Stone walls give an appearance of enduring solidity that other 
materials only approximate 
A combination of gray shingles with local stone laid in white mortar 
makes a cheap and effective house 
Of What Shall We Build Our Walls? 
SHALL WE USE SHINGLES, CLAPBOARDS, STUCCO, BRICK, CEMENT, STONE 
OR SOME COMBINATION OF THESE —AND WHAT WOULD EACH COST? 
by Russell Fisher 
Photographs by Thomas W. Sears and others 
N OT very many years ago, before the present epoch of easy 
transportation and aggressive invention, the problem of 
selecting a material for the walls of the house bothered home¬ 
builders of that day little or not at all. A man employed the one 
or two materials that were nearest to hand. In the stone dis¬ 
tricts he found all his neighbors’ homes built of the local building 
material; the builders knew how to handle it better than any 
other, even if it were available, so the natural thing to do was 
to follow his neighbors’ examples. In other localities stone was 
a scarce material and wood prevailed; in clay districts brick kilns 
formed the source of material for the walls. Not long ago I was 
driving along a road in central Vermont when, to my astonish¬ 
ment, I noticed that the foundations and underpinnings of houses, 
barns, outbuildings, and even the roadside walls, were built of 
white marble, almost as flawless as the statuary marble of Italy. 
It was the material nearest at hand, to be had from the out¬ 
croppings merely for the gathering, so it had been used. 
Among the old cottages of England this employment of local 
building materials is one of the most 
striking and attractive features of that 
most picturesque architecture. In one 
county the cottages are all of plaster, 
roofed with thatch; again, they are of 
half-timber construction; in another dis¬ 
trict—the Cotswold, for example—stone 
is used, with heavy slates on the roof. 
Here in America, too, we have pro¬ 
gressed far enough to be able to look 
back upon that period when local mate¬ 
rials gave a distinctive character to every 
village and country district. Consider 
the wooden homesteads of New England; 
the stone, plaster and wood in combina¬ 
tion that marked the homes of the Dutch 
settlers in northern New (Jersey, New 
York and Pennsylvania; the stately Georgian mansions of brick 
in Virginia. 
Even to-day there remains here and there a wholesome and 
affectionate regard for the local building traditions. In the 
vicinity of Germantown, for instance, where the local gray, 
mica-specked stone has remained for years the favorite building 
material, the houses have an air of neighborliness and harmony 
that sets the whole community upon a higher plane. 
There is no doubt, whatever, that one of the chief causes of the 
heterogeneous inharmonious character of the bulk of our modern 
American homes is the recently widened choice of building materials 
now open to us. Transportation and modern invention have 
brought too generous a contribution to our doors. We are 
handicapped by an embarrassment of riches. 
In the first place we have wood—shingles, clapboards or siding. 
It has long held an enviable position among the building ma¬ 
terials by reason of its low cost and the facility with which it may 
be erected. The former quality—low cost—is probably soon 
to be won by stucco or by concrete. 
Lumber has more than doubled in price 
during the last decade or so, and so long 
as we continue to burn up untold mil¬ 
lions of it year after year, with little or 
no provision for renewing the supply, 
the price seems likely to rise even more 
speedily in the future. Then, too, in 
building a house we must keep in mind 
the fact that first cost is not the whole 
matter. Wooden houses require paint 
and frequent repairs, to say nothing of 
insurance. It is a question even now, 
taking into account initial cost, main¬ 
tenance, and depreciation, whether in 
many localities the advantages of cost 
are not on the side of stucco on concrete 
Comparative Costs of House Walls per 
Square Foot near New York 
Local stone, furred, lathed and plastered. .$0.41 
Brick, furred, lathed and plastered.'... .56 
Brick, furred, lathed, plastered and rough¬ 
cast .65 
Concrete, furred, lathed, plastered and 
rough-cast.58 
Terra cotta blocks, plastered and rough¬ 
cast .37 
Terra cotta blocks, furred, lathed, plastered 
and rough-cast.38 
Stud wall, lathed, plastered, sheathed and 
shingled.27 
Stud wall, lathed, plastered, sheathed and 
rough-cast.32 
Stud-wall, lathed, plastered, sheathed and 
clapboarded.26 
Stud wall, lathed, plastered, sheathed and 
false half-timbered.37 
Half-timber wall, brick-filled, lathed, plas¬ 
tered and rough-cast.45 
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