Texas State Association of Architects

thanks be extended to the retiring President, J. J. Kane, for his just and pleasant ruling and also to out retiring secretary for his [?] interest in the welfare of our association. Adopted.

W. H. Tyndall A. O. Watson

On motion of W. C. Dodson, the thanks of the association were unanimously voted to E. J. Heiner for his many and courterous attentions which had contributed so largely to pleasure of visting architects.

On motion of Nat'l Tobey, the convention adjourned to meet at Waco, Texas the third Tuesday in January 1889.

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Schedule of charges and professional practice of architects as usual and proper and endorsed by the Texas State Association of Architects.

For full professional services (including suspension) 5 percent upon the cost of the work except for such work as hereinafter otherwise mentioned.

In case of the abandonment of the work the charge for partial service is as follows:

preliminary studies, one percent, preliminary studies, general drawings and specifications, two and one half percent.

Preliminary studies, general drawings, specifications and details, three and one half percent.

For dwelling or resident buildings and all work costing less than $5000 7 percent, divided as follows: for preliminary studies 1 1/2 percent, for preliminary studies, general drawings. Specifications, 4 percent, for preliminary studies, general drawings, specifications and detail drawings 5 percent

In the event of abandonment or indefinite suspension of work, the architect is entitled to the full percentage for his service and upon every duplicate of his work. He may, howevery, make special agreement in such cases with his client in settlement.

For monumental and decorative work and designs for furniture, a special rate in excess of the above.

For alterations and additions, an additional charge

to be made for surveys and measurements.

An additional charge to be made for alternations or additions in cowtracks or plans, which will be valued in proportion to the additional time and service employed. Necessary traveling expenses to be paid by the client.

Time spent by the architect in visiting, for professional consultation and in accompanying travel whether by day or night will be charged for whether or not anny commission either for office work or supervising work is given. The architect's payments are exclusively due as his work is completed, in order of the above classifications. Until an actual estimate is received the charges are based upon the proposed cost of the works and the payments are received as installment of the entire fee, which is based upon the actual cost.

The arcitect bases his professional charge upon the entire cost (to the owner) of the building when completed in cluding all fixtures necessary to render it fit for occupation and is entitled to additional compensation for

the furniture or other articles designed, elected or purchased by the architect.

If any material or work used in the construcition of the building be already upon the ground or come in possession of the owner without [expense?] to him. The value of said material or work is to be added to the sum actually expended upon the buildings before the architects commission is completed.

Supervision of Works

The supervision or superintendence of an architect (as distinguished from the continuous personal superintendence which may be secured by the employment of a clerk of the works, mean such inspection by the architect or his deputy of a building or other work in process of erection, completion or alteration, as he finds necessary to ascertain whether it is being executed in [conformity?] with his design and specifications, or directions, and to enable him to decide when the successive installments

or payment provided for in the contract or agreement are due or payable. He is to determine in construction emergenices to order necessary changes and to define the true intent and meaning of the drawings and specifications and he has authority to stop the progress of the work and order its removal when not in accordance with them.

Clerk of the works

On buildings where it is deemed necessary to employ a clerk of the works, the remuneration of said clerk is to be paid by the owner or owners, in addition to any commissions or fees due architect. The selection or dismissal of the clerk of the works is to be subject to the approval of the architect.

Extra Services

Consultation fees for professional advice are to be paid in proportion to the importance of the questions involved at the discretion of the architect.

None of the charges above enumerated cover professional or legal services connected with negotiations for [?], disputed [?] walls, right of light.

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

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

not time at the present, nor is it neccessary, to investigate the cause of this discimination which has been made against our profession; it is enough to know it has been done, partly because it has not been represented in the halls of legislation, as the other two have been, and partly from the mistaken idea that it was not of sufficient importance to provide for it. This feeling will give way as the light of truth breaks in upon the minds of the people and they better understand the functions, duties and responsibilities of an architect. This matter is of importance to the profession and is of equal importance to the public, and be inssited on continually, for the public will have to understand that it is for their interest before we can succeed in its attainment.

This subject is intimately blended with the billfor the regulation of the practice of architecture which we are preparing to present to the legislature; it is blended with it, because a profession of sufficient importance to require a license for the protection of the people before it can be practiced should require suitable proficiency to be made in the science and knowledge attaching to that profession, and ample means should be made to attain that proficiency. Do you not bbelieve that if there had been an architectural department in our university, as there is for law and medicine, that the legislature would not have enacted some law, on its own motion, at least similar to the one we are asking for? Because it is an unnatural father will disown his child. Graduation and license are linked together. I do not wish to be understood as advancing the idea that no man should be allowed to practice architecture unless he has gone through the curriculum which would be adopted in an institution of learning before he could be examined and licensed to practice, any more than the student of law or medicine is required to do so, but only that the same opportunities should be the one as is given the other, thus putting each upon an equal footing; but I do insist that men should be eamined and licensed by comptent authority before they are allowed to practice.

Many persons have fallen into the error that architect desire the enactment of a law requiring examination and licensure before practice can be allowed, from a desire of respectability and self interest. This is a mistake, for as a class they have too much self respect to have any desire for factitious respect, and sense enough to wish only to pass in the light of their own merit and indivudality rather than that of a borrowed light which might be given by a recognition from the state, neither is it from a selfish motive that the enactment of this law is desired, for I know of no facts showing them to be more selfish than other classes, but we know enough to justify us in the attempt to get such a law for the protection of the people. Law and medicine have such laws and the man would make himself contemptible who brought such a charge against lawyers or doctors. They advocated such protection, not for themselves only, but for the people, because each in their own profession were better qualified to detect charlatans and impostors than were others, and what the facts are in their case are exactly the facts in our case.

The architects want to be protected! Not at all, any further than the law throws its ægis around every citizen, and around other professions for the protection of the citizen. If any special protection had been necessary for our existence we would have become extinct long ago, for we have received protection than any other class of citizens in any department of business. No, we want no protection, other than the security of our rights; but the people want protection and it is the duty of the state to give it to them. In this as in all other instances where progress has been made in a right line the architect has the task before him of teaching others what is for their goods, and what is necessary for their own safety and comfort, and must live in advance of those around him and occupy a higher plane in technical, scientific and practical information, for he must not keep up with the advancement of the people, but must keep in advance of their advancement -- in his department, a leader able to instruct. Gentlemen, you thus see the work, or at least part of it, which lies before us. Many of us will not live long enough to see the fruits of our labor ripen into the golden harvest, but if we will be true to ourselves and true to the interests of others, those who will come after us will reap what we have sown. Each one is now busy drawing designs and laying out plans for foundations and their superstructures, and are having buildings erected which will stand as monuments to their labor and their worth, but as an association, we are laying a foundation deeper and broader than any we have laid as individuals, and the projecting compass of design will describe a nobler building and fairer in all its proportions -- a monument to the memory and the worth of the Texas Association of Architects. Sheltered within its walls the architects will keep abreast with the wants of this great state in all its improvements, until its sunny hills and umbrageous valleys rejoicing in the handiwork of man, will smile with their tasteful dwellings and gorgeous palaces, the picture of refined intelligence and a scene of beauty.

But decaying elements exist in all materials, which finally terminate in the ruin, and this structure which we raise will be brought to a speedy fall if we do not eliminate everything of a ruinous nature. We cannot expect success if each is trying to work