May, 1919 
29 
MY FRIENDS THE BUI LT MORES 
A Recountal Which, Despite the Pictures, Isa Serious 
Exposition of the Building Cost Problem 
GEORGE S. CHAPPELL 
M y friends the 
Builtmores are 
building again! 
There’s news for 
you. Imagine it, at 
this time 1 Isay 
“again” when I 
should say “still”, for 
they are always at it. 
But you probably 
know them; she was 
Sally Post, a sister of 
Newell Post, the arch¬ 
itect, and since she 
married Jack Builtmore, who has been so suc¬ 
cessful, life has been just one house after 
another I 
Of course they began modestly—Jack was 
just getting started—and all they needed was a 
little two bath-power cottage, which they built 
out in Englewood, way back in the days when 
there were general house-workers 1 Sally said 
they had to employ Newell to keep peace in 
the family, as if there were any surer way of 
turning old home-week into a shambles. 
In January, after the cottage' was finished, 
which was three months later than Newell had 
said it would be. Jack lured his architect out 
into the great Jersey silences and put him in 
the northeast guest room. It was a tiny room, 
so small that the heating contractor hadn’t even 
seen it on the plans, and the only place for the 
bed was on an outside wall with the head next 
to one window and the foot—or feet, if you 
were in it—near the other. All the rest of the 
wall space was composed of doors. Sally said 
that it always reminded her of the stage-setting 
for a Palais Royal farce. 
ELL, before Newell was ushered up to 
this grotto they sat downstairs before the 
living room fireplace, which drew backwards 
right into their faces. Jack and Sally sat there 
as if they liked being smoked, until poor Newell 
couldn’t stand it any longer and insisted on 
putting the fire out, after which he craned his 
head into what he called the throat or breast 
or neck or something—anyway, he finally 
pulled out—what do you suppose? A pair of 
overalls! Sally said he looked so funny, with 
tears plowing through the grime on his cheeks 
and a look of magnificent triumph on his face, 
that she and Jack simply sat dovm and cried, 
and Jack made a hideous joke about not sup¬ 
posing that that was the kind of soot that came 
in a chimney. Then they relighted the fire and, 
my dear, it smoked worse than ever! When 
Jack suggested stuffing the overalls back 
Newell said it was 
time for bed. Jack 
told him to be sure to 
ring if the hot water 
wouldn’t run in the 
morning. Needless to 
say, the pipes were 
already frozen and 
there was no bell in 
the room. 
But that was years 
ago and they have all 
gotten bravely over 
the incident. Newell 
has kept on practicing and Jack and Sally 
have kept on building—quite independently, of 
course—and they can even refer laughingly to 
the head-room on the back stairs and things 
of that sort. 
And now, as I say, they are at it again. The 
war held them up for a while, but the day 
after the armistice was signed Jack wired Sally 
to meet him in town and they went into imme¬ 
diate executive session with Jack’s latest archi¬ 
tect, a Mr. Naylor, with whom he had been 
thrown in close contact during his work in 
Washington. 
This Mr. Naylor is really a curiosity. It 
seems he thinks about the cost of things. He 
appears to be a rather 
for-biddingperson,but 
Jack is most enthusi¬ 
astic over him and 
says that the cost of 
all that goes to make 
up a house is so tre¬ 
mendous, the bricks 
and putty and so on, 
that one simply must 
have a practical archi¬ 
tect nowadays. H e 
says that if the war 
hasn’t made architects practical it is good-bye 
to them. Well, Mr. Naylor is certainly all 
that. You know a great many architects make 
me think of the color pink. They have pink 
beards or pink dispositions—temperaments, I 
think they are called. Jack’s last before Mr. 
Naylor was a Mr. Sweet. He almost fainted 
at the mere mention of figures. He said he 
preferred to get what he called an “upset price” 
beyond which the costs couldn't go. So they 
finally let him have his way and the figure 
that was handed in certainly upset everybody. 
I will say, though, that it is hard to see how 
the cost could possibly have gone beyond it. 
M r. NAYLOR, instead of pink, suggests 
blue—the blue of a steel knife or of a 
man who has to shave twice a day. His mouth 
goes straight across and his favorite expression 
is, “Now, let’s get down to brass tacks.” He 
looks as if he might eat them for breakfast. Jack 
says that in the Housing Department at Wash¬ 
ington Mr. Naylor used to sleep with nothing 
over him but a cost-sheet and that he knows 
more about future building prices than anyone 
else in the world. So that when he speaks every¬ 
body listens. We had such an absurd dinner¬ 
party at Sally’s last week. Right in the midst 
of the usual chatter about plays and persons 
and such things Mr. Naylor calmly started a 
lecture. He was sitting next to that pretty 
little Mrs. Tibbets, who had just made Remark 
206 from the Conversational Manual—“O 
yes! I have always said that if I were a man 
I should have been an architect”—and that 
started him off, and the first thing we knew we 
were all listening to what’s what in the build¬ 
ing world and really enjoying it. 
As nearly as I can remember, Mr. Naylor 
said that the average cost of construction to¬ 
day, covering a lot of absurd places, was about 
twenty per cent above that of three years ago. 
Making allowance for the extravagance of 
emergency work and considering the number 
of men returning, he thought that at least half 
of that would be 
eliminated in the next 
six months, leaving 
the net price ten per 
cent above normal. 
“But what of that?” 
he asked us. “People 
must have houses. 
They are going to 
have houses, and those 
who start operations 
{Continued on 
page 76) 
