22 ms·

Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

406 points by nkurz 11y ago

sbierwagen 11y ago
Loginwall.
- hatsix 11y ago
  click the 'web' link underneath the title, then the first link in google.
- chrismealy 11y ago
  The "Wait, Google Sent Me" plugin works.
- fransan 11y ago
  ...or you can open the web console, remove a couple of nodes from the dom, and the wall is gone. To scroll, use your up/down keys in your keyboard :)
  - eyko 11y ago
    or just disable javascript.
- fa 11y ago
  Firefox specific. about:config -> javascript.enable -> "false". Refresh. Reset to "true".
turar 11y ago
Wait, aren't a lot of modern American "brick" buildings made with plywood covered with brick siding?
- tectec 11y ago
  That is addressed in the article.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  That's not really an accurate description of wooden-framed construction. For one, there's a lot more structure to it than just bricks and plywood, and it's also safer against earthquakes and other environmental damage.
coryrc 11y ago
The author admits to the limited comparison. I have a few other reasons: 1. We actually care if our buildings are insulated now and withstand earthquakes. 2. People are so wealthy here they don't have to get it right, they can always pay to do it over again. They don't care to put in the research to make sure it is done right. [0] 3. Corollary to #2, we don't need our buildings to last 100 years because we expect the area to be overtaken by increased density by then? [0] CSB: Person tells about friend that bought house in Las Vegas just prior to 2008, has enormous cooling bill because house doesn't have overhang to protect southern exposure from the sun and HOA won't allow her to alter it. Asks why the government doesn't protect her. I ask why she didn't do a little more due diligence before spending $300k. He hadn't thought of it that way and considers it.
- SamBam 11y ago
  How would any of the issues with the Dartmouth brick building in the article have been caused by #1?
  - douche 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure they don't care about insulation that much at Dartmouth. There's a huge steam plant on campus, and all the brick dorms are equipped with old-fashioned steam radiators that have two settings - over-bearingly hot, and "boil my pot of ramen noodles." It's common to see the dorm windows wide open when it is -20 F in February, with students trying to regulate the temperature to a livable level.
  - coryrc 11y ago
    The masons and architects have a lot more to care about these days. Even so, they should have gotten the flashing and water flow right (even cheap 80s houses usually have slanted window sill). Oh, and the insulation reduces drying of the brick to the interior, which can cause it decay within a decade if not done right: http://www.bluegreengroup.ca/bluegreen-launches-a-study-on-attached-double-brick-homes http://www.bluegreengroup.ca/bluegreen-launches-a-study-on-a... (though that's not the case here).
  - shimon 11y ago
pilsetnieks 11y ago
Could it be survivor bias? What if the cheap shitty hundred-year-old buildings are torn down or covered in plaster or siding, thus leaving only the good specimens?
Retric 11y ago
Survivorship bias is a really important caveat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Many cheap brick buildings from 100 years ago are gone, where the high quality ones are more likely to remain. Also, steel Lintel are often used over windows in brick buildings. They don't last as long, but are fine for cheap construction that is not expected to last. AKA the kinds of building that are unlikely to be around in 100 years.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  not only that, but back in the day brick was the fancy expensive option, today it isn't. those with big budgets and ambitious design goals choose other materials (steel, glass, etc.)
  - afarrell 11y ago
    I thought brick was more expensive today due to labor costs and that steel and glass were comparatively cheap. Is this false?
    - pjc50 11y ago
      Generally true. The relative cost of wood vs brick also varies from country to country depending on local availability.
      - beachstartup 11y ago
        wood is definitely cheaper than brick but i have a hard time believing that a brick building will be more expensive than one made of steel and glass. the architecture, engineering, transport, etc. is where most of the cost comes from, not the building materials.
        pjc50 11y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10522334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10522334 claims that brick is expensive enough for people to steal buildings!
cecilpl 11y ago
Isn't this simply an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias? The only brick buildings you can still look at from the 1800s are the ones that were built very well - all the shoddily-constructed buildings from that era have since disappeared.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  Here's an example of a shoddy building from over a century ago that, through a historical quirk, is still around: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-shack-starting-at-350000-2015-09-29 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-shack-startin... Yeah, the dorm in the linked article is totally better than that building. So while there are good buildings from that era, let's not kid ourselves, there were also a lot of horrible buildings that are rightfully no longer around. I would be willing to bet that the average quality of new construction is better now than it was then. If nothing else, the pervasive use of aluminum/vinyl siding and tar-asphalt shingle roofs yields buildings that better withstand the elements that old-style painted wood.
danieltillett 11y ago
We have the same issue here in Australia. The quality of recent brick work is terrible, even the bricks are worse. It seems brickies are unable (or unwilling) to lay bricks anymore.
Animats 11y ago
Is the brick actually holding up the building? In many modern buildings, it's just a veneer, about 1cm thick. The steelwork holds it up. The new Box.net HQ in Redwood City looks like a brick building, but it's not; it's steel and concrete with about 1cm of brick on the outside. There's some nice work being done with brick today.[1] Some of this is gentrification, built to fit in with existing brick buildings, or to imitate them in new construction. All those examples have recessed windows, although not structural stone lintels. Many lintels today are precast stone and decorative; steel is carrying the load. Robotic bricklaying is here.[2] In earthquake country, you really don't want tall brick buildings where the brick is structural. San Francisco is very anti-cornice; in even minor earthquakes, overhanging masonry cornices tend to fall off and kill people. [1] http://www.bdcnetwork.com/7-emerging-design-trends-brick-buildings http://www.bdcnetwork.com/7-emerging-design-trends-brick-bui... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI
- dpark 11y ago
  > Is the brick actually holding up the building? This was my thought as well. The modern building is likely just using the brick as veneer, even if it is full-thickness brick. It's likely concrete walls with brick layered over it. The fact that the brickwork is poorly done likely doesn't matter except aesthetically. If all the brick fell off the building would still be standing. The newer building is indeed ugly, and the brickwork looks cheap and poorly done. But that doesn't mean the technology has declined. It means the technology has advanced to the point that the brick is just ornamental.
  - barrkel 11y ago
    Wouldn't you expect brick for ornamental purposes to look prettier than brick used for functional purposes?
    - greggyb 11y ago
      No, you'd expect brick for ornamental purposes to look prettier than what it's covering.
Plough_Jogger 11y ago
This is a clear example of survivorship bias. Buildings from 100 years ago that still stand today necessarily must have been those that were most carefully constructed or those that have been thoughtfully preserved. This creates a biased comparison between the highest quality buildings of the past and an average (or perhaps worse than average) building from modern times. This article could conclude that not all brick buildings today are superior in construction to the highest quality buildings built 100 years ago, but making a more general statement would be a fallacious extrapolation.
- escherplex 11y ago
  And to bring that idea home: contemporary flimsy construction is also a function of local building codes. In 2004 I was in a Florida house built in 1988 which structurally resembled a concrete bunker outfitted with heavy duty crank windows. This was required construction at the time. A hurricane showed up mid August with 140 mph (225 kph) winds and two things in particular were impressive: how well the structure survived the hurricane essentially unscathed (other than damage to it's pool cage screening) and witnessing how well palm trees folded their foliage to weather the onslaught. Apparently after 1988 they had lightened up on the building codes and cheap 2X4 frame construction was allowed for two story dense pack condos in the surrounding area. These did not fare so well. In one case a large pine tree was snapped at the base and hurled through the side of a frame condo complex like a battering ram, demolishing the whole structure. The complex had been evacuated before the hurricane struck so apparently there were no casualties. The moral of this story is that if you mandate good construction then that's what you get. Leave loopholes for cheap construction and that's what you'll get (and it won't suffer the rigors of time very well).
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
If you are curious about this topic you should bring it up with some architects from different countries. From my understanding there are indeed regressions in building quality in some countries but it's not entirely clear what causes it other than decisions that have been made at the time. In particular the brick did not decrease in quality but the way they were built did. For instance for a while people paid less attention to protecting buildings from water damage to achieve more interesting designs. A particular crazy architectural style that suffers a lot from this is British brutalist architecture.
- Marazan 11y ago
  Brutalism gets everywhere in modern british arcitecture. The idea that any archtiect should be designing a flat foor bulding in, say, Scotland is totally bonkers.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter's_Seminary,_Cardross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter's_Seminary,_Cardross It's a beautiful ruin, but it seems never to have been a properly functioning building. Artistic success, total waste of resources for church that built it.
    - Gibbon1 11y ago
      Oh yes that's quite the nasty bit of concrete.
      - Marazan 11y ago
        I would love to know the mindset and thought process of Brutalist architects and admirers who see that and see beauty whilst the majority of the rest of the world sees a broken down leaking eye sore. We are so far apart it is like trying to understand and alien. I have seen a scant handful of Brutalist building that I consider fine works of craft but the gob smacking majority are pitiful piles of concrete and exposed trusses.
