Chapter IX: Part VII: Proceedings of Annual Meeting 287 (5)

The second class of house which is found prominently is that built for one family of the better class and now converted to the use of three or more families of the very poor. In the history of housing in other cities, these houses have formed one step in the evolution of such tenements as we have described. Here, they form the most important phase of our tenement house problem. May it not be that by wisely adapting them to the needs of the very poor they can take the place of the larger tenements and give to Philadelphia the proud distinction of housing these classes in small buildings, which shall avoid the evils attendant upon the herding of many families together? At present, there are large numbers of houses of this class in the older parts of this region and a total failure of any adaptation of the old arrangements to suit the new conditions. The houses are usually well built and the rooms large and well ventilated, but there is no attempt at adequate or sanitary plumbing. The hydrant in the yard is often the only water supply and there is probably but one closet, also in the yard, the privy well of which may be shared by three adjoining houses. Little attention is given to care or management. The repairs are neglected, the stairways are dark, the halls obstructed by extra furniture and rubbish. In many cases the cellars are damp and filthy and give no provision for storage. The yards are obstructed, there are no arrangements for drying clothes.

The law provides that when buildings are altered into tenements certain provisions shall be enforced, but it makes no mention of the need for this alteration in houses so used without changes, nor does it exact any such changes. The landlord of the district is keenly alive to the fact that when alterations are to be made, an affidavit that the house is to be used by only two families will protect him from the exactions of the tenement house law. A special investigation into houses of this class would surely show how the law could be amended to cover their defects and to fit them at a moderate expenditure and under good regulation to meet the needs of the newly arrived immigrant and of the very poor.

This type of houses built for one family and changed into tenements has another and a worse form when it is used for what is known as a “furnished room house.” There is a large, and it is believed a steadily increasing, number of these in the older parts of the city and where conditions have greatly deteriorated. There are no data on which to estimate their number. A thorough inquiry could be made only with police or other authority behind the workers. These houses are tenements and have all the objectionable features of tenements in a marked degree, besides others peculiar to themselves. These features are intensified by the character of the tenants, who are of the lowest class. Sometimes the houses are used for immoral purposes, and the occupants generally are shiftless, intemperate and slovenly. Some few are deserving families where the breadwinner is out of work. Their conditions are deplorable, and they have not even the stimulus to decent living that comes from the ownership of household goods. The buildings are generally old, and ill-adapted to the number of people crowded in them. The rooms are rented by the week at prices ranging from $1.50 to $2.50 per room. They have the scantiest possible equipment of old and dilapidated furniture. They are dirty and unventilated; the beds and bedding indescribable. Water is seldom found above the ground floor. Bath-tubs are unknown or used for storage. In most cases there is but one closet in the yard for all the tenants of the house. The yards, as a rule, are filthy. There is no apparent effort at cleanliness or supervision. One room is the ordinary rule for one family, with frequent boarders in addition. In some cases the large rooms have been divided by flimsy partitions, and each half is occupied by a family. The primary need of these houses is frequent and efficient inspection. This is more urgent than in a case of ordinary tenements, as the occupants are the lowest and the poorest, and unable or unwilling to make any efforts in their own behalf. In no way can the Health and Building Department regulations be enforced, nor any general improvement in the condition of these houses be effected, except by a system of periodic inspection, followed by action by the proper city departments. It is entirely possible that a thorough investigation of these houses made under adequate authority throughout the city, would show the prevalence of conditions warranting a system of licensing—the license to be revoked upon failure by the landlord to enforce reasonable regulations as to cleanliness, decency, overcrowding, etc.—in addition to the present laws applying to all tenement houses.

The third class of houses to which we would draw special attention is that of the rear dwelling, a small two or three-story house, built sometimes singly and sometimes in rows of from two to eight or ten houses on the rear of the front house. This plan of building has been characterized as the horizontal rather than the vertical tenement. The entrance to the row is by a narrow passage-way from the street or court. This passage-way is also frequently the means by which the surface drainage is carried to the street or to an open sewer-connection at its entrance. The space in front of the houses is the only yard. Sometimes this space widens at the end of the entrance-way and there is a double row of dwellings facing each other and covering the rears of two or three front lots. Sometimes again the open space forms a square with houses on three sides. Thus one comes unexpectedly on a little community whose existence one has not imagined. More often, however, the narrow passage-way runs the whole length of the row and in many cases the brick wall of an adjoining lot shuts away all air and sunshine and makes a prison of the little court.

In a careful investigation made by the college settlement into the sanitary condition of one block in its immediate neighborhood, this type of house was strongly illustrated. Out of a total of 196 houses in the block, over 90 were rear dwellings, and but a small proportion of these was underdrained. The building of rear houses is now prohibited by law. Such an investigation as we ask for would show many localities where some houses should be torn down to give light and air to the others, and other cases where the courts should be cut through or entirely demolished. Where the conditions are good, however, these houses meet the needs of the very poor and offer the advantage of an individual house, at a low rent, even though it involve the common use of yard space and closet and water conveniences.

