Texas State Association of Architects

THE SOUTHERN CHAPTER, A. I. A. 27

carpenter's trade. 'These men have, in some instances, familiarized themselves with a few plans and specifications prepared by architects, and have finally essayed the practice of architecture; and in most cases the community loses a good builder and gains a person too large in his own estimation for the honorable trade, and yet greatly too small for the profession he calls "Arch e tecturing."

The trade of a builder is a most honorable one, and carries with it great responsibilities; and its emoulments are always satisfactory and often large; and there is always room in any community for a good builder while there should be no room for a pretender.

It would be impossible in this paper to enter into a criticism of the drawings furnished by builders and to follow them up and examine the building erected from them; but suffice it to say, they are in almost every case crude, raw, and undigested, and even to the uneducated eye there is something that stamps them as builders' drawings, and the house erected from them is neither in design a thing of beauty nor in plan a joy forever.

The question is how shall we seek to remedy this evil. The fault lay not at the door of the builder; for he, in making these so-called architectural designs, is but supplying a demand of the public, the masses who are too often ignorant and careless in all matters of architecture, and who, thinking to save the professional fee, will expend often twice the amount of this fee in patching up mistakes in faulty plans and specifications, and inflict on the community a Dolly Varden monstrosity.

We can only hope for an improvement by the gradual education of the public to a higher standard in architecture. That this standard is improving, there is little doubt; and here in the South-land, which we all love so well, and in whose development we are peculiarly interested, there isa growing demand for better things, and the public is discriminating between good and bad architecture. This is the age of travel and observation, and much is learned by comparison. Art is now diffusing itself into everything, and this is seen in the simplest forms of household decoration; and the child of today is surrounded and educated by artistic objects that were not thought of in our boyhood days.

And so it behooves us now, one and all, to strive for this end; and with unceasing study and the careful preparation of every detail of design, both in small as in large buildings, to improve the architecture of the South, and to place it on a level with that of any other part of this land. Nature has been most bountiful and the resources of our country are unlimited; and we desire the traveler in the future to pause and admire and study our architecture as well as our history.

At this point. Mr. W. S. Smith, of Birmingham, offered a resolution looking to the strengthening of this Chapter by further obtaining a charter from the State of Alabama, which elicited considerable discussion and was finally referred to a