Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/38

 22 THE BUILDING NEWS. Jan. 5, 1872. New Inrirmary ror S. Savrour’s Unron.—The union of the three parishes of S. Saviour’s, South- wark, S. Mary, Newington, and S. George the Martyr, Southwark, in 1869, under the order of the Poor Law Board, rendering necessary the erection of an infirmary for the poor of the united parishes, designs were obtained from six architects for a building, which it was proposed to erect at Peckham Rye. The design of Messrs. H. Jarvis & Son, of Trinity-square, Borough, was selected as being the best. Shortly afterwards, the project for erecting a building at Peckham was abandoned, and it was determined to enlarge the Newington workhouse at Walworth to serve this purpose. Additional wards and other works have been in progress during the last two months, and are now approaching comple- tion. The new wiag is 165ft. long, 46ft. wide, and four storeys high. The basement is arranged for stores. The ground floor consists of women’s wards for 86 beds, and on the first and second floors are two wards for 72 beds each, the total number of beds being 230. The walls are about 44ft. high, but are divided down the centre by a low iron partition, so that there are four rows of beds in this width, and practically two wards, each 22ft. wide, are thus placed side by side, which is a more economical mode of building (though not so advantageous for the patients). Large airy day-rooms, 43ft. by 25ft., are placed at one end of each ward. The wards will be heated by pedestal close stoves, two in each ward. The contractors are Messrs. F. & H. Croaker, of Great Dover-street, Borough, the architects being Messrs. H. Jarvis & Sons. The total cost will be about £10,000. Swanpournr, Bucxs.—New schools, one for infants, and one for boys and girls, have been built in this village, of red brick, with roof of Bangor slate and timber porches. The ‘hollow beam” system of ventilation has been used in the mixed school, and has been found to answer admirably. The works have been carried out by Mr. Matthews, builder, Winslow, from the designs and under the superintendence of Mr. E. Swinfen Harris, archi- tect, of London and Stony Stratford, inclusive of offices and boundaries, for the sum of £426. ened TO CORRESPONDENTS. We do not hold ourselves responsible for the opinions of our correspondents. The Editor respectfully requests that all communications should be drawn up as briefly 28 possible, as there are many claimants upon the space allotted to correspondence.) To Our READERS.—We shall feel obliged to any of our readers who will favour us with brief notes of works con- templated or in progress in the provinces. Letters relating to advertisements and the ordinary business of the Paper should be addressed to the EDITOR, 31, TAVISTOCK-STREET, COVENT-GARDEN, W.C. Advertisements for the current week must reach the office not later than 5 p.m. on Thursday. Recetvey.—J. & E. Goad.—H. 8. P. & Co.—G. B.—C. L.— P.—W. 0.8 & Co.—S. H. Bros.—E. W. P.— S L—J.N—C. C. M—W. P. B.—A Well- wisher—W. H.—P. D.—J. I. & Son.—J. O.—C. L. S.— G, B—E. S. & Co. J. O.—In condemning the “ hottest thunderbolts, the sour tempers, and bitter tongues of the two architectural en you might have shown good temper your- self. A.—It might be an advantage to young men to limit the age of competitors to 21 or 22 years, but a decided dis- advantage to the public, which, you will admit, hive some claim to consideration. R. H.—As you recommend a particular system of heating churches, in answer to “Stewart,” you should, at least, put your name and address. E. E. Honpen.—The article did not come to hand. Correspondence. ay THE NEW LAW COURTS. To the Editor of the Burtpinc News. Srr,—In his contribution to the current number of Macmillan, which you have thought right to re- produce in your columns, Mr, James Fergusson, F.R.S., has the following passage with reference to Mr. Street's admirable and most appropriate designs for the New Law Courts :—‘ The lawyers of the nineteenth century must be content to lounge in vaulted halls, with narrow windows filled with painted glass, and so dark that they cannot see to read or write in them. They must wander through corridors whose gloom recalls the monkish seclusion of the Middle Ages. They must sit on high straight- backed chairs, and be satisfied with queer-shaped furniture, which it is enough to give one the rheuma- tism to look at; and no higher class of art must be allowed to refresh the eyes than the heraldic devices or the rude ungainly nightmare paintings of the Middle Ages;” and so forth, with a sneer at the existing happy appreciation of the national archi- tecture of England in its noblest expression, as “ the reviving taste for barbarism.” It is difficult to suppose the writer of