How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New YorkRiis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
History
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August)
Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Tenement houses -- New York (State) -- New York
Mr. White has built homes for five hundred poor families since he began
his work, and has made it pay well enough to allow good tenants a share
in the profits, averaging nearly one month's rent out of the twelve, as
a premium upon promptness and order. The plan of his last tenements,
reproduced on p. 292, may be justly regarded as the _beau ideal_ of
the model tenement for a great city like New York. It embodies all the
good features of Sir Sydney Waterlow's London plan, with improvements
suggested by the builder's own experience. Its chief merit is that it
gathers three hundred real homes, not simply three hundred families,
under one roof. Three tenants, it will be seen, everywhere live
together. Of the rest of the three hundred they may never know, rarely
see, one. Each has his private front-door. The common hall, with all
that it stands for, has disappeared. The fire-proof stairs are outside
the house, a perfect fire-escape. Each tenant has his own scullery and
ash-flue. There are no air-shafts, for they are not needed. Every room,
under the admirable arrangement of the plan, looks out either upon
the street or the yard, that is nothing less than a great park with a
play-ground set apart for the children, where they may dig in the sand
to their heart's content. Weekly concerts are given in the park by a
brass band. The drying of clothes is done on the roof, where racks
are fitted up for the purpose. The outside stairways end in turrets
that give the buildings a very smart appearance. Mr. White never has
any trouble with his tenants, though he gathers in the poorest; nor
do his tenements have anything of the "institution character" that
occasionally attaches to ventures of this sort, to their damage. They
are like a big village of contented people, who live in peace with one
another because they have elbow-room even under one big roof.
Enough has been said to show that model tenements can be built
successfully and made to pay in New York, if the owner will be content
with the five or six per cent. he does not even dream of when investing
his funds in "governments" at three or four. It is true that in the
latter case he has only to cut off his coupons and cash them. But the
extra trouble of looking after his tenement property, that is the
condition of his highest and lasting success, is the penalty exacted
for the sins of our fathers that "shall be visited upon the children,
unto the third and fourth generation." We shall indeed be well off, if
it stop there. I fear there is too much reason to believe that our own
iniquities must be added to transmit the curse still further. And yet,
such is the leavening influence of a good deed in that dreary desert
of sin and suffering, that the erection of a single good tenement has
the power to change, gradually but surely, the character of a whole bad
block. It sets up a standard to which the neighborhood must rise, if it
cannot succeed in dragging it down to its own low level.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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