Sun Supplies Heat For This House
OLD SOL provides the heat for the hot water system in this new sun laboratory, recently completed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for research on using the sun rays for house heating and power generation. The man on the roof is Dr. Byron B. Woertz, research assistant, who is inspecting energy collectors, or “heat traps,” in which circulating water is heated by sunlight and stored in a large basement tank for future use.

Corner Windows Feature of New Gotham Skyscraper

A NEW step in office building construction has been marked with the completion of a new 34-story skyscraper in New York City. The most noteworthy feature of the building is that the supporting steel framework does not extend to the corners of the structure, these corners being left entirely clear, and windows being placed at each floor with only a thin metal window sash at the angle. The additional light thus available in the corner offices makes these suites desirable especially in the upper stories beyond reach of street noises.

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Haywire House

By R.W.K

I’VE been there, I’ve seen, I’ve taken pictures—but I still don’t see how such things are possible.

The Editors of MI heard some wild stories about a place called the House of Mystery. What stories! People go around ten degrees off the vertical! A golf ball thrown straight up comes down several inches to one side! A bottle rolls uphill! A broom stands by itself—at an angle to the floor! People grow taller or shorter, depending on where they stand! All this happens in Oregon, in a peculiar area called the Oregon Vortex, a circle, or rather a sphere, exactly 165 feet 4-1/2 inches in diameter up in the Gold Hill country!
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House Shaped Like Elephant
A HOUSE built in the shape of an elephant is located at Margate City, N. J. Erected in 1882 by James V. Lafferty, the novel home is said to be the only one of its kind. The body is 38 feet long, the circumference, 80 feet. The head is 26 feet long and 48 feet around. Legs are 22 feet long with a diameter of 10 feet. Glass eyes have an 18-inch diameter.

Bureau-Shaped Building Houses Bureau of Information
AS a novel means of advertising their town’s chief industry, the manufacture of furniture, the local Chamber of Commerce of High Point, N.C, has erected a building resembling a huge bureau to house its headquarters. The novelty of the structure lies in the sign on the mirror, for the building is actually a bureau—a bureau of information. This unique building was erected by popular subscription and is located in the heart of the town.

Latest in Homes Has Skyscraper Frame and Glass Walls

CUBICAL in construction and designed to build for $2500 or less, the model house shown in the photo at the left has just been completed in Syosset, Long Island. It is intended to serve the needs of families whose income is $1800 a year or less.

Simple modernistic lines, with no fancy and expensive curlicues, characterize the design. Steel is used for the framework, giving it the durability of a skyscraper skeleton. Much glass is used to admit plenty of light. Read the rest of this entry »

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CITY WITHIN A CITY

Equal in size to ten 10-story buildings, New York’s Interstate Commerce Center will have an Indoor highway.

THEY gasped when Tom Mix rode his horse right through the swinging doors and into .a western saloon. They laughed when Olsen and Johnson drove a midget car into the elevator of a modern building and then through the halls to a lawyer’s office. (In Hollywood, anything can happen.) Read the rest of this entry »

Greenhouse Goes Modern

WHAT is considered as the last word in green houses recently has been completed in St. Louis at a $120,000 cost. Unlike the average greenhouse of today, the roof is practically hail proof, the top being made of an unbreakable composition.

The glass panels are made up of 24 by 26-inch panes covering 15,000 square feet, and are fastened in place with copper glazing strips.

Prefabricated House For Defense Needs
THIS radical-looking prefabricated house is one of the many types which have’ been submitted to the Division of Defense Housing Coordination as a quick, cheap method of housing defense workers. The house weighs only a ton, and can be constructed in six days by one man. At the right is an interior view of the novel “defense” house.

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The House That Death Built

by Dean S. Jennings

DEAD leaves, whipped from stark lonely trees by the valley wind, sing a dirge in the night glow of a winter’s moon.

Behind the skeleton screen of withered oaks whose rotting limbs droop to pungent ground, you can see the house, gabled and gaunt, rising wraith-like against a blue shadowed mountain backdrop.

They call it the “mystery house,” and “the house that death built” or “ghost house.”
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TENT CITY ON HOTEL ROOF IN SAN DIEGO, CALIF.
An unusual method of coining dollars from the waste space on the roof of a building is shown in this view of the U. S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, where about twenty tents have been pitched far above the city. The view is fine, the air good, and as the elevator and other hotel service is at hand, the guests enjoy camp life and city advantages together. The proprietor receives a good rate for these quarters, so that the novel idea is beneficial all around.

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PLAYGROUNDS IN THE SKY

Here is MI’s hold plan to fight juvenile delinquency and get kids off the street.

THE scene is your city on a sticky, sweltering twilight in midsummer. Lights are beginning to wink on and kids are starting to gather in the streets after the evening meal.

A few years ago this was the danger hour in your city. You remember it well—the nightly muggings would begin about now and young girls would be afraid to venture out alone. Beatings were commonplace and gang wars, fiercely fought with knives and zip-guns, were a frequent occurrence. But things are different now. Read the rest of this entry »