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A FAILING CAPITOL.
IT
is said that the capitol at Topeka, Kan., though yet
incomplete, is in danger of falling down, on account
of the poor
material used in its construction. It has cost
so far $1,250,000. It is built of Kansas
stone, in accord-
ance with the act of the legislature, and this stone has so
little resistance to pressure that many of the blocks in
the base of the dome are cracked and crumbling with the
superincumbent weight. The building has been erected
under the supervision of a Board of Public Works, not
one of whom, it is said, has the slightest knoivledge,
theoretical or practical, of architecture.
a tendency in architecture is toward the colo-
-L nial style,” said an architect. “In the northern
and eastern cities, and in Louisville and Atlanta, many
residences have recently been built after that style. In
ten years
from now every new house in Birmingham will
be so constructed. There is only one house in Birming-
ham at present that is designed after the colonial
style,
and that is the handsome new residence of Mr. Sinnige
on the South Highlands. All persons of good taste ad-
mire it very much. The massive white pillars, the broad
porches, the dormer windows, the small stained glass,
the picturesque gables, the low substantial walls, all
combine to give a home-like appearance and convey the
idea of comfort and safety. If architecture is frozen
music, then this home might fitly be compared to some
such sweet and homely song as “Home, Sweet Home.”
There is another tendency in architecture that is
very
apparent. The substantial and the massive predomi-
nate. Men are now building for all ages, as they did in
the days of Greece and Rome. —Age Herald.
THEY BUILD EACH OTHERS’ HOUSES
Tt is a custom, and a very commendable one, of the
1 Carpenters’ Union of San Francisco to build houses for
one another without charging anything for their labor.
The owner must supply land and material and his house
will be speedily completed. A local
paper
tells how
such a dwelling was recently put up in one day. At
sunrise thirteen members of a carpenter’s union ap-
peared on the ground, bringing their tools, and before
dark they had raised a structure whose exterior at least
was finished. It was not a Queen Anne villa of course,
nor was there much taste of any kind displayed in the
design, but it afforded a comfortable home to the me-
chanic and his family, and the burden of
rent-paying
was no longer to haunt him. “That is the seventh house
built this
way
for members of carpenter’s unions here,”
said one of the workers when they were packing up their
tools.
“My house you see over there on that hill was
the first one. The boys put it up
for me about a
year
ago,”
A GREAT RUIN.
What Is Left of the Magnificent Temple of Baal.
THERE
rises a huge Avail
seventy feet high, inclosing a
square court of Avhich the side is 740 feet long. Part of
the wall, having fallen into ruins, has been rebuilt from
the ancient materials ;
but the Avhole of the north side,
Avith its beautiful pilasters, remains perfect. As the
visitors enter the court they stand still in astonishment
at the extraordinary sight which meets their eyes; for
here, crowded Avithin those four high Avails, is the native
village of Tadmor. It was natural t noughfor the Arabs
to build their mud huts Avithin these ready-made fortifi-
cations, but the impression produced by such a village
in such a place is indescribabty strange.
The temple, so to speak, is eaten out at the core, and
little but the shell remains. But here and there a fluted
Corinthian column or group of columns, with entabla-
ture still perfect, rises in stately grace far over the
wretched huts, the rich, creamy color of the limestone
and the beautiful moldings of the capitals contrasting
with the clear blue of the cloudless sky. The best view
of the whole is to be obtained from the roof of the
naos,
which, once beautiful and adorned with sculpture, is now
all battered and defaced and has been metamorphosed
into a squalid little mosque. To describe the view from
that roof were indeed a hopeless task. High into the
clear blue air and the golden sunshine rise the stately
columns
; crowded and jumbled and heaped together be-
low, untouched by the gladdening sunbeams, unfreshened
by the pure, free air, lies all the squalor and wretched-
ness of an Arab mud-hut village.

Blackwood's Magazine.
THE ADVANTAGES OF ELECTRIC ELEVATORS.
IT
used to be said that steam plants in business build-
ings, hotels, etc, were a necessary evil, and
something
we could not getaway from, but since the wide introduc-
tion of the electric motor a great change has taken place,
and this assertion is no longer true. The evil can be
escaped, and very easily, too.
One of the most important uses to which
power
is
ap-
plied in buildings of the class named is for elevator ser-
vice. We find these valuable conveniences in the most
unpretentious buildings nowadays, and in order to main-
tain them power
is needed. To get the power we must
maintain a h}ffiraulic or steam plant, and to maintain a
steam plant in a city building costs a large sum of
money. The expense is not represented so much in the
cost of fuel for the boilers or the quantity consumed per
hour, but more in the
space necessary
for the
plant.
Space in a city building is valuable; hence the room
taken
up by a steam plant, which consists of boilers, en-
gines and auxiliary apparatus, means so much less in-
come from the premises.
The question of
economy
of
space
is one that has al-
ways perplexed the architect and owners of buildings.
Whether the power used for elevators be hydraulic or
steam, a good deal of valuable room must necessarily
be given over to the driving apparatus, which yields no
visible return. The electric motor and its
application to
elevator service has, however, solved the problem.
Electric elevators are no new thing—in the sense that
they are untried. They have long since passed out of
the experimental stage of their
career,
and are now es-
tablished, in a commercial sense, on a sound foundation.
They are
great economizers of space and are in
every
way as reliable and efficient as steam or hydraulic ele-
vators. The fact that electric elevators are being very
EDITED BY DR. I. S. HOPKINS, PRESIDENT GEORGIA SCHOOL OF
TECHNOLOGY.
247
THE SOUTHERN ARCHITECT.

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