Enough has been said about sanitation to show the great need of reform. The death-rate is not the only gauge of the sanitary condition of the neighborhood. It is shown also in lowered vitality and poor health for which there are no statistical returns. The prevalence of surface drainage in Philadelphia is very imperfectly realized. Of its 1500 miles of streets, according to a Bulletin of the Department of Labor in 1901, there were in that year 419 miles that were unpaved, and 613 miles without sewers, leaving a balance of at least 193 miles of paved streets without underdrainage. In streets where drains have been laid, many houses have not been connected. The open drains still run through the great majority of alleys, where the decaying matter stands in the gutters and when dried is scattered about by the wind. Neglected and foul privy wells are frequently found. The people are eager to tell their grievances and many are submitting patiently to intolerable conditions.

The most essential step now to be taken by the city is systematic and frequent inspection of sanitary conditions. If it is not possible to enforce underdrainage at once, such inspection would cause it to be enforced where flagrant nuisances exist, and the moral influence of an official would stimulate to better standards. The Board of Health can make but rare inspections on its own initiative and its small force of twenty inspectors of nuisances is unable to respond promptly to the numbers of complaints made to it. If this force and the force of the Bureau of Building Inspection were largely increased, with added powers, the evils of insanitary dwellings and of the evasion of the building law could be readily dealt with. There is no large city where these problems could be more easily solved.

To prove more fully the need of such measures we hope that an investigation full enough to give a comprehensive knowledge of existing conditions may soon be made. The results of such an investigation would not only promote these reforms, but would suggest other means of undoing the evils which have arisen from our long neglect and of safeguarding the future.

We have spoken thus far of the need of reform through legislation and the strengthening of the municipal departments whose work is so important in these districts. Such measures are necessary for all classes; it is for the very poor that something more is needed. The principle cannot be too strongly set forth that it is the management of the dwellings of the poor, whether they live in courts or tenements, that is to be the means of securing to them health and comfort, of giving them, in reality, homes. Miss Octavia Hill began in London in 1864 the work that was destined from the strength of its underlying principles to become a significant factor in dealing on these lines with the housing problem in Europe and also to some extent in this country.

While considering that the “spiritual elevation of a large class depends to a considerable extent on sanitary reform,”[7] Miss Hill believes also that sanitary improvement itself depends upon the educational work among grown-up people and that this work must be effected by individual influence. It is this influence in the hands of the landlord or his representative that is so great a power, and can be used either for weal or woe.

Miss Hill’s plan is not to tear down old buildings and to begin anew, but to improve existing conditions gradually as the tenants are trained gradually to appreciate and desire better things. This work is done with the assistance of large numbers of volunteer rent collectors, each one of whom is specially trained and is given a small group of tenants to care for. We quote from Miss Hill as to the duties of the collectors: “We have tried so far as possible to enlist ladies who would have an idea of how, by diligent attention to all business which devolves on a landlord, by wise rule with regard to all duties which a tenant should fulfill, by sympathetic and just decisions with a view to the common good, a high standard of management could be obtained. Repairs promptly and efficiently attended to, references carefully taken up, cleaning sedulously supervised, overcrowding put an end to, the blessing of ready money payment enforced, accounts strictly kept and, above all, tenants so sorted as to be helpful to one another.” The relation thus established on a basis of mutual obligation is one of real and often enduring helpfulness, and the opportunities for service are almost unlimited.

Miss Hill’s work has from the first been on a sound business basis and has given excellent financial returns. She has never formed any association of the owners of the many properties under her care, or of the workers who manage them. She has felt that the work is freer, and more real when thus untrammeled.

Many cities have followed the example of London in this plan of work. That of the Edinburgh Social Union is of unusual interest. It believes, as we must all believe, that the “immediate question to face is how to make the best of present conditions, how to raise the standard of comfort without waiting for legislative changes.” Its reports tell a story of successful growth which is full of valuable and suggestive experience.

In Philadelphia the need for the extension of such work grows to us stronger and more insistent as we learn more of the neglected places of our city, of the many streets and courts which need such influences as these. We believe that this work must grow and that there will come also a more realizing sense of the responsibility of the community for the welfare of its people. In the wise control of new building, and of the apartment houses which may be tenements in the future, by planning for wide streets and many open spaces, by the awakening of higher civic standards we shall come also to a higher social order. “Victory over evil at its source and not in its consequences; reforms which shall regard the welfare of future generations, who are the greatest number.”[8]

EDITOR’S NOTE.—The Octavia Hill Association is a stock company
organized to improve living conditions in such neighborhoods as those
described in the foregoing paper, on lines similar to the work of Miss
Octavia Hill in London. Its aim is to improve old houses and small
properties rather than to build new ones. It uses women rent
collectors, both paid workers and volunteers. The Association was
organized in 1896 and has a capital stock of $50,000; it has paid
yearly dividends of 4 per cent and 4½ per cent. Its capital is
invested in houses which when purchased were typical of the classes
above described. These houses have been properly altered and repaired
and demonstrate the possibility of overcoming such conditions and yet
receiving a fair financial return. The Association assumes also the
management of property for other owners. It has seventy-seven houses
now under its care, sixty-five of which are small houses for separate
families, and twelve are tenements of a medium size, averaging eleven
or twelve rooms each. The Association desires especially to extend its
work of managing the properties of other owners, believing that the
relation thus established is stronger and more enduring than where the
ownership is in a company. Its directors are:

Nathaniel B. Crenshaw, President, Girard Trust Company, Broad and
Chestnut streets; Miss Hannah Fox, 339 South Broad street; Mrs.
William F. Jenks, 920 Clinton street; Mrs. Thomas S. Kirkbride,
Secretary, 1406 Spruce street; Hector McIntosh, 605 North Sixteenth
street; Miss Helen L. Parrish, 1135 Spruce street; Mrs. William M.
Lybrand, 139 East Walnut Lane, Germantown; George Woodward, M. D.,
Chestnut Hill; C. H. Ludington, Jr., Treasurer, 425 Arch street.

