Responsibility of Architects and Builders
An architect liable to punishment would take pains to calculate his strains, his weights, and the strength of his materials; to study his fire escapes, and other contrivances for the security of life, and zealously to supervise the construction of his piers and arches and ties; and a builder, under the same circumstances, would neither construct nor advise as to the construction of a staging, without far more careful consideration than he seems to bestow under our present happy-go-lucky system, where neither forethought nor caution is encouraged. Yet, it cannot he denied [that such tragedies as the burning of the Brooklyn Theater, of the Southern Hotel at St. Louis, of Hale’s piano factory at New York, or the fall of the dome of the liockford Court House, or of the roof of the New York Post Office, or even of the temporary staging in Blackstone Square, are impossible in Paris, and would he impossible in Brooklyn, St. Lonis, New York, Rockford, and Boston, under laws by which the safety of the citizen is secured by the peril of the builder.—American Architect and Building News.