chrisBob 11y ago
Is there any reason to believe that the "old" building wasn't just recently repointed? This seems like the most likely answer.
- yasth 11y ago
  No amount of repointing could make the modern joints as even, or as narrow, as the old ones. Though to be fair I don't think the modern builders were even going for that look.
  - Animats 11y ago
    Modern builders rarely go for the tightly fitted brick look. It's possible to get brick and concrete pavers with precise dimensions and cement them tightly together, and this is common for brick and stone paving work. Walls could be made that way, but seldom are.
dworin 11y ago
There are some other great explanations in this thread (survivor bias seems very plausible), but I'll throw out another based on my experience with other construction trades: economics. If you look at old buildings, you tend to notice that they also have a lot of intricate plaster-work that you never see anymore. Why? Because it used to be much cheaper to hire skilled labor than it is today. You can see a similar trend every year in the Christmas Price Index, which tracks the cost of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas song. The prices of goods tend to stay stable, while the price of labor tends to increase significantly. For our brick buildings, I tried to find the best numbers I could, and here's what I came up with: In 1894, bricks cost about $5.70/thousand [1], which is $165.51 in today's dollars Today, you can get bricks wholesale for $220/thousand - and that's what I found online, I imagine an actual wholesaler is less. [2] That's an increase of about 37% For the bricklayer, the average wage in 1891 was $4/day, which is about $110 in today's dollars [3] Today, the median bricklayer pay is $24/hour [4], which is $192 per 8 hour day. That's an increase of 75% in the real wages of the bricklayer, and it means that the rate labor costs have increased is double the rate of material costs. In 1891, it may have made financial sense to pay for a bricklayer to make intricate, high quality buildings. In the past few decades, it's likely that's no longer the case. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA953&lpg=PA953&dq=average+price+brick+1891&source=bl&ots=GcEOPaUc51&sig=NleYQCrOeeo04wtGQazDrf-4WFc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIyoCb_tn8yAIViiomCh07oAPV#v=onepage&q=average%20price%20brick%201891&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA953&lpg=... [2]http://brickbroker.com/brick.html http://brickbroker.com/brick.html [3] https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=PA722&dq=wage+bricklayer+1891&source=bl&ots=yl05RZTmSC&sig=ezss_Em2mx16u76THQi7eTaR8xY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCsQ6AEwA2oVChMIqIWbodr8yAIVTOImCh3fKQED#v=onepage&q=bricklayer's%20wages&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=... [4] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Rate http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Ra...
- shimon 11y ago
  I think you're on the right track but your comparison fails to take into account the productivity of the bricklayer. A good bricklayer today ought to be more productive than an 1891 bricklayer, because he has motorized mixers, vehicles to move bricks to the right place, laser lines to level his rows, etc. Even in a craft that seems legendarily nontechnical, you have to give some credit to technological advancement. But it's still probably not enough to fully compensate for the 75% increase in labor cost.
smrtinsert 11y ago
Where are brick buildings being torn down left and right? I challenge the survivorship bias argument as where I live in the US east coast multiple cities push for historical status on buildings past a certain age in order to retain character.
- jws 11y ago
  My 1950 brick building is 1/3 constructed from re-used brick. Many houses built in the 1960s in my area are also built of reused brick. There must have been some degree of brick teardown going on. Even now we have trouble with people stealing brick buildings. Unused houses are sometimes set ablaze by brick thieves, then later they come in the night and cart off the bricks.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    stealing brick buildings This sounds totally bananas, where is this? Are the bricks made of gold or something?
    - paulzerkel 11y ago
      This is a problem in parts of St. Louis, MO. The brick is of high enough quality that people will steal them for resale from abandoned buildings. Naturally, this leads to the building collapsing which causes even more issues for surrounding area.
    - jws 11y ago
      $0.50 to $1.00 is typical for St. Louis used bricks.
rwmj 11y ago
The small house I live in is 100 years old, and built of brick. It is a tremendously (over-)engineered building: two layers of brick even for interior walls, exterior walls are around 1 ft thick, and four massive chimney-breasts (although two were sadly removed by previous owners). My theory is that they just had enormous amounts of cheap labour 100 years ago, and you'd never be able to build such a building today because it would be far too expensive.
- ashark 11y ago
  In my experience the timber in buildings that old is of the sort that would be hard to find at any price these days, and ruinously expensive if you could. Single thick, long, flawless pieces used in places where several thinner, knot-filled pieces would be used today. Exceptional (by modern standards) material, used in quantities that would be considered excessive even in nice construction these days.
  - rwmj 11y ago
    This is of course why reclaimed building materials are a thing (in the UK anyway). I could go to a place not 10 miles from here and buy a cast iron fireplace that was previously in a home very similar to mine. The irony being that a previous owner of my home probably chucked my fireplace in a skip in about 1980.
unit91 11y ago
Survivorship bias and structural integrity aside, I suspect it's all about the cashflow. The bank was built in 1891. The FDIC wasn't around until 1933. The appearance of wealth and institutional stability was a very important marketing tool to late 19th-century bankers wanting patrons to trust them with their money. The dorm houses kids fresh out of high school who can't / don't want to live off campus. I'd guess the building is attractive enough to most people to avoid negative attention, and -- as the article indicates -- it obviously isn't swaying money away from Dartmouth, so why bother?
vvpan 11y ago
Alright, too many mentions of survival bias and too much skepticism. There're large parts of some cities that are almost exclusively constructed from brick. It might be bias or it might not be. It's clear that nowadays buildings are made cheaply. For example the construction of the regular American suburban "stick" house is just the cheapest and the quickest way put up walls and a roof. What you get is something that's badly insulated (both from weather and sound) and just isn't very strong, and the technique is getting traction in other parts of the world too, replacing concrete, beams and brick.
- gluggymug 11y ago
  Yeah I don't think it's bias. That would imply that there's no issues with the newer design when the article clearly showed where the wrong choices have affected the durability of the building.
beat 11y ago
More broadly on this subject, I recommend that every software engineer read the book How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand. It's a book about the lifecycle of buildings, design compromises, and how buildings are altered and repurposed over their life. It's a fascinating way to think about software as well.
oliwarner 11y ago
It's an interesting idea worth exploring... ...but comparing a bank (a building that in 1891 had to LOOK expensive) and student flats (a building that has to BE cheap) results in the rather underwhelming discovery that because they had wildly different budgets with completely different aesthetic aims, they ended up with different built qualities. Shocking, isn't it? If they want to make an apples-for-apples comparison, the author should come to the UK and compare our 1890 semi-detached with any post-70s new-build. There are certainly ecological issues with the older building (that are expensive to retrofit past) but the quality of building and workmanship is drastically better in the older houses. And [at least in the UK] this isn't a case of crappy houses made of sticks falling down. With the rarest of exceptions, there is no "survivorship bias".
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Student housing at a very expensive private institution. Not some council houses. So pretty fair comparison I think. And that aesthetics should override competent construction technique is a bad idea, is also a fair criticism.
  - oliwarner 11y ago
    It's sweet that you think students get what their parents pay for. No. The briefest of glances lets you know exactly what Dartmouth instructed their architect to aim for: capacity. The real reason it looks so poor is —as I did say before— their respective aesthetic aims. Dartmouth wanted something that looked New Englandy that holds dozens of students, while the bank wanted something that makes them look like they have all the money.
- dazc 11y ago
  > "With the rarest of exceptions, there is no "survivorship bias"." A lot of UK housing built circa 1900 - 1930 was not well built at all; Building regulations as such hardly existed and there was a lot of trial and error. Buildings did indeed fall down.
  - oliwarner 11y ago
dnautics 11y ago
I saw this brickwork on a building in nyc's financial district on a building maybe around 50-100 years old. https://plus.google.com/111337360985340071974/posts/KkDyX34uZop https://plus.google.com/111337360985340071974/posts/KkDyX34u...
- ItsDeathball 11y ago
  That's structural brick covered in stucco, which was pretty common in American cities in the 18th and 19th centuries. You see it a lot in areas with low-quality clay, since the resulting brick is porous and brittle, necessitating a stucco covering to protect it from the elements and not look awful. It might not be poor construction, just ugly because it's not intended to ever be seen. Of course, by design the stucco needs to be replaced every few decades, so who knows if it's been kept up. That contrasts with the article's 1891 example of a building where the brickwork was both structural and decorative, requiring maximum attention to detail.
  - dnautics 11y ago
    Did you zoom in on the brick underneath? It's helter skelter.
yk 11y ago
Reminds me on a recent conversation at a maker space: How do you control it, a transistor and a oscillator? Nah, just an Arduino. So with micro controllers we loose a lot of applied knowledge of analog circuits and I suspect something similar is going on in architecture. The hours a architect spends on learning about modern materials is not spend thinking about brick works, and consequently a modern architect is a lot worse at building brick buildings than a architect one hundred years ago.
gopowerranger 11y ago
