The Cost of Shelter

by Ellen H. Richards

Within the last two or three years the author has received requests from all over the country for suggestions as to kitchen design and construction.

The two illustrations here given show one little step in the right direction. The cuts represent a remodelled kitchen in Providence, R.I.

The floor is of lignolith laid down in one sheet and carried up as a wainscoting so that no crevice exists for entrance of insects or dust. Such floors are yet in their infancy and need suitable preparation for laying, just as macadamized streets fail if the foundation is faulty. The idea is all that we are here concerned with. One of the features to be especially noted is the use of glass for shelves. Why should the hospital monopolize the materials for antiseptic work? When it is understood how much hospital work is caused because of dirt in the preparation and keeping of food, the kitchen will receive its share of attention.

To-day the cost of shelter is about one third for the house and two thirds for the expense of running it, largely due to dirt and its consequences. Mr. Wells wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were wiselier done."

When the real twentieth-century house is put up our young engineer and college instructor will be willing to pay $400 to $500 rent, because wages and running expenses will be $100 less and the company owning the houses will not expect more than 4%, largely because repairs will be less and permanence of tenure more assured. The old type of wooden house used by the old type of tenant could not be expected to last more than a few years, which justified a higher rate of interest. For the tenement tenant of the better class twenty years has been the estimate, so that the cost of building could not be distributed over fifty years as it should be.

The house will be made of reinforced concrete or its successor; certainly not of wood. Whether a single house or one of two or more "compartments," each family will have a side, that is, the entrance doors will not be side by side. Such have been built in Somerville, Mass., by a railroad company for its employees. Those who wish to have a garden may; but no one will be obliged, for there will be regulations about the general appearance of the whole park, and every man his own lawn-mower will not be true. The cultivation of taste will have so far advanced that the grouping advised by the landscape architect will appeal to the occupant more than his own fancied arrangement.

Since the heating will be supplied from outside, there will be a hothouse and cold-frames for those who wish to have a share in the garden, just as now there are bins in the basement. The care of these may replace the exercise now gained in scrubbing the front steps. The windows of the house will be dust-proof, fly-, mosquito-, and moth-proof; the air supplied will be strained by galleries of screens, if indeed social advance has not eliminated soot from chimneys and grit from the streets. Most certainly dirt will not be permitted to come in on shoes and long dresses. Warmed or cooled, moistened or dried air will be circulated as needed. In such a house rugs may stay undisturbed for a month or more, books for years, and the dust-cloth be rarely in evidence; the redding will consist of putting back in place the things used; but as each member of the family will do this as soon as he is old enough, there will be but a few minutes' work.

The breakfast will be of uncooked or simply heated food, parched grains and cream, fruit fresh or dried, and nuts. If coffee or cocoa is desired, the electric heater serves it to the requisite degree of heat. Each adult member of the family will probably take this in his own room or at his own convenience, without the formality of a meal. The few glasses and other dishes may be plunged into a tank of water and left for future cleaning. Luncheon will depend altogether on the habits of the family, but dinner, at whatever hour that may be, will be the family symposium. Dressed in its honor, with a sprightly addition to the conversation of experience or information or conjecture, there will be form and ceremony of a simple, refined kind, such that once again the family may welcome a guest without anxiety. Good conversation and fresh interests will thus come into the children's lives. How much they have missed in these days of the barring out all hospitality! Is it perchance one reason, if not the chief, why manners have degenerated?

This meal will not have more than four courses of food carefully selected and perfectly cooked, whether in the house or out matters not so it is served fresh and of just the right temperature. No kind of cooking will be permitted which "meets the guest in the hall and stays with him in the street"; therefore the dishes may be washed by neatly dressed maids or by the children, who thus learn to care for the fitness of things; plenty of towels and hot water, with all hands doing a little, leaves everything snug and no one too tired. We will let Mr. H.G. Wells describe the bedroom of the future house:[³]