THE HOUSING CONDITIONS IN BOSTON

By ROBERT TREAT PAINE, ESQ.

Boston

The housing conditions of Boston may be studied under five aspects:

1. The growth of population compared with the increase of houses.

2. The facilities for the building of new houses by private enterprise.

3. The influence of philanthropic efforts in building model blocks and separate homes.

4. Building laws.

5. The diminution of slum conditions.

1. The following table has been prepared by Dr. E. M. Hartwell, statistician of Boston.

POPULATION AND NUMBER OF DWELLING-HOUSES WITH PER CENT OF ANNUAL
INCREASE.
─────────┬───────────┬──────────┬────────────────┬──────────┬──────────
Year. │ Estimated │ Per Cent │Total Number of │ Per Cent │ Of those
│Population.│Increase. │Dwelling-Houses.│Increase. │ Vacant
│ │ │ │ │Dwellings.
─────────┼───────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────┼──────────
1891 │ 457,772 │ 2.07 │ 53,429 │ 2.42 │ 1,104
1892 │ 467,260 │ 2.07 │ 54,853 │ 2.67 │ 1,269
1893 │ 476,945 │ 2.07 │ 56,730 │ 3.42 │ 1,446
1894 │ 486,830 │ 2.07 │ 58,310 │ 2.79 │ 1,866
1895 │ 496,920 │ 2.07 │ 60,039 │ 2.96 │ 1,964
1896 │ 509,102 │ 2.45 │ 60,278 │ .40 │ 2,205
1897 │ 521,583 │ 2.45 │ 61,573 │ 2.15 │ 2,127
1898 │ 534,370 │ 2.45 │ 62,850 │ 2.07 │ 2,647
1899 │ 547,470 │ 2.45 │ 63,890 │ 1.65 │ 2,902
1900 │ 560,892 │ 2.45 │ 64,886 │ 1.56 │ 2,686
1901 │ 573,579 │ 2.26 │ 65,600 │ 1.10 │ 2,627
─────────┴───────────┴──────────┴────────────────┴──────────┴──────────

In the ten years from 1891 to 1901, while the population increased from 457,772 to 573,579, or 25.3 per cent, the number of dwelling-houses increased from 53,429 to 65,600, or 22.8 per cent, not quite keeping pace; and though not a few of the new buildings are capacious tenement houses, yet actual conditions have probably not improved. It is to be noted that 4 per cent of the dwellings are vacant.

2. The facilities for the building of new houses in the suburbs steadily increase. The suburbs of Boston are deservedly healthy and are ample for a vast population.

The President of the Boston Elevated Railway Company has furnished the following statistics, which show in the last five and ten year periods a marvelous development and explain the exodus outward from the crowded centre into happy and healthy suburban life on some of the hundred hills which make these suburbs so attractive. This outward migration shows no sign of culmination, but is still under full headway.

The running time of the cars has improved so that it now averages nine miles per hour on the whole system, against six miles or less ten years ago when horses were used, and within the last five years it has been reduced about 8 per cent. The track mileage increased from 260 miles in 1891 to 296 in 1896 and 408 in 1901. “For the year ending September 30, 1891, we ran 2,326,274 trips, 17,462,572 miles, carried 119,264,401 revenue passengers and 8,466,311 free transfer passengers. The average length of each trip at that time was 7.5 miles. Five years later we ran 2,822,142 trips, 25,841,907 miles, carried 166,862,288 revenue passengers and 17,566,361 free transfer passengers. The average length of each trip was 9.16 miles. Five years later, or for the last fiscal year, we ran 3,883,737 trips, 43,631,384 miles, carried 213,703,983 revenue passengers and 65,000,000 free transfer passengers. The length of each trip had increased to 11.23 miles.”

The co-operative bank system has greatly promoted the construction and separate ownership of the modest and cosy little homes springing up so rapidly in all the suburbs of Boston. The Pioneer Bank was started in 1877, and to-day there are in Boston eighteen of these co-operative banks with a capital of $5,029,478, nearly the whole of it loaned out on small estates. A score of years ago it was no easy matter to obtain a “building loan,” but co-operative banks have perfected the system of loans to builders upon houses “in process of construction.” The admirable process of small monthly payments not only educates the borrowers into habits of saving, but in a few years reduces the loan, so that the old-fashioned savings banks with their immense capital can take up at lower rates these loans, when they are reduced to the statute limit of 60 per cent of the value of the estate. Hence it is the case that the $5,000,000 of co-operative bank capital by no means measures the full beneficial influence of this system in the growth of suburban homes.

3. The influence of philanthropic enterprise, compared with that of private business, has been insignificant.

Three incorporated societies are working in a small way, the oldest, the Boston Co-operative Building Company, chartered in 1871. With a capital of $292,000, it has about $400,000 invested in seventy-eight houses with 985 rooms, occupied by 311 families containing 1,023 persons.

