BUILDING LAWS, laws passed either by State or municipal authorities regulating the construction of buildings by landowners or lessees on their lands. Usually they prescribe the height of buildings, their distance from the street, the composition, dimensions, strength, etc., of the materials used, the manner of light ing, ventilating and drainage, the amount of open space around them, and the measures to be adopted to make structures sanitary and as far as possible free from the perils of fire.
Colonial Regulations.— Early in American
were passed with the object of preventing disastrous conflagrations and with a view to making the towns and villages more substantial and architecturally more beautiful. In 1662 the Virginia legislature passed an act for the building of a town at James City, which act provided: That the towne to be built shall consist of 32 houses, each house to be built with brick, 40 foot long, 20 foot wide, within the walls, to be 18 foote high above the ground, the walls to he two brick thick to the water table, and a brick and a halfe thick above the water table to the roofe, the roofe to be 15 foote pitch and to be covered with slate or tile"; furthermore that °me wooden houses shall hereafter be built within the limits of the towne, nor those now standing be hereafter repaired, but brick ones to be erected in theire steads" (Hening, W. W., 'Statutes at Large of Virginia,' (Vol. II, pp. 172-76, New York 1823). On 23 Jan. 1648 an ordinance was passed at New Amsterdam providing that "henceforth no wooden or merely plastered chimneys shall be put into any house between the Fort and the Fresh Water,' because °some careless people neglect to have their chimneys properly swept and they do not take care of their fires." On 15 Dec. 1657 the New Netherland council directed that "all roofs covered with reeds, all wooden chimneys, all hay ricks shall be taken down and removed within the next four months" and that "fire buckets, ladders and hooks be kept at the corners of the city streets and in public houses." (Fernow, Berthold (ed.), 'The Records of New Amsterdam,' Vol. I, pp. 5, 34-35, New York 1897). In 1761 an act was passed "for the more effectual prevention of fires and for the regulating of buildings in the City of New York," providing that °every building that shall be erected after January 1, 1766 in the city south of
New York,' Vol. I, p. 269; Vol. IV, p. 571, New York 1896). As many years elapsed be fore the inauguration •of buildings several
stories in height, the early building legislation
was concerned with one- or two-story houses.
Fire Prevention Measures.— The numer ous appalling disasters that culminated in the Chicago fire of 1871 led to the establishment in many cities of what is known as afire limits,' within which none was allowed to erect enclos ing walls and roofs of inflammable material. With the expansion of the area of the city the fire limits were extended but the Baltimore fire of 1909 showed that this extension had not been pushed either sufficiently far or rapidly. Many suggestions have been made to overcome the danger, such as dividing the larger cities into three fire-zones, the innermost zone con taining fireproof buildings only; the next zone only such buildings as have non-inflam mable walls; and the third area buildings which may be constructed with inflammable exterior walls but with non-inflammable roofs and other protective features. Where rows of wooden houses prevail, as in suburban com munities, a °fire wall street* has been suggested, though as yet not incorporated in any law. By this is meant the erection of non-inflammable buildings on certain streets, which would traverse dangerous areas at right angles, thus cutting a district into isolated sections.
About 1886, owing to the great loss of life in theatre fires at Brooklyn and Vienna, special types of construction and protection were adopted for buildings devoted to large assem blages of people. The New England mutual in surance companies have advocated a better type of factory construction and have imposed pro hibitive insurance rates on buildings that do not meet proper standards, while the National Board of Fire Underwriters has used every effort to secure the adoption of better fire resisting devices, such as automatic sprinklers. The opposition of private interests had to be overcome in securing protective legislation, since manufacturers endeavored to have their materials specified in the building laws to the exclusion of all others. Thus in 1888-90 the makers of structural steel products met stren uous opposition from the iron founders who believed that their control of structural iron work *ould be taken from them. See Fria