Bricklayers Century Of Craftsmanship

Examining the proliferation of reinforced-concrete construction in the United States after 1900, historian Amy E. Slaton considers how scientific approaches and occupations displaced traditionally skilled labor. The technology of concrete buildings—little studied by historians of engineering, architecture, or industry—offers a remarkable case study in the modernization of American production. The use of concrete brought to construction the new procedures and priorities of mass production. These included a comprehensive application of science to commercial enterprise and vast redistributions of skills, opportunities, credit, and risk in the workplace. Reinforced concrete also changed the American landscape as building buyers embraced the architectural uniformity and simplicity to which the technology was best suited. Based on a wealth of data that includes university curricula, laboratory and company records, organizational proceedings, blueprints, and promotional materials as well as a rich body of physical evidence such as tools, instruments, building materials, and surviving reinforced-concrete buildings, this book tests the thesis that modern mass production in the United States came about not simply in answer to manufacturers' search for profits, but as a result of a complex of occupational and cultural agendas.

Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits follows the history of the Building and Construction Trades Department from the emergence of building trades councils in the age of the skyscraper; through treacherous fights over jurisdiction as new building materials and methods of work evolved; and through numerous Department campaigns to improve safety standards, work with contractors to promote unionized construction, and forge a sense of industrial unity among its fifteen (and at times nineteen) autonomous and highly diverse affiliates. Arranged chronologically, Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits is based on archival research in Department, AFL-CIO, and U.S. government records as well as numerous union journals, the local and national press, and interviews with former Department officers. Grace Palladino makes the history of the building trades come alive. By investigating the sources of conflict and unity within the Building and Construction Trades Department over time, and demonstrating how building trades unions dealt with problems and opportunities in the past, she provides a historical context for the current generation of workers and leaders as they devise new strategies to suit their current situation.

"The past decades witnessed a powerful return of struggles against what economic historian Karl Polanyi termed the commodification of social life. This book explores how organized workers in two metropolises of the late nineteenth century responded to the commodification of labor. In doing so, it reveals a striking continuity in collective opposition against the unfettered power of free markets. Drawing on contemporary feminist revisions of Polanyian thought, this book illustrates the ambiguous potential of movements for social protection"--Back cover.

"Pre-eminent among historians of labor history." --Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The textbook history of the 1920s is a story of Prohibition, flappers, and unbounded prosperity. For millions of industrial workers, however, the "roaring twenties" looked very different. Working-class communities were already in crisis in the years before the stock market crash of 1929. Strikes in the 1920s and attempts to organize the unemployed and fight evictions in the early 1930s often fell victim to police violence and repression. Here, Irving Bernstein recaptures the social history of the decade leading up to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration, uncovers its widespread inequality, and sheds light on the long-forgotten struggles that form the prelude to the great labor victories of the 1930s. "In other words, viewed from afar, most of the people who were suffering the hardships of the Depression were depressed and even ashamed, ready to blame themselves for their plight. But the train of developments that connects changes in social conditions to a changed consciousness is not simple. People, including ordinary people, harbor somewhere in their memories the building blocks of different and contradictory interpretations of what it is that is happening to them, of who should be blamed, and what can be done about it. Even the hangdog and ashamed unemployed worker who swings his lunch box and strides down the street so the neighbors will think he is going to a job can also have other ideas that only have to be evoked, and when they are make it possible for him on another day to rally with others and rise up in anger at his condition. --From the new introduction by Frances Fox Piven

This book takes a look at the history and use of cut, rubbed and gauged brickwork; the use of tools and equipment and the differences between historic and contemporary bricks with a view to inform conservation and restoration decisions. The book uses case studies from England, Ireland and the US to illustrate the use of different materials and techniques on buildings ranging in age. Written by Dr. Gerard Lynch, the leading authority in this subject area, this book will be of particular interest to architectural historians, architects working on historic buildings and building conservators.

This book takes a look at the history and use of cut, rubbed and gauged brickwork; the use of tools and equipment and the differences between historic and contemporary bricks with a view to inform conservation and restoration decisions. The book uses case studies from England, Ireland and the US to illustrate the use of different materials and techniques on buildings ranging in age. Written by Dr. Gerard Lynch, the leading authority in this subject area, this book will be of particular interest to architectural historians, architects working on historic buildings and building conservators.

Illustrated with over 250 drawings, this book covers architectural history and building construction, focusing on the various crafts involved in the construction of buildings.

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