The Harrison avenue group of twenty-four three-storied brick houses—each, except the corners, arranged for three families—has attracted deserved attention, with its hollow square in the centre, tastefully arranged as a playground for the children, and a bit of beauty for the parents.

The company has just started to reproduce this hollow square on its last purchase of 33,000 feet on Massachusetts avenue. Mr. A. W. Longfellow, the architect of the Harrison avenue group, furnishes this plan of a corner and a normal interior house just completed on Massachusetts avenue, showing the latest developments of model tenement house design, and also a land plan.

The thirty-one years of life of this company show many vicissitudes; 7 per cent being earned for some years, and then from 1876 to 1889, dividends were stopped or reduced to 3 per cent and earnings were invested. Recently dividends have been 6 per cent or 5 per cent. But the capitalization of undivided profits has been so large, that it is not possible to ascertain what the just annual earnings are from year to year, and hence the educational influence is lost upon other capitalists who might be incited, by a clear and exact statement of facts, to follow the most commendable lead of this company in building the very best model tenements and having them managed by the considerate care of women agents.

The Workingmen’s Building Association was organized in 1888, to build small separate houses for sale. Its first purchase of 668,591 feet, about three miles out in Roxbury, was most successful. This tract was divided into 150 lots, averaging 4,457 feet, so that one acre has ten lots, with an estimated population of sixty to seventy souls.

FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF TWO HOUSES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE BLOCK FOR
THE BOSTON COÖPERATIVE BUILDING COMPANY ❋
·A· W· LONGFELLOW· ARCHITECT·
]

PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF BLOCKS ON MASS. AVE. LOT [150′ × 200′] AS
PROPOSED FOR THE BOSTON COÖPERATIVE BUILDING COMPANY ❋❋❋
·A·W·LONGFELLOW·ARCHITECT· BOSTON·
]

The houses cost from $1,800 to $3,000, and were almost all for single families, total cost of a house and land varying from $2,600 to $4,500. They were all sold by 1894. Its next venture in Dorchester found the demand for single houses painfully reduced in the depression of the last seven years, while a marked preference shows itself for “two-family” or “three-flat” houses.

This company has not succeeded in building houses at lower cost, to its great regret.

4. The building laws of a city greatly influence results. Boston was startled by its great fire of 1872 into creating a stringent code. This was remodeled in 1885, chapter 374. After a commission had studied the subject anew, the present code was enacted in 1892, chapter 419, with subsequent amendments.

Two features are especially important: (1), the percentage of the area of a lot which may be built upon; (2), the height of the buildings and the provisions as to fireproof construction.

The law of 1892 permitted three-quarters of the area to be covered, measuring to the middle of the streets on which the lot abuts. This proviso, however, would allow a building to cover the whole of a lot sixty feet deep on a forty-foot street. The act also required two exposures on open spaces at least ten feet wide, of an aggregate length of one foot, for every twenty-five square feet occupied by the building.

These last provisions, however, were found not to prohibit the construction of a huge four-storied tenement house on a lot forty-two feet wide and 101 feet deep, built on a dumb-bell plan, with only about two feet of open land across a part, but not the whole, of the rear. It was the erection, in 1894, of this barrack, which led many observers to doubt whether these new conditions were not worse than the old; whether these vast tenement houses, sometimes called model houses, were not far worse in many essentials for the health and welfare of their occupants than the little old houses, often built of wood, which they replaced. These views are confirmed by the deliberate judgment which Miss Octavia Hill has put on record in her valuable chapter in the second volume of Charles Booth’s great work on London.

The construction of this great tenement house, with such trifling rear light, occasioned the act of 1895, chapter 239, which reduced the area to be occupied from 75 to 65 per cent, and also required an open space across the whole rear of the building, and of a depth equal to one-half the width of the front street, not exceeding twenty feet, or an equivalent area of open space in the rear of other dimensions.

The act of 1897, chapter 413, section 9, exempts corner lots from this requirement of open rear land, and also gives the Building Commissioner discretion to accept “an equivalent area of open space in the rear or on either side of such building.”

It is worthy of note that these requirements are less stringent than those in the new tenement house law, chapter 334, of 1901, for Greater New York, which limits the building to 90 per cent of a corner lot and 70 per cent of any other lot.

Secondly, the law of 1897, chapter 413, section 3, required every tenement house to be a first-class building, _i. e._, “of fireproof construction throughout.” It was at once apprehended that this requirement, that all tenement houses must be of fireproof construction, would stop the building of tenement houses for tenants paying moderate rents. Subsequent investigation showed, that after existing permits had been exhausted, few, if any, tenement houses were built with tenements renting at $16 a month or less. Reaction set in, and by the act of 1900, chapter 321, the requirement of fireproof construction was removed from tenement houses of not more than four stories and not more than fifty feet in height, but here again came a proviso limiting these houses to “two families, or less, above the second story.”

This is the present tenement house law of Boston. It seriously handicaps the construction of tenement houses, but whether this is too stringent, and the influences are harmful, is not yet apparent. So far as an impulse is given to scatter the population out into the healthier suburbs and into the small, separate, detached suburban homes, each with its little plot of land, instead of the fearful overcrowding of families in the huge new tenement houses, students of the social welfare of the people must certainly rejoice.

