STEEL HOUSES
[A representative of the Spectator inspected the steel house which has been erected at Tooting,.the first in the London area.]
THERE is something rather strange and eerie about one's first sight of one of the new steel houses. Ever since man first left his cave he has been building with wood and stone. It is true that in England, only about 500 years ago, he began to use bricks ; but after all, they were only a kind of artificial stone made from clay. No new principle of construction was made possible by them. And so building has always remained the most traditional, the most instinctive almost, of industries. And then suddenly in the last thirty years we get two wholly new building materials—concrete and steel. At a stroke all our possibilities and limitations are altered. At first the new materials arc used for big buildings—unheard of spans are made, undreamt of stresses taken. But now we arc beginning to realize their possibilities for small buildings. We are confronted with the factory - made, the mass - production house. No Wonder the more conservative of us are given pause. No wonder those rich old Tories the Trade Unionists are suspicious and aloof. Are the methods of standardization, of automatic large-scale production, to close down with their cold, inhuman efficiency on this last most intimate of industries, which has resisted them so far ? Are we to order our houses by the square yard, to live each in his exactly identical, convenient, hygienic, Municipally owned, steel bungalow ? So it seems. And perhaps it is as sentimental to object as it will be futile to resist. A demonstration steel house has now been put up in London. It is in Tooting High Street, and has been built by the Consteelwood Company. These " Con- steelwood " houses are built, as their name suggests, of the three materials, wood, steel and concrete. A wooden frame is put up ; thin sheets of galvanized steel (painted any colour you want) are tacked on the outside, the middle is filled up with concrete blocks, and still thinner sheets of stamped steel are tacked on to the inside of the frame. Thus a four-inch wall is made. The roof of the present house is of tiles. The bungalow was started on Monday, February 9th, and in a week the outside was completely finished. When I saw it there was still a good deal to do inside, but it was confidently expected that all would be finished within fourteen days from the time of starting. The houses will cost, in quantity, about 1400 each.
I had neither the opportunity nor the capacity to tell whether these houses would be pleasant to live in— whether they would be cool in summer and warm in winter, or the reverse, durable or not, clean or verminous: But however unsatisfactory they may turn out to be, it is safe to say one thing—namely, that whoever says that they are not better than the houses in which a great many of our fellow-countrymen are living, simply does not know the slums. If, as we are told, these steel houses, and other kindred types, can be turned out in really large quantities and quickly erected, then let us use them as " emergency houses " by which the present terrible situation can be relieved. • Even if they fall down in ten years the money spent will have been a thousand times repaid in the alleviation of human suffering and degra-
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