Memoirs of a millionaire

by Lucia True Ames Mead

“You old bigot!” said I inwardly, “your grandmother, I suppose, would have protested against sleeping-cars and elevators and dumb-waiters as being unnatural and artificial!”

I am amazed every day to see how densely stupid some sensible people are. I know a Frenchwoman who has always slept at home on a bed four feet high, canopied and enshrouded with curtains. It is half a day’s work to make it, and she feels out in the cold and all forlorn when put into one of our little, open, low, brass bedsteads. I suppose she would think it quite as unhomelike and as demoralizing in its tendency as my agent thought my berth beds would be.

The other day I explained the idea to a poor woman in a tenement house, who with the greatest difficulty was trying to sweep under two good-sized bedsteads in a tiny room. At first she did not seem to comprehend, but when she did, she smiled and nodded and said, “I like that, Mees; easy to sweep; children no kick each other all time; my children sleep four in one bed—too much kick and cry.”

I have thought of another thing, that is, of having low, stationary settees made in suitable places against the wall, and having the seat a cover which would turn up on hinges, showing space underneath where clothes and all sorts of things could be kept out of sight, instead of being put into trunks or left to lie around in an untidy way. I shall have no closets, as I find that space can be better saved and cleanliness more readily enforced by building stationary wardrobes, each with a drawer underneath and shelves above extending to the ceiling. Closets, I find, are rarely swept.

On these shelves, which can be protected by a curtain, things not in frequent use can be laid away, and every inch of space to the ceiling utilized. I know you will not approve of this. You think closets are a sine qua non; all of which is well enough if you are dealing with people who are sure to keep them swept clean, and where room is not so precious. But in this case I am planning to economize space to the utmost, and at the same time give the number of hooks for hanging clothes that there is in the ordinary closet.

The rooms are to be only seven feet high, thereby saving much space and making it possible for me to put on another story to the building. Without this, by the closest planning, I could not afford all the conveniences that I want and get my four per cent. interest, which, for the success of the experiment, I feel bound to make.

Of course these low-studded rooms would give too little air were it not that I have taken extraordinary pains about the ventilation. I have been using all my feminine ingenuity to devise all possible means to provide the greatest amount of comfort and convenience for the smallest possible amount of money and space. Understand that I am aiming to provide a decent home for the very poorest, who cannot afford to pay more than five dollars a month for rent. I mean to give them as much room as they have now in their dirty, dark alleys and attics, and in addition to that, warmth, pure air, cleanliness, and the saving of countless steps.

I find my architects strangely unsuggestive about all this; they have not enough imagination to put themselves in the place of a tired ignorant woman who has to spend all her life in two rooms with her husband and four or five untidy, restless children.

Knowing how much afraid of the dark many of my North End people used to be, and remembering how they used to keep a lamp burning all night in their sleeping-rooms, where the windows were shut tight, I have planned to have the upper eight inches of the walls of the room bordering on the hall, of glass, which can be opened like a transom, to admit air and much light at night from the lights in the hall, which I shall myself provide. I mean also to have in every room, fastened against the wall, a stationary table that can be put up or let down like an ordinary table-leaf.

I am going to have some experienced woman oversee all these little details, for I never yet saw a builder who could not learn a great deal from a practical housekeeper.