The Renaissance of Concrete.-The Concrete Age.-Concrete Architecture.-Concrete Literature.-The Future of Concrete.
The Renaissance of Concrete.-The history of concrete is a history of an ancient and highly developed art, long lost and forgotten during the dark centuries of the middle ages, and having a new awakening and renaissance nearly two thousand years later. Some of the costly and magnificent structures of concrete built by the Romans during the period of their supremacy still remain as time-defying evidence of their great skill as constructors, and as monuments to the utilitarian character of their art. As a seed planted in an arid soil springs to life at the first visiting of rain, so has concrete been born anew in the twentieth century when the state of industrial and constructive art became favorable to its development; and with such new life, it has reached a much higher state of development, and attained a wider application and a more permanent place in our civilization than was ever dreamed of by our Roman predecessors.
How broadly concrete has entered into our modern lives has been well put by Kerwin in an address before the National Association of Cement Users in the following words:
The Concrete Age.-"Our ancestors progressed from the Stone Age to the Iron Age; we seem to be passing from the Steel Age to the Cement Stone or Concrete Age. We tread on concrete walks, travel in concrete subways, over concrete bridges, live and work in