In the old North End of Boston, where population is densest and rentals are highest, the erection of new tenement houses and the remodeling of old buildings into tenement houses are visible in many of the streets. On the other hand, in the southerly part of old Boston, such enterprise is nearly at a standstill and rents are falling, owing probably to the greater attractiveness of the neighboring suburbs.

The definition of a tenement house by the number of tenements, rather than by the number of rooms, discriminates with unintended harshness on just that class whose welfare ought especially to be studied, the very poor, the lone widow, the widower, the parent with a single child, who always find with difficulty a single spacious room, and usually pay higher rents because of the short supply of such much-needed accommodation. Twenty years ago a committee of the Associated Charities made a report to show the importance of building tenements of a single room and to call the attention of capitalists to this need. A small one-storied house with only four rooms, adapted for the needs of four separate women, must conform to all the expensive provisions of the tenement house code.

A just and judicious amendment should define a tenement house as having more than three tenements “_and containing more than twelve rooms_.”

Workers among the poor were surprised last year at orders issuing from the Board of Health, for single tenants to vacate single rooms. Such a notice was nailed on the door of the large “square room” in the model block of the Boston Co-operative Building Company, on Canton street, occupied by a lone old woman. It is supposed that this mistaken policy has been abandoned.

A strange thing happened in 1892; the building law of that year, chapter 419, in its final section 138, repealing numerous laws, included a repeal of the health provision, 1885, chapter 382, section 4, defining for health purposes a “tenement house.” So that since 1892, the Board of Health has been shorn of so much of its powers over tenement houses as depended on the definition, so carefully inserted in the health law of 1885, which has been since then the health code of Boston. Perhaps it is stranger still that no allusion can be found in the annual reports of the Board of Health, to this mysterious and probably unintended curtailment of health powers, the exact legal effect whereof no man can tell.[9]

5. A crusade for the extirpation of the slums of Boston has been waged for the last fifteen years, thus far with no great success. Housing conditions are justly to be condemned so long as old, dilapidated and unsanitary buildings are allowed to stand, often so overcrowded upon the land that sunlight and air are practically shut out. Such conditions are a disgrace to any city. They tempt the most wretched of the poor, or vicious, or criminal classes to worse degradation. The breadwinner loses his health, which is his only wealth. Children grow up in shameless loss of self-respect. Frequent visitors are physicians, police officers, and charity agents; physicians to struggle with needless disease, the police to arrest criminals created by their foul environment, and charity agents to relieve countless varieties of want caused by cruel and unjust conditions of life.

Private initiative has been struggling in these years to secure more vigorous action by the Board of Health in the destruction of the worst slums. Prof. Dwight Porter, acting under the auspices of a voluntary committee, made an investigation and “Report upon a Sanitary Inspection of Certain Tenement house Districts in Boston,” in 1888, which really started the movement.

Committees of the Associated Charities have lodged indictments against many vile slums and have been heard by the board. In 1891–2, the state caused the Bureau of Labor to make a thorough and exhaustive investigation. The report of Hon. H. G. Wadlin sets forth in two volumes the results. (22d and 23d Annual Reports of the Bureau of the Statistics of Labor. “A Tenement House Census of Boston,” made pursuant to chapter 115, Resolves of 1891.)

Sanitary conditions were classified under five heads: excellent, good, fair, poor, and bad. It may be truly stated that tenements falling so low as to be classed “bad” are so intolerable as to demand most summary measures for their destruction, yet 1,346 houses were found to deserve this just but terrible condemnation (Vol. 1, p. 577).

“It may be safely assumed that whenever a tenement was designated as entirely bad as to its inside condition—that is, to be more explicit, was bad as to facilities for light and air, ventilation and cleanliness—such a tenement was unfit for human habitation. The existence of such tenements forms primarily _an indictment against the landlord_ who is responsible for their condition. They should either be abandoned or improved. In some cases such improvement as would render them suitable for occupancy can easily be made; in other cases, no doubt, they should be permanently abandoned.” (Vol. 2, p. 417.)

“The existence of defective outside sanitary conditions is, upon the whole, _an indictment against the city_; for while some of the defects are due to unclean or poorly kept private ways and alleys, the responsibility of the city for the existence of such defects can hardly be avoided.” (Italics are the writer’s.) (Vol. 2, p. 418.)

In the reports of the Boston Board of Health no allusion is found to this fearful indictment by the authorities of the Commonwealth, or to the following municipal report.

In 1895 a special committee of the Common Council was appointed to consider what improvement could be made in the tenement districts of Boston, and what legislation was needed. They made a very brief “Partial Report” (Document 125 of 1895) from which may be quoted:—“In the North End the tenement houses are to-day a serious menace to public health.... The most astounding circumstance in connection with this investigation that attracted the attention of your committee is the social and financial standing of the owners of the most of these tenement houses.”

In 1897 a study was made, under the direction of the Tenement House Committee of the Twentieth Century Club, of certain typical slums, and the results were published with plans of some seven areas where buildings were old, dilapidated and so overcrowded on the land, that no remedy was possible except destruction either of all or of many of the tenements. (“Some Slums in Boston,” by H. K. Estabrook, May 15, 1898.)

A public hearing was granted by the Board of Health on June 27, 1898, and many competent experts and real estate owners testified to the intolerable conditions. Mayor Quincy attended the hearing and promised strong support. Commendable progress was made in vacating or destroying some of the worst slums for about three years. But the exercise of the power to “destroy” seems recently to have been paralyzed, perhaps, as a result of pending litigation.