this, and the rest of the envious and paltry trash associated with it, not to have known that the words I have quoted convey impressions that are in direct opposi- tion to the real facts. Mr. Street's design includes one vaulted hall, and has not ‘vaulted halls” for lounging purposes; all Mr. Street’s windows are large, and admit the light freely and in abund- ance; in no single apartment in Mr. Street's Law Courts will any “lounging” lawyer (if bent also upon reading and writing) find him- self less able to see than his brethren who may pre- fer to do their reading and writing in a more active frame of mind. Mr. Street’s windows are the re- verse of **narrow;” they will not be ‘ filled with stained glass,” but they will do all that can be required or desired from the most efficient of windows. There is no single feature in Mr. Street’s design which can possibly ‘recall the gloom and monkish seclusion of the Middle Ages,” since the building is perfectly lighted everywhere, every part has its proper use in connection with its special purpose, and everything provides in the happiest and most successful manner for the convenient, orderly, and efficient discharge of the requirements of the Law Courts of London at the present time. Mr. Street’s ‘‘corridors,” in particular, by prevent- ing the possibility of “‘ wandering,” are eminently qualified to conduce to the convenience of the dif ferent classes of persons who will frequent this great building, and they will greatly facilitate the transaction of business in every department through their adjustment. The ‘rheumatism-suggesting” furniture and the ‘‘ nightmare” artistic accessories of Mr. Street’s Law Courts, in like manner, are pure fictions—fictions devised, indeed, with the palpable purpose of supporting a most unworthy attempt to bring discredit upon an eminent artist and a grand national edifice, and as such may be treated with deserved contempt. I suppose Me Fergusson wrote in the hope that he would strike a heavy blow upon Gothic art while doing his best, or his worst, to demolish two far abler architects than himself. At all events, I am confident that he will experience some difficulty in establishing a general belief in the sustained advance of architecture from A.p. 1377, till that advance was brought to a halt by the revival of Gothic architecture in our own times. Nor do I expect that Mr. Fer- gusson will readily find much sympathy with his views when, with a haughty self-sufficiency and a total disregard for justice. with a hostility also that is at once specious and virulent, he denounces such men as Mr. Street and Mr. Waterhouse, and derides as mere retrogressive copyists (who sometimes copy just to avoid the trouble of designing) architects whose ability has placed them in the foremost rank in their profession. It is no more true that Mr. Street, upon whom, as a most formidable Gothic champion and a thorough master of Gothic art, Mr. Fergus- son specially pours forth his spiteful wrath, is a copyist from the remote past and a reproducer of a barbarous Medixwvalism, than that Gothic architec- ture really belongs to exclusively one age or can consistently produce buildings only of one class. The Gothic is architecture for all time, as for every purpose, and Mr. Street has deserved well, both of his country and of his profession, in having taken his ideal of the only true architecture of England from the period of its most perfect development and expression, and then having adapted this ideal in his practical application of the style to the seuti- ments, the uss the requirements, and the general condition of both science and art at the present day. Mr. Fergusson is not alone in having taken more than a little trouble to demonstrate his own absolute inability to understand tke Gothic, a course of pre- cedure quite consistent with vilifying that great style, and with the most grossly unjust attacks upon aneminent Gothic artist and a noble Gothic design. This ignorance may be pitied and disregarded ; and the hostility to a design which would establish the Gothic supremacy may be left for discomfiture from its own palpable motives; still it may not be al- together undesirable to set forth certain facts in their true reality, when they have been, not misrepre- sented merely, but absolutely inverted.—I am, &e., January 3, 1872 Cuarves Bourett. P.S.