A three story house at 1326 Kenilworth Street might be chosen as an apt example of the superintendent’s reconstructive work. The rental of the house before the Association took charge was $16 a month. It was sublet to negro tenants who paid in all about $50 a month for their quarters.
It is now being rearranged for two-room apartments, one on each floor, which will rent for eight dollars a floor per month, the rent payable in weekly instalments. There is a toilet on each floor, and there is a sink in each kitchen. Superfluous partitions that prevented the free circulation of light and air have been taken out. A gesture of the superintendent’s arms, as though he were lashing out in a gymnastic exercise, told one more than his words. “I must get light and air,” he said; and one thought of Octavia Hill’s insistence on this point.
One of a row of little houses in the rear is $8 a month. The former owner put in a few cheap articles of furniture and collected $20 a month. Under the Association the furniture is that of the tenants. Improvements now being installed will add a dollar a month to the rent. These little houses are called “one, two, three houses,” because they are of three rooms only, one over another.
What an oasis we find here, as we look from the upper windows! The houses round about—not Association property—have ruinous shacks at the rear that hold broken boxes and barrels, superannuated chairs and bedding and broken-down baby carriages. There is no clear space to sit under a shade-tree, or plant morning-glories, or put a sandpile. One longs to see the workmen who are paving the Octavia Hill courtyard below turn their attention to the whole vicinity.
In the case of the property at 948–952 North Third Street, from six privy-wells in the court, which extended partly under the kitchens, one hundred barrels of filth in each case were taken. From another well, ten feet in diameter and twenty-five in depth, 275 barrels were taken. The figures convey some slight idea of the superintendent’s task as sanitary engineer. The men, overcome by the stench of these vaults which had not been thoroughly cleaned—it is said—in eighty years, worked in relays to obtain the necessary breathing-spells.
There were disreputable tenants when the Association came to this court; tenants who had influence with powers political and defied the new administration to oust them. A law unto themselves, they made night both hideous and dangerous to respectable neighbors. The drinking, brawling, immoral occupants had to go, and today’s tenants are a very different sort.
A Serb who inhabits one of the houses in the cement-paved court at the rear is secretary of his lodge, and describes with pride the school for thirty Serbian children which he and his countrymen have started at Third and Brown Streets near by. In another house a woman is making some embroidery to be sold for her church. She has been working on stems for artificial leaves to trim hats, and she has made $3.50 to $5.00 a week laboring from dawn to dark, at two cents and a half for a gross of stems. But she is happy because she has a good husband, and this is pin-money. The children of another house have taken a cast-iron bath-tub and made for themselves a joyous swimmingpool with a few feet of hose provided by their father. No wonder is it that former residents who recently returned to the court to visit failed to recognize the place, and were about to retreat abashed as trespassers. At the back of the court is a good example of the wire fence installed in many places in place of the solid board fence, to permit of the free circulation of air. It should be noted that the solid blinds of old-time Philadelphia dwellings are similar undesirable barriers to the medicinal out-of-doors. So many tenants need to be taught the therapeutic virtues of fresh air!
Court of 948–952 North Third Street Property, Before Alterations. Surface Drainage, One Hydrant for Six Families. Toilet Not Underdrained and Overflowing at Time of Purchase.
