How to Read an Architectural Drawing 
THE MEANING OF A FLOOR PLAN OR ELEVATION OF YOUR HOUSE AND HOW TO INTERPRET IT 
SO THAT THE FUTURE BUILDING MAY NOT BRING UNEXPECTED AND UNDESIRABLE FEATURES 
by Russell Fisher 
I T is not surprising that many a new home turns out to be 
something entirely different from the owner's mental pic¬ 
ture formed beforehand. There are comparatively few people, 
outside of the architects themselves and those trained to read 
technical drawings, who readily grasp the full meaning of a set 
of house plans. This one fact is responsible probably for the 
majority of "extras'’ in building a home — it is not until the 
building is well under way, with the roof on and the partition 
studding in place, that the owners begin to realize that the resub 
is going to be different from their expectations. Then follows 
the series of changes, sometimes few and slight, sometimes revo¬ 
lutionary, that will bring the desired result. Too frequently, 
however, these revisions are too radical to be undertaken at 
that late day, and the house is doomed to be a misfit for the 
remainder of its life. 
An architect is almost invariably desirous that the owner and 
his family shall understand thoroughly what is being planned, 
and he will usually make every effort to explain the meaning 
of plans, elevations and details. One difficulty in his way, most 
frequently, is the reluctance of the family to display their in¬ 
ability to interpret the drawings, and their consequent blind 
acceptance of the plans or a mere pretense of understanding 
them. There is certainly nothing to be ashamed of in a lack of 
the rather technical knowledge needed, and it is unfortunate that 
these people do not ask at once for further information. There 
is practically nothing about the ordinary house that cannot be 
made readily understandable to the layman in some way; if 
plans and elevations are Greek to him, perspective drawings of 
interiors as well as the outside of the house will surely convey 
a fuller meaning. There may be an extra charge for making 
these, as they are not ordinarily considered to be included in the 
usual services of the architect, but this amount will be well spent 
if it will insure to the owner the carrying out of his desires. 
The most important part of any house is its floor plan, and 
it is naturally therefore imperative that its meaning be well un¬ 
derstood in advance. A plan as shown on the architect’s draw¬ 
ing is a horizontal cross-section through the building just above 
the window-sills. The diagram reproduced herewith makes this 
clear. Side by side are shown a simple first-story plan and an 
isometric drawing of the building up to the height at which the 
plan is taken. If 
your own house 
plan is not clearly 
understood, by all 
means have it 
translated into 
this more legible 
form. The iso¬ 
metric drawing, as 
you know, dif¬ 
fers from a true 
perspective in 
that the actual di¬ 
mensions of depth 
and width are laid 
out on the hori¬ 
zontal and reced¬ 
ing lines (the lat¬ 
ter usually drawn at an angle of 45 or 60 degrees to the horizontal. 
The size of the various rooms shown on a plan will have 
little significance unless you compare these with the dimensions 
of rooms in houses already built. That is the best way to deter¬ 
mine whether they will conform to your own needs. And right 
here let me warn you that the completed house will never after¬ 
wards appear so small as when it is first staked out on the site. 
A11 owner has frequently felt, to his chagrin, that his house must 
be enlarged by at least half, judging from its apparent size when 
staked out or even when the frame was up. From that time on 
each operation makes the rooms seem larger. Lathing, plaster¬ 
ing and finally the addition of furniture, tend each to increase 
the apparent size of the interior. 
One of the stumbling-blocks for the layman is the represen¬ 
tation of the staircases. In the plan given the stairs are shown 
in solid lines below the line of the section, being dotted in above 
this plane. Where one stairway runs over another, as is usually 
the case, it is customary to indicate about half of each, sepa¬ 
rating them at the junction by a broken line. Other plans may 
show the stairs from first to second floors complete on the first 
floor plan; those from the cellar to first floor on the cellar plan; 
and those from second to third floor on the second floor plan. 
The elevations of a house offer some difficulty also to the 
layman, for two reasons. One is that the dimensions of depth 
must necessarily be omitted. This may be more clearly under¬ 
stood by constant reference to the plans, but is unmistakably 
shown in a perspective. The other reason is that one will never 
see the building in direct elevation after it is built. An eleva¬ 
tion, of course, is drawn as if one were looking directly at each 
point at right angles to the wall. The roof expanse appears as 
it would if one could be lifted up to see it on a level with each 
point—a manifest impossibility. An owner frequently objects 
to the apparent roof expanse on the ground of its too great 
height. It will be readily apparent, however, that a person stand¬ 
ing on the ground in front of the house will see the receding roof 
at an acute angle and hence as a very much flatter rectangle than 
appears on the elevation. 
The difficulties of reading architectural drawings are greatly 
increased in the case of a house having its main floors broken up 
into different levels. An isometric plan will help to make the 
scheme clearer, 
but interior per¬ 
spectives should 
be made as well, 
and in a particu¬ 
larly complicated 
design it may be 
advisable to have 
a small model 
made of wood or 
even cardboard. 
Another aid to 
the proper con¬ 
ception of the com¬ 
pleted building is 
the making of 
cardboard models 
of each room. 
A simple first-story plan is shown at the right, such a drawing as should convey accurately 
the arrangement of this portion of the interior. At the left the same plan is translated 
into an isometric drawing representing the house as it would appear if sawed through on 
a plane just above the window-sills 
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