The English women also suggest the desirability of a central heating
plant as a measure that would lessen the work of the household, afford
economies in fuel, and render a hot-water supply readily available.
They urge, therefore, further experimentation with central heating.
The American plans have no suggestions to make at this point, but
accept the coal stove or the separate furnace in the higher-priced
houses as the means of heating. While they provide for hot water, no
suggestions are made as to how this is to be supplied. It is
presumably done by a tank attached to the range, which means that hot
water is not available when there is no fire in the range; that is, in
summer and during the night. It should also be noted that these plans
make no suggestions for co-operative use of any of the equipment of
the household.
There is another point at which the architects and builders failed to
take sufficient notice of the problem of lightening the women's
work--namely, in their attitude toward the separate family home as
compared with the multiple family dwelling. The Massachusetts
Commission was, by the terms of the Act creating it, limited to the
provision of one or two-family houses; the United States government
standards were definitely against the building occupied in whole or in
part by three or more families.
Tenement and apartment houses are considered generally
undesirable, and will be accepted only in cities where,
because of high land values, it is clearly demonstrated that
single and two-family houses cannot be economically provided,
or where there is insistent demand for this type of multiple
housing.
This judgment, however, has by no means met with universal approval.
Those architects who think in terms of the woman's time and strength
consider the merits of the group and of the multiple house. For
example, those who planned the Black Rock Apartment House Group in
Bridgeport, Connecticut, the open-stairway dwellings, the John Jay
dwellings on East Seventy-seventh Street, New York City, and the
Erwin, Tennessee, development, maintain that the advantages of the
separate house in privacy, independence, and access to land can be
secured by the multiple arrangement. Not only can economies in the use
of the land be practiced, but protection and assistance for the women
and children can be obtained, and there is the possibility of devices
for convenient and collective performance of many tasks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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