Is there any reason to believe that the "old" building wasn't just recently repointed? This seems like the most likely answer.
Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
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Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#22Survivorship bias is a really important caveat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Many cheap brick buildings from 100 years ago are gone, where the high quality ones are more likely to remain. Also, steel Lintel are often used over windows in brick buildings. They don't last as long, but are fine for cheap construction that is not expected to last. AKA the kinds of building that are unlikely to be aroun…
I suspect that survivorship bias is not much of an issue here since the old building still looks a lot better than that new building.
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#23There are some other great explanations in this thread (survivor bias seems very plausible), but I'll throw out another based on my experience with other construction trades: economics.
If you look at old buildings, you tend to notice that they also have a lot of intricate plaster-work that you never see anymore. Why? Because it used to be much cheaper to hire skilled labor than it is today. You can see a similar trend every year in the Christmas Price Index, which tracks the cost of the items in the 12 Days of Christmas song. The prices of goods tend to stay stable, while the price of labor tends to increase significantly.
For our brick buildings, I tried to find the best numbers I could, and here's what I came up with: In 1894, bricks cost about $5.70/thousand [1], which is $165.51 in today's dollars Today, you can get bricks wholesale for $220/thousand - and that's what I found online, I imagine an actual wholesaler is less. [2] That's an increase of about 37%
For the bricklayer, the average wage in 1891 was $4/day, which is about $110 in today's dollars [3]
Today, the median bricklayer pay is $24/hour [4], which is $192 per 8 hour day.
That's an increase of 75% in the real wages of the bricklayer, and it means that the rate labor costs have increased is double the rate of material costs.
In 1891, it may have made financial sense to pay for a bricklayer to make intricate, high quality buildings. In the past few decades, it's likely that's no longer the case.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=Oo4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA953&lpg=...
[2]http://brickbroker.com/brick.html [3] https://books.google.com/books?id=cNdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA722&lpg=... [4] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Bricklayer/Hourly_Ra...
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#24Where are brick buildings being torn down left and right? I challenge the survivorship bias argument as where I live in the US east coast multiple cities push for historical status on buildings past a certain age in order to retain character.
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#25The small house I live in is 100 years old, and built of brick. It is a tremendously (over-)engineered building: two layers of brick even for interior walls, exterior walls are around 1 ft thick, and four massive chimney-breasts (although two were sadly removed by previous owners).
My theory is that they just had enormous amounts of cheap labour 100 years ago, and you'd never be able to build such a building today because it would be far too expensive.
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#26Wait, aren't a lot of modern American "brick" buildings made with plywood covered with brick siding?
That's not really an accurate description of wooden-framed construction. For one, there's a lot more structure to it than just bricks and plywood, and it's also safer against earthquakes and other environmental damage.
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#27Survivorship bias is a really important caveat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias Many cheap brick buildings from 100 years ago are gone, where the high quality ones are more likely to remain. Also, steel Lintel are often used over windows in brick buildings. They don't last as long, but are fine for cheap construction that is not expected to last. AKA the kinds of building that are unlikely to be aroun…
I suspect that survivorship bias is not much of an issue here since the old building still looks a lot better than that new building.
Actually that confirms the point; the old building was clearly state of the art for the time, and the new building is a cheap rush like student dorms sometimes are.
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#28Isn't this simply an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias ? The only brick buildings you can still look at from the 1800s are the ones that were built very well - all the shoddily-constructed buildings from that era have since disappeared.
Here's an example of a shoddy building from over a century ago that, through a historical quirk, is still around: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/san-francisco-shack-startin...
Yeah, the dorm in the linked article is totally better than that building. So while there are good buildings from that era, let's not kid ourselves, there were also a lot of horrible buildings that are rightfully no longer around. I would be willing to bet that the average quality of new construction is better now than it was then. If nothing else, the pervasive use of aluminum/vinyl siding and tar-asphalt shingle roofs yields buildings that better withstand the elements that old-style painted wood.
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#29Survivorship bias and structural integrity aside, I suspect it's all about the cashflow.
The bank was built in 1891. The FDIC wasn't around until 1933. The appearance of wealth and institutional stability was a very important marketing tool to late 19th-century bankers wanting patrons to trust them with their money.
The dorm houses kids fresh out of high school who can't / don't want to live off campus. I'd guess the building is attractive enough to most people to avoid negative attention, and -- as the article indicates -- it obviously isn't swaying money away from Dartmouth, so why bother?
Re: Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?
#30Alright, too many mentions of survival bias and too much skepticism. There're large parts of some cities that are almost exclusively constructed from brick. It might be bias or it might not be.
It's clear that nowadays buildings are made cheaply. For example the construction of the regular American suburban "stick" house is just the cheapest and the quickest way put up walls and a roof. What you get is something that's badly insulated (both from weather and sound) and just isn't very strong, and the technique is getting traction in other parts of the world too, replacing concrete, beams and brick.