The law grants two powers to the Board of Health to deal with these evils. Since 1850, chapter 108, tenements may be “vacated” if adjudged unfit for human habitation. This power should be exercised only after thorough investigation and on deliberate judgment, setting forth true and sufficient causes. It may easily work grave injury to owners if exercised unjustly. Yet, when justly exercised, orders to vacate should be adhered to and not lightly rescinded because of political or other pressure. Observe that this power to vacate requires no destruction of the building and cannot justly prevent use of the vacated tenement for other fit purposes, not of human habitation.

In 1897, chapter 219, the power to destroy [the statute word is “remove”] buildings first appeared in Massachusetts. Its origin is interesting. The British “Housing of the Working Classes Act,” 1890 (53–54 Vict., chapter 70), sections 30–37, is the origin, so far as I know, of this new power “to order the demolition” of a “dwelling-house” “unfit for human habitation.” Section 38 enlarged this power and made it apply to “obstructive buildings,” thus condemning one building because it injures another building. It is surprising that any American lawyer could suppose that such a power would be sustained in America, where the unlimited powers of the British Parliament are much curtailed by constitutional safeguards.

Yet New York soon copied this British Act (1895, chapter 567, amended by 1897, chapter 57) in shape so condensed as to make its injustice more conspicuous. This act was enforced for a few years in the city of New York, till owners of property began to defend their rights in court. The suit of Dassori _vs._ the Health Department of New York has settled that this law cannot be enforced to its full extent.

“Proof that rear tenement houses, each five stories high, lighted only from a court on the west or front from five to eleven feet wide, and a space or opening of eleven inches wide at the southeast corner of the court, and a space on the east side of eight inches filled with all sorts of filth, occupied by 115 persons, showing a death-rate almost twice the normal one, damp, filthy, infested with vermin, and filled with foul smells, and by their construction interfering with the light which would otherwise have been enjoyed by tenement houses on the front of the lots, justifies a finding that the rear tenement houses are unfit for habitation, but does not necessarily establish the fact that they are not capable of being made fit for other uses to which the owner might lawfully put them, nor does it show that the nuisance could not be abated in any other way than by their destruction.

“The owner of a tenement house cannot be compelled to submit to its destruction, if it is on his own land, merely because some building adjacent to it is, by reason of its existence, deprived of proper ventilation.” (N. Y. Health Dept. _vs._ Dassori, Appellate Division Reports, Vol. 21, p. 348. October, 1897.)

Boston deserves no credit for the slovenly shape in which this faulty law was reproduced, 1897, chapter 219, closely following the language of the New York act. First the power to vacate is set forth, yet while covering the same ground as our ancient and well-tried statute (1850, chap. 108; Pub. Sts., chap. 80, sec. 24; Revised Laws, chap. 75, sec. 71), neither repeals nor amends it. Then follows the power to order “removed,” _i. e._, destroyed, a building irremediably “unfit for human habitation.”

Statute 1899, chapter 222, enlarged these powers of the Board of Health so that the order may be not merely to “vacate” a building “unfit for human habitation,” but to “cease to use” a building “unfit for use”; the power to order buildings destroyed remaining limited to those “unfit for human habitation.”

The suit (October, 1900) of Holland _vs._ Durgin _et al._ (Board of Health) has gone on appeal to the Supreme Court. It raises interesting questions as to this last statute, its constitutionality, the lawfulness of a decree to remove, without previous notice to or opportunity to be heard by the owner, as well as the lawfulness of an order to remove stables occupied by horses and sheds only for storage as “unfit for habitation” (_sic_), the statute language being “unfit for human habitation.”

The Board of Health is thus clothed with transcendent powers, whose exercise vitally affects the physical and moral welfare, especially of that large portion of the people who are lowest in the economic scale. These powers should only be lodged in the hands of men of strong character, sound judgment, sanitary experience and genuine love for the plain people. Yet the action of the Boston Board of Health has been characterized for many years past by mysterious apathy.

The law provides that the Board of Health shall make annually “a full and comprehensive statement of its acts during the year, and a review of the sanitary condition of the city,” yet in the annual volumes of the last ten years the space devoted to the sanitary condition of the city has been utterly insignificant.

“To this subject, houses vacated, nearly a whole page is devoted in the report for 1892; nearly two pages in the report for 1893; from four to six lines in each of the reports for 1894, ’95, and ’96; and not one word in the report for 1897. Throughout the 122 pages of this last report, this extremely important duty to vacate houses unfit for occupancy is not mentioned.

“The report for 1895 says only this: ‘The number of houses which the board has ordered vacated during the year because of their unsanitary condition is 112; of this number, however, a very large per cent were put in a satisfactory condition before the expiration of the time allowed the occupants to quit the premises, and in such cases the orders were not enforced.’ The report for 1896 simply quotes this one sentence, word for word—except that ‘121’ is substituted for ‘112.’ This one sentence, then, is the ‘full and comprehensive statement’ of the acts of the three years, 1895–7.”

In none of these reports since 1892 “is a list given either of houses ordered vacated or of houses actually vacated, yet hundreds of other lists and tables are given, as lists of stables ordered discontinued, of passageways paved, and even of minor defects in certain houses. While in the reports of the New York Board of Health there are complete lists of houses vacated and of those demolished, in only two of our reports, those for 1892 and ’93, are any of the houses ordered vacated named.”

