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.