An objection sometimes heard regarding the fireproof house is that it is too plain to be attractive. The Holden house, at South Orange, 
N. J.—Hollingsworth & Bragdon, architects, shows that this is by no means a necessary fault 
The Fireproof House 
THE REVOLUTION IN BUILDING MATERIALS THAT HAS COME ABOUT WITHIN THE LAST 
TWENTY YEARS—COMPARATIVE COSTS OF UNBURNABLE CONSTRUCTION AND ITS ADVANTAGES 
by Jared Stuyvesant 
Photographs by Henry A. Frost, A. 
I N the early years of home-building in America, the natural and 
almost only available material was wood. Our forefathers 
could scarcely afford the time and labor necessary in building 
their homes of stone; brick kilns were few and far between; and 
these three materials completed the list. Wood was so common, 
so easily worked and so close at hand that its use followed as 
a matter of course. 
It has taken many years for our home-builders to get away 
from the idea that wood is the most economical form of construc¬ 
tion. Even now, although the cost of wood has increased by 
leaps and bounds within the last decade, the cost of a house built 
of clapboards or shingles is less in most localities than a house 
of any other material. But we are coming to the realization that 
there is something more to be considered than merely this first cost. 
A Sproul, Thomas W. Sears and others 
With the enormous waste by fire—a loss so great in figures 
as to be beyond our comprehension — and the need for buildings 
that will not require so much in the way of maintenance cost, 
other materials have been brought forward and have rapidly found 
their way into general use. 
Within the past five years the examples that we see on every 
hand of fireproof construction in office buildings and commercial 
structures of various kinds has developed a widespread desire to 
build our homes in a similarly indestructible manner. There has 
been also another factor that has brought fireproof construction 
within the bounds of possibility for the small place. This is the 
constantly increasing familiarity on the part of the building trades 
with the methods and materials used in fireproof construction. 
Ten years ago the cost of a fireproof house was out of all reach. 
(ii) 
