Fast Piecework

Prefabricated construction, which now accounts for 8% of all new home building, last week was making fast headway in the commercial building field as well. Among the newest developments:

¶On Manhattan's Park Avenue, a $14 million skyscraper was being fitted with 1,800 prefabricated aluminum panels, each with two window frames. The entire job of putting up outside walls on the 26-story structure was being done in the record time of 6½ working days, v. eight weeks for ordinary stone-and-brick construction. The metal panels, two stories high and 4½ ft. wide, were carted to the site from a Long Island plant, ready for installation.

¶ In a suburb of Cincinnati, the Steel-craft Manufacturing Co. was putting up a prefabricated steel frame for a two-story, eight-family apartment building.

¶ In Columbus, Ohio, a fully prefabricated, 74,000-sq.-ft. structure was being put up in 50 working days as an exhibition building for the Ohio State Fair. Parts for the rigid steel framework were carried to the site and riveted together, and 204 pre-finished concrete panels, measuring up to 8 by 10 ft., were bolted to the steel to form walls. The panels were made by the Marietta Concrete Corp., which in three years has made slabs (two layers of concrete sandwiching a 1½-in. layer of Fiberglas insulation) for 25 large buildings.