It may be due to the quality of the clay, or the lack of clay at all, for making the bricks. I saw a documentary on this just a few months ago aired by our local PBS station on this very subject. http://ninenet.org/archives/pressroom/st-louis-brick-building-legacy-explored-on-special-hour-long-program-2 http://ninenet.org/archives/pressroom/st-louis-brick-buildin... https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brick https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brick
pjc50 11y ago
> "Part of the blame, I feel, rests at the feet of the Modernist movement — a movement that idealized the cube and disdained roof overhangs. Modernist architects were ignorant of the entire concept of moisture management. The fact that thousands of Modernist buildings suffered water entry problems did little to deter architects from falling in love with Modernism and Brutalism. This tragic love affair contributed to the withering of age-old skills." I believe this is a fair assignment of blame. It's analogous to the complaints people have about some modern web design - total focus on appearance at the expense of usability or technical quality. The architects produce buildings that look good on paper, because that's what wins the contract. The next client isn't going to go to their previous building and do a customer satisfaction survey on the users. Nobody ever does. Edit: Incan stone construction is one of the great examples of ancient 'over'building: precisely fitted hand-carved stone, good for five centuries. And Rome has plenty of 2000 year old brick buildings, especially the Pantheon dome.
- everyone 11y ago
  This was a good article but I think the authors assignment of blame is misplaced. In my opinion the reason contemporary brick construction is not up to par with 100 year old brick construction is the same reason contemporary washing machines are not up to the standard of washing machines 100 years ago: The emphasis in making things now is on speed and cheapness, the emphasis 100 years ago was on quality. The college dorm building was certainly thrown up in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the price with a fraction of the labourers, than the bank building.
  - finnh 11y ago
    I will gladly trade a 100 year old washing machine (rusty and hand-powered, I assume) for a Miele. I'm sure you have an argument here, but I don't see how washing machines further it.
    - everyone 11y ago
      You assume too much. Also this article is addressing the construction quality and longevity of brick facades. I was referencing the construction quality and longevity of washing machines, pre-war vs modern. https://youtu.be/baFaEvBywGc?t=22m40s https://youtu.be/baFaEvBywGc?t=22m40s
shimon 11y ago
In Somerville, MA there is an area with some converted loft buildings including new construction loft-style buildings. The new building walls use masonry blocks (large grey blocks) for structure, with decorative brick on the outside. On the inside, there is a cavity for insulation and wiring, and an interior brick wall. The masonry work is excellent, and is probably the best way to create a wall that looks like brick inside and out yet meets modern insulation demands. But it is a gratuitously expensive construction technique to try and make a building look old and classic. If you don't value that particular aesthetic, you would select other materials. If you want to pander to that aesthetic but don't have a premium loft budget, you might end up with crap like that dorm.
MisterBastahrd 11y ago
Because brick has become affordable for the common man and building techniques value speed? The average person building a house in 1915 would have a house built with wood siding because brick would have been out of his price range, even with the slave labor wages and lack of sufficient building regulations.
lr 11y ago
You can see the results of this all over NYC. A building down the street from where I live has had scaffolding around it for over 2 years as they replace the bricks (building owners have to test the bricks ever 5 years in NYC if their building is over 6 stories). This building was build in the 70s. I have no idea when they are going to be done.
scottious 11y ago
I don't buy any of it for even a second. On my way to work, they're building this wonderful brick sidewalk. While still just a side walk and not a building, it's remarkably well crafted and detailed. I think we CAN do it, we just choose not to, economically. I think somebody would rather save a lot of money and build something "good enough" these days than invest in craftsmanship. Also, I bet you don't have to look far to find a bunch of counter examples in modern times.
- vlehto 11y ago
  My perception is that parks, walkways, fences etc have gotten better. Even bridges are getting beautiful again. It's houses that seem to go downhill. But not single family houses, only bigger buildings.
- TheCowboy 11y ago
  Someone might be able to do it, but they're not easy to find or cheap. There was a structural brick house that remained an eyesore in a DC neighborhood for years after a car accident demolished part of its cylindrical masonry wall (picture a round castle tower). The owner gave the reason that the masonry skills to construct this type of feature were not something easily found, and had been a sort of lost art, and they had been looking for a long time before finally getting it repaired.
jhallenworld 11y ago
There are some modern construction techniques that make me nervous: One is pre-stressed concrete. This has replaced I-beams for highway bridges. The problem here is how do you inspect them? With steel I-beams you can use your eyes. With concrete maybe you need some kind of ultrasound equipment to check the tension cables? Do you trust those responsible for long-term maintenance to do it? Another is engineered wood I-beams for houses. Basically these are floor joists made out of plywood. How long will they last? What happens if they get wet? If there is a fire the house is gone because the floor joists will be ruined by the water to put the fire out. There were certainly mistakes in the past as well. One is building with cast-iron beams. They look nice, but they crack.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  Scuttlebutt I've heard. If a modern stick house built with plywood beams catches fire, the fire department will not try to save it because it's too dangerous to send a man up on the roof to cut access holes. This is because in a fire the glue in built up beams loses strength very quickly and the thing de-laminates.
- nkurz 11y ago
  If there is a fire the house is gone because the floor joists will be ruined by the water to put the fire out. Do you have more information on this? I've known about the increased direct risk from fire, but haven't seen anything about damage from temporary water contact. The only information I can find doesn't seem to agree with this, although it doesn't specifically prove otherwise: www.woodbywy.com/document/tb-213
  - jhallenworld 11y ago
    Well I went looking for this and it's not as clear as I first thought. The fire risk is the biggest issue. The webbing for "TJI" is made out of OSB, and it seems there is definitely a long absorption time for this material so I'm thinking the collapse risk from water during firefighting is not all that high. Nobody is recommended ignoring long-term dampness (like from a leak) and the manufacture will certainly void the warranty.
analog31 11y ago
I wonder if the decline of labor unions is a factor, or some similar thing that affects the willingness of people to make a career of a skilled trade.
WalterBright 11y ago
Bank buildings built before 1929 tend to be massive masonry structures with greek columns, marble, etc. Ones build later tend to be cracker boxes in strip malls. My theory is that the older banks needed to impress their clients with stability, conservativeness, safety, responsibility, etc. After FDIC, customers looked to the government for that, and so banks no longer needed to spend the money on the building. The massive, glittering vaults are sadly gone now, too. The money exists as data on a server somewhere, little need for a vault.
- beardicus 11y ago
  > After FDIC, customers looked to the government for that Or an alternate theory: bank owners used to be local businesspeople, who would have been (rightly) embarrassed and ashamed to erect a shoddy and short-lived structure in their hometown. Now banks are at least regional, if not national or global, and care more about saving a few pennies for shareholders than they do about the communities they inhabit. Combine this with the fact that consumers and "fellow citizens" don't give a crap about good buildings and good urbanism, and here we are with crackerbox drivethrough shite that nobody gives a damn about because it'll be bulldozed in 30 years, after a brief stint as a laser tag venue.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    This is close to what I think. To a great extent buildings have been commodified. And businesses typically do not own buildings, they are tenants. The bulldozed in 30 years attitude is post war nihilism in a nutshell. (In thirty years will be living on mars or dead from nuclear fire)
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  While most money does exist electronically, you'd be surprised at the amounts of actual cash and gold which are stored in major banking centers.
- asveikau 11y ago
  I think the strip mall thing happened much later than 1929. I can think of specific bank branches from my east coast childhood that I would estimate were built in the 60s or 70s that are still trying to pull off the "grandeur" style.
old-gregg 11y ago
The quality of modern construction (not necessarily brick) is a big pet peeve of mine and something I keep looking for answers. The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. It is especially easy to see when looking at NYC buildings, some rentals are even explicitly advertized as "pre-war". Examples of annoying trends in modern construction: - Low "hobbit" ceilings. - Short door frames. - Tiny windows. - Nearly non-existent noise/vibration insulation Even looking at materials used for construction today, I can't figure out why everyone thinks that drywall-on-sticks is acceptable? Literally every multi-story home I've been in felt hollow and shaky if you jump on the 2nd floor because there's no mass anywhere. This is clearly not a cost issue, I have taken tours looking at brand-new multi-MM homes in Austin, TX just for fun. While they all had top-notch appliances, finishes and a gazilion of square feet and bedrooms, they were also built using the same "toy" materials and used generally similar architectural patters as middle class homes. What caused this change? It's like our collective mind suddenly stopped caring about tall doors, 10ft ceilings and solid feel of floors we walk on.
- djrogers 11y ago
  re 'drywall on sticks' - not only does this construction technique provide for a huge amount of flexibility in interior layout, it's by far the most earthquake friendly construction for single family homes. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a home built with such 'toy' materials require nothing more than some stucco repair and drywall patching, with a brick house right next door literally falling apart. I realize not every region has earthquakes to worry about, but it is a factor in some areas.
- patmcc 11y ago
