INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



cement that comes from Pennsylvania, lumber from 

 Maine, brick from Missouri, and paint manufac- 

 tured in New Jersey. He furnishes his house with 

 articles that come from the four corners of the earth, 

 and heats it with coal that has to be hauled fifteen 

 hundred miles. Distance is no longer a determining 

 factor as to material used in building; and this elimi- 

 nation of space from the problem has played, and is 

 playing, an enormously important part in the selection 

 of building material all over the world. Indeed we 

 shall see a little later that it makes it possible, in many 

 instances, for man to build better buildings, for less 

 money, by using artificial products hauled thousands 

 of miles, than by making use of the most natural and 

 abundant ones furnished by nature close at hand, 

 such as stone. 



Until the closing years of the nineteenth century 

 the materials employed in constructing buildings, and 

 the methods of using them, had changed very little 

 from those of the builders of ancient times. Wood, 

 brick, and stone were in use as far back as we have the 

 records of history; fire " brick" and even a form of 

 cement used to form an "artificial stone" was known 

 to the Greeks and Romans. The dome of the Pan- 

 theon, built two thousand years ago, is of this material, 

 as is also the Aqueduct of Vejus. But in the last 

 two decades of the nineteenth century great strides 

 were made by the modern builders, who were then, 

 for the first time since the beginning of the Christian 

 Era, able to produce something new in the architec- 

 tural world, by the use of steel and cement. The 



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