Texas State Association of Architects Minutes and Proceedings

measurment of work, or services incidental to arrangement consequent upon the failure of contractors during the performance of the work. When such services become necessary they shall be charged for according to time and trouble involved.

Drawings and Specifications

Drawings and specifications, as instruments of service, are the property of the architect.

The office service shall consist of original and duplicate sets of drawings and specifications. Both originals and duplicates are included as the property of the architect.

The Architectural Association of Missouri also [?] the following resolution, passed by the Wester Association of Architects:

Practice

Resolved. That in his relations to his clients and contractors. The architects should be an impartial arbitration; and that under no circumstances should he act as a special

pleader for either party.

Resolved. That the relations between architect and clients should be confidential and that no architect is worthy of employment who is unworthy of trust.

Resolved. That it is the [?] of this association that it is desirable that the architect in all cases superintend the work designed by him.

Resolved. That in cases where for special reasons, the architect does not superintend the work designed by him, his responsibility ceases with the delivery and acceptance of the plans, unless by expert testimony it can be proven that the plans were defective.

The foregoing resolutions and schedule of charges are adopted by the Texas State Association of Architects

This page is blank

Procedures of the fourth annual meeting of the Texas State Association of Architects held at Waco, Texas

January 15th & 16th 1889

Tuesday Jan 15

The fourth annual meeting of the Texas State Association of Architects was called to order at 2:30 P.M. and the [?] opened by the following address from the President W.C. Dodson

The Address.

Gentlemen of the Texas State Association of Architects:

In its annual course the day returns for us to meet in council in the interest of our profession; and in the beginning of our deliberations I return to you my thanks for the honor conferred in unanimously choosing me to the responsible position of president of our association. I assure you this token of your confidence is appreciated, and ask each of you to assist me in the proper discharge of the duties devolving upon me, and to bear with any mistakes which may occur, and as each of you have deep interess in all that concerns the profession, I ask that all will aid me in the discharge of every duty. to us, this meeting is of improtance, because questions are to come before us of high interest--of the association, coupled with intelligent understanding of our wants by each member, will enable us to so take counsel together and in such a manner that right conclusions will be reached, and an impetus given to the objects and aims of our association, which will terminate in the fruition of our hopes.

Three years have passed since our organization, and during that time much has been accomplished for our own benefit, and much also for the welfare of the people. Our social relations have become more intimate by better acquaintance with each other, and our influence has been increased with the people by educating them to a better apprehension of the duties and vocation of the architect, and of the necessity requiring the services of men skilled in the science and practice of building, and in that wants and needs of the citizen and the community. But while we have made some progress, we have hardly begun the work which lies before us. A vast field is to be traversed, if we accomplish anything worthy of ourselves in the achievement of the objects for which we are associated, and secure the benefit to ourselves to the people and to those who may follow in our footsteps, which we should work to accomplish, and bend all of our energies to attain, so in addressing you today I wish, in a cursory manner, to present the subjects in such a light that each of us mayt be stimulated to more zeal and have increased energies for the before us.

As evidence of what has been done before and since our organization in this state, I ask you to look back a few years and see the difference between private and public buildings, at a date not remote, and the present. The time is not far back in the past when intelligent men--intelligent in most of the affairs of business--were ignorant of the needs of an architect, and still more ignorant of his vocation and his duties. At that time few had thought but one man knew as much about building as another, or if there was any difference it was in favor of those who had never given the subject aq thought outside the primitive frontier dwelling or public building. As enlightened intelligence has increased this idea has been giving away, and as the light has dawned upon them its increasing rays give promise that ere long the old architects who have labored under great difficulties in developing a refined taste and working for the good of others, will reap the reward which their merit deserves. Indeed, so far has education proceeded in this line that we have instances where the architects of the state were not deemed of sufficient capacity to supply a felt want, but others from distant parts were secured to do the things which the advanced ideas of some suggested could not be done by those at home. Gentlement, there are some of you here today who have seen this, and who when you, first came to this state could not find a public building worthy the name nor a dwelling with convenience or construction which would meet the requirements for which it was erected. But see the change today! Asylums, colleges, a university, school buildings, churches, court houses, dwellings

and jails, which for architectural achievement under adverse circumstances, will compare favorably with the same character of buildings to be found throughout or land. In all these we see the fruit of the architect's labors which inspires the hope of further advancement until the profession shall attain the standing for which they are striving. But after all of our toils and work we will have to cease our labor, with our task unfinished, and leave to those who come after us the completion of that which we began.