  >>>This is clearly not a cost issue Nope, that's exactly it - it's cheaper and faster for the builder to frame a house small and simply. They've found that people spend money for houses based on location, size, and the visible stuff (like nice paint jobs and shiny appliances). They could spend twice as long as 40% more in materials and the home would sell for 2% more - not worth their time.
golergka 11y ago
How do these buildings compare in cost, adjusted for inflation? A lot of examples of "superior" technology from 19th century turn out to be expensive stuff created for upper class, compared to mass-produced items of today that are affordable for the general population.
alricb 11y ago
A bit more technical: http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi080-tailor-made http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi080-tailor-... Essentially, Holladay is complaining about the lack of water detailing, which is super important to the durability of brick. It doesn't need to be as fancy as his first example, as the link above shows, but you need someone to care about it. Essentially, the issue building science specialists have with modernist architecture is that it often favors geometric simplicity over proper protection of the materials. Brick can withstand water, to an extent, but without drip edges and other details, it's quickly going to get damaged and ugly. Note that building science nerds also tend to hate bumpouts and complicated rooflines because the air tightness and insulation details are hard to get right (and usually they just aren't done properly).
y04nn 11y ago
What is the point of comparing a high class building with a low class building? They have not been constructed with the same budget and not to achieve the same goal. Clearly a dorm aims to lower the cost to an extreme, exactly the opposite of what a bank would do.
kaiser_wilhelm 11y ago
Feminism and the social left. Basically the same hive that will downvote this.
tsetliff 11y ago
As I sit here in a rather old house (1920's) though never very expensive house I would say there are good and bad things about it. There's very little insulation, the heavy exterior is only a couple inches from some sort of plaster board on the inside causing many electrical boxes to be shallow. They really didn't care about the price of heating the house when they built it or maybe they did it to be cheap, but in any case that cost has gone way up. I do like an actual wood floor and heavy beams used in the construction of the basement and such. The plumbing is sometimes far more creative then is easy to fix now and I've found myself just cutting sections out and replacing it. I actually have some pipes made from lead going out so they can be bent in curves. Terracotta drains in the yard probably need to be replaced. The wiring was the first thing I replaced, knob and tube without grounds was just scary. O, and since the entire house was painted (yes they painted the formed bricks, not exactly like in the article though still bricks) with lead paint I certainly wouldn't eat something grown close to the house. Also I have steam heat which is interesting all by itself. So all in all, a not super expensive old building tends to be a lot of work these days and I would rather have a newer even if flimsy construction next time. I think I'll go along with the commenter who said the surviving old buildings are a bias because they are generally the best of the best of what was built in that time period.
gp7 11y ago
Capital?
lutorm 11y ago
This sort of "commodification", for lack of a better word, is visible in many areas, I think. I was thinking about this lately in relation to tools. It's great that you can now get tools for unbelievably low prices compared to, say, 50 years ago. This is a big win in many instances, because a shitty tool is often better than no tool at all, and it opens up access for many who would never be able to afford the old tools. The flip side, however, is that it's devalued quality. It's remarkably difficult to actually find high-quality stuff these days. Even what used to be high-end brands have been bought up by some conglomerate that is now selling cheap Chinese versions under the old names. There's still a market for quality, of course. You don't use tools from Harbor Freight when building rockets, but you'll never see those in any store you visit and they're likely to be priced far outside the reach of a normal person. It's like the middle ground has been lost, most stuff is cheap and low quality and then there is this small high end of really expensive stuff.
dschiptsov 11y ago
It is, probably, a global shift from slow and costly perfectionism to quick and cheap "good enough" (in worst possible sense of "getting shit done"). What they call a cost cutting or " optimization " is merely a form of cheating and concealing inability to and unwillingness to provide quality. BTW, the most of buildings with have collapsed in Kathmandu around the new bus stand were these which has been built quickly with cost cutting (chap, thin steel bars, thick cheap cement layers between bricks, etc). And this trend is everywhere, from clotches to Java. The age of getting shit done.)
pbreit 11y ago
Here's another question: why is the architecture in San Francisco so awful? I would take cruddy brick over hideous paneling any day.
- robbrown451 11y ago
  What architecture are you speaking of? Wood buildings like the very common Victorians? I don't know what you mean by "hideous paneling," but of the many places I've lived, San Francisco has the most beautiful/interesting architecture. I grew up in a brick house on the east coast, and I find that sort of architecture drab comparatively.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    Oh, no. I'm talking about stuff that's been built over the last 1 or 2 decades. Mainly, the disgusting loft buildings in SOMA and all the larger, paneled residential buildings.
    - bluthru 11y ago
      It looks cheap because it is cheap. Developers have no civic pride and just want their investment to pay out ASAP.
aurizon 11y ago
The dramatic increase in the cost of labour compared to the cost of bricks and mortar has been a major driver in the elimination of detail on houses and buildings. Now we engineer things to snap together. Wires and pipes etc all suffer from this problem as well. We can actually make better brick work, with longer lasting mortar - as long as we want to pay for these details
- HillRat 11y ago
  One interesting thing that I found out, having renovated a loft in a brick building from the early 1900s, is that modern mortar is much more friable and shorter-lived than older mortars (specifically, European recipes) made with a higher proportion of lime. The old mortars flex more effectively, while moderns compounds crack and spall. When we repointed our building, we found an English stonemason with a background in historical buildings (it's not cheap, architecture). He had worked on renovating Roman-era buildings in Bath, where they found that mortar laid down thousands of years ago had survived completely intact, requiring often very minor repairs. It's sobering to think that Roman building technologies will outlast those of our own age.
kaizendad 11y ago
One of the things the author brings up is that the old worksite would've had senior craftsmen - and that the standard of work of the ordinary laborer would've been higher. Have these skilled craftsmen moved into other careers - for instance, software engineer?
owenversteeg 11y ago
I live in Hanover, NH -- the town mentioned in the post -- and see that building every day. I also know the architect that designed that building personally, and would be happy to forward any questions to him.
- nkurz 11y ago
  I don't have any specific questions, but I'd love to see his response to the article! I'm pretty sure that Martin would add it to the bottom of the original if desired.
daodedickinson 11y ago
100 years ago, the writing engineer would never dare to have used such a narrow evidence base.
mcs 11y ago
Cinder blocks were cheaper near foundries, so a lot of plant economy homes are wood propped up and not on slabs. Slabs do not last on the "gumbo" mud, and it floods. Metals weren't cheap enough for siding so asbestos was used. Now there are the synthesized woods.
gchpaco 11y ago
There are almost no 100 year old brick buildings in San Francisco. Why? Because there was a big goddamn earthquake in 1906, and unreinforced masonry (which is to say, functionally almost all of it) deals badly with earthquakes in general. It deals especially badly with them when they are built on landfill. There are also lots of mentions of survivorship bias, which is extremely relevant here. Now that said, I find modern construction to be badly done in general, because it is almost all of it erected as cheaply as possible—and as cheaply as possible as measured by the shortest possible term metric. There is good stuff done still, and it is arguably cheaper over the ten year run or longer, but that's not what people buy and so it's not what the developers make. I'd like to claim this is shortsightedness but I can't shake the feeling that it's because real wages have been stagnant or sometimes declining since around 1972. There just isn't the money to spend. N.B.: there are a lot of reasons why modern lumber seems like so much crap. About 95% of it is because folks are unwilling to pay for good lumber, as described above. Quality lumber, even quality construction lumber exists, but it's significantly more expensive than #2 common. Of the remainder, it's worth remembering that modern 2x4s are tend to be farmed in sustainable fashion using fast growth species like Douglas fir or Southern yellow pine. The stuff we were building with in the 30s and 40s? Quite a lot of that came from old growth forests, now irrevocably gone.
listic 11y ago
Is there a non-paywalled version? 'This article is available for GBA PRIME members only'
- tandyclone 11y ago
  Easily ripped-off because their paywall needs a new word to describe simultaneously terrible, useless and laughable that isn't Donald or Trump. In most desktop browsers, press <ESC> (or stop on mobile browsers) to stop loading content while the page is still loading in just the right time window and the paywall ask will be less likely to popup (but still nondeterministically succeed sometimes). Or read just the the text here: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7eea331af1ff2fe088c2/raw/d87d8abce8d8f0788c43fab8ad3f5bc6f30c5f89/gistfile1.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7eea331af1ff2fe...
relaxitup 11y ago
He is right about a couple of things, though he does not seem to have much of a grasp about buildings in general. He is right that sills (whatever material they are made of) should always protrude. I agree that the 1970's and 80's will probably be considered the low point in building (and were certainly the low point in automobile quality). He apparently doesn't understand that the brick header in the older building is actually weight-bearing while the one in the newer building is a veneer covering a poured-concrete structural header. He misses the main point: the older building is much better quality because it cost much more in relative terms. Buildings, like most of our modern products have declined in quality because we don't spend as much on them. But we have far more stuff - buildings and everything else.

