Home Builders' Blue Book

Paperback trade catalog printed for the J.C. Simpson Lumber Company by the William A. Radford Company. (**See below.) The front and back covers have a light blue background, with color illustrations of houses. The front cover also has 2 men and a woman looking over a house plan in the front yard, the title at the top in white, and "J.C. Simpson Lumber Co., Lumber and Building Materials" in black at the bottom. The back cover has a quote from John Ruskin's 1849 book: Seven Lamps of Architecture. The spine is covered in light blue tape. The book is in overall good condition, with some tearing on the front cover's bottom right corner and wearing along all edges. The illustrations and floor plans inside are all in black and white. 98 pages. Size: 8.25" x 11.5"

**From antiquehomestyle.com: "Of the hundreds of companies that designed house plans during the first half of the 20th century, one of the most prolific was the William A. Radford Company of Chicago, Illinois.

Radford sold a number of books under their name, but also provided their plans to lumber dealers and builders for distribution to customers. Many of those books are unattributed, but they are easy to identify by comparing the plans with the books and American Builder magazine which was in publication for several decades."

**From wikipedia: "It was the Radford Architectural Company for which he is remembered, whose output over the years comprised more than 40 books on various types of construction and more than 1000 plans and specifications for buildings ranging from homes to small commercial buildings.^[1] Radford founded this company in 1902, and his publications were collaborations with prominent authors in the field at the time including Frank E. Kidder, Alfred G. King, and Ira O. Baker.^[1] He was also the founder of various magazines: Beautiful Homes, Farm Mechanics, American Carpenter and Builder, and Cement Homes.^[1]

Although, in the opinion of his biographer Neal Vogel, some of his designs were "lackluster versions" of Queen Anne or American Foursquare designs, some of his designs reflect the Prairie School aesthetic and his publications helped to spread it across the United States in the early 20th century.^[2] Radford embraced what were then modern innovations, with books on construction types that were just coming into use such as his 1700-page-long 1910 Radford Cyclopedia of Cement Construction which dealt in the use of concrete and whose articles were written by a team of experts on the subject."