Good housing that pays /

by Fullerton L. Waldo

Furthermore, if the Association is understood to be an honest and legitimate competitor in the open market with other real estate operators whose business is plain business, with no tincture of philanthropy, it does not seem expedient to rely upon gratuitous service in work for which the ordinary operator must carry a pay-roll. Such a procedure, if the influence of an object-lesson is sought, does not convince the dealer who is without philanthropic assistance that he can live up to the standards of decency, comfort, and cheapness his benevolent rival sets and still make a satisfactory profit.

It does not fall within the scope of this discussion to follow from street to street or from one congested area to another each of the separate acquisitions in the long list of purchases and leases which the Association in the twenty-one years of its history has made, or to recapitulate all the managerial responsibilities which, to the gratification of the owners, it has from time to time assumed. But to the acquisition and development of certain typical properties we may profitably devote our attention, as symptomatic of what has taken place with the entire number. We must bear in mind, moreover, the wise principles of selection that have guided the Association in deciding where to employ its little army of busy hands in tearing down and building up, in redeeming foulness to fairness, in letting air and light enter where these had long been strangers.

The Association has stipulated that the properties it took over should be in need of reconstruction and improvement; that the price should be sufficiently low to allow of the necessary repairs and still leave a fair return on the sum invested; that the group dealt with should be large enough to present a conspicuous object-lesson to the community. Many a neighborhood must be—and is—a little ashamed to look itself in the face, after regarding the spick-and-span aspect of the Association improvement adjoining its unseemliness.

In the properties acquired by the Association in the older parts of the city, these three types, speaking generally, are to be distinguished—the house that was built for one family and is now occupied by several families; the small, one family house on the narrow street or alley, having a yard of its own; the three-room rear dwelling, set in rows of from two to perhaps ten houses behind a house fronting upon a recognized thoroughfare. With the latter type there may be two facing rows, at the rear of two or three front lots. Or there may be a courtyard built round three sides. In the control of the Association as agent are several model tenements. It has erected a few small new houses, and will build more of these in future, to an indeterminate extent. It has built one large group of model houses for one or two families.

Montrose Street. Typical Group in Congested Italian Quarter. Brick Houses in Front Replaced Frame Houses Beyond Repair. Before Renovation Tenants Were Dependent on Open Privy Vaults With Insufficient Water Supply and the Extreme Conditions of Neglect and Disrepute.

If the people living in an old house acquired by the Association are law-abiding and respectable they are not disturbed. Sometimes it is necessary to oust occupants whose room proves better than their company.

In July, 1896, title was taken to the first of its properties by the Association—five houses near Seventh and South Streets. Four were small houses, one was a several-family dwelling. These properties, after being set in order, were profitably managed, and it would have been possible to pay a dividend, but it was decided that it was better business for the first year to establish a surplus with the proceeds.

In May, 1897, eight small houses on Fairhill Street and one on Lombard were added to the Association’s property. The Fairhill Street houses were in a colored neighborhood. In February, 1899, seventeen houses on League Street came into the possession of the Association. These houses needed and promptly received new plaster, new woodwork and paint. The Association had League Street put on the city plan, and obtained the introduction of an ordinance to secure proper drainage. As a result of its purchase a kindergarten was started, with an average attendance of thirty pupils, for the swarms of children in the neighborhood. It was conducted by the Social Science Department of the Civic Club, with which the name of Mrs. Edward Longstreth, a devoted servant of the public weal, will ever be associated. Fairhill Street was repaved in 1899, no doubt to keep pace with the new and progressive ownership of the eight houses, and the water supply was increased by new pipe lines. Ten houses of the Theodore Starr Estate—one a large dwelling with eight two-room apartments—were put under Association management in this year.

Miss Parrish has made a study, “The Improvement of a Street,” published as a tract by the Association, which describes the League Street development. League Street formerly bore the somewhat significant name of Reckless Street. It is between Front and Water Streets, and many of the men—largely Irish—are boatmen, fishermen on the Delaware, or longshoremen on the wharves. They have long slack seasons when they are exposed to the loafer’s temptation of the gin-mill. In this neighborhood the beautiful little Old Swedes’ Church, built in 1900 on the site of an earlier block-house, is a landmark. In the green God’s acre of the Episcopal sanctuary, with its quaint old parish buildings and the sexton’s house, Alexander Wilson the famous ornithologist lies buried.