406 points by nkurz 11y ago

sbierwagen 11y ago

Loginwall.

hatsix 11y ago
click the 'web' link underneath the title, then the first link in google.
chrismealy 11y ago
The "Wait, Google Sent Me" plugin works.
fransan 11y ago
...or you can open the web console, remove a couple of nodes from the dom, and the wall is gone. To scroll, use your up/down keys in your keyboard :)
- eyko 11y ago
  or just disable javascript.
fa 11y ago
Firefox specific. about:config -> javascript.enable -> "false". Refresh. Reset to "true".

turar 11y ago

Wait, aren't a lot of modern American "brick" buildings made with plywood covered with brick siding?

tectec 11y ago
That is addressed in the article.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
CydeWeys 11y ago
That's not really an accurate description of wooden-framed construction. For one, there's a lot more structure to it than just bricks and plywood, and it's also safer against earthquakes and other environmental damage.

coryrc 11y ago

The author admits to the limited comparison. I have a few other reasons: 1. We actually care if our buildings are insulated now and withstand earthquakes. 2. People are so wealthy here they don't have to get it right, they can always pay to do it over again. They don't care to put in the research to make sure it is done right. [0] 3. Corollary to #2, we don't need our buildings to last 100 years because we expect the area to be overtaken by increased density by then? [0] CSB: Person tells about friend that bought house in Las Vegas just prior to 2008, has enormous cooling bill because house doesn't have overhang to protect southern exposure from the sun and HOA won't allow her to alter it. Asks why the government doesn't protect her. I ask why she didn't do a little more due diligence before spending $300k. He hadn't thought of it that way and considers it.

SamBam 11y ago
How would any of the issues with the Dartmouth brick building in the article have been caused by #1?
- douche 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure they don't care about insulation that much at Dartmouth. There's a huge steam plant on campus, and all the brick dorms are equipped with old-fashioned steam radiators that have two settings - over-bearingly hot, and "boil my pot of ramen noodles." It's common to see the dorm windows wide open when it is -20 F in February, with students trying to regulate the temperature to a livable level.
- coryrc 11y ago
  The masons and architects have a lot more to care about these days. Even so, they should have gotten the flashing and water flow right (even cheap 80s houses usually have slanted window sill). Oh, and the insulation reduces drying of the brick to the interior, which can cause it decay within a decade if not done right: http://www.bluegreengroup.ca/bluegreen-launches-a-study-on-attached-double-brick-homes http://www.bluegreengroup.ca/bluegreen-launches-a-study-on-a... (though that's not the case here).
- shimon 11y ago

pilsetnieks 11y ago

Could it be survivor bias? What if the cheap shitty hundred-year-old buildings are torn down or covered in plaster or siding, thus leaving only the good specimens?

Retric 11y ago

Survivorship bias is a really important caveat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Many cheap brick buildings from 100 years ago are gone, where the high quality ones are more likely to remain. Also, steel Lintel are often used over windows in brick buildings. They don't last as long, but are fine for cheap construction that is not expected to last. AKA the kinds of building that are unlikely to be around in 100 years.

beachstartup 11y ago
not only that, but back in the day brick was the fancy expensive option, today it isn't. those with big budgets and ambitious design goals choose other materials (steel, glass, etc.)
- afarrell 11y ago
  I thought brick was more expensive today due to labor costs and that steel and glass were comparatively cheap. Is this false?
  - pjc50 11y ago
    Generally true. The relative cost of wood vs brick also varies from country to country depending on local availability.
    - beachstartup 11y ago
      wood is definitely cheaper than brick but i have a hard time believing that a brick building will be more expensive than one made of steel and glass. the architecture, engineering, transport, etc. is where most of the cost comes from, not the building materials.
      - pjc50 11y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10522334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10522334 claims that brick is expensive enough for people to steal buildings!

cecilpl 11y ago

Isn't this simply an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias? The only brick buildings you can still look at from the 1800s are the ones that were built very well - all the shoddily-constructed buildings from that era have since disappeared.

CydeWeys 11y ago
Here's an example of a shoddy building from over a century ago that, through a historical quirk, is still around: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-shack-starting-at-350000-2015-09-29 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-shack-startin... Yeah, the dorm in the linked article is totally better than that building. So while there are good buildings from that era, let's not kid ourselves, there were also a lot of horrible buildings that are rightfully no longer around. I would be willing to bet that the average quality of new construction is better now than it was then. If nothing else, the pervasive use of aluminum/vinyl siding and tar-asphalt shingle roofs yields buildings that better withstand the elements that old-style painted wood.

danieltillett 11y ago

We have the same issue here in Australia. The quality of recent brick work is terrible, even the bricks are worse. It seems brickies are unable (or unwilling) to lay bricks anymore.

Animats 11y ago

Is the brick actually holding up the building? In many modern buildings, it's just a veneer, about 1cm thick. The steelwork holds it up. The new Box.net HQ in Redwood City looks like a brick building, but it's not; it's steel and concrete with about 1cm of brick on the outside. There's some nice work being done with brick today.[1] Some of this is gentrification, built to fit in with existing brick buildings, or to imitate them in new construction. All those examples have recessed windows, although not structural stone lintels. Many lintels today are precast stone and decorative; steel is carrying the load. Robotic bricklaying is here.[2] In earthquake country, you really don't want tall brick buildings where the brick is structural. San Francisco is very anti-cornice; in even minor earthquakes, overhanging masonry cornices tend to fall off and kill people. [1] http://www.bdcnetwork.com/7-emerging-design-trends-brick-buildings http://www.bdcnetwork.com/7-emerging-design-trends-brick-bui... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI

dpark 11y ago
> Is the brick actually holding up the building? This was my thought as well. The modern building is likely just using the brick as veneer, even if it is full-thickness brick. It's likely concrete walls with brick layered over it. The fact that the brickwork is poorly done likely doesn't matter except aesthetically. If all the brick fell off the building would still be standing. The newer building is indeed ugly, and the brickwork looks cheap and poorly done. But that doesn't mean the technology has declined. It means the technology has advanced to the point that the brick is just ornamental.
- barrkel 11y ago
  Wouldn't you expect brick for ornamental purposes to look prettier than brick used for functional purposes?
  - greggyb 11y ago
    No, you'd expect brick for ornamental purposes to look prettier than what it's covering.

Plough_Jogger 11y ago

This is a clear example of survivorship bias. Buildings from 100 years ago that still stand today necessarily must have been those that were most carefully constructed or those that have been thoughtfully preserved. This creates a biased comparison between the highest quality buildings of the past and an average (or perhaps worse than average) building from modern times. This article could conclude that not all brick buildings today are superior in construction to the highest quality buildings built 100 years ago, but making a more general statement would be a fallacious extrapolation.

escherplex 11y ago
And to bring that idea home: contemporary flimsy construction is also a function of local building codes. In 2004 I was in a Florida house built in 1988 which structurally resembled a concrete bunker outfitted with heavy duty crank windows. This was required construction at the time. A hurricane showed up mid August with 140 mph (225 kph) winds and two things in particular were impressive: how well the structure survived the hurricane essentially unscathed (other than damage to it's pool cage screening) and witnessing how well palm trees folded their foliage to weather the onslaught. Apparently after 1988 they had lightened up on the building codes and cheap 2X4 frame construction was allowed for two story dense pack condos in the surrounding area. These did not fare so well. In one case a large pine tree was snapped at the base and hurled through the side of a frame condo complex like a battering ram, demolishing the whole structure. The complex had been evacuated before the hurricane struck so apparently there were no casualties. The moral of this story is that if you mandate good construction then that's what you get. Leave loopholes for cheap construction and that's what you'll get (and it won't suffer the rigors of time very well).

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

If you are curious about this topic you should bring it up with some architects from different countries. From my understanding there are indeed regressions in building quality in some countries but it's not entirely clear what causes it other than decisions that have been made at the time. In particular the brick did not decrease in quality but the way they were built did. For instance for a while people paid less attention to protecting buildings from water damage to achieve more interesting designs. A particular crazy architectural style that suffers a lot from this is British brutalist architecture.

