Bau

“ If we broadly define civil engineering as the art of construction, then the birth of the art is as old as the emergence of man from savagery. The savage who hollows out a log of wood in order to construct a canoe has taken the first step in the art of shipbuilding; and when he has constructed a hut, however rude, to take the place, as an abode, of the cave hollowed out by nature, he has moved one step nearer to those triumphs of building construction which satisfy man’s necessities, comforts, and æsthetic desires. ”

“ Equally so was it with the art of building—a living allegory in which man imitated in miniature [155] the world-temple, and sought by every device to discover the secret of its stability. Already we have shown how, from earliest times, the simple symbols of the builder became a part of the very life of humanity, giving shape to its thought, its faith, its dream. ”

“ A plot of ground shall be covered; a street shall be built, says the money-making builder; and, when the street is finished, who will know whether this or that particular house is built on gravel, or clay, or mud? Who will take the trouble to ascertain whether the elevated road to his entrance-hall, or the spot on which his house is placed, was made by nature’s laws, or by the scavenger’s cart? As to the drainage of the house, and the supply of water, these are hidden mysteries, with which no dweller in a house, except a master-builder, is expected to trouble himself. ”

“ This same grandeur of idea is seen in the vast masses used in construction. Man did not then regard his work as a piling together of stones, but as the erection of masses that rivalled those of nature. If a cell or chamber was required, each side was formed of one single stone.... If a building was set up, it was an artificial hill in which chambers were carved out after it was piled together.... ”

“ Worth attention, however, and admiration too, is the solidity of construction by which the huge mass of building, doubly heavy from the ponderous machinery it contains, besides its clustering group of out-houses, megass-sheds, tall chimneys, store-places, and the rest, is enabled to support itself upright and unyielding on a soil so marshy and unstable. ”

“ No matter what the weather may be, he is in the mud up to his knees; not a movement on the part of his workmen escapes him; he knows the why and how of everything, and is pushing forward the construction of an enormous mill, a dwelling-house, with garden and buildings, sheds, dams, roads and bridges—in a word, a magnificent establishment. ”

“ Not only setting up houses or edifices, but, as we have said before, preparing the materials—aye, even to the very question of the planting and the culture of the oak and the pine, on which the future carpenter is to exercise his ingenuity. As to the brick-field, the quarry, the limekiln, the mine, the forest—consider what enters into the composition and completion of a building, what machines and implements are employed in working and preparing the materials, and its erection—what in the furnishing and fittings—what in the garden and other appurtenances. ”

“ When you built your house you did not employ a man who had only a vague idea of how it was to be constructed, and what it was to be built of. Before your house was finished you had used lumber as your chief material, but you also employed brick, stone, lime, sand, nails, etc. If we examine a house, we find all these materials. If we wish to build another house, we know we must use them in their proper proportions. ”

“ On tracing out and measuring the plan, you find its arrangement and proportions to be of the most perfect kind; and, though so little comparatively stands in situ, the ground is strewn here and there with masses from the superstructure, from which you may trace out the design of much which has fallen down, while the fences and agricultural buildings around are perfect storehouses of mouldings, capitals, and fragments of tracery or of groining, from which you can study the detail almost as profitably as from a perfect building. ”

“ From the time when men wove together branches of trees or piled up loose stones and mud for shelter to the present day, when they erect huge heaven-soaring structures of steel to house a multitude, the builder has played a most important part in the progress and development of human civilization. ”

“ Now, the history of this concurrence of art with construction is the History of Architecture; and, to an architectural historian who is capable of taking at once an artistic, a philosophical, a political, and a religious view of the facts which he chronicles, nothing can be more interesting than to follow out from the earliest ages to which we can carry back our researches, firstly, the practical changes in building, arising{293} from the exigencies of climate, the stage of civilisation, the traditions of race, and the varied influences of political and religious circumstances ”

“ As the building stands now, a mere shell, bereft of roof and floors, and with all, except its noble arches and cloisters, crumbling gradually to decay, it is a noble and impressive structure, and enough remains to estimate what it must have been when perfect. ”

“ Not only is civil engineering an ancient art, but when the archæologist points to some of the masterpieces of building construction which have been literally hidden from view by the débris of centuries, and describes the old roads which the disintegrating forces of nature, working for centuries, have not been able to destroy, it is natural to assume that in many features the civil engineering of the present day is but a copy of ancient work, or, at least, that there has been comparatively little real progress. ”

“ Much has been written of buildings, their origin, age, and architecture, but of the builders hardly a word—so quickly is the worker forgotten, save as he lives in his work. Though we have no records other than these emblems, it is an obvious inference that there were orders of builders even in those early ages, to whom these symbols were sacred; and this inference is the more plausible when we remember the importance of the builder both to religion and the state. ”

“ Who of you has ever thought of all that goes into the making of a house, a house firm on the earth, and honestly built, with well-plumbed walls, with a good sheltering roof? Think of all that is needed to build a house: well-squared stones, well-baked bricks, sound beams, freshly-burned lime, fine, clean sand, cement that has not lost its strength through age! ”

