Houses Without Nails.

Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 8 January 1915, Page 3

Houses Without Nails.

In Atbarta, Canada, there is a village of houses which have been constructed without nails. As a matter of fact, little or no hardware of any character has entered into their construction. These houses have been built by Ruthenian immigrants, and their architecture is quite novel. Their first attempts at house-building are usually of the kind they have been accustomed to over in Europe, and their buildings are of the typical Ruthenian stylelog, pitch-roofed, thatched, and wide in the eaves. In many cases these buildings are put up without a. dollar's worth of hardware. Even the door, an affair of slender twigs woven and laced together swings on home-made hinges and is latched with a woodSn hasp. The floor is of hewn logs, unnailed. The roof, as tiie favourite Russian roof always is, is wonderful fabric of poles and cross-poles, through and over which has heen woven wheat straw, ten inches thick, packed tight and solid, and laid with such care that it will shed the weather for twenty years.