748 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION^ 1913. 



over four stories high to be constructed fireproof throughout, as do 

 Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Scranton, St. Paul, and St. Louis — and 

 require the three or four stoiy tenements to have brick exterior, 

 stairs, halls, and fire towers — investors in house property will coif- 

 struct houses less than three stories in height because they will be 

 comparatively cheaper in cost per unit of construction. Massa- 

 chusetts towns, which have adopted the permissive tenement-house 

 act for toAvns — Belmont, Arlington, Winthrop, etc. — have elimi- 

 nated the three-story tenement house for the future by requiring that 

 every tenement house three stories in height shall be fireproof 

 throughout. The cities above mentioned are all of them peculiarly 

 free from high tenement houses. 



THE ZONE SYSTEM. 



The measures above indicated would tend to eliminate from your 

 city all new construction of high tenement houses except for apart- 

 ment houses of the well-to-do classes. They would not, however, ab- 

 solutely prevent any man from constructing such apartment houses 

 on any lot in the city or suburb which he might chance to own. It 

 would still be possible for a man to place a high apartment house in 

 the midst of a block of private residences, shutting out light from his 

 neighbors' homes, marring the beauty of their outlook with the ugly 

 back of his building, and bringing into that street a class of popula- 

 tion of different tastes and perhaps of a type from which neighbor- 

 ing parents would wish to protect their children. The city of Cal- 

 gary, in Alberta, attempts to meet this difficulty by providing in its 

 local building code that no owner shall build an apartment house 

 within any city block unless two-thirds of the other owners in the 

 block give their assent. This provision is, however, inequitable, in 

 that it does not give all the persons who are interested in the erection 

 of such apartment house an opportunity to vote. The owner of the 

 property across the street would be equally affected by the building 

 of such apartment house ; so, also, in less degree, would the passerby 

 whose outlook may be marred by its erection. 



To protect a community from the intrusion of undesirable building 

 types, it might be desirable here, as in German cities, to establish a 

 zone system of building. The essential feature of the zone system is 

 that a city is divided into districts in which building types are per- 

 manently fixed. In the heart of the city the highest buildings may be 

 erected (six stories, in the case of Vienna) ; in the next district, near 

 the center of the city, buildings may be erected one story less high 

 and perhaps covering a smaller proportion of their lot. In the third 

 district will be found again a reduced height and a reduced per- 

 centage of lot area to be covered. In outlying districts, contiguous 



