Thousands who would live in the city could they find suitable homes here, and who would be worth millions to the city, are driven to the surrounding country to build up Jersey and all the regions round about; while no small proportion of those who must remain are forced into a manner of living which violates the very first requirements of the life we most affect, namely, individual privacy and family seclusion.

As a people we set a high value on domestic life; we venerate the hearthstone: yet here we are herded in hotels and boarding-houses where privacy is all but unknown and home-making impossible, submitting perforce to have our lives ordered by others who house us and feed us as may seem most profitable to them, and grudgingly conforming ourselves to an existence which we instinctively abhor, which sinks the domestic circle, destroys the atmosphere of home, forces the young into untimely and spurious development, delays marriage,-in a thousand ways, in short, corrupts or prevents the sole sure foundation of a good commonwealth, wholesome and happy homes.

Our own fault? Largely, no doubt, but not wholly, as every one knows who has ever tried to cut loose from the hotelkeeper or Madam of the boarding-house, to set up a modest establishment of his own. Unless one can afford to buy or rent a whole house for the privilege of occupying a quarter of it, his chances are few in New York for finding the dwelling-space he desires. Our houses are not made for the accommodation of small families. By some mysterious dispensation,-in punishment for our sins, it might be suspected, were it possible for Providence to make use of a discipline so clearly adverse to virtue,-house-building in New York has been chiefly given over to speculative carpenters and bricklayers, who cover the ground with structures that look very imposing from without and are very imposing within and throughout, if mistaken for dwellings rows of houses as uniform in style and finish as if made by machinery, and as uniformly unsuited to the needs of their expected occupants. It is safe to say, that there are in the city ten times as many houses, three, four and five stories high, planned, so far as they are planned at all, -for the accommodation of but one family each, as there are families large enough to fill them or rich enough to support them.

VOL. VIII.-5

On the other hand, not onetenth of the families who live, or would live in the city, can find suit-. able shelter for the maintenance of homes; that is, apartments

containing the required number of rooms and no more,

grouped for easy and economical housekeeping, and shielded from undue publicity.

The condiwhich

tions

have done most to bring about this undesirable state of things are not hard to discover. The narrow area of our island and the ceaseless crowdings of commerce have made the land extremely valuable; small houses, such as shelter the populations of other American cities, are out of the question here. We

must build deep and high to pay the ground-rent. But our need of houseroom does not increase with the size of the houses, nor does our ability to pay for superfluous space; a fact, which the average New York house-builder seems incapable of comprehending. Nor has he yet learned that multiple tenancy alone can make large houses economical, and home life possible to the multitude in a city like this: this, too, without converting our

dwellings into barracks, or anything like them.

Other people build large and lofty dwellings without saddling themselves with the household evils which we labor under; but they are not people of English descent, or those whose architectural habits and social prejudices have been determined by English influences.

The genuine Briton puts his social trust only in vertical walls. He feels his privacy invaded the moment there is any one above or below him in space, any one not amenable to his household rules and regulations; a prejudice harmless enough where there is no lateral compression, where one is not obliged to climb for room; but mischievous in a crowded community like ours, since it gives our houses the proportions of a brick on end, and makes them inconvenient, wasteful of space, and altogether unsuited to our needs.

The

Continental communities find equal privacy, equal security, and vastly greater comfort between horizontal walls. Frenchman, the German, the Italian,-even the Scotchman,-prefers a level apartment, and concerns himself as little about who lives over or under him, as the Englishman does about his neighbor next door.

It is a striking illustration of the force of inheritance, that we who pride ourselves on our independence, our common sense, and our ability to get a dollar's worth for a dollar, should, in so important a matter, allow the cockney's prejudice to outweigh the experience and economy of all other civilized nations.

In all the capitals of Europe,-Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Florence, and the rest,the problem of the maximum of household accommodation with the minimum of cost, has been an architectural commonplace for centuries; and it has been uniformly solved in a style of building the reverse of that which we have copied from the English-a style which provides ample and convenient house-room for twelve families on the same area that we require for three, and proportionately diminishes the ground-rent, and average cost of shelter to each.

The loss which our inconvenient and wasteful mode of building involves, is not to be wholly measured, either, by the exorbitant rents we have to pay. It is felt in every element of our personal, family, social and political life.

