Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/756

 Homes for War Workers

A new type of standardized dwelling which can be built by unskilled labor in two weeks

��Bv John Walker Harrington

����Workmen's houses of concrete, all different from each other, can be built exceedingly rapidly and cheaply

��WAR workers' dwellings may be built at about half the usual cost and in half the customary time by a novel method originated by Mr. Alfred C. Bossom, a New York architect, according to estimates submitted by him to the Council of National Defence.

His scheme is the result of personal studies of actual conditions at leading American shipyards and munitions plants. It also embodies his experience as an ex- pert retained by large industrial corpora- tions in this country as well as by the housing committee of the London Com- mon Council.

The construction is best adapted for fireproof materials. Wood may also be employed.

Under the Bossom plan, large sums may be saved in preparing the sites proposed. The ground for a hundred or so of workmen's cot- tages is leveled off at once. Then a military trench digger is run along the lines for the foundations. The re- sulting ditches are sheathed inside with boarding which projects a few inches above the earth. As there are to be no cellars, the work of excavation is soon completed.

��There next appear strange devices re- sembling the cradles on which ships are sometimes carried overland and from which they are again launched into the water. These house cradles are huge frameworks of heavy timber which are readily moved on roll- ers. Suspended from

��them at regular intervals are three up- rights of reinforced concrete or steel, or even wood, which are to be part of the skeleton of the one-story dwellings. The cradles are steadied against the pull of these verticals by counterweights piled on low platforms on their opposite sides and are adjusted by wedges, until every- thing is made plumb. The pillars are then lowered into the trough, and their feet are soon embedded in concrete dumped into the foundation form from wheelbarrows. As soon as the cement hardens, the cradle is withdrawn and the next three posts are launched. As several cradles may be used at once in building a house, both the outer wall uprights and

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��Here is a typical plan for one of the proposed cottages. This particular one would be a two-family house, semi-detached

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