over 40 per cent of the people, al
though they are living in traditional
houses, would prefer to have COM
pletely different type of dwelling for
themselves and their families Sew
eral hundred field workers, sent out
by the magazine. displayed side by
side pictures of modern" and tradi-
tional Colonial homes of equal cost to
gather votes which lead to discovery.
The vote was considered all the more
remarkable because in many areas OF
the country and among many classes
of people interviewed there was no
realization that building revolu-
ton" was already gathering force.
Modern Still Lacking.
Despite much talk of modern archi-
lecture ara the general belief that
skyscrapers represent modernism, the
real modern architecture has yet to
come. says Fortune. At present there
are no more than so residences in the
United States which show an honest
acceptance of the so-called 'func-
tional motif" while throughout the
whole country there are only two Of
flee buildings and less than a dozen
theaters which can be called truly
modern.
The anticipated boom, according to
Fortune, will not have the speculative
basis of the 1923 boom. but will be
founded instead upon the desire of
the United States home owner to take
advantage of a new standard of COM
fort and convenience in living. at
cost which has hitherto been pro-
hibitive, but which is now coming
closer and closer within reach of all.
The magazine sees in such recent re-
flnements as the modern oil burner,
the modern refrigerator and the mod
ern stove the true elements OF the
new building revolution and points
out that in the last boom these ap-
planes were crude by comparison
with their present-day reinements.
Along about 1928 there was
building boom in the United States"
Fortune says. Citizens still alive re-
member quite clearly the sound of
the riveting machines and the odor of
wet cement. That building boom
fourished to produce $13 daily in the
pants pockets of the Nations carpen-
tiers, silk stockings on the knees of its
masons' wives, automobiles 10 deep
in the vacant lots behind the con-
struction jobs and an all-time record
in architectural ineptitude and unin-
ventiveness. Generations will pass
before the fashionable suburbs and
the real estate developments of Amer
lea are cleared of the false, faxed,
footing inconvenience erected to the
glory of Spain or the glory of France
in the decade Of the 20s.
Inventiveness to Predominant.
"Along about the year 1886 there will
sprout in the United States a second
building boom. 1t will probably be
less of a boom than its predecessor
Its mother will be necessity, not the
stock market. Its wage scales may be
lower, its silk stockings skimpier and
its automobiles more battered than the
wage scales, silk stockings and auto
mobiles of the decade before. But its
architecture, by and large and with all
proper allowance for the intransigence
of occasional millionaireS and occa-
sional real estate developers, will not
only surpaSs, but will entirely eclipse,
cancel, repeal and nullify the archi-
lecture of the school of Coolidge For
the characteristic architecture of the
boom of the 30s (and the 40s) will be
inventive, not initiative; rational, not
faxed. In other words, it will be
modern"
AS for the actual buildings which
now give modernism form, they are
''far and few enough" The Eastern
States have bare dozen-no more
than four in the entire city of New
York. The West Coast has more, but
the greatest concentration Gin the Los
Angeles area) is barely II. Only four
are big enough to impress the impress
sionable by their size. They include
Edward D. Stones residence for Rich
ard Mandel IN Mount kisco, N. Y, and
George Howe's residence for William
g. WaSSerman in Chestnut Hill, Pa.
The rest are middle sized or definitely
small. Frank Lloyd Wright, the Wis
consin architect, is responsible for
about score of the so and 1.-The only
other names to appear with any fire.
quency are those of the Viennese,
Richard J. Neutra, and the Swiss, Will
liam Lescaze"
There are only two Office buildings
In the country, Fortune says, which
are truly modern. These are George
Howes and William Lescaze's Phila-