Marazan 11y ago
Brutalism gets everywhere in modern british arcitecture. The idea that any archtiect should be designing a flat foor bulding in, say, Scotland is totally bonkers.
- pjc50 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter's_Seminary,_Cardross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter's_Seminary,_Cardross It's a beautiful ruin, but it seems never to have been a properly functioning building. Artistic success, total waste of resources for church that built it.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    Oh yes that's quite the nasty bit of concrete.
    - Marazan 11y ago
      I would love to know the mindset and thought process of Brutalist architects and admirers who see that and see beauty whilst the majority of the rest of the world sees a broken down leaking eye sore. We are so far apart it is like trying to understand and alien. I have seen a scant handful of Brutalist building that I consider fine works of craft but the gob smacking majority are pitiful piles of concrete and exposed trusses.

chrisBob 11y ago

Is there any reason to believe that the "old" building wasn't just recently repointed? This seems like the most likely answer.

yasth 11y ago
No amount of repointing could make the modern joints as even, or as narrow, as the old ones. Though to be fair I don't think the modern builders were even going for that look.
- Animats 11y ago
  Modern builders rarely go for the tightly fitted brick look. It's possible to get brick and concrete pavers with precise dimensions and cement them tightly together, and this is common for brick and stone paving work. Walls could be made that way, but seldom are.

dworin 11y ago

There are some other great explanations in this thread (survivor bias seems very plausible), but I'll throw out another based on my experience with other construction trades: economics. If you look at old buildings, you tend to notice that they also have a lot of intricate plaster-work that you never see anymore. Why? Because it used to be much cheaper to hire skilled labor than it is today. You can see a similar trend every year in the Christmas Price Index, which tracks the cost of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas song. The prices of goods tend to stay stable, while the price of labor tends to increase significantly. For our brick buildings, I tried to find the best numbers I could, and here's what I came up with: In 1894, bricks cost about $5.70/thousand [1], which is $165.51 in today's dollars Today, you can get bricks wholesale for $220/thousand - and that's what I found online, I imagine an actual wholesaler is less. [2] That's an increase of about 37% For the bricklayer, the average wage in 1891 was $4/day, which is about $110 in today's dollars [3] Today, the median bricklayer pay is $24/hour [4], which is $192 per 8 hour day. That's an increase of 75% in the real wages of the bricklayer, and it means that the rate labor costs have increased is double the rate of material costs. In 1891, it may have made financial sense to pay for a bricklayer to make intricate, high quality buildings. In the past few decades, it's likely that's no longer the case. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA953&lpg=PA953&dq=average+price+brick+1891&source=bl&ots=GcEOPaUc51&sig=NleYQCrOeeo04wtGQazDrf-4WFc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIyoCb_tn8yAIViiomCh07oAPV#v=onepage&q=average%20price%20brick%201891&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA953&lpg=... [2]http://brickbroker.com/brick.html http://brickbroker.com/brick.html [3] https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=PA722&dq=wage+bricklayer+1891&source=bl&ots=yl05RZTmSC&sig=ezss_Em2mx16u76THQi7eTaR8xY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCsQ6AEwA2oVChMIqIWbodr8yAIVTOImCh3fKQED#v=onepage&q=bricklayer's%20wages&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=... [4] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Rate http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Ra...

shimon 11y ago
I think you're on the right track but your comparison fails to take into account the productivity of the bricklayer. A good bricklayer today ought to be more productive than an 1891 bricklayer, because he has motorized mixers, vehicles to move bricks to the right place, laser lines to level his rows, etc. Even in a craft that seems legendarily nontechnical, you have to give some credit to technological advancement. But it's still probably not enough to fully compensate for the 75% increase in labor cost.

smrtinsert 11y ago

Where are brick buildings being torn down left and right? I challenge the survivorship bias argument as where I live in the US east coast multiple cities push for historical status on buildings past a certain age in order to retain character.

jws 11y ago
My 1950 brick building is 1/3 constructed from re-used brick. Many houses built in the 1960s in my area are also built of reused brick. There must have been some degree of brick teardown going on. Even now we have trouble with people stealing brick buildings. Unused houses are sometimes set ablaze by brick thieves, then later they come in the night and cart off the bricks.
- pjc50 11y ago
  stealing brick buildings This sounds totally bananas, where is this? Are the bricks made of gold or something?
  - paulzerkel 11y ago
    This is a problem in parts of St. Louis, MO. The brick is of high enough quality that people will steal them for resale from abandoned buildings. Naturally, this leads to the building collapsing which causes even more issues for surrounding area.
  - jws 11y ago
    $0.50 to $1.00 is typical for St. Louis used bricks.

rwmj 11y ago

The small house I live in is 100 years old, and built of brick. It is a tremendously (over-)engineered building: two layers of brick even for interior walls, exterior walls are around 1 ft thick, and four massive chimney-breasts (although two were sadly removed by previous owners). My theory is that they just had enormous amounts of cheap labour 100 years ago, and you'd never be able to build such a building today because it would be far too expensive.

ashark 11y ago
In my experience the timber in buildings that old is of the sort that would be hard to find at any price these days, and ruinously expensive if you could. Single thick, long, flawless pieces used in places where several thinner, knot-filled pieces would be used today. Exceptional (by modern standards) material, used in quantities that would be considered excessive even in nice construction these days.
- rwmj 11y ago
  This is of course why reclaimed building materials are a thing (in the UK anyway). I could go to a place not 10 miles from here and buy a cast iron fireplace that was previously in a home very similar to mine. The irony being that a previous owner of my home probably chucked my fireplace in a skip in about 1980.

unit91 11y ago

Survivorship bias and structural integrity aside, I suspect it's all about the cashflow. The bank was built in 1891. The FDIC wasn't around until 1933. The appearance of wealth and institutional stability was a very important marketing tool to late 19th-century bankers wanting patrons to trust them with their money. The dorm houses kids fresh out of high school who can't / don't want to live off campus. I'd guess the building is attractive enough to most people to avoid negative attention, and -- as the article indicates -- it obviously isn't swaying money away from Dartmouth, so why bother?

vvpan 11y ago

Alright, too many mentions of survival bias and too much skepticism. There're large parts of some cities that are almost exclusively constructed from brick. It might be bias or it might not be. It's clear that nowadays buildings are made cheaply. For example the construction of the regular American suburban "stick" house is just the cheapest and the quickest way put up walls and a roof. What you get is something that's badly insulated (both from weather and sound) and just isn't very strong, and the technique is getting traction in other parts of the world too, replacing concrete, beams and brick.

gluggymug 11y ago
Yeah I don't think it's bias. That would imply that there's no issues with the newer design when the article clearly showed where the wrong choices have affected the durability of the building.

beat 11y ago

More broadly on this subject, I recommend that every software engineer read the book How Buildings Learn, by Stewart Brand. It's a book about the lifecycle of buildings, design compromises, and how buildings are altered and repurposed over their life. It's a fascinating way to think about software as well.

oliwarner 11y ago

It's an interesting idea worth exploring... ...but comparing a bank (a building that in 1891 had to LOOK expensive) and student flats (a building that has to BE cheap) results in the rather underwhelming discovery that because they had wildly different budgets with completely different aesthetic aims, they ended up with different built qualities. Shocking, isn't it? If they want to make an apples-for-apples comparison, the author should come to the UK and compare our 1890 semi-detached with any post-70s new-build. There are certainly ecological issues with the older building (that are expensive to retrofit past) but the quality of building and workmanship is drastically better in the older houses. And [at least in the UK] this isn't a case of crappy houses made of sticks falling down. With the rarest of exceptions, there is no "survivorship bias".

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Student housing at a very expensive private institution. Not some council houses. So pretty fair comparison I think. And that aesthetics should override competent construction technique is a bad idea, is also a fair criticism.
- oliwarner 11y ago
  It's sweet that you think students get what their parents pay for. No. The briefest of glances lets you know exactly what Dartmouth instructed their architect to aim for: capacity. The real reason it looks so poor is —as I did say before— their respective aesthetic aims. Dartmouth wanted something that looked New Englandy that holds dozens of students, while the bank wanted something that makes them look like they have all the money.
dazc 11y ago
> "With the rarest of exceptions, there is no "survivorship bias"." A lot of UK housing built circa 1900 - 1930 was not well built at all; Building regulations as such hardly existed and there was a lot of trial and error. Buildings did indeed fall down.
- oliwarner 11y ago

dnautics 11y ago

I saw this brickwork on a building in nyc's financial district on a building maybe around 50-100 years old. https://plus.google.com/111337360985340071974/posts/KkDyX34uZop https://plus.google.com/111337360985340071974/posts/KkDyX34u...

