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Show ARCHITECT? r J Architecture Is one of the J most promising lines of en- J deavor today, besides being one J of the cleanest To become an architect your boy can go to an J architect's office Just how he a will be advanced, the studies he J will have to pursue, and why It c is necessary for him to go into J business for himself at a certain a stage The comparative ease a with which this can be done. BY C.W.JENNINGS. I W-S-lMi' AVE you ever thought about yfylfJ architecture as your boy's 'yln' "fes vocatfon? J I If nt. perhaps you would M m do weI1 to l00k a "ttle int0 this line of human endeavor, en-deavor, especially If your boy has given giv-en you cause to believe that he takes to subjects mathematical naturally, or Is good at mastering this branch of learning. For there is today probably not a more promising or cleaner field of industry for a young man than architecture. And what makes the opportunities In this profession for profession it is exceptionally bright Just now Is that the general aim in building is to combine art with utility and also the entire land is reverberating reverbera-ting with the sound of hammers and riveting machines. Not a few of the country's leading universities teach architecture in schools especially organized for this purpose. Probably it would be well for your boy, if he has architectural ambitions, to attend a good school of this sort, provided the family finances permit. But if they will not, do not be discouraged, for more than one successful suc-cessful architect has made himself such ere now, by starting as an office boy in an architect's office. And an an office boy, or minor clerk, your boy would do well to start, if he cannot be sent to a reliable school of architecture. architec-ture. Of course, as an office boy, your boy will get only four or five dollars a week in actual money But all the while he will have his eyes open, picking pick-ing up the very simplest rudiments of the profession; and pretty soon, as eonv; of the mysteries of blue prints and compass, and T square, and triangle, tri-angle, and box wood scale, and thumb tacks begin to clear up, his employer will give him an eraser and tell him to clean an Ink-finished drawing of its pencil marks. This may be within two or three months from the time the youngster starts to. earn his first week's wage as office boy. Then, within about six months or so he is put before a big table, given a pen and bottle of india ink, and told to trace over the lines of a drawing that have already been made in pencil. pen-cil. He is also shown how to make blue prints, the sheets containing the plans of the structure to be erected that are given to the carpenters and other workmen on the job. By this time he has been told - something about. water coloring and is set to make a blue sky behind a finished drawing, paint the house pink, and to splash a vivid green over the grass in front. Within a year from the time he entered the office If he has got on he will be getting eight or ten dollars a week. Within another year he will be giv- en a rough sketch of a floor plan and told to draw it out "to scale." This means that he must make a detailed picture of the floor of a house, allowing, allow-ing, say, a quarter-Inch of space on the drawing for each foot of actual dimensions the floor is to be. It will not be long now till the boy will know a lot about drawing and begin to look forward to the time he will be called a draftsman; for, inside of three years from the beginning, he will be earning from $15 to $18 a week and can probably take the notes given by the prospective owner of a modest dwelling and work out therefrom a fairly complete set of plans with numerous hints and helps from the boss, of course. Perhaps the boy by this time has some original ideas of how a house ought to look, and is able to picture his ideas on paper. This means that he has the rudiments of a designer in him. But, anyhow, he has acquired the foundation on which a real architect archi-tect is erected, and goes on for three or four years more, till he can draw plans for any ordinary building and make very acceptable designs. He will be getting, as draftsman, anywhere any-where up to $30 a week, and, if he has studied hard, he may be foreman over several other draftsmen, if the office Is a large one, and earning double $30 a week. This is apt to bo the end of tb9 architectural progress of your boy unless un-less he has utilized any opportunities that may show themselves, to get Into business for himself; for there are few high salaried positions in the profession, pro-fession, and in many cases these come from political or other "pull." Of course, such a job as the superintendent superinten-dent of school buildings in a large city pays as high as $10,000 a year; but the man that gets it need not necessarily neces-sarily be a highly competent architect. Rather, executive ability is the main requirement; for he can hire good draftsmen, and radical changes in design de-sign are generally made through outside out-side sources. Your boy has got to get into business busi-ness for himself. The requirements for doing this are practically nothing at all; for all he needs is the few tools he has long since acquired and mastered mas-tered and a place to draw in. If he can get somebody that he knows is going to build a house to let him draw the plans and attend to the construe tion, he will get a fee of 5 or 0 pel cent of the building's cost. Then he may be given more pretentious work, and so on, till he successfully submits plans In a competition, or otherwise, for some large public or semi-public institution, and finds his reputation all made, and his fortune in the making. Between our office boy and the successful suc-cessful archil -vet, however, there is a long course of studying that has to be done besides what he has learned In the office. The time has long since gone by when an architect, so-called, simply copied the plan of one house when called on to lay out another; for the modern cry is for more elaborate elab-orate and original structures which require the most elaborate and painstaking pains-taking detailed knowledge. Your boy's course of study, which can be gone through at nights and will be partly acquired in his work, will include quite a complete knowledge knowl-edge of geometry and geometrical drawing, as well as freehand and per-spective per-spective drawing, architectural and ornamental drawing, pen and Ink rendering, drawing In water color and from nature, an extensive knowledge knowl-edge of masonry and carpentry, the latter including ornamental ironwork and sheet metal work; wiring for electricity, plumbing, heating and ventilating, ven-tilating, painting and decorating. Also, he will have to be able to superintend the construction of the. buildings for which he has drawn the plans, and this includes a gem ral knowledge of all that the contractor does. Also, he must have studied (ontracts and the building permits and laws of his particular par-ticular locality, as they have to be conformed to. These subjects seem a somewhat forbidding array, particularly when It i3 added that the architect has to know the strength and adaptability of every timber or stone or piece of steel or iron used; but all this is no more than thousands of successful men have already learned, and no more than your boy can pick up during the course of his work if he is ambitious and has unremitting application. Let me add that he should make his beginning be-ginning in a comparatively small office of-fice rather than by being one of a score of employes in a large architectural archi-tectural company. In the latter he will probably develop facility in only one particular line of work, and be kept at it. In the other case he will have opportunity to participate in every class of work. And it is the all round man who stands the best chance of making good in architecture. architec-ture. He can specialize, if he so desires, de-sires, after he has got a firm foundation. founda-tion. For there are architects who devote their time and energy on churches; others who limit their services serv-ices to skyscrapers; others to stores and lofts; still others to dwellings, and so on, through the entire list of buildings. But it is invariably true that every successful specialist Is one who knows from A to Izzard about everything there is to know of architecture archi-tecture in a general way. And this he had sense enough to learn before he set about specializing. (Copyright. 1910, by the Associated Literary Lit-erary Press.) |