more than one hundred members. It aims to teach boys and girls of the poorer New York families how to make useful and beautiful objects for their homes. At the same time it gives them something to interest them. Under Miss Brigham's directions old wood boxes assume wonderful shapes. Pieces of furniture, toys, fancy boxes, and other articles of wonder are made by delighted youngsters.

Several weeks of enthusiastic work in this shop makes experts of the boys and girls. They are taught correctly from the start how to handle the saw, how to plane straight and true, how to drive nails so as not to mark the wood, and how to finish the furniture with stain

so as to hide, partially, its humble origin. They have brought many boxes into the workshop, gathered in places that only boys and girls of the East Side know, and have seen these boxes change under their own hands into chairs, tables, and toys. They have not needed the aid of the teacher in all their work. They have been encouraged to develop their own ideas, and many original articles have been turned out without aid from the instructors. It is noted, too, that furniture made in this shop, far from being weak and useless, is strong and ready to stand hard usage. Nothing is permitted to go out of the workshop that is not finished and capable of being used.

After establishing her shop Miss

Brigham took an apartment on a corner opposite the square. The youngsters who were learning to "make things" under her direction in the workshop, thereupon called upon Miss Brigham in a body.

"Let us," they demanded, "make all the furniture. Let us make every single bit."

As a result, with the exception of a heavy hardwood chair with great carved arms which she made herself when she began her studies of box furniture, and a quaint cabinet made for her by a Norwegian, every article of furniture in her home was made by the boys and girls. Now the youngsters feel, just as Miss Brigham wanted them to feel, that her home is a part of the community and the community life.

The apartment shows how the box may be turned into real furniture. A kitchen cabinet made from three starch boxes, with receptacles for flour, sugar, and spices, is one of the triumphs. It

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has a mixing board, a glass covered pastry board, and all sorts of receptacles for cutlery and tins. It is compact, convenient, and saves steps, and its cost was only a few cents and half a day's time.

For the dining room there is a Greek dining table made from four packing boxes. A bedroom boasts of a bedside stand with a set of revolving shelves which keep everything an invalid might need within reach of her hand. At meal times this becomes a table, for beneath the top is a shelf which pulls out and extends over the bed.

In the sitting room there is a hanging basket made of a little square box with rope knotted through each corner, and a jardiniere which was once a tall cocoa box but is now mounted on a pedestal of three square boards of varying sizes and neatly finished with flat strips along its upper edge. It is this careful finishing which relieves Miss Brigham's furniture of all trace of amateurishness.

Fa tomato (to say nothing of "a small bottle and a bird") can spend the heated term so cool that frosty beads of refreshing moisture cling to it, when all outside is sweltering at a temperature sufficient to fry eggs. on the tar-oozing pavements, why cannot man enjoy the same privilege and comfort? In other words, why not emulate the tomato, the cucumber, and the small bottle, and live in an ice box? Think of the satisfaction of such a life in the dog days, when the postman plodding his weary way is the only sign of activity

on

the boulevard and all humanity swelters under a broiling sun.

The experiment of living in an ice. box, another one of those ideas with a "made in Germany" label, is being tried out successfully in this country. Residence ice boxes built of hollow tile, so

constructed as to shut out the hot air of summer and shut in the warm air of winter, have been used for a long time in government buildings and higher class residences in Germany, Russia, Austria, and Italy. It is only within the past year or so, however, that the idea has been adopted to any extent in this country, but already its success is sufficient to warrant the prediction that it will be much more generally adopted in the near future.

The use of hollow tile (the air spaces of which form a non-conductor of heat, cold, and dampness) for foundation walls, fireproof skyscrapers, and even for the inner walls of residences, with a brick veneer, has been common for some time, but the use of hollow tile, with only a stucco exterior, for the whole house is something comparatively

new in America. The fact that every time a mason lays an eight-inch tile he is building the volume equivalent of ten brick, goes a long ways toward adding to the popularity of the hollow tile in these times of highest efficiency.

But the efficiency of labor is not the only, nor the main point. of advantage. With lumber on the upgrade and with practically all building materials climbing the ladder of high prices, the hollow tile appeals to those whose modest purses make the old-style manner of building out of the question. But even should the cost of constructing the hollow tile building be greater, the one important essential that would justify the bills, comfort, could not be overlooked.