ItsDeathball 11y ago
That's structural brick covered in stucco, which was pretty common in American cities in the 18th and 19th centuries. You see it a lot in areas with low-quality clay, since the resulting brick is porous and brittle, necessitating a stucco covering to protect it from the elements and not look awful. It might not be poor construction, just ugly because it's not intended to ever be seen. Of course, by design the stucco needs to be replaced every few decades, so who knows if it's been kept up. That contrasts with the article's 1891 example of a building where the brickwork was both structural and decorative, requiring maximum attention to detail.
- dnautics 11y ago
  Did you zoom in on the brick underneath? It's helter skelter.

yk 11y ago

Reminds me on a recent conversation at a maker space: How do you control it, a transistor and a oscillator? Nah, just an Arduino. So with micro controllers we loose a lot of applied knowledge of analog circuits and I suspect something similar is going on in architecture. The hours a architect spends on learning about modern materials is not spend thinking about brick works, and consequently a modern architect is a lot worse at building brick buildings than a architect one hundred years ago.

gopowerranger 11y ago

It may be due to the quality of the clay, or the lack of clay at all, for making the bricks. I saw a documentary on this just a few months ago aired by our local PBS station on this very subject. http://ninenet.org/archives/pressroom/st-louis-brick-building-legacy-explored-on-special-hour-long-program-2 http://ninenet.org/archives/pressroom/st-louis-brick-buildin... https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brick https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brick

pjc50 11y ago

> "Part of the blame, I feel, rests at the feet of the Modernist movement — a movement that idealized the cube and disdained roof overhangs. Modernist architects were ignorant of the entire concept of moisture management. The fact that thousands of Modernist buildings suffered water entry problems did little to deter architects from falling in love with Modernism and Brutalism. This tragic love affair contributed to the withering of age-old skills." I believe this is a fair assignment of blame. It's analogous to the complaints people have about some modern web design - total focus on appearance at the expense of usability or technical quality. The architects produce buildings that look good on paper, because that's what wins the contract. The next client isn't going to go to their previous building and do a customer satisfaction survey on the users. Nobody ever does. Edit: Incan stone construction is one of the great examples of ancient 'over'building: precisely fitted hand-carved stone, good for five centuries. And Rome has plenty of 2000 year old brick buildings, especially the Pantheon dome.

everyone 11y ago
This was a good article but I think the authors assignment of blame is misplaced. In my opinion the reason contemporary brick construction is not up to par with 100 year old brick construction is the same reason contemporary washing machines are not up to the standard of washing machines 100 years ago: The emphasis in making things now is on speed and cheapness, the emphasis 100 years ago was on quality. The college dorm building was certainly thrown up in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the price with a fraction of the labourers, than the bank building.
- finnh 11y ago
  I will gladly trade a 100 year old washing machine (rusty and hand-powered, I assume) for a Miele. I'm sure you have an argument here, but I don't see how washing machines further it.
  - everyone 11y ago
    You assume too much. Also this article is addressing the construction quality and longevity of brick facades. I was referencing the construction quality and longevity of washing machines, pre-war vs modern. https://youtu.be/baFaEvBywGc?t=22m40s https://youtu.be/baFaEvBywGc?t=22m40s

shimon 11y ago

In Somerville, MA there is an area with some converted loft buildings including new construction loft-style buildings. The new building walls use masonry blocks (large grey blocks) for structure, with decorative brick on the outside. On the inside, there is a cavity for insulation and wiring, and an interior brick wall. The masonry work is excellent, and is probably the best way to create a wall that looks like brick inside and out yet meets modern insulation demands. But it is a gratuitously expensive construction technique to try and make a building look old and classic. If you don't value that particular aesthetic, you would select other materials. If you want to pander to that aesthetic but don't have a premium loft budget, you might end up with crap like that dorm.

MisterBastahrd 11y ago

Because brick has become affordable for the common man and building techniques value speed? The average person building a house in 1915 would have a house built with wood siding because brick would have been out of his price range, even with the slave labor wages and lack of sufficient building regulations.

lr 11y ago

You can see the results of this all over NYC. A building down the street from where I live has had scaffolding around it for over 2 years as they replace the bricks (building owners have to test the bricks ever 5 years in NYC if their building is over 6 stories). This building was build in the 70s. I have no idea when they are going to be done.

scottious 11y ago

I don't buy any of it for even a second. On my way to work, they're building this wonderful brick sidewalk. While still just a side walk and not a building, it's remarkably well crafted and detailed. I think we CAN do it, we just choose not to, economically. I think somebody would rather save a lot of money and build something "good enough" these days than invest in craftsmanship. Also, I bet you don't have to look far to find a bunch of counter examples in modern times.

vlehto 11y ago
My perception is that parks, walkways, fences etc have gotten better. Even bridges are getting beautiful again. It's houses that seem to go downhill. But not single family houses, only bigger buildings.
TheCowboy 11y ago
Someone might be able to do it, but they're not easy to find or cheap. There was a structural brick house that remained an eyesore in a DC neighborhood for years after a car accident demolished part of its cylindrical masonry wall (picture a round castle tower). The owner gave the reason that the masonry skills to construct this type of feature were not something easily found, and had been a sort of lost art, and they had been looking for a long time before finally getting it repaired.

jhallenworld 11y ago

There are some modern construction techniques that make me nervous: One is pre-stressed concrete. This has replaced I-beams for highway bridges. The problem here is how do you inspect them? With steel I-beams you can use your eyes. With concrete maybe you need some kind of ultrasound equipment to check the tension cables? Do you trust those responsible for long-term maintenance to do it? Another is engineered wood I-beams for houses. Basically these are floor joists made out of plywood. How long will they last? What happens if they get wet? If there is a fire the house is gone because the floor joists will be ruined by the water to put the fire out. There were certainly mistakes in the past as well. One is building with cast-iron beams. They look nice, but they crack.

Gibbon1 11y ago
Scuttlebutt I've heard. If a modern stick house built with plywood beams catches fire, the fire department will not try to save it because it's too dangerous to send a man up on the roof to cut access holes. This is because in a fire the glue in built up beams loses strength very quickly and the thing de-laminates.
nkurz 11y ago
If there is a fire the house is gone because the floor joists will be ruined by the water to put the fire out. Do you have more information on this? I've known about the increased direct risk from fire, but haven't seen anything about damage from temporary water contact. The only information I can find doesn't seem to agree with this, although it doesn't specifically prove otherwise: www.woodbywy.com/document/tb-213
- jhallenworld 11y ago
  Well I went looking for this and it's not as clear as I first thought. The fire risk is the biggest issue. The webbing for "TJI" is made out of OSB, and it seems there is definitely a long absorption time for this material so I'm thinking the collapse risk from water during firefighting is not all that high. Nobody is recommended ignoring long-term dampness (like from a leak) and the manufacture will certainly void the warranty.

analog31 11y ago

I wonder if the decline of labor unions is a factor, or some similar thing that affects the willingness of people to make a career of a skilled trade.

WalterBright 11y ago

Bank buildings built before 1929 tend to be massive masonry structures with greek columns, marble, etc. Ones build later tend to be cracker boxes in strip malls. My theory is that the older banks needed to impress their clients with stability, conservativeness, safety, responsibility, etc. After FDIC, customers looked to the government for that, and so banks no longer needed to spend the money on the building. The massive, glittering vaults are sadly gone now, too. The money exists as data on a server somewhere, little need for a vault.

beardicus 11y ago
> After FDIC, customers looked to the government for that Or an alternate theory: bank owners used to be local businesspeople, who would have been (rightly) embarrassed and ashamed to erect a shoddy and short-lived structure in their hometown. Now banks are at least regional, if not national or global, and care more about saving a few pennies for shareholders than they do about the communities they inhabit. Combine this with the fact that consumers and "fellow citizens" don't give a crap about good buildings and good urbanism, and here we are with crackerbox drivethrough shite that nobody gives a damn about because it'll be bulldozed in 30 years, after a brief stint as a laser tag venue.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  This is close to what I think. To a great extent buildings have been commodified. And businesses typically do not own buildings, they are tenants. The bulldozed in 30 years attitude is post war nihilism in a nutshell. (In thirty years will be living on mars or dead from nuclear fire)
dredmorbius 11y ago
While most money does exist electronically, you'd be surprised at the amounts of actual cash and gold which are stored in major banking centers.
asveikau 11y ago
I think the strip mall thing happened much later than 1929. I can think of specific bank branches from my east coast childhood that I would estimate were built in the 60s or 70s that are still trying to pull off the "grandeur" style.

old-gregg 11y ago

The quality of modern construction (not necessarily brick) is a big pet peeve of mine and something I keep looking for answers. The way I see it, some time right after WWII, people in US suddenly decided to live in a poorly built and ugly looking dwellings regardless of their income level. It is especially easy to see when looking at NYC buildings, some rentals are even explicitly advertized as "pre-war". Examples of annoying trends in modern construction: - Low "hobbit" ceilings. - Short door frames. - Tiny windows. - Nearly non-existent noise/vibration insulation Even looking at materials used for construction today, I can't figure out why everyone thinks that drywall-on-sticks is acceptable? Literally every multi-story home I've been in felt hollow and shaky if you jump on the 2nd floor because there's no mass anywhere. This is clearly not a cost issue, I have taken tours looking at brand-new multi-MM homes in Austin, TX just for fun. While they all had top-notch appliances, finishes and a gazilion of square feet and bedrooms, they were also built using the same "toy" materials and used generally similar architectural patters as middle class homes. What caused this change? It's like our collective mind suddenly stopped caring about tall doors, 10ft ceilings and solid feel of floors we walk on.

djrogers 11y ago
re 'drywall on sticks' - not only does this construction technique provide for a huge amount of flexibility in interior layout, it's by far the most earthquake friendly construction for single family homes. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a home built with such 'toy' materials require nothing more than some stucco repair and drywall patching, with a brick house right next door literally falling apart. I realize not every region has earthquakes to worry about, but it is a factor in some areas.
patmcc 11y ago
>>>This is clearly not a cost issue Nope, that's exactly it - it's cheaper and faster for the builder to frame a house small and simply. They've found that people spend money for houses based on location, size, and the visible stuff (like nice paint jobs and shiny appliances). They could spend twice as long as 40% more in materials and the home would sell for 2% more - not worth their time.

