Court of 948–952 North Third Street Property, After Alterations. Each House Has 4 Rooms, Water in Kitchen, Gas, Toilet. Rent, $8.50 Per Month.
Damp walls constitute a serious problem for the superintendent. Tenants constantly complain of leakage into cellars. Often the water collecting against the sashes of cellar windows or seeping under them rots the sashes. If plastering is done directly on brick walls, the dampness will come through in cold weather and appear in the form of “sweating” on the inside. Much experimentation has developed the fact that the cheapest and most satisfactory procedure is to give the walls several applications of the substance known as tunlin. In some places this has been in use three years on the walls and still keeps the moisture from coming through.
By paying cash or by discounting its bills the Association has become a desired customer, and the superintendent keeps his eye out for a rise in prices or the possibility of a good bargain.
For instance, in the Kenilworth Street houses we note that the new window-sashes are of bass wood, a good-looking and easily-handled material. It now costs considerable more than it did a little while ago. We find that the superintendent, before the price soared, bought a quantity for $15 that would now cost $200 at least. It is, he explains, soft enough to work in, old enough to have dried out, and the best possible material for satisfactory mitre-joints.
We find that he bought twenty-five kegs of nails, in anticipation of the rise, two days before there was an advance in price of 40 cents a keg. When it is necessary in all ways to keep down prices for the sake of low rents, and the dividing-line between profit and loss is so precisely drawn, a saving of $10 on one such transaction is no trifling affair.
Nor does the Association save by cheating its tenants as the former landlord did in the house where the twenty-seven thicknesses of wall-paper were removed. It was found that this particular miscreant had used manure instead of hair as a binder for the plaster.
By standardizing the various minor hardware a further saving is effected. There are rim locks of uniform pattern for the outside of the door, mortise locks of one type for the inside.
The paint is of much the same color. That means a match is readily obtainable without making a special mixture.
All houses are fitted up for gas, an inexpressible relief to the housekeeper who must otherwise face the hot range in summer.
Every effort is made to conserve the backyard trees, and it is the superintendent’s favorite theory that these trees are meant to be sat under and played under, as well as to shade the windows and the courts.