Tests made under the supervision of the City Building Department of Cleveland, Ohio, within the last two years, subjected an enclosure 9 feet 6 inches by 10 feet 3 inches by 8 feet 9 inches built of hollow tile, to a heat of two thousand degrees, Fahrenheit. With this immense heat inside the enclosure the outside wall did not even warm, "but remained cool during the entire time of test, with no warping, settlement, or cracking of any kind." This is according to the official report, which

J. MEREDITH KNAPPEN

BERGER

adds: "The inside common plaster was all burned off. The inside face of hollow tile was true and in no case was any damage evident. After punching a hole completely through the rear wall, the entire tile sections were left absolutely undamaged." This same rear wall was likewise subjected to a weight test, bearing an evenly distributed load of eighty thousand six hundred forty pounds, or about

A Kansas City High School boy who designed the plans for a hollow tile stucco house recently built there.

JAMES H. SCOTT He assisted in designing the Kansas City hollow tile stucco house.

a

wide range.

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He learned

of the tests to which hollow tile had been subjected and found that he could build his home of the tile at a cost practically the same as that for frame, or stucco, construction. Accordingly he put up the house, using twelve-inch hollow tiles with three holes along one side and two on the other. The clay, or shale, is non-absorbent and the air spaces make the material an absolute non-conductor. The tiles are fluted, or grooved, so as to fit together closely. When the. wall was erected, it was ready for plastering on both sides, without any further expenditure for furring or lathing. Thus, with the necessary coats of plaster on the inside and of stucco on the outside, a most presentable and artistic home was built, designed to maintain an ice-box frigidity in summer and a hothouse torridness in winter.

nine thousand four hundred eighty seven pounds per running, or square, foot, "with no evidence of crushing, cracking, or disintegration of any sort.' Equally interesting tests, made at a recent hollow tile show in Chicago, demonstrated that the tile is a non-conductor of dampness. Water at a tremendous pressure was held for many hours against a hollow tile wall, without any dampness penetrating the first hollow of the tile. An intense heat was likewise placed against the same wall with the result that on the other side there was no change in the temperature. Having thus proved its value as a heat and moisture resistant, it is little wonder that the hollow tile, once it can be made artistically presentable, is coming in for popularity as a home-building material."

One of the most artistic of these new ice-box houses was recently constructed in Kansas City, the plans being prepared by two boys-J. Meredith Knappenberger and James H. Scott-in the vocational class in draftsmanship of the Central High School. The owner wanted a house that would withstand the varying changes of temperature in a region where one hundred and ten degrees above zero in the summer and twenty degrees below zero in the winter make.

In a twelve-inch hollow tile wall, there is no point which is not intercepted by more than one dead air space. Even in an eight-inch wall there are three horizontally confined air spaces wholly disconnected with like chambers above or below. No currents can possibly result which will tend to equalize the inner and outer temperatures. Not only is an evenness of temperature maintained, but the hollow spaces provide, without further insulation, natural conduits for electric wires and gas and water pipes. At the same time the studding spaces of frame houses, serving only for the accumulation of dirt and as natural runways for vermin, are dispensed with entirely. Considerations of economy, efficiency, and comfort all champion the cause of the hollow tile house and it is thought that as its virtues become more generally known its popularity will greatly increase, until "living in a refrigerator" no longer has the touch of oddness.

The advantages of the ice-box residence, therefore, are more than sufficient to offset any possible disadvantages, while the comfort of the dwellers therein makes them to be envied.

F

OUR plans

of flood pre-
vention are being

considered to protect

Dayton and surrounding territory in the Valley of the Great Miami River from future damage by water. The first plan calls for the establishment of a system of reservoirs that will either contain all of the surplus water that comes with the floods or hold the rising river and its tributaries in restraint. The second idea is to provide a system of cut-offs, which would divide the river's flow between two channels, auxiliary water courses being provided at various points to help carry off the flood. The third plan would be to eliminate the river's curves through the city, all of which are said to be hindrances to the free flow of the waters. If the fourth plan is adopted, the course of the main river would be diverted entirely from the city, but the expense attached to an undertaking of this kind has made the idea unpopular.

Dayton's chief flood danger, according to authorities, lies in the confluence of four streams in the very heart of the city. Three of these waterways are

NEW DANGER The islands created in the Great Miami by the March floods

rivers and one a creek of large proportions. All of the Great Miami's chief tributaries dump their volumes of water into the main channel within a half mile of each other. The territory drained by the four streams embraces an area of some seven thousand square miles and, with a rainfall like that of last March, the city is at the mercy of the water that is gathered from this vast sweep of country and carried down the valley toward the Ohio River.

Another menace is the type of river bridge construction that has been followed throughout the flooded district of Ohio. The construction of piers in the channels of the streams without provision for an ample clearance for the river at a swollen stage dammed up much of the water in the last flood and caused a pressure along the levees at many points