Cost of Concrete.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 7, 1 May 1907, Page 266

Cost of Concrete.

The Public Health Engineer quotes the Liverpool city engineer as having said that concrete buildings can be built on a large scale for twenty-five per cent, less than brick buildings of the same size.

Near the village of Bedenden, in Kent, a large building is approaching completion, which is interesting, not merely from an architectural point of view, but on account of the conditions under which it is being erected and will be maintained. The building in question is a sanatorium for consumptive patients, and the cost of its erection — about £50,000 — and of its maintainance, is defrayed by about thirty working men's unions and societies. The levy per member of the contributing bodies is one halfpenny per week, and this sum insures for the members the right to treatment under the most favourable conditions that modern science has devised, should they be so unfortunate as to contract the dreaded disease. The site on which the sanatorium is being built is 250 acres in extent. The building is crescent-shaped, and has been designed by Mr. A. William West, who acted as honorary architect, to accommodate 200 patients of both sexes. Though naturally it is not planned on such luxurious lines as the Edward VII. sanatorium at Midhurst, it is believed that nothing which the best hygienic authorities regard as essential has been omitted.