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About Adobe

      The John Boylston Fairbanks home is built of adobe. The World Book Encyclopedia says the following about adobe:

        "Adobe is the Spanish name for sun-dried bricks, or for a house built with such bricks. A less common type of adobe is made with dampened earth pressed down in building forms similar to those used for poured concrete walks.

        "People have used adobe bricks to build houses and other structures in desert regions for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians used adobe.

        "To make adobe, workers first mix sandy clay or loam with water and a small quantity of straw, grass, or similar building material. They place this mixture in wooden forms that shape it into bricks. Workers remove the forms when the bricks are dry. Then they bake the bricks in the sun from ten days to two weeks.

        "Adobe houses are common in Mexico and the south-western part of the United States. Traditional adobe houses built by Mexicans and by Pueblo Indians are covered with mud. Modern adobe houses are covered with a plaster-like material called stucco. Adobe houses are cooler than uninsulated homes made of wood or stone, but adobe is not suitable for use in cold or damp regions. The bricks will crumble if they are exposed to rain or to periods of freezing and thawing."

      A letter to the family organization, dated 1964, by Jonathan Fairbanks states:

        In 1845, Henry L. Ellsworth, the first Commissioner of Patents of the United States Patent Office, suggested in his first annual report to the nation that persons going West would be wise to build their homes of adobe, or unburned brick. Designs for such homes, called "prairie cottages," were published by Mr. Ellsworth and were reproduced in many handbooks of the mid-nineteenth century; but so far as I know, only the Utah pioneers adopted the idea on a large scale. Such adobe buildings are quickly disappearing and may soon be known only by photographs. The John Boylston Fairbanks house is based on Mr. Ellsworth's plans, and is one of the few important examples extant today.