Who, for example, can estimate the city's

BED ROOM

LIVING ROOM

CLOSET

CLOSET CLOSET

PARLOR

BED ROOM

UPPER FLOOR OF CHEAP FLAT.

working hours in the city and betake themselves to the suburbs and the outlying country at night for the home-life which the city denies them? Unable to find on the island the shelter they require for the money they can afford to pay, they plant their families elsewhere, depriving them and themselves of the privileges of recreation, social life, and culture which concentration makes possible, and the city of their social and political

pres

ence, which it sorely needs. As soon as common sense comes to rule in our domestic architecture, instead of tradition and routine, this most desirable middle class will have an opportunity to return to metropolitan life to wield the balance of power now divided between the very rich and politically indifferent, and the very poor and politically unscrupulous. In the meantime there may be spasmodic attempts at political reform and the purifying of the social atmosphere, but their effects will be transient for lack of substantial backing.

Another evil connected with and resulting from the traditional style of house building is sub-letting. There are relatively few families whose incomes are sufficient to pay the rent of a four or five story house. A house they must have, in a good street; and as small houses are not to be had, there is no choice but to take a big one and sub-let as much of it as may be possible, to make up the lacking rent. If the houses were designed for multiple tenancy, this resort would work no mischief; but they are not. The extra tenants must be strangers, single gentlemen, or married couples without encumbrances." The lodgers must be fed; and as it is rarely convenient for them to go out for their meals, they are very apt in the end to find a seat at the family table. The domestic circle is thus broken, the privacy of home is invaded, and the house degenerates into a boarding-house. From taking in lodgers as a makeshift, to keeping boarders as a business, the transition is easy, and once on the downward course, the blotting out of independent home-life is rapid and inevitable. The children are spoiled, the wife becomes a drudge, or worse, a schemer; and-every one has seen the result. The city is full of families whose social tone has been lowered, whose normal development has been thwarted, by the vain attempts to sustain a home by a process which breaks down the domestic walls, makes privacy impossible and home an empty name: and the gregarious existence of boarding is, as every one has seen, equally damaging to those who resort to it. The evil is characteristic of New York. The remedy lies primarily with the architects. When housekeeping can be attempted within the city limits, without a fortune to pay the rent and an army of servants to do the endless drudgery of ill-planned houses, home making may again be fashionable among us.

one room to another, costs a climb of from twenty to a hundred steps. Up and down, up and down, the women folk are perpetually toiling as in a treadmill, wasting daily in the fruitless and health-destroying labor of carrying themselves from floor to floor an amount of strength sufficient to do the whole work of a sensibly constructed house. Very few American women can endure it, let alone doing their household work besides: hence the power of Bridget. She knows that she is indispensable, and dominates accordingly. Her dominion would be sapped were housekeeping once brought, as it might be, fairly within the strength of less muscular women. As soon as it becomes possible to live without her, or so many of her, so soon it will be possible to subsist in comfort with her.

The progress making toward this desirable consummation, that is, economical and home-creating houses,-is, to say the least, promising. least, promising. Nearly twenty years ago a beginning was made in a small but handsome apartment house erected in Wooster street, on a plan furnished by Mr. R. M. Hunt. About the same time, perhaps a little earlier, a similar house in Hudson street offered complete facilities for modest housekeeping on separate floors. These houses though less needed then than now, were eagerly taken by families moderately

well-to-do, who wanted good and convenient homes at relatively small cost, and whose prejudices did not prevent their living under the same roof with two or three other families of the same social grade. From time to time other houses, more or less deservedly styled French Flats, were erected on the avenues, especially on the west side, but without meeting or meriting much success. Sham elegance and general inconvenience were their most prominent characteristics; marble mantels and much paint vainly striving to atone for the absence of ventilation, and the too abundant presence of dark rooms, narrow passages, and back-breaking stairs. Now and then a genuine attempt to further the reform was made, but received little popular encouragement until the successful establishment of a few elegant apartment houses for the rich demonstrated to those of moderate means the possibility of multiple tenancy without risk of social debasement.