—The consistency of this candid and courteous critic claims a word of special notice. First, he declares it to be ‘ the accuraey of imitation pervad- ing every detail” in Mr. Street’s Law Courts design (imitation, that is, of the Early Gothic) ‘that makes it so perfectly intolerable ;” and then, having denounced Mr. Street’s Central Hall, which in every respect is worthy of all praise for every condition of judicious and comprehensive excellence, as a “particular crotchet” and an “anachronism,” and for doing exactly what it does not do, he suddenly announces his discovery that this Central Hall, after all, instead of exhibiting “minute accuracy of imi- — tation” of some early authority, ‘is not Gothic” at all, because he (Mr. Fergusson) does not happen to “know of any such vaulted hall having been erected for any civil purpose in any country of Europe during the Middle Ages!” I observe also that Mr. Fergusson says, ‘‘Mr. Street boasts” of his Law Courts design being areal fac-simile of the monastic or domestic architecture of the Middle Ages.” TI must be permitted to doubt Mr. Street having made any such ‘“ boast,” or any other “boast” as to his design ; and, indeed, since Mr. Street’s design, while conceived and executed in the true spirit of a master of Gothic art, is not a fac-simile of a Mediwyal edifice, I am constrained to consider Mr. Fergusson’s assertion of Mr, Street's “‘ boast ” to be in strict keep- ing with his assertions relative to the character and the qualities of that gentleman’s entire design for the New Law Courts.—C. B. HOUSE DRAINAGE AND VENTILATION OF DRAINS AND SOIL-PIPES. Srr,—I am glad to see the interest that is being taken in this really very important matter, and join in the hope that practical good will result from it. To know the disease is half the cure. There is one point, however, which the remarks about ‘metal valves on waste-pipes ” referred toby “ G, H. G.”’ p. 473, Vol. XXI., force me to draw attention to, viz— that whatever is done should be done in the simplest manner possible consistent with efficiency. Now, as a practical tradesmen of about twenty years’ ex- perience, permit me to say that the less we have to do with “ metal valve * machinery at the junction of waste and soil pipes the better, first, because it is really unnecessary, and, second, because these valves would be so apt to get out of order as to be not only useless, but possibly even a nuisance. The sketch which follows will help to show this. But first as to the remarks of Mr. Aitchison at page 485. TI cannot see how it necessarily follows, if the pipes are properly laid, that the cement joints of glazed drain pipes require to be broken in removing the soil to get at them; for, as I have oceasionally laid them with my own hands, you would as soon break the pipe itself as break the joint. When laying the drain-pipes—it is jof pipes inside the house I am especially speaking—see that the ground below them is solid and that they are laid solidly also, then don’t spare the cement, and with proper atten- tion you have nothing to fear. Then as to its being difficult to join the lead pipes to the drain- pipe, I cannot remember ever encountering any par- ticular difficulty in the matter. I generally put on a lead flange and then make up solidly with cement. Or if the lead pipe is branching into a hole cut for it in the side or on the top of the drain-pipe, a sort of ferrule can be used by cutting off three or four inches of the lead pipe and placing it in the hole, flange back the pipe into the shape of the letter X, with a hole through its ceentre—) (—and you can then solder the pipe to this. As to those annoying vermin, rats, the proper plan in dealing with them is to keep them out altogether by closing all holes where they come in at with cement mixed with broken glass— not with soft lime, whichis both useless and a sham ; and be especially careful to see all secure where the drain-pipes pass out though wall of house. In some cases I have protected lead pipes from rats by cover- ing them with a piece of sheet zinc. When a house is either being built or overhauled it is a capital plan, in connection with its drains and for the purpose of preventing rats burrowing, and so making air shifts of their tunnels, to asphalte the whole of under story, then see that the walls are all safe and securely pointed, both outside and in. As to want of ventilation for the house, there is no excuse for this in many of our houses, for the window on roof which overhangs and lights the stair ought always to have one or more ventilators at it, and further ventilation can also be had in many ways. As to the 4-inch drain-pipes which Mr. Sorby has “built into the walls” for the purpose of acting as conductors for the rain-water, I cannot con- sider them any improvement upon either good lead or iron, except that they may be cheaper; but as it is efficiency that is the desideratum at present, I think they are better dispensed with, and, as he says, he puts a “cesspool in roof gutter.” Should any crack occur or any joint be left open, then the foul air could get no exit but into the house, for the top is closed. Now as to gas from common sewer outside forcing its way through the main cesspool or drain pipe of