Helping to Solve the Parking Problem The accompanying picture shows a cross section of the Lancaster spiral floor building which has been recently invented for the purpose of parking automobiles and relieving the congestion caused by parking alongside the curb. The curb parking of automobiles causes such serious congestion of street traffic that many cities are restricting and partially prohibiting such parking in business sections, to the great inconvenience of automobile users and a loss to business in those sections. There is space for only 32 cars along the two curbs of one city block, allowing twelve blocks to the mile of street and leaving open spaces at fire hydrants. This relatively small number of cars standing along the curbs congests traffic without beginning to satisfy the demand for parking space. According to the inventors what is needed to solve the parking problem is a number of buildings in the congested districts of every city, each one of a type fulfilling the special requirements for parking of automobiles. In capacity, rapidity of movement of cars and flexibility of use, each building must present an economic proposition, fully justifying its erection on valuable real estate. of Each must be distinctly a new type building and not a modified barn or warehouse, just as the automobile is distinctly a motor vehicle and not a horseless carriage. Each must meet the needs of the times for housing these motor vehicles and be well adapted for numerous other uses. The Lancaster Spiral Floor Building meets these requirements. It occupies a relatively small ground area compared with its large capacity. It may be built any height conformable to local building regulations. It does not have separate ramps, but its continuous spiral floor gradually ascends from the ground level to the top of the building, as clearly shown by the illustration on this page. Its spiral floor permits rapid travel of motor vehicles into and out of the building on an aisle or driveway wide enough for two lanes of travel, under conditions similar to those on streets and highways and practically identical to those met in an ordinary one-story garage. This driveway circles round a central storage space and outside of the driveway is ample storage space on the spiral floor for a large number of cars. Adequate stairways, passenger elevators and toilet facilities are located in or one more corners of the building. In the Lancaster System stores and offices may be combined with a garage and the latter be kept entirely separate from the offices and stores. This permits the most profitable use of property. One such combination is shown by the drawings on this page. This arrangement is suitable for a 20-story building with the lower six stories devoted to garage, stores and offices, and the upper 14 stories devoted to offices. All offices are completely separated from the garage. The perspective view shows a Lancaster Building 115 feet square, which is in excess of minimum dimensions required, having a capacity of 51 cars per story, or 510 cars for 10 stories. This equals the number of cars that may be parked along both sides of the street for the length of 16 city blocks, or one and one-third miles. In this building, 500 cars can enter or leave the building at the rate of 15 cars per minute, or the entire building may be filled or emptied in 33 minutes. It is entirely feasible, where such a building is located on a corner, for entrances and exits to be on two streets or on one street and an alley, in which case, by using the full width of the driveway and passing through both exits, 500 cars can leave the building in 17 minutes, traveling at eight miles per hour and be spaced 47 feet apart, or in 25 minutes, traveling at six miles per hour and 53 feet apart. A patron may drive his own car directly to its parking space and return by passenger elevator to the entrance. When calling for his car, he may take the passenger elevator up to where his car is parked and drive it out himself. Patrons do not have to turn their cars over to attendants nor wait on attendants to get their cars. The spiral floor feature is also especially advantageous for a building to be used for display or exposition purposes or for a building devoted to small stores or shops. Patrons may be taken up by elevator to any story and will find it easy to walk along a continuous and gradually descending aisle, passing exhibition booths or the show windows of individual stores, shops or offices. It is equally well adapted to buildings to be used for light manufacturing operations, where raw materials are taken to the top by elevators and emerge at the lower level as buildings to be used for storage purposes. finished products. It is also adapted to For some of these special uses, one or more elevators may be placed in the center of the building and the floor areas outside of the spiral portions made level. Session of the Afternoon of August 17, 1926 Engineers, Councilmen and Street Superintendents J. A. VAN ALSTINE, President DISCUSSION ON BUILDING CODE The meeting was called to order at 1:30 o'clock p. m. MR. VAN ALSTINE (Presiding): Is Mr. Garrard of Richmond in the room? (No response). The convention yesterday had a number of specialists on its program, largely on city planning, county planning, and matters of sanitation. This afternoon we have a complete change of program. We only have two events. We will hear first of the work being done and to be done on a uniform building code for Pacific Coast cities. This is a matter which everyone here should be heartily interested in, whether you are connected with the design of buildings, the construction of buildings, or the administration or inspection of building work. The idea of a uniform building code for Pacific Coast cities was first proposed in San Francisco in 1922 at a meeting of the state building inspectors conference. At that time Mr. A. C. Horner, then building inspector of Stockton, was appointed executive secretary. Mr. Horner has carried on this work as executive secretary up to a few months ago, at which time due to his resignation he was appointed City Building Inspector of Long Beach, and in order to carry on the work Mr. Horner has brought his report of each of the different meetings which have been held in different parts of California. At the present time arrangements have been made for the printing of a tentative draft of the code. Mr. Horner will appreciate meeting the various officials and have their criticism of the draft with a view, eventually, of its adoption by the various cities. Mr. Horner. MR. HORNER: Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sorry I haven't been able to think up something like our friend Mr. Newkirk this morning in talking of his proposed sanitary law, when he said that the downfall of the Roman Empire was more or less predicated on the fact that they did not enforce their sanitary ordinances. I could not think up a good one along the same lines which would be applicable to a uniform ordinance for building regulations, but I do have a little different view point and a little different problem to present. I am more or less of a pinch-hitter this afternoon. The scheduled speaker, I believe, is not here, and I have no idea of