The application of a comprehensive manufacturing system in the preparation of var• sous parts of a building is observable most particularly in certain establishments of great magnitude. The test is this—whether the builder conducts so gigantic a trade as to warrant him in setting up a steam-engine of great power, and in providing highly wrought machines for cutting and otherwise treating wood, stone, etc. When once this degree of magnitude is reached, the operations arc conducted under very great advantage. The Crystal palace in Hyde park could never have been built at the stipu lated cost, nor in the required space of time, but by the application of steam power to work the machines which shaped and grooved the two hundred miles of sash bars; by the resources of the largest English establishment in the glass-trade, in making 1,000,000 sq. ft. of sheet-glass: and by the skill and capital of our great iron manufacturers, in rapidly producing 3000 iron columns, and more than that numbei of iron girders. When the late Mr. Thomas Cubitt was engaged in the vast building operations at Bel gravia (a district in the w. of London owned by the marquis of Westminster), his factory OD the banks of the Thames was the most complete ever known in the trade. It exemplified both the principles adverted to above—the manufacture of various articles by steam-worked machinery; and the collecting of large stores of other articles made in a similar way by other firms. There was a store of drawing-room and parlor doors, a store of window-sashes, a store of street-doors, and stores of mantel-pieces, stone and marble steps, balusters, slates, knockers, bells, and all the materials for house-building from the coarsest to the finest. There was also observed that systematic gradation of kinds and dimensions which is so much attended to in the higher kinds of machinery, and which so much expedites all operations; seeing that one particular piece would not only fit into or against another, but into or any one of a whole class to which that other belonged. A house built in this systematic way partakes a good deal in the nature of a large machine, in which all the parts fit together with very great accuracy.
There can be little doubt that if skill and capital he judiciously applied in this way, a house ought to be better built and to cost less than if built in the ordinary unsystem atic manner. It may also be mentioned here that Mr. Cubitt was the owner of a very large brick-making establishment on the banks of the Medway, between Rochester and Maidstone, where steam-power was employed in all the operations of making bricks. Sonic of the great railway contractors, who have become millionaires, were originally house-builders, alive to the grand results producible by the combination of steam-worked machinery with the labor of well-organized bodies of men.
As an art, B. is of vast antiquity, and has assumed different forms, according to the necessities of mankind and the materials readily at their disposal. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Italy, B. in stone rose to a high state of perfection, and till the present day it may be said that the greatest progress in the art is made only where stone of a man ageable kind is conveniently at command. Rome, Paris, Lyons (with very many Italian and French cities), Bordeaux, Brussels, Munich, Geneva, Vienna, Edinburgh, and Glasgow are specimens of what may be achieved in stone workable with the chisel; Aberdeen is mainly built of granite. On the other band, London, the greatest city within the bounds of civilization, is built of brick; so likewise are Manchester and Liverpool: also Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other towns in Holland; and as a general fact, it would appear that wherever brick has to be resorted to, there the allied arts of architecture and building, as regards domestic accommodation and elegance of style, are on a poor scale. B. with stone of a superior kind is now becoming common in New York, Philadelphia, and some other American cities. It is not necessary to trace in this article the various processes embraced in the comprehensive term BUILDING; see ing that all the materials used, and all the operations conducted, are noticed under the proper headings in the encyclopaedia.