Block (architecture)

“ In them, for the most part, each block is a complete structure and not a conglomeration of little buildings of all shapes and sizes, a two-storey house next to a four-storey one, and so on. Thus, among a number of blocks a pleasing harmony in architectural styles is obtained, which is a golden mean between the rigid uniformity of some new cities and the antique irregularity of old ones. ”

“ The blocks, which are shaped at such an angle that they give the most perfect mutual support, are joined to each other by oaken dowels, and laid on a hard concrete foundation, presenting a level surface, over which the impact is so equally divided, that the whole mass resists the pressure on each particular block; and yet, from being formed in panels of about a yard square, they are laid down or lifted up with far greater ease than the causeway. ”

“ The pressed blocks of which they are built show the new freedom conferred by concrete as a building material. Each block has a long right-angle arm extending inward from the middle, and a short arm extending from each end. In laying the blocks in a wall no portion of a block extends through the wall. By leaving the exterior vertical joints open to afford a free circulation of air, no part of a block on one side of the wall touches any block from the opposite side ”

“ The modern blockhouse is a building, sometimes of two storeys, which is loopholed on all sides, and not infrequently, in the case of two-storey blockhouses, provided with a mâchicoulis gallery. Blockhouses are built of wood, brick, stone, corrugated iron or any material available. ”

“ Every child who has ever built with bricks feels the reckless wastefulness of using for steps the bricks so much needed for walls and towers. And who has not experienced the aggravation of finding when his tower is built that he has used up all the long bricks near its foundation and has now none left which are long enough to lay across its summit and form its roof? The slabs of board should be, like the bricks, of seasoned oak, and should be an inch thick. There should be plenty of arches—so as to render possible some sort of resemblance to Norman and classical architecture. ”

“ Overtop rubbed the window, looked out, and carefully surveyed the row from end to end, and back again. "Ah, I have it!" he said. "A real mystery, too. Look at that four-story house near the western end of the block, the one a trifle shabbier than its neighbors. Do you see, in the open window, a man with a pale, intellectual face, gray hair, and arms bare to the elbows, filing away at something held in a vise before him? ”

“ They are the largest blocks known to have been used in actual construction, but are excelled by another block still attached to its bed in the quarries half a mile S.W. This is 68 ft. long by 14 ft. high and weighs about 1500 tons. For long these blocks were supposed, even by European visitors, to be relics of a primeval race of giant builders.
In the town, below the Acropolis, on the S.E. is a small temple of the late imperial age, consisting of a semicircular cella with a peristyle of eight Corinthian columns, supporting a projecting entablature. ”

“ And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinselwindowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you’ve got to do one of two things.... Please mister where’s the door to this building? Round the block? Just round the block ... one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. ”

“ There are little homes toward the end of the street—it is one block long—little, old, two-story, brick dwelling houses, in charmingly bad repair, with fire escapes, little stairs twisting up to the doors and iron railings there, and window-boxes at the windows. ”

“ If the blocks were placed in parallel rows, the first block of a new row would have no support, while by this method each reclines on the previous one. When the house has reached a considerable height the man who cuts the blocks outside must place them upon the last row. The builder supports them with his head and pushes them to their proper places. ”

“ To the front of an old frame building about 16 feet by 28 feet has been built a neat, well lighted concrete block room, about 16 feet by 16 feet, carrying the building to the lot line and affording ample space for the generating set and switchboards, and such desk room as is needed for the ordinary office business of the company. ”

“ There is no doubt that blocks with one-third opening are inconveniently and unnecessarily heavy. Such a block, 32 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 9 inches high, has walls about 3 1/2 inches thick, and weighs 180 pounds. ”

“ ARCH, [1] in building, a constructional arrangement of blocks of any hard material, so disposed on the lines of some curve that they give mutual support one to the other.
The blocks, which are technically known as voussoirs, should be of a wedge shape, the centre or top block (see fig. 1, A) being the keystone A; the lower blocks B B which rest on the supporting pier are the springers, the upper surface of which is called the skewback, C C ”

“ It is really a delightful thing, to a person who has never seen it, to go on to the block and see the skillful manner in which our architects and workmen pick up these big stones and pass them all over the building, and lay them in their place to a hair's breadth. ”

“ It is not so much that the walls are thin, as that they have disappeared: there are no walls—only a series of piers dividing windows, the opening filled with glass being much greater, if measured along a horizontal line running through the windows, than is the extent of the solid masonry. You see at once wherein there is an excuse for the saying “a wall of glass with a roof of stone.” But there is more than this: the primary object of the designer has been to treat his construction as the main inspiration of his design. ”

“ With a yard as a center, each part of the prison surrounding it formed a structural entity, a “block,” separated from the next one by a space about eight feet wide, and extending from the ground floor right up to the glass roof above. The aggregation of blocks was enclosed by the outer walls as the segments of an orange are enclosed by the peel. With the cell windows toward the yards, the doors were in the circumference of the blocks. ”

“ Not until the original block-houses began to be replaced by stone buildings was any thought given to interior convenience, but as soon as it became possible to employ the services of skilled workmen the question of comfort and even elegance began to be more considered. ”

