32 
House & Garden 
Irving J. Gill, Architect 
Irving J. Gill, Architect 
The seeming nudity of the exterior of an unburnable house is only 
an expression of the extreme simplicity of the interior from which 
wood has been eliminated 
Any fear that the unhurnahle house would not be home-like is 
removed by this California residence in which fireproof construc¬ 
tion has been e^nployed 
CONSTRUCTING THE 
UNBURNABLE HOUSE 
BERTHA H. SMITH 
I S it possible and thoroughly practical? 
How is it built, and of what materials? 
What will it cost ? 
Is it adaptable to any style of archi¬ 
tecture and all climates ? 
The unburnable house is 
not only possible and practi¬ 
cal ; it is imminent. 
People are growing weary 
of the fear of fire and the 
fret of fire waste. Makers 
of materials are sensing this 
restlessness, and as soon as 
architects and builders begin 
looking forward, the unburn¬ 
able house will be a fact and 
not a futurist fable. 
Fires make their attack 
from two directions, without 
and within. There have al¬ 
ways been many fire-resisting materials 
used for outer walls—brick, stone, marble, 
terra cotta, tile, concretes of sorts—and 
every year new composition materials offer 
themselves. They are all more commonly 
used in other countries than our own. But 
even where these non-inflammable materials 
are used quite to the exclusion of frame 
walls, so much wood enters 
into the 'construction of 
roofs, floors and interior 
walls and finish that the in¬ 
tegrity of the unburnable 
outer walls is undermined. 
Materials that will not burn 
can be destroyed by fire, and 
even if they do not collapse, 
four roofless walls are not 
much to have left of what 
used to be one’s home. 
It is inside the house, then, 
that the great revolution 
must take place before we 
have the unburnable house. 
The only inflammable feature 
of this room is the mahogany 
door. The concrete floor would 
doubtless resist the fire of burn¬ 
ing carpets or furniture. The 
room loses none of its comfort 
because of this construction 
A7iother type is found in the 
residence of James E. Blythe, 
Esq., at Mason City, Iowa. The 
tvalls are native stone, the roof 
reinforced concrete poured in 
forms. The floors are concrete 
covered with tile 
