
Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years? - nkurz
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/articles/dept/musings/quality-issues-brick-buildings
======
old-gregg
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.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
A combination of three things, IMHO:

1\. Labor specialization, meaning less of the home-buying market is savvy
enough in the "handyman" sense to tell the difference. 2\. A move away from
building the thing you're going to own, and building things that other people
will buy later. 3\. Minimum standards for housing construction.

The third needs to be explained more - instead of aiming towards "building a
good home", the construction industry aims to build the cheapest thing that
they are legally allowed to sell (ie, meets building codes). While building
codes do mean that there's a quality floor, competitive pressure means that
nobody can consistently exceed the floor without getting out-competed by
people who aim to barely meet it.

~~~
dazc
>"...less of the home-buying market is savvy enough in the "handyman" sense to
tell the difference"

True. I don't know how the market works in the US but in the UK what typically
happens is a developer owns the land but borrows short term money to build on
it.

The incentive, therefore, is to complete the project as quickly and cheaply as
possible. Residential houses are designed for ease of building not for
quality.

A typical buyer will have a 90-95% mortgage and the completed house is signed
off by a surveyor who is engaged by the mortgage provider. The only real
concern is if the house will still be standing in 25 years time and nothing
else. In effect it's a rubber stamping process.

The buyer is often too emotionally involved in the concept of owning a home to
care less.

No sane person would complete the purchase of a new car if defects in build
quality were so glaringly obvious but the same people do it with houses every
day?

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Yeah, that's roughly how it works in the US. Pre-WW1, though, there was much
more of "buy land and materials, build a house yourself" going on. Like,
sometimes you'd basically clear the trees from a plot and use the lumber from
that to build the house.

That's what I meant by labor specialization - on the home-buying side, much
fewer people can build a home or participate meaningfully in construction and
remodeling.

------
Animats
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-
bui...](http://www.bdcnetwork.com/7-emerging-design-trends-brick-buildings)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppk4O7iyzPI)

~~~
dpark
> _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.

~~~
Cerium
I fully expect that the brick is structural in those examples. My university
had brick dorms "the bricks". They had brick exterior walls and cinder block
interior walls. The brick walls were brick on the outside and the inside and
only one brick thick.

~~~
dpark
If the interior walls are cinder block, I would expect the brick to be purely
aesthetic. Cinder blocks don't need brick next to them for strength if built
correctly.

------
Retric
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.

~~~
ealexhudson
My last house was built in ~1936. It was cheap for the time, but the entire
estate of houses it sat in was complete - virtually nothing had been removed.
The form of the buildings had changed somewhat (extension for bathroom instead
of toilet in the garden), but the brick walls were incredible and the internal
timberwork (joists, frames, etc.) was all hardwood of a quality that would be
very expensive now.

My current house was built in ~1985. The brick quality isn't bad, the walls
are much straighter, but the wood is cheaper and the materials thinner and
lighter. It might be the case this place will last 100 years, but I wouldn't
bet on it. It's a middle market house, for the time, not cheap but not high
end.

While survivor bias is important, where I live (London) the main reason houses
from 100 years ago aren't around now is simply the war. The stuff from then
that's still about - including "cheap" factories and other stuff - is now
wildly fashionable and still well-built. Stuff built in the 50s was laughably
awful and a lot is gone, stuff from 60s and 70s is going the same way. There
are definitely other things going on.

~~~
danieltillett
I think one thing is buildings are now are built closer to their required
engineering tolerances. In the past many building were massively over
engineered, while modern buildings seem to be built for their exact expected
lifespan.

The one thing I really hate about most modern buildings here in Australia is
the ceiling height has been reduced. A lot of modern buildings have ceiling
heights around 7’ while old buildings will have ceilings of 10’ to 12’.

~~~
tobico
Shorter ceilings are better for climate control, though. No need to heat up a
bunch of air that just floats around over your head.

~~~
jonknee
Not a huge concern in most parts of Australia... Having high ceilings (and
fans) is actually an advantage.

------
yk
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.

------
pjc50
_> "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
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
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
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)

~~~
roel_v
Back then, you could only buy expensive high quality ones. Only a few people
could afford it. Nowadays, you can buy cheap crappy ones, as well as expensive
high quality ones. What's the argument here? If someone will let me spend the
equivalent amount of what these old houses cost back then on a new brick
building, I will have them build just as good as the old ones. Actually, I'll
have them build better, because the woodworking of the windows will be much
better, the moisture barriers will be better, the insulation will be better,
the quality of the mortar will be better, the concrete slab will be better
(actually, 'it will have a concrete slab'), the roof tiles will be of better
quality, the heating system will not suck, I can go on and on...

------
coryrc
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
How would any of the issues with the Dartmouth brick building in the article
have been caused by #1?