The earliest American venture in this direction was, we believe, the Hotel Pelham in Boston, designed by Mr. Arthur Gilman. Successful from the first, this house initiated a new order of building, which has proved immensely popular in Boston. Many of the finest dwellings in the newer and better part of the city are on the apartment plan, each offering from ten to twenty suites of rooms adapted to the needs of thoroughly complete first-class housekeeping, at reasonable prices.

The pioneer apartment houses in New York are the well-known Stuyvesant Build

ings; the first, in Eighteenth street, having been opened in the fall of 1870, and the second, in Thirteenth street, the following spring. Both are large, massive, and handsome buildings, finished throughout in a style at once rich and modest. The apartments, some of six, others of ten rooms, including kitchen and servants' rooms, are designed for strictly independent housekeeping, in good but not extravagant style.

The lack of elevators detracts somewhat from the value of the apartments; still they have never failed of steady occupation by first-class tenants, at extra good pricesproof enough that houses of the sort are needed in New York, and that the style of living they are designed for is not in itself distasteful to American families of high grade.

The next experiment in this direction, the Haight House, corner of Fifteenth street and Fifth avenue, introduced a public kitchen and dining-room, with other features, which give it a position midway between an apartment house proper and a family hotel. It has five floors, divided into twenty family suites provided with everything requisite for independent housekeeping, and fifteen suites for single gentle

men.

Each of the family apartments includes a small antechamber or private entrance from the public hall, a parlor, a dining-room (with butler's pantry), a kitchen, three bed-rooms, and a bath-room. The bachelor suites are of two and three rooms each. Meals are served in the dining-hall or restaurant to such as choose to dispense with cooking in their own apartments. Those who prefer greater privacy, can order their Own marketing through the steward, have the food cooked in the common kitchen, and

served in their own rooms. A steam laundry does the washing for the house, and an elevator relieves the tenants of the upper floors from the fatigues of stair-climbing. The internal history of this house neatly illus

trates what promises to be a characteristic feature of New York life under the coming régime,that is, the clustering of particular social sets about particular centers. From the first, the Haight House has been the chosen refuge of artistic and literary people, who are able to find home, society, recreation,— everything almost which goes to distinguish civilized life,-without passing from under their own roof.

An establishment of similar character, though immensely more ambitious and expensive is the Stevens House, on Twentyseventh street, between Broadway and Fifth avenue. It was opened in 1872, and has since been partially remodeled.

As

an investment it has not been fortunate, its great height, ornate front, and extravagant internal decoration, making it far more impressive to the beholder than profitable to the owner. While it splendidly illustrates one phase of the new order of domestic architecture, its influ

A

ence on the reform has been hardly favorable.

The Grosvenor, corner of Tenth street and Fifth avenue, is a type unique. Starting with a singularly clear conception of the wants of a particular class of New York families, a class possessing wealth, culture, refinement, and love of ease, and desiring the security and comfort of home life, with none of its cares,—the designer of the Grosvenor brought to the task of supplying the demand a rare experience as a successful hotel manager, a genius for organization, ample means, and untiring vigilance in the carrying out of his plans. The result is an establishment which may well be considered a model, since it secures the economy of multiple tenancy and co-operative living, with the atmosphere of home, and combines all the advantages of English exclusiveness and solid elegance, with the utmost independence in all that pertains to individual life. It is, in fact, a nest of elegant homes, each distinct and thoroughly secluded, yet all provided for with the elaborate machinery and systematic service of a first-rate hotel.

The Grosvenor was a success from the

first. It opened with all its rooms leased for terms of years, while scores of desirable tenants eagerly enrolled themselves as candidates for the first vacancies that might occur.

While these first-rate adventures were demonstrating the need of apartment houses for the very rich, and the willingness of good families to adopt the style of life which they call for, not a little progress was made toward supplying with similar homes the classes less bountifully favored by fortune-not progress enough to make housekeeping and home-life available to the multitude, but quite enough to give a clear indication of what the future New York dwelling is likely to be. In the newer districts around the lower end of Central Park, and along the avenues up town, a great number of new houses have been laid out in independent floors, each designed. for individual housekeeping. Lower down, in neighborhoods lately abandoned by the tide of fashion, it has come to be quite a common practice to convert into flats a style of deep and double houses, no longer acceptable to those who can afford to occupy them alone, and to throw together