“ The accommodations within the city walls being thus multiplied as a result of the many floors high in the air, the Roman people easily find excellent places in which to live.
18. It has now been explained how limitations of building space necessarily forbid the employment of brick walls within the city. When it becomes necessary to use them outside the city, they should be constructed as follows in order to be perfect and durable. On the top of the wall lay a structure of burnt brick, about a foot and a half in height, under the tiles and projecting like a coping. ”

“ Figure 4 shows a block-plan on a very small scale of the apartment-house, and a block-plan on the same scale of 40 “towers” adjoining each other, and having the same available space as the apartment-house. These plans show how much more land is required to give the same accommodations (minus the conveniences and luxuries of an apartment-house) in the “tower” system than in the “flat.”
The shaded portions in each block-plan represent the aggregate of available room in each case. This shows very strikingly what an enormous proportion of land and material is wasted in the “tower” system. ”

“ A common pin or tack is driven partly into one side of a block, which is connected by a string with a little strip of wood above. Instead of making side-pieces for supports, two chairs can be used, letting the strip rest upon the seat or lower rounds. Each block has the same number upon every side, and is hung so that the bottom is about one-quarter of an inch from the floor. When a marble strikes a block it swings a little and soon is quiet. ”

“ The shaft rose from a sort of plaza, a wide space, rectangular, with avenues dug through the living stone and lined with metal, top and bottom as well as both sides, and with the various compartments that would correspond to our buildings honeycombed out from each avenue, so that there really was no feeling of a city as we know it—only of immense tunnels, intersecting, none of the relief of roofs and chimney pots and varying architectural façades—a triumph of cubism, a nightmare of magnesium that reflected a pale green light from opalescent tubing recessed everywhere into the city's roof. ”

“ The hall and two rooms on each floor form the original house, the central block, while the wings are distinctly of a later period, as is evidenced by the style of the beams and burghas, and by the stucco work. The entire building is raised four feet from the ground, but only the wings are flued—another mark of the later period, and finally the walls of the wings do not 'bond' into those of the central block. ”

“ Because it keeps the eyes so busy, seeing all the people that pass, one block of buildings seems very much like another the first few times the new-comer takes this walk, except, of course, for conspicuous landmarks like that of the new library on the site of the late reservoir or the Arcade on the site of the old Windsor Hotel, with its ghastly memories; but after awhile all the blocks begin to seem very different; not only the one where you saw a boy on a bicycle run down and killed, or where certain well-known people live, but the blocks formerly considered monotonous. ”

“ Our modern architects try to make their rooms mathematically square, a series of brick boxes, one on the other like pigeon-holes in a bureau, with flat ceilings and right angles in the corners, and are said to go through a profound education before they can produce these wonderful specimens of art. If our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed, with polished timber beams in which the eye rested as in looking upwards through a tree. ”

“ With long narrow blocks, as in New York, the development would be more irregular, the tendency being to alternate high and low buildings. Further variations occur where a skyscraper owns one or two lots in an adjoining tract in order to block the erection of another high building, as with the Park Row Realty Building, and the Broad Exchange Building, or the purchase of low buildings across narrow streets to insure light and air, as with some of the life insurance company buildings. ”

“ Blocks with openings equal to only one-third the surface, as required in many city regulations, are heavy to handle, especially for walls 12 inches and more in thickness, and, as the above figures show, are enormously stronger than there is any need of. Blocks with openings of 50 per cent would be far more acceptable to the building trade, and if used in walls not over 44 feet high, with floors and roof calculated as above for 25 feet span, would be loaded only to 56 pounds per square inch of actual surface. ”

“ In the ground plan will be seen a brick, or stone partition—which may extend to such height as may be necessary to contain the bulk of ashes required for storage within it—on one side of the building, to which a door gives access. ”

“ Nicholas at Leicester, which contains horizontal courses of brick at intervals, and arches constructed of brickwork; the curious portion of a wall of similar construction, with remains of brick arches on the one side, which indicate it to have formed part of a building, and not a mere wall as it now appears, at Wroxeter, Salop; and the polygonal tower at Dover Castle, which, notwithstanding an exterior casing of flint, and other alterations effected in the fifteenth century, still retains many visible features of its original construction of tufa bonded with bricks at intervals. ”

“ One architect may plan a house which will be plain to ugliness, the bricks laid in the most severe and commonplace fashion, and the outlines of the design—if design it can be called—devoid of any grace or variety. No projections to break up the dull flatness and give light and shade; no attempt to relieve the unmitigated square, hut-like appearance of the building. Another puts a pointed roof to his house, pierces it with pretty windows that have form without diminishing the light. He runs some courses of brick work round his building laid in diagonal or otherwise diversified lines. ”

“ In spite of such unhappy freaks as that by which the stone basement merges into the brick superstructure with no architectural mark of the transition, and cuts the openings quite at random, or as that by which the brick wall, for a considerable but indefinite extent, is quite promiscuously aspersed with irregular bits of stone, it shows a considerable skill in the placing and detailing of features, and the disposition of the openings gives the principal front a grateful sense of stability and repose. ”

“ I like better the notion of letting the material of which brick walls and partitions are composed form the actual finish inside as well as outside. The floors, too, should be bare, and the beams that support them ought to be visible, and in case of a wooden house, the posts, braces and other timbers should be left in sight when the building is finished. It is a sad pity that modern modes of building, like modern manners and fashions, conceal actual construction and character, making a mask that may hide great excellence or absolute worthlessness. ”