There are several questions which will come before you, but none of more importance than our proposed bill to regulate the practice of architecture. This is a matter of improtance to every member, and should receive their earnest support, and careful examination that it contains nothing which would not stand confirmed in the courts and receive the approbation of all enlightened and just men. There are persons who make light of it, as there are of the same class who make light of any thing when they do not comprehend its importance and are not enough acquainted with history to know its age and its influence. Many things which were once a neccessity at a given time and place have ceased because the necessity which brought them forth has ceased; but not so with our profession--its importance has increased with the growth of years, until to day it stands as one of the three most prominent in the secular professions practiced among the cultured and refined, and its importance in any given locality is in the exact ratio of the culture and refinement of that locality.

Architecture, or the practice of building, is venerable with age and honorable with the accumulation of yeas, and none need be ashamed of it. It is co-existent with the human race, and in the history of the earliest times we read of human habitations and of the people buildings cities: but it is not to be inferred from this that all understood building any more than all understand building at this day, or that its practioners had the knowledge or scientific exactness of those of succeeding ages, or knew the convenience of the dwelling or public building. Like all other wants coeval with man, it has gradually developed with the wants and tastes and habits of our race as man has increased in knowledge and advanced in science and civilization. In an aboriginal state the wants of the people were few and simple in every department of life, and it is to-day, not progressed beyond the demand of any felt want in any given case, but as it is to-day, the architect, by his genius and knowledge, made the want felt by leading the people in paths that brought them to right ideas, and conducted them to a higher plane. From the first, human necessity required protection from the summer heat and winter's cold; and diseases, wounds and sickness begot the use of medicine, however simple, to allay pain and heal sickness and restore to health; and the wickedness of men produced crime, which gave birth to the necessity for law to protect the innocent and punish the guilty--hence these three avocations--architecture, medicine and law, are the children born of the same parents, the frailities of our nature and the needs of our race, each simple and rude in their beginnings, but keeping pace with man in the increase of his knowledge and the enlargement of his faculties.

But in their advancement they did not keep abreast each with the other. Law nor medicine advanced to lead or to meet the wants of society, as did the other, and neither of them have left monuments to their skill and efficiency, either in material good, or in song or story, that marks the achievements of the architects when the nations were in their infancy. They have in Egypt to compare with her pyramids, or her broken entablatures and fallen columns, broken and fallen but wonderful even in their ruin, and eloquent with the history of the architects, who, in science and knowledge, had outstipt all others. There is no remembrance of either, which has come down the aisles of time, in history or in their technical works, from cultured Greece or classic Rome, which can stand with the genius of those who designed their amphitheatres and their temples; while later yet, St. Peter's was built, before medicine knew the functions of the heart, or had discovered the circulation of the bloodl and St. PAul's had amazed the world with the symmetry of its proportions and the grandeur of its magnitude before Blackstone wrote his commentaries, and law was in a formative state. Since that time, law and medicine have been pushed by means of technical education, which has been provided by universities and other institutions of learning, while architecture has made such progress without these adventitious aids, that the high plane to which it would have attained with them, would be the envy of the others. Thus by means of both a liberal and a technical education the former two are more south after by men of education than the other, and this mistake would not be so often made by men of merit if equal facilities were provided for the technical education of each. I do not see any sound reason why the state should make discriminations in providing facilities for the education of two of these brances and none for the other. It is true, there is not the glamour and show in ours there are in the others, nor is there the room for incapacity, but if the necessity for this chair in our university is rightly apprehended by our law makers they will not be long in making suitable provision for it. I have