~~~
douche
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.

------
alricb
A bit more technical:
[http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi080-tailor-...](http://buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi080-tailor-
made)

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).

------
rwmj
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
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
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.

------
vvpan
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
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.

------
oliwarner
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
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
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.

------
the_mitsuhiko
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
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
[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
Oh yes that's quite the nasty bit of concrete.

~~~
Marazan
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.

~~~
Khaine
I don't think I've ever seen a Brutalist building that I consider good. Worse
still, stupid architects get them heritage listed so we can't even replace
them with actually useful buildings (i.e.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Offices,_Belconnen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Offices,_Belconnen))

------
unit91
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?

------
beat
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.

------
pilsetnieks
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?

------
Plough_Jogger
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
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).

------
smrtinsert
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
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
_stealing brick buildings_

This sounds totally bananas, where is this? Are the bricks made of gold or
something?

~~~
paulzerkel
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.

------
dworin
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=...](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)

[2][http://brickbroker.com/brick.html](http://brickbroker.com/brick.html) [3]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=...](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)
[4]
[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Ra...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Rate)

~~~
shimon
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.

~~~
stevewilhelm
You couldn't possibly hire the bricklayer directly today. The bricklayer would
be hired as a subcontractor by the general contractor who would apply a
surcharge.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Yea, and I see this as one of the main reasons, the quality of work is
declining instead of improving (due to technical advances). In my country,
when you build a building today, you hire a builder company. This company does
_no_ building themselves. They buy the parts of the building from
subcontractors and some times the subcontractors buy the service needed from
sub-subcontractors. And the company that finally does the job, some times,
they even do it not with their own workers, but hire some cheap temporary
staff to do the work.

So finally, who is to blame, when the window is not even? The builder? No! He
did nothing. The windowing subcontractor?? Technical yes, but practical he
just used hired workers. Some times ago, it was possible to say: Here we have
a good company, with good reputation, the workers are proud to work for it ...
Today, it is just a blaming game -- and when one of the subcontractors is sued
because of bad work, they file bankruptcy, because there is also no financial
basis -- the companies are just empty shells.

What also adds up to this is, that on every level of this game, only the price
of the service is evaluated today -- not the quality. I also saw cases, where
the builder company was a big one with great reputation, but the execution was
awful! The reason: Bad contractors.

Another reason in my country is, that the requirements for workers in the
building sector have been deliberately drastically lowered by the government,
to make way for even cheaper work.

Today, (at least in my country) one that wants a house for his family to be
build, has no means to decide, if the company will succeed and make a good
house or will build a horror house. In most cases, there will be several
topics where the execution was bad or really bad and you can call yourself
lucky, when the additional costs after the house was finalized are moderate.

There are some really bad cases, where families thought the house would be
ready in time and canceled their rent-flat just to be on the streets
afterwards, because their house was not ready even months after the deadline.
Some where never finished.

------
danieltillett
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.

------
tsetliff
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.

------
gchpaco
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.

------
owenversteeg
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
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.

------
jhallenworld
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.

~~~
nkurz

      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
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.

------
lutorm
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.

------
cecilpl
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
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-startin...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-
shack-starting-at-350000-2015-09-29)

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.

------
dnautics
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/KkDyX34u...](https://plus.google.com/111337360985340071974/posts/KkDyX34uZop)

~~~
ItsDeathball
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
Did you zoom in on the brick underneath? It's helter skelter.

------
relaxitup
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.

------
shimon
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.

------
golergka
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.

------
dschiptsov
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.)

------
listic
Is there a non-paywalled version?

'This article is available for GBA PRIME members only'

~~~
tandyclone
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/7eea331af1ff2fe...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/7eea331af1ff2fe088c2/raw/d87d8abce8d8f0788c43fab8ad3f5bc6f30c5f89/gistfile1.txt)

------
WalterBright
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
> 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
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)

------
scottious
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.

~~~
TheCowboy
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.

------
analog31
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.

------
aurizon
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
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.

------
lr
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.

------
MisterBastahrd
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.

------
mcs
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.

------
y04nn
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.

------
kaizendad
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?

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

~~~
yasth
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
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.

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

~~~
robbrown451
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
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
It looks cheap because it is cheap. Developers have no civic pride and just
want their investment to pay out ASAP.

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

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

~~~
tectec
That is addressed in the article.

------
gp7
Capital?

------
sbierwagen
Loginwall.

~~~
fransan
...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
or just disable javascript.

------
gopowerranger
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-
buildin...](http://ninenet.org/archives/pressroom/st-louis-brick-building-
legacy-explored-on-special-hour-long-program-2)

[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brick](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/brick)