“ From about these two groups, more or less harmonized by intermediate examples, but always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility—to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. ”

“ Thus we have church building, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify; but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ”

“ So in timber-work we should master the old system of construction, and then think how far it is perfect and where open to improvement, and also how far the old system as applied to oak is suited to our own constructions in fir, and what are the practical variations suggested by the material. ”

“ Building is, in its turn, divided into two parts, of which the first is the construction of fortified towns and of works for general use in public places, and the second is the putting up of structures for private individuals. ”

“ I will begin, then, with architecture, as the most universal and the most necessary and useful to men, and as that for the service and adornment of which the two others exist; and I will expound briefly the varieties of stone, the manners or methods of construction, with their proportions, and how one may recognize buildings that are good and well-conceived. ”

“ To the best of my mature consideration, I have now treated the materials which are necessary in the construction of buildings, the proportionate amount of the elements which are seen to be contained in their natural composition, and the points of excellence and defects of each kind, so that they may be not unknown to those who are engaged in building. ”

“ Houses could be built and cities walled with unexampled facility; to say nothing of the making of a multitude of minor implements and utensils hitherto quite unknown, or at best rare and costly. Nor must we overlook the aesthetic influence of edged implements, with which wood and stone could readily be sculptured when placed in the hands of a race that had long been accustomed to scratch the semblance of living forms on bone or ivory and to fashion crude images of clay. ”

“ When peasants live beneath these roofs of nature's providing, they simply wall up the face and ends to form houses of the cheapest description of construction, with the earth as the floor, and one wall and the roof of living rock, into which they burrow to form cupboards, bedplaces, and cellars. ”

“ THE BUILDERS.
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best ”

“ If, however, solid ground cannot be found, but the place proves to be nothing but a heap of loose earth to the very bottom, or a marsh, then it must be dug up and cleared out and set with piles made of charred alder or olive wood or oak, and these must be driven down by machinery, very closely together like bridge-piles, and the intervals between them filled in with charcoal, and finally the foundations are to be laid on them in the most solid form of construction. ”

“ As the varying undulations of the face of the country tell a plain tale to the geologist, so the shape and materials of human habitations tell their story to the student of architecture and the history of man. ”

“ A hundred years ago, we could not build a steam-engine; we could scarcely build a bridge. Look at the churches built a hundred years ago, and behold the condition of our architecture. A hundred years ago, we had fallen to almost the lowest condition as a nation. ”

“ Public buildings are usually either of pale- yellow brick, or buff-stone from quarries near the city; the factories, which are numerous—supplied by the immense water- power of the falls —are built of the bluish-gray limestone from the bluffs. ”

“ As the nature of architectural plans depends upon the properties of the wood, stone, or iron, as they must correspond with the material to be employed (i.e., the span of a roof, the construction of a bridge depend upon the material in shape and weight) , so the nature of the organic material determines to a large extent the shapes assumed in the course of growth. ”

“ Nature seems to obey thought. The architect desirous of erecting a building, the engineer who wants to change the surface of the ground, either to lower or to raise, to cut down mountains or fill [237] up valleys, does not strike against material weight and material difficulties, as he does here. Art, too, has made the most rapid progress from the beginning. ”

“ But when once the work is above ground, and construction begins, when the structure lifts itself, when it aspires,—the crow line dissolves and melts quite away. This, in a sense, is true of man in any of his operations. ”

“ It is an essential concomitant of this, that architecture not only be limited to the construction of excavations and caves, but attest itself as an inorganic Nature built by human hands on the spot where men have actual need of it, and for a definite purpose will it to be. ”

“ In the general and usual practice of developing land at the present day, the owner or freeholder of the land first consults an architect and states his intentions of building, the size of what he requires, what it is to be used for, if for trade how many hands he intends to employ, and the Procedure for an intended building.sub-buildings and departments, &c., that will be wanted. The architect gathers as much information as he can as to his client’s requirements, and from this information prepares his sketches. ”

“ He must be acquainted with the principles of timbering in trenches, and excavations, shoring, brickwork, fireproof construction, stonework, carpentry and joinery, smiths’ work, plumbing, heating, ventilation, bells, electric and gas lighting, water-supply, drainage, plastering, tiling to internal walls or pavings and roofs, slating of roofs, glazing, painting and decoration. ”

“ That necessity, which must do without the aid of the mechanic or the knowledge of his skill, has developed a principle in construction that has sufficient merit to warrant its use by all who wish to erect in a cheap and substantial manner any class of wooden buildings. ”

“ As settlement progresses, and the prosperity of the inhabitants increases, more substantial building materials are required than the timber which succeeded the wattle-and-dab order of architecture of the early settlers. ”

“ We can now be quite methodical and workman-like in our building, and can learn to use all the parts economically and according to principle. We can discuss ground plans, cellars, foundations, basements, roofs, eaves, chimneys, entrances, and windows, and thus can make almost habitable dwellings and miniature models of larger objects. ”