Good housing that pays /

by Fullerton L. Waldo

Monroe Street. A Typical Court After Renovation. Three-Room Houses With Cellar and Separate Toilet. Running Water in Kitchens. Rent $8.00 Per Month.

Resuming our examination of typical properties in the care of the Octavia Hill Association, we find one of the most inspiring examples in the group of houses at Workman Place.

This large and picturesque court is situated on Front street between Pemberton and Fitzwater. In Colonial days several of the houses belonged to the Mifflin family; later they became part of the Workman estate, and finally Mr. and Mrs. E. W. Clark acquired the group by instalments and turned it over to the Association to manage.

There are twenty-two houses in all, built of red brick. Five of these face on Front Street, and these, with one on Pemberton Street, have several occupants each. Behind the Front Street dwellings, surrounding the ample open space of what was once a large garden, are the remaining houses, in groups, conveying a delightful impression of an island of peace and privacy in the midst of the sweltering sea of humanity in this loud and crowded foreign quarter. In the houses that face on Front Street there are wainscotted halls, carved balustrades and mantelpieces with elaborate designs of ships and grapes and fluting that bespeak the past glories of the more deliberate day of minuet and sedanchair and the soft light of candles. Even the ancient windowpulleys were made of mahogany. One has only to read the itemized list of the household goods owned in 1754 by George Mifflin, Jr., as given in the Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, to realize the difference between that day and the present, wherein the Polish seamstress bends above her work in a room still haunted by the ancestral presences of those who were as deft in turning the heel of a stocking as in pouring tea. In the smaller houses there will be found Irish tenants who survive the Polish invasion of the neighborhood.

On Pemberton Street there are two small vine-clad cottages with “G. M. 1748” set out in black bricks against the red, betokening George Mifflin’s ownership. These houses were doubtless occupied by his servants. They are not unlike the little “Letitia Cottage” of Penn in Fairmount Park. The Association set above windows and doorways slight projections that enhance the aspect. Betwixt these cottages an iron gateway admits to the large enclosure shaded by great trees, on which all the tiny gardens of the houses surrounding abut. The base of each tree is rimmed by a seat. There is abundant room for clothes-lines, not infringing on the space for the children’s play. A pavilion is at one side. On the Fitzwater Street exposure is a temporary shelter to impound homeless animals till the S. P. C. A. wagon comes to claim them.

At the corner of Front and Fitzwater Streets, through the generous initiative of a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clark, is Workman Place House, a Settlement of such demonstrated value to the region round about that it deserves more than passing mention.

It is conducted by the Alpha Pi Fraternity of young women alumnæ of the Agnes Irwin School. The Matron has taken hundreds of mothers and children of the neighborhood during the summer into the country, which is as novel and startling to many of these people as America was to the sailors of Columbus. The great fact of Fairmount Park itself is news to an incredible number. University of Pennsylvania students have taken the boys to summer camps. There has been supervised play in summer, and in the winter months there is a carefully scheduled and well-attended routine of classes and meetings for young and old. All these people have a racial affiliation with the dance, and even after the Mothers’ meetings in the Good Neighbors’ Club, dancing to the pianola is an exuberantly joyful exercise. Christmas parties are red-letter events. The entire admirable enterprise is sustained by bazaars, sales of old clothing, and gifts in cash and in kind.

The little vegetable and flower gardens at the rear or in the forecourt of each of the Workman Place houses are sources of not inconsiderable pride to the occupants. Anyone who saw the central area before the Association took hold here must be amazed at the transformation. The solid board fences that dissected the space in all directions have been removed, the rubbish has been carted away, wells and cesspools have been filled, and the houses themselves—in a deplorably decrepit state—have been renovated from top to bottom. The generous owners have not sought an income from the property. Any returns have been left in the hands of the Association, as the contracting agency, for improvements or for the acquisition of other houses.

Workman Place. Street Side of Small Houses. Built 1748. Supposed to Have Been Servants’ Quarters of the Mifflin Mansion.