CHAPTER XVII.
ARCHITECTURAL TERRA-COTTA.
IT is interesting to note what the fifth edition of the
Encyclop/etda Bri/anica, published in 1815, contains
relative to this subject :'Worlidge, and others after
him, have endeavored to excite brick-makers to try their
skill in making a new kind of brick, or a composition of
clay and sand, whereof to form window-frames, chimney,
pieces, door-cases, and the like. It is to be made in
pieces, fashioned in molds, which, when burnt, may be set
together with a fine red cement, and seem as one entire
piece. The thing should seem feasible."  And so we
shall find that it was.
Terra-cotta, the most enduring of all building mate,
rials, has been used to a greater or lesser extent from a
high antiquity in continental Europe, and in England
terra-cotta trimmings were used in building as early as the
fifteenth century. In the United States this material does
not seem to have been introduced until after 185o. Ex-
periments were made in this direction in 1853 by Mr.
James Renwick, a prominent New York architect, but the
innovation was not received with favor by builders. In
1870 the Chicago Terra-Cotta Company brought over
2s                  385