Masonry Magazine March 1963 Page. 20
They're after your job!
The metal industry recently paid you and your industry a big compliment. It also threatened you and your firm. It is planning a huge campaign that will shortly sweep through your community. Metal fabricators and jobbers will swamp your architects, businessmen, PTA leaders, and school boards with arguments, booklets, and other propaganda attacking the reduction of glass in school walls. They're particularly alarmed by the trend toward construction of the windowless or near-windowless masonry school. Here's what they say: "Need for joint action by the flat glass jobbers, the manufacturers, and the metal and allied industries in the battle against the windowless type school becomes more evident as newspapers and school publications report more construction of such buildings the impetus in this attack comes from the national organization of brick manufacturers."
Members of the MCAA have worked vigorously with bricklayers and brick producers to promote the advantages of masonry walls. As you know, the best promotion, anytime and anywhere, is to tell the truth. This is what we have done and it has seriously upset our opposition. Now they want to knock out the gains made by our industry. Following in two contrasting paragraphs is what they say and what we say and know to be the truth. (Much of our argument exists in the fine Allied Masonry Council publication, "A Few Hard Facts About the Design/Cost/Construction of Modern School Buildings.") Please read their claims and our corrections. Read it and re-read it. Then use the information. Tell the facts to every businessman you come into contact with. Make sure that your bricklayers' union distributes the "Few Hard Facts" literature (obtainable through the MCAA Executive Office) to every architect, contractor, PTA head, school board member, city and county official, and business leader in your community. Make sure, too, that your chapter gets together with the bricklayers' local union and the brick manufacturers organization to plan a coordinated campaign. As the metal people are telling their 20,000 jobbers and their more numerous allied industry people, "the jobber cannot merely throw this material to the wind and expect it to be effective in promoting the curtain-wall school design. He must know where to place the information to be effective. He must be aware of the opinion leaders in the community and the various groups and organizations which exert influence on local affairs. If a committee is the most deciding and most influential force in your community school building program, you should study the organization carefully, learn who the members are, who the most powerful individual is, and determine how the committee operates. In most instances, this will be the school board. Choose an individual from the group and explain the situation to him..." The metal statement also urges the local representatives to tie in with manufacturer promotion, industry's sales tools and literature, propagandize architects, and so on. So runs the metal industry's plot to knock out your job. Now read the arguments:
The Metal Industry Claim
The windowless school is a "warehouse" school. The school is the "open-world" school.
The Facts
This is a lot of silly name-calling. The metal window school might similarly be called the "fishbowl" school or the "high-tax" school. That's what it is. The masonry school is the "modern" school; the "tax-saver" school; the "better-learning" school; the "flexible" school. Most modern buildings today are windowless. They cost a great deal to operate; they eliminate distractions from outside; inside temperatures can be controlled more easily; you can use all of the space inside and make any interior changes you wish.
The Metal Industry Claim
The metal-and-glass school is the only true "curtain-wall" school.
The Facts
This is nonsense. A "curtain-wall" can be made of anything. It simply means the opposite of load-bearing. Masonry walls can be either curtain-wall or load-bearing. The first curtain walls in this country were made of masonry.
The Metal Industry Claim
Glass makes a fine setting for audio-visual aids.
The Facts
This is too silly to deserve an answer.
The Metal Industry Claim
Glass schools are safer.
The Facts
Ever jump through a window or thick glass wall? Doors are what you walk through; good housekeeping and proper wiring prevent fires. When they do occur, you want to be able to confine them within spaces to prevent them from flashing through an entire building. Glass will melt under heat. Masonry will stand up for many hours.
The Metal Industry Claim
Only in a big-glass-area school can the child relax mind and eyes.
The Facts
Do children go to school to stare out the window or to get an education?
The Metal Industry Claim
Glass schools lower air conditioning cost.
The Facts
This is a big whopper. Item: The New York Daily News carried a recent story about the $9,000,000 Great Neck, L. I., school built of tinted, floor-to-ceiling glass with Venetian blinds and awning. The classroom temperature was 101 degrees and an engineering consultant said the only solution was an air conditioning system costing $300,000. In many parts of the country, architects have established that the money you save on glass alone will more than pay for an entire air conditioning system. Why? The initial cost of brick is much lower. Architects Golemon & Rolfe in Houston, Texas, compared two identical schools and found that more than $500,000 could be saved by building a compact, rectangular, all-masonry building.
MASONRY March,