80 
House &° Garden 
“A QUARTER OF AN INCH EQUALS ONE FOOT” 
Herei?i Are Explained the Mysteries of Scale Drawifigs 
For Those Who Would Attempt to Make or Read Them 
ALWYN T. COVELL 
O FTEN all has gone happily enough on 
the projected house until the first look 
at the plans, on each of which appears the 
legend, modestly lettered in one corner 
“X Inch = One Foot”, or A" = , the 
latter employing the architect’s and build¬ 
er’s symbol of (') instead of the word, 
“foot”, or “feet”, and (”) in place of the 
word “inches”. 
“What does he mean, ‘a quarter of an 
inch equals a foot?’ A quarter of a dollar 
. doesn’t equal a dollar”. 
The whole thing is simplified if you read 
it “represents” instead of “equals”. 
On the architect’s drawings, that is on the 
scale drawings of plans and elevations, 
every quarter of an inch represents a foot on 
the actual house. The adoption of a quarter 
of an inch to represent a foot, instead of a 
half an inch, is simply a standardized form 
of procedure, a convention, used by all 
architects because its customary use makes 
it easier for contractors and the men on the 
job to “read” the plans. 
This “quarter of an inch” which repre¬ 
sents a foot is the “scale” at which the 
drawing is made. Other scales are used for 
other drawings, but the working plans from 
which the blue prints are made, are always 
“X iiich scale drawings”. 
What happens if you try to make a set 
of plans, even roughly, without making 
them “ to scale ”? Everything is guess work. 
The hallway which you mean to be 4' wide 
is nearer 6', compared with some other 
guessed-at dimension, and a room which you 
mean to make 14' x 20' may be nearer 
10' X 18'. Nothing will work out on such a 
guess-work plan even closely enough to 
determine the possibilities not to speak of 
the actualities of the proposed house. The 
amateur planner, too, has the utmost diffi¬ 
culty in getting the upper floor plans to 
correspond with the first floor plan. 
It is a simple enough matter to make a 
set of preliminary plans to scale, and 
simpler still to read scale plans. But no 
one should make the mistake of thinking 
that “ scale ” is all that’s needed on a set 
of actual working drawings from which a 
{Continued on page 156 ) 
WAs/t/e. 
This is an exact reproduction of a quarter-inch scale drawing, showing the side elevation of a simple 
house. By placing an ordinary ruler on any of the indicated dimensions it will be seen that one quarter 
of an inch on this drawing is equal to a foot in the finished building 
