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has been very quickly settled and built up—villages have 
rapidly grown into cities—and brick has been seized upon 
and used chiefly because it is the least expensive material, 
the use of which will comply with the municipal building 
laws. The result is that it has been so extensively used 
for constructing factories and other unsightly buildings, that 
the very mention of a brick house brings to mind some 
hideous structure with which one may be familiar. Still 
another reason is, that until very recently our architects 
have given very little attention to the study of brick build- 
ings. Too often it has been regarded as a cheap substi- 
tute for stone and thus forced into a use for which it is not 
adapted, for we seem to have forgotten that brick has had 
a long and honorable history and possesses an entire school 
of traditions of its own. We may think of the beautifully 
mellow and time-stained brickwork of Italy, France and 
England, and sigh because such effects belong to other coun- 
tries and bygone ages, forgetting that much of the grace 
and beauty of such building may be ours if we will but use 
the materials at hand with which to create it. 
Many of us think that wood is the cheapest of building 
material, but, after all, is it? The initial cost is the least, 
but a frame building begins almost at once to demand re- 
pairs, and these repairs become more and more costly as 
the age of the house increases. It must be painted every 
year or two to keep it in presentable order, and any failure 
to make these repairs promptly results in a rapid deprecia- 
tion in value. A frame house is difficult to heat and to 
heat it at all involves a heavy outlay for fuel, while in 
Summer it is much warmer than a house of brick and con- 
sequently much less comfortable. A frame building is of 
Here we 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
see a careful arrangement of material, combining 
October, 1912 
course highly inflammable and insurance companies have 
learned to their cost, that a frame house once on fire is al- 
most invariably a complete wreck and therefore a loss, and 
their rates for insurance are naturally higher. In a few 
years the added cost of these items may amount to much 
more than the difference between what the house cost and 
what it would have cost had it been built of brick or even 
of stone. 
Then, too, thi: frame house is subject to constant depre- 
ciation in value. \ wooden house ten years’ old generally 
looks its age, anc if it were for sale would not bring any- 
thing like its cost. A brick house, on the contrary, becomes 
more beautiful with the passing years, and therefore in- 
creases in value. One can hardly find a frame house one 
hundred years old, but brick buildings one thousand years’ 
old are numerous, and apparently as strong and serviceable 
as ever. It might be suggested that we are building our 
homes for ourselves, and not for our descendants of one 
hundred or one thousand years hence; but why not build 
the best for ourselves, particularly when the best costs only 
a very little more than something not so good? 
Next to frame, the cheapest material of which to build is 
stucco in some one of its various forms. Stucco, of course, 
is not a new building material, but its adaptation to modern 
country and suburban building is quite recent. The use of 
stucco which just now finds wide acceptance requires that it 
be applied directly to tile or terra cotta blocks or else ap- 
plied to wire lath or metal netting which is stretched upon 
a framework of wood. This method of building is so new 
that there has not yet been time to fully test its efficacy, but 
it may be said that so far the stucco has shown a tendency 
artistically proportioned woodwork and brick construction 
