124 THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE. 
graph Company on Bush street, was completely shuttered. Although 
every opening in this building was protected, it is not certain that 
the fire did not find its way into the building through some of them 
in spite of the protection. The protection of individual openings 
apparently was not quite heavy enough. 
The view of the main front of this building (PI. XLI, 4) shows 
plainly that it was not severely attacked by the flames, yet it prob- 
ably would have resisted such an attack a good deal better than the 
facades of many other buildings. The exterior architraves of most 
of the windows are of solid molded brickwork, and the amount of 
hollow terra cotta in the exterior front is reduced to a minimum, so 
that this building would probably not have suffered quite as much 
as the average, even if the fire test from the outside had been fully 
as severe. 
FIREPROOF VAULTS. 
It would seem that the question of so-called fireproof vaults in 
commercial office buildings should also receive some attention. The 
failure of such vaults in San Francisco is absolutely inexcusable. 
The fact that they were so flimsy was not due to any lack of available 
knowledge as to how a fireproof vault should be built; the only 
motive that can be imagined for the erection of such vaults is parsi- 
monious and criminal economy. (See PI. LII.) 
CONSTRUCTIONS AND MATERIALS RECOMMENDED FOR EARTH- 
QUAKE LOCALITIES. 
For every tall building the best type of construction is undoubt- 
edly a steel frame, but it should be thoroughly braced in much the 
same way as in the Call Building, where the steel bracing undoubt- 
" Since the above was written the following information has been received from Cali- 
fornia, through the courtesy and cooperation of Capt. M. L. Walker and Capt. William 
Kelly, both of the Corps of Engineers : 
The rolling shutters on the Bush street building of the Pacific States Telephone and 
Telegraph Company were made of interlocking slats crimped out of heavy sheet iron, 
the shutter as a whole sliding at the sides of the opening in heavy iron guides. Cap- 
tain Kelly thinks they were made of No. 22 iron. I do not believe, personally, that these 
shutters withstood the direct impact of fierce flame for a great length of time ; they would 
have warped and pulled apart so as to let the flame in. The view of the Bush street 
front of this building (shown in PI. XLI, .4) would indicate that there was no direct 
attack by the flame from the outside, and there is every reason to believe that the plate 
glass on the inside stood long enough to prevent the shutters from receiving any serious 
attack from the flames of the interior fire. It is probable, however, that these shutters 
are fully as efficient as the rolling shutters made by other manufacturers out of continu- 
ous sheets of corrugated iron riveted together along the edges. The continuous sheets 
have to he of rather light metal, in order to make them practicable ; and when subjected 
to any great amount of heat they invariably pull apart along the lines of rivet holes — a 
weakness which was clearly illustrated in the Baltimore fire. There would seem to be no 
doubt, however, that rolling shutters of either type used on the outer windows of a 
building would effectually prevent ignition from radiant heat due to a fire in a neighbor- 
ing building. They would also, of course, resist for a time the actual impact of flame, 
but I am personally of the opinion that they could not resist this form of attack for very 
long. 
