LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
STEEL HOUSES AND THE AMENITIES OF CONSTRUCTION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I am sending by to-day's post a copy of Country Life of January 3rd, and would refer you to the article on the Steel House, pages 8 to 10. Apparently the Government is strongly favouring this type of house, and I see it is suggested that experimental cottages of the " steel " construction type
are to be erected in twenty-four of the most important centres of industry. In this article we illustrate -Lord 'Weir's type of cottage, and other examples of steel construction. Is it possible to imagine anything more sordid and objectionable than a town, a village, or a group of " cottages" such as are shown in either the first or the second of these illustrations ? " Living in sordid surroundings can only mean more and more dissatisfaction among the working classes, with a consequent
• increase in Communism and in Socialism. The country has ' no right to put up this wretched class of building.
In comparison with the steel cottages, take the Merstham ' cottages, which are shown by the centre illustration on the second page of the article. The contractor who built these is perfectly -willing to go on building such cottages, and at
practically the same price. Also I would direct your attention to the Dormanstown houses. Here you have a system of steel construction handled in a manner which anyway is good and pleasant to live in ; a reasonably happy life would there be possible.
It is to be hoped that far more thought will be given to this latest housing proposal before the country is conimitted to any great scheme of building cottages such as the ugly and sordid examples shown in the first two illustrations. It is a serious responsibility for any country to take, to authorize abominations such as these.
While fully recognizing the difficulties that exist, the shortage of building labour, supply of materials, &c., we feel strongly that these difficulties should not be accepted as an excuse for the erection of houses which are flagrantly bad from an architectural point of view. The old houses of England are a fine heritage, and the majority of the new houses which have been erected in recent years in connexion with housing schemes have reached a very satisfactory level of design. It will therefore be the more regrettable if the good work done is to be set aside, and unsightly houses are erected wholesale throughout the country. It has yet to be shown that steel houses are an economical and satisfactory part solution of the housing problem, but even though they are proved to effect a saving in the first cost, and in speed of erection, it will be a short-sighted policy if they ultimately prove uneconomical, and remain as excrescences on the land.
I am sure you will agree that this subject is of the greatest national importance.—I am, Sir, &e., EDWARD- HUDSON.
20 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, W.C. 2.
[We, of course, agree with Mr. Hudson that beauty—or, at any rate, appropriateness and seemliness—must be con- sidered in housing schemes, and considered with the deepest attention. The last thing we desire is the brutalizing of the country. At the same time, the need for emergency houses is so great, so terrible, that if we can only get what we want for housing the people in some comfort and decency while the slums are being rebuilt, we should not hesitate for a moment to support far uglier buildings than those shown in Country Life. We have no parti pris in favour of Lord Weir's model, and think it probable that others may ultimately be devised as good as his or better, both from the financial and the material side. If, however, it can be shown that he is making the nation a cheaper and better offer in the way of emergency houses than is given by other experimenters in temporary buildings, then unquestionably we must use his offer. To borrow a saying from an eighteenth-century controversialist in regard to the French Revolution, we must not "pity the plumage and forget the dying bird." We cannot let aesthetic considerations forbid the cleansing of the slums. That is a proposition to which there can be no opposition among men who have hearts to feel and heads to think. Meanwhile we do not admit that seemliness and cheapness and efficiency cannot be reconciled. We believe they can. Let us assume that under Lord Weir's scheme the emergency house can be turned out cheaper and better than under some other scheme. In that case, we say there is no reason why Lord Weir's model should not be modified in regard to pitch of roof, size and form of windows, and doors, and general proportions, so as to make it perfectly seemly. In the December number of the Architectural Review (27-29 Tuthill Street, 'Westminster, S.W. 1) there are pictures of one-storey houses in Abe in Finland which afford a perfect example of how seemliness .may be secured in one-storey buildings with zinc roofs and -wooden walls. If that could be done seventy or eighty years ago in Finland, why not now in England ? It is no good merely to abuse Lord Weir's houses as ugly, as 'undoubtedly -they are. The essential thing is to make suggestions for their improvement. And let us say here, in conclusion, that we shall get into great difficulties if we do not make a proper distinction between the 'emergency house (which, as we have said on a previous occasion, is in fact "a hard-shell tent "). and houses of a definitely permanent character. Once more, even if we were to accept the perfectly unnecessary assumption that emergency houses must be ugly, we have got to have them all the same. They are a thousand times better than slums. Of the slums we must say as the Elizabethan poet said of man-slaying by poison : "Other crimes only speak, -murder cries out."—ED. Speetaior.1
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