golergka 11y ago

How do these buildings compare in cost, adjusted for inflation? A lot of examples of "superior" technology from 19th century turn out to be expensive stuff created for upper class, compared to mass-produced items of today that are affordable for the general population.

alricb 11y ago

A bit more technical: http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi080-tailor-made http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi080-tailor-... Essentially, Holladay is complaining about the lack of water detailing, which is super important to the durability of brick. It doesn't need to be as fancy as his first example, as the link above shows, but you need someone to care about it. Essentially, the issue building science specialists have with modernist architecture is that it often favors geometric simplicity over proper protection of the materials. Brick can withstand water, to an extent, but without drip edges and other details, it's quickly going to get damaged and ugly. Note that building science nerds also tend to hate bumpouts and complicated rooflines because the air tightness and insulation details are hard to get right (and usually they just aren't done properly).

y04nn 11y ago

What is the point of comparing a high class building with a low class building? They have not been constructed with the same budget and not to achieve the same goal. Clearly a dorm aims to lower the cost to an extreme, exactly the opposite of what a bank would do.

kaiser_wilhelm 11y ago

Feminism and the social left. Basically the same hive that will downvote this.

tsetliff 11y ago

As I sit here in a rather old house (1920's) though never very expensive house I would say there are good and bad things about it. There's very little insulation, the heavy exterior is only a couple inches from some sort of plaster board on the inside causing many electrical boxes to be shallow. They really didn't care about the price of heating the house when they built it or maybe they did it to be cheap, but in any case that cost has gone way up. I do like an actual wood floor and heavy beams used in the construction of the basement and such. The plumbing is sometimes far more creative then is easy to fix now and I've found myself just cutting sections out and replacing it. I actually have some pipes made from lead going out so they can be bent in curves. Terracotta drains in the yard probably need to be replaced. The wiring was the first thing I replaced, knob and tube without grounds was just scary. O, and since the entire house was painted (yes they painted the formed bricks, not exactly like in the article though still bricks) with lead paint I certainly wouldn't eat something grown close to the house. Also I have steam heat which is interesting all by itself. So all in all, a not super expensive old building tends to be a lot of work these days and I would rather have a newer even if flimsy construction next time. I think I'll go along with the commenter who said the surviving old buildings are a bias because they are generally the best of the best of what was built in that time period.

gp7 11y ago

Capital?

lutorm 11y ago

This sort of "commodification", for lack of a better word, is visible in many areas, I think. I was thinking about this lately in relation to tools. It's great that you can now get tools for unbelievably low prices compared to, say, 50 years ago. This is a big win in many instances, because a shitty tool is often better than no tool at all, and it opens up access for many who would never be able to afford the old tools. The flip side, however, is that it's devalued quality. It's remarkably difficult to actually find high-quality stuff these days. Even what used to be high-end brands have been bought up by some conglomerate that is now selling cheap Chinese versions under the old names. There's still a market for quality, of course. You don't use tools from Harbor Freight when building rockets, but you'll never see those in any store you visit and they're likely to be priced far outside the reach of a normal person. It's like the middle ground has been lost, most stuff is cheap and low quality and then there is this small high end of really expensive stuff.

dschiptsov 11y ago

It is, probably, a global shift from slow and costly perfectionism to quick and cheap "good enough" (in worst possible sense of "getting shit done"). What they call a cost cutting or " optimization " is merely a form of cheating and concealing inability to and unwillingness to provide quality. BTW, the most of buildings with have collapsed in Kathmandu around the new bus stand were these which has been built quickly with cost cutting (chap, thin steel bars, thick cheap cement layers between bricks, etc). And this trend is everywhere, from clotches to Java. The age of getting shit done.)

pbreit 11y ago

Here's another question: why is the architecture in San Francisco so awful? I would take cruddy brick over hideous paneling any day.

robbrown451 11y ago
What architecture are you speaking of? Wood buildings like the very common Victorians? I don't know what you mean by "hideous paneling," but of the many places I've lived, San Francisco has the most beautiful/interesting architecture. I grew up in a brick house on the east coast, and I find that sort of architecture drab comparatively.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Oh, no. I'm talking about stuff that's been built over the last 1 or 2 decades. Mainly, the disgusting loft buildings in SOMA and all the larger, paneled residential buildings.
  - bluthru 11y ago
    It looks cheap because it is cheap. Developers have no civic pride and just want their investment to pay out ASAP.

aurizon 11y ago

The dramatic increase in the cost of labour compared to the cost of bricks and mortar has been a major driver in the elimination of detail on houses and buildings. Now we engineer things to snap together. Wires and pipes etc all suffer from this problem as well. We can actually make better brick work, with longer lasting mortar - as long as we want to pay for these details

HillRat 11y ago
One interesting thing that I found out, having renovated a loft in a brick building from the early 1900s, is that modern mortar is much more friable and shorter-lived than older mortars (specifically, European recipes) made with a higher proportion of lime. The old mortars flex more effectively, while moderns compounds crack and spall. When we repointed our building, we found an English stonemason with a background in historical buildings (it's not cheap, architecture). He had worked on renovating Roman-era buildings in Bath, where they found that mortar laid down thousands of years ago had survived completely intact, requiring often very minor repairs. It's sobering to think that Roman building technologies will outlast those of our own age.

kaizendad 11y ago

One of the things the author brings up is that the old worksite would've had senior craftsmen - and that the standard of work of the ordinary laborer would've been higher. Have these skilled craftsmen moved into other careers - for instance, software engineer?

owenversteeg 11y ago

I live in Hanover, NH -- the town mentioned in the post -- and see that building every day. I also know the architect that designed that building personally, and would be happy to forward any questions to him.

nkurz 11y ago
I don't have any specific questions, but I'd love to see his response to the article! I'm pretty sure that Martin would add it to the bottom of the original if desired.

daodedickinson 11y ago

100 years ago, the writing engineer would never dare to have used such a narrow evidence base.

mcs 11y ago

Cinder blocks were cheaper near foundries, so a lot of plant economy homes are wood propped up and not on slabs. Slabs do not last on the "gumbo" mud, and it floods. Metals weren't cheap enough for siding so asbestos was used. Now there are the synthesized woods.

gchpaco 11y ago

There are almost no 100 year old brick buildings in San Francisco. Why? Because there was a big goddamn earthquake in 1906, and unreinforced masonry (which is to say, functionally almost all of it) deals badly with earthquakes in general. It deals especially badly with them when they are built on landfill. There are also lots of mentions of survivorship bias, which is extremely relevant here. Now that said, I find modern construction to be badly done in general, because it is almost all of it erected as cheaply as possible—and as cheaply as possible as measured by the shortest possible term metric. There is good stuff done still, and it is arguably cheaper over the ten year run or longer, but that's not what people buy and so it's not what the developers make. I'd like to claim this is shortsightedness but I can't shake the feeling that it's because real wages have been stagnant or sometimes declining since around 1972. There just isn't the money to spend. N.B.: there are a lot of reasons why modern lumber seems like so much crap. About 95% of it is because folks are unwilling to pay for good lumber, as described above. Quality lumber, even quality construction lumber exists, but it's significantly more expensive than #2 common. Of the remainder, it's worth remembering that modern 2x4s are tend to be farmed in sustainable fashion using fast growth species like Douglas fir or Southern yellow pine. The stuff we were building with in the 30s and 40s? Quite a lot of that came from old growth forests, now irrevocably gone.

listic 11y ago

Is there a non-paywalled version? 'This article is available for GBA PRIME members only'

tandyclone 11y ago
Easily ripped-off because their paywall needs a new word to describe simultaneously terrible, useless and laughable that isn't Donald or Trump. In most desktop browsers, press <ESC> (or stop on mobile browsers) to stop loading content while the page is still loading in just the right time window and the paywall ask will be less likely to popup (but still nondeterministically succeed sometimes). Or read just the the text here: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7eea331af1ff2fe088c2/raw/d87d8abce8d8f0788c43fab8ad3f5bc6f30c5f89/gistfile1.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7eea331af1ff2fe...

relaxitup 11y ago

He is right about a couple of things, though he does not seem to have much of a grasp about buildings in general. He is right that sills (whatever material they are made of) should always protrude. I agree that the 1970's and 80's will probably be considered the low point in building (and were certainly the low point in automobile quality). He apparently doesn't understand that the brick header in the older building is actually weight-bearing while the one in the newer building is a veneer covering a poured-concrete structural header. He misses the main point: the older building is much better quality because it cost much more in relative terms. Buildings, like most of our modern products have declined in quality because we don't spend as much on them. But we have far more stuff - buildings and everything else.