The objection of injury to tenants by the destruction of slums has no weight. The Associated Charities (Report of 1898, pp. 40–48) seized the occasion of the building of the South Station and the change in the neighborhood, in 1897–8, to cause a careful study to be made of the results upon the welfare of the twelve poorest families known to them when that sudden and forced migration occurred. “It brought out the interesting fact that in every case the condition of the family was improved by the change.”

Death-rates by wards are shown in the annual report of 1901 of the Registry Department of Boston for the first time, so that it is possible to compare. The ghastly fact stands out that the death-rate in some wards is more than double what it is in the healthier wards, viz: one person dying in the year 1900 out of 39 in Ward 7, 40 in Ward 13, 41 in Ward 6, and 42 in Ward 5, contrasted with one in 81 in Ward 25, 72 in Ward 24, 71 in Ward 23, 69 in Ward 20 (p. 5).

Now that this table proves how the murder of the innocents goes on, the public conscience should be aroused. Statisticians will also tell us that the ratio of sickness keeps pace with the ratio of death, so that sickness among the poor, with its train of evils, is twofold more than good sanitary conditions should tolerate.

The model buildings of London have told the world what a powerful influence upon the length of life (and of course upon the amount of sickness) of their occupants is exerted by healthy homes. The Peabody buildings with a population of about 20,000 show a death-rate of about 1 in 71; and the Waterlow buildings, with 30,000 tenants, about 1 in 100, while the rate of all London is about 1 in 57. In Boston, 1 out of 48 dies yearly.

A Tenement House Commission will probably be appointed by the Mayor this year, to consider and report upon existing conditions and possible improvement.

On the whole, the outlook is full of hope. Vigilance and vigorous action are demanded of all municipal authorities. Public interest is aroused. The action of other cities in Great Britain as well as in New York and other American cities warns Boston not to fall behind in this movement, which will surely give to us and our children a healthier city for the homes of the plain people, with its plague spots extirpated, and an increasing proportion of the population living out in suburban homes in this city of unsurpassed suburban beauty.

HOUSING CONDITIONS IN JERSEY CITY

By MARY BUELL SAYLES

Fellow of the College Settlements Association

The housing of the working people in Jersey City presents few striking or distinctive features. There are in the crowded parts of the city no such alley-intersected or narrow back street districts as are found in certain sections of Chicago and Philadelphia; there is no block which presents such conspicuously bad conditions of overcrowded land areas, and consequently deficient lighting and ventilation, as prevail throughout the newer tenement house districts of New York. None the less the evils of construction of sanitary neglect and of overcrowded living quarters, which have been brought to light in the recently completed investigation upon which the present article is based, are of a character both to claim the interest of specialists and to compel the attention of citizens.

In his report on housing conditions and tenement laws in leading American cities, Mr. Veiller, then secretary of the New York Tenement House Commission of 1900, notes but four cities, out of the twenty-seven which he discusses, as having a tenement house problem. Among these is Jersey City. Yet compared with the situation in New York, the Jersey City tenement house problem is still in its early stages. The great mass of the working class population is housed either in converted dwellings or in tenement houses of the primitive type commonly erected here, as in Manhattan, twenty to forty years ago; and these two classes of houses, which in the great city have been rapidly giving way, during the last generation, before the onslaught of the dumb-bell tenement with its characteristic eighteen-inch wide air-shaft and overcrowded lot, in the smaller city show few signs of a similar yielding of place. Very few tenements are at present in process of erection, and so few built within the last five or even ten years were found in the districts investigated, that it is difficult to speak with certainty of present tendencies in construction. It is, therefore, chiefly to evils long fixed upon the community and grown so familiar as to be generally overlooked, that attention has been directed—evils none the less serious for this fact, and all the more difficult to eradicate.

The investigation upon which, as has been said, the present paper is based, was necessarily very limited in scope, as it was undertaken single-handed and, under the conditions of the College Settlements Association fellowship, confined to a single academic year. Five hundred houses having been decided upon as a reasonable estimate of the field which could and should be covered, three districts were selected as representative both of the worst and—hardly less important—of average housing conditions. Seventeen blocks in all were investigated. Of these the investigation of the first was largely experimental, as it was undertaken before the printing of the regular schedules used later on, and its results, though hardly less complete than those afterwards obtained, are not in all respects uniform with them, and have therefore, for the present, been set aside. It is then with the returns from sixteen blocks, consisting of the records of five hundred and four houses,[10] and of two thousand one hundred and fifty-four apartments,[11] that we shall deal in this paper.[12]

Of the three districts, the first and largest includes the eight blocks bounded by Sussex and Essex and by Van Vorst and Hudson streets, together with two others adjoining, extending between Hudson and Greene to Grand, and between Van Vorst and Warren to Dudley street. The widest range of conditions, as might be expected from its relative size, is to be found in this district. From the comfortable well-built dwellings of Sussex street, only recently converted to tenement house uses, and still in a large proportion of cases unaltered, to the four and five story brick tenements and the huddled rear houses of Morris and Essex streets, every type and grade of house is represented. The population of the district is overwhelmingly foreign. Only 18 per cent of the 1,278 families interviewed were of American stock, while in some of the blocks south of Morris street the percentage falls as low as 11 per cent. The foreign elements most largely represented are the Polish and Russian, who together lead with 18 per cent; the Germans who follow with 20 per cent, and the Irish with 18 per cent. Twenty other nationalities are represented, but as the most numerous, the Jewish, is represented by but thirty-two families, no one of them forms an important element numerically in the population.