just how I shall present my subject. Sitting through the session yesterday and today, I conceived the idea that perhaps some of you do not realize how many kinds of municipal building regulations we have had in the world. I do not propose to go into that matter, but I do propose to put before you this question: Is Building Regulation Necessary? A great deal could be said on that one subject-is building regulation necessary? And how should it be regulated? Shall we go to the extent of making ourselves insurers and guarantee the paint that a man puts on his house by passing an ordinance stating that the paint must have so much oil in it and so much color pigment in it, or shall we confine our building ordinance to those things which have to do with public health, safety and welfare? My personal opinion is that we should confine ourselves as nearly as possible to the safety, health and welfare of the public and not attempt to approach the problem from the standpoint of guaranteeing to the individual citizen that the-well, we will say; that the paint on his house is of the first quality. Should we pass an ordinance telling him what kind of paint to put on his house and say if he puts that kind of paint on we will guarantee it? I don't think we should. If it is safe, in other words, if any part of the building is safe, that should be as far as the city should go. There is now on foot all over California and Wisconsin, and just starting in Florida, a movement to write a building ordinance for interior plastering and require the plaster to be % or 3/4 of an inch thick. True, you do not have to put any plaster at all on if you don't want to, but if you do it must be 34 of an inch thick. There are a great many forms of building ordinances and regulations proposed which assume that the city is going to guarantee a citizen, the man that puts up a house, against the unprincipled builder who wants to skin him on the job. That is all right, I think, up to a certain point, and it is true that the courts are today looking with a little bit more favor on city legislation in that direction, but it is easy to go too far, and more harm can be done in going too far than not going far enough, which is the situation in which we find ourselves today. Now, if you consider building regulation is necessary for public safety, health and welfare, the next question that presents itself is, is it necessary to have uniformity in building regulation in the various cities, uniformity in respect to fundamentals only, or is it desirable, for instance, that the building regulations of San Diego, which might require a 12-inch brick wall of a certain height, should be the same as the building regulation in Sacramento for the same given condition? the same Is it desirable that the fire clay flue lining. as required in chimneys in San Diego be the same as that for Sacramento, or Seattle or any other city on the Pacific Coast? There are many other phases of uniformity. One that happens to come to me is the case of an architect in San Francisco who is designing a building which is to be built, perhaps, in Fresno. He has to go to the trouble of writing down to Fresno and get the building code, and that is only half of the story; he has to ask the building inspector what changes there are, if any, in the regulations, what rulings he has made, subsequent to the passage of the ordinance, because no ordinance in existence today. is strictly in force; there is no ordinance. that has not been amended and rulings passed by building inspectors, and so forth, until it reaches the point that the whole matter is almost in the hands of the building inspector to say what he enforces and what he does not enforce. From that standpoint uniformity in building regulations is desirable, also from the standpoint of the contractor who builds in various cities, from the standpoint of the banker who makes loans, from the standpoint of building and loan associations, and from a great many standpoints uniformity in building. regulation is necessary. The next question that presents itself, if you agree that uniform building regulation is necessary, who is best able to prepare such a uniform building code? The city government is predicated on a city council, a board of trustees, or some legislative body-call it what you will. It is presumed that this legislative body should make or at least should pass-in fact they are required by law to pass ordinances in their respective cities. Therefore, why not have the city council. frame all the laws. The city council is the one that has got to pass an ordinance, why should they not frame it? That FOR PERMANENCE USE VITRIFIED CLAY PIPE FOR Sewerage, Drainage, Culverts, Irrigation, etc. For the asking, you may have our catalog, or the advice of GLADDING, McBEAN & CO. 660 Market St., San Francisco, and Glendale, Calif. question can be readily answered in your own mind. Obviously the city council cannot do any such thing. They pass the job over to the city attorney. City attorneys, I think-most of you in the engineering departments who are here today realize that city attorneys have legal minds and not engineering minds. Building regulation is essentially an engineering function, but when a city attorney has to prepare a building code he first calls in the building inspector and says, "what will we do about this?" "Well," the building inspector says, "we will get a San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and a Chicago code and then we will take the best parts of those codes and put them into the code-for the city of Long Acres or whatever the city is." That is the way it has been going for the past twenty or thirty years and most building codes have been drawn up in that way; they get these various codes and the building inspector sits down and argues out various things in these other codes which might be related to their own city-usually they are not. Finally the building code is drawn up and goes to the city council and customarily there are not many people who look it over and it is passed, and after it is passed you find that instead of being able to build your house out of 2 x 4s you can by using 2 x 3s save money and you go ahead and build your house with 2 x 3s. You decide in a couple of years to build another house, but you are out of luck, the building ordinance has been amended in some way and you find you cannot build this house the same as you did the last one. On the other hand, a new building code is passed and you have built your house under the old ordinance, not knowing about the new one, and you put in a brick chimney and you did not put any fire clay flue lining in it. The building inspector comes along and says, "You can't build that chimney that way. You've got to close that up or have a fire clay flue lining in it." It makes you pretty sore, but you tear down your chimney and put in the fire clay. So the thing works both ways. Late in 1922 a number of building inspectors on the Pacific Coast met in San Francisco with the idea of forming an organization somewhat along the lines of the League of California Municipalities, an association or conference, which could discuss all these things. These inspectors had seen the evil of these things which I have been telling |