The industrial attractions which have brought together this foreign population are not far to seek. The great American Sugar Refinery looms conspicuously on the southern boundary of the district; numerous other factories and workshops are interspersed through the blocks; while to the north, within a few minutes’ walk, lies the Pennsylvania Railroad, and to the south, across a narrow strip of water, stretch the docks of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The foreign population shows, as was to be expected, a heavy preponderance of factory hands, railroad employees, and longshoremen.

The second district includes the two blocks bounded by Railroad avenue and Morgan street and by Henderson and Warren streets, and another adjoining, extending between Provost and Henderson to Bay street. Bounded to the south by the Pennsylvania Railroad’s elevated tracks, stretching out toward the Erie Railroad, and hedged in towards the Hudson by factories, foundries and workshops, it offers to the immigrant almost the same inducements of employment as does District I, and presents an even larger percentage of foreign born inhabitants. Of the 506 families whose apartments were investigated, not quite 14 per cent were Americans, 42 per cent were Polish, 18 per cent Irish, 13 per cent Italians and 4 per cent Germans. Among the remaining families the Jewish lead, numbering 16.

The houses of this district correspond with the older and more neglected portion of District I, showing, however, a larger proportion of wooden buildings and a smaller proportion of high tenements.

District III, consisting of the three blocks bounded by First and Second and by Monmouth and Merseles streets, is located farther from the business centre of the city and from the water front, near the foot of the hill on which are situated most of the better-class resident districts. It lies in the heart of what is known as Little Italy—the most distinctively national section of the city, and the most dilapidated and neglected. Sixty-five per cent of the 377 families interviewed were Italians, and their manner of packing themselves solidly where once they enter into possession gives to the southern half of the district, with the blocks adjoining, an intensely foreign aspect. The remaining 35 per cent, among whom the Irish, the American with 10 per cent, and the German nationalities predominate, are interspersed chiefly on the northern side of the blocks, along Second street.

Rival attractions to the railroads, factories and docks, which claim so large a part of the population in the other two districts, are here offered by the dump-grounds adjacent. Irregular heavy laboring work is, however, the predominating occupation among the Italians, though the rag-picker and junk-dealer are frequently found, as well as the omnipresent factory hand.

So much for the characteristics of the separate districts. For the remainder of the paper, the houses will be dealt with, in the main, without regard to district lines. Some preliminary classifications may properly be given before more detailed points of construction and sanitation are taken up, or special evils pointed out.

First of all, classifying the 504 houses by materials, we find that just 55 per cent are of wood, and 45 per cent of brick—a few of the former having brick, and a few of the latter stone, fronts. If we group them by the number of stories, three-story and three-story-and-basement houses are found to lead with 54 per cent; four and four-story-and-basement houses come next with 31 per cent; 5 per cent have five stories; the remaining 10 per cent have either two stories or two stories and basement, with the exception of two houses, one and one-half stories and one-story-and-basement respectively.

Again, we may group the houses by the number of apartments contained. Houses occupied by but one family were not touched in the investigation, but sixty-three two-family houses were examined, leaving 431 houses which contain accommodations for three families or more, thus falling under the definition of a tenement house most generally accepted throughout the country. Three-apartment houses are most common, 25 per cent of the total number falling under this head; 58 percent have from four to nine apartments; of houses containing ten apartments or more there are twenty-three, or 4 per cent.

Another significant classification of houses is that by position on the lot. Fourteen per cent of the houses investigated are rear houses. These figures, however, give little idea of the actual aspect of things, as two blocks are without any rear houses, and six others have but one or two each, while in one block rear houses constitute no less than 40 per cent of all. These houses are seldom over three stories in height, are almost always of wood, are in general very old and frequently dilapidated.

Turning now from classifications of the houses themselves to consider the apartments they contain, we find that three-room apartments lead by a wide margin, constituting 41 per cent of the total of 2,154. Next come four-room apartments with 28 per cent; two-room apartments with 12 per cent; five-room apartments with 7 per cent; six-room apartments with 4 per cent. Of one-room apartments there is less than 1 per cent. One per cent of the apartments examined contained over six rooms.

If now, leaving these preliminary statistics, we turn to matters of greater interest, we shall find it convenient to group the chief evils found, as first, evils of construction, under which we shall speak only of the two leading faults, lack of proper provision for escape in case of fire, and inadequate lighting and ventilation; next, sanitary evils, some of which are structural and some the result of natural conditions or neglect; and lastly, evils of occupancy, chief among which is that of overcrowded apartments.

The absence of fire-escapes is perhaps the most conspicuous and glaring fault observable in the tenement houses of Jersey City. Of the twenty-four five-story buildings found, just one-half were provided with fire-escapes; while of the 155 four-story or four-story-and-basement houses, only four were so equipped. After these figures it will hardly surprise anyone to learn that in no case was a fire-escape found upon a three-story house. There are thus out of a total of 431 tenement houses, most of them three stories or more in height, but sixteen, or 3 per cent, which are provided with fire-escapes of any kind.