Dwellings

“ The more aristocratic dwellings have the sawn planks which form their walls carved and ornamented, the open balconies of elaborate workmanship, and below the jutting roof inscriptions graven to recall the name of the owner, and the year and day in which the work was done, and generally some blessing, in quaint rhyme, on building and builder. ”

“ The dwellings are in perfect line, with low thatched roofs, and every here and there are larger establishments with grounds, which answer for public assemblages. The walls are of beaten clay, and the insides are cosy and clean. ”

“ Crazy old buildings, crowded rear tenements in filthy yards, dark, damp basements, leaking garrets, shops, outhouses, and stables [3] converted into dwellings, though scarcely fit to shelter brutes, are habitations of thousands of our fellow-beings in this wealthy, Christian city. ”

“ Old and dilapidated houses are ready for his occupancy, but though they are often not so bad as the large tenements, with their more attractive exteriors, they are not fit dwellings for his growing family. ”

“ Cottages designed for simple dwellings, whether built apart or connected, should, as far as possible, preserve their identity as cottages, and if destined for undulating and picturesque situations, should be outlined to accord with their surroundings.... ”

“ His trustees have already erected ranges of workmen's dwellings in many parts of the metropolis,—which will from time to time be extended to other parts. The Peabody dwellings furnish an example of what working men's dwellings ought to be. They are clean, tidy, and comfortable homes. They have diminished drunkenness; they have promoted morality. ”

“ Articles discarded in tenement house dwellings and sold for a few pennies to a ragman are triumphantly brought into the reception room of a patrician mansion, treasured by the new owners, and admired by his friends. ”

“ Houses were invaded by perfect strangers who insisted in pointing out the rooms in which they were born and in which they had been married, and in telling the present proprietors how fortunate they were to live in dwellings thus blessed. ”

“ We must not leave the foot-path without having become acquainted with the principal places to which it leads, the dwellings where human beings reside, spirits who love or hate, suffer and hope, worship and pray. Let us enter the first cottage on our way.
Within it is a young and pretty woman and four little boys. Three of them are platting straw. The youngest of these little workers is only three and a half years old. The little home, of one room and a kitchen, exhibits neatness and a certain degree of prosperity. ”

“ Along its sides are spread out every variety of habitation, from the substantial brick and stone structures, which are being erected with extraordinary rapidity, to the multitude of galvanised iron dwellings, and the still not unfrequent tents of the first, and last comers. ”

“ There is no little care displayed in the formation of these strange habitations, some of which have scraps of gardens or miniature terraces before them; hanging from the doorways are green creeping things, with other graceful adjuncts, which help to give a touch of beauty to their aspect. ”

“ Not by human dwellings—not in crowded cities alone, are the sights and sounds of life. The wildest places of the earth are full of them. ”

“ From the managers of the two best-known experiments in model tenement building in the city, the Improved Dwellings Association and the Tenement-house Building Company, I have letters dated last August, declaring their enterprises eminently successful There is Do reason why their experience should not be conclusive. ”

“ Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it. ”

“ These habitations are, of course, held only by the poor and outcast, yet, in spite of circumstances, they live merrily from hand to mouth how they can, and by means, perhaps, not always of the most legitimate description. ”

“ If it be a landscape, I at once pitch upon the spot for a cottage, a temple, or a villa; if it be a house, I instantly settle in my mind the room I would take as my own, the window I would sit beside, the very chair I'd take to lounge in; if it be a garden, I fix upon the walk among whose embowering blossoms I would always be found: and so, if the occasion be one of festive enjoyment, I have a quick eye to catch her whose air and appearance possess highest attractions for me. ”

“ The eaves of the house, the door knocker, the pickets of the fence, the honeysuckles and seringas, once the boast of summer, are all alike polished, varnished, and resplendent with their winter trappings, now gleaming in the last rays of the early sunset.
Within that large, old-fashioned dwelling might you see an ample parlor, all whose adjustments and arrangements speak of security, warmth, and home enjoyment; of money spent not for show, but for comfort. ”

“ And in actual life, let me assure you, in conclusion, the first ‘wisdom of calm,’ is to plan, and resolve to labour for, the comfort and beauty of a home such as, if we could obtain it, we would quit no more. Not a compartment of a model lodging-house, not the number so-and-so of Paradise Row; but a cottage all of our own, with its little garden, its pleasant view, its surrounding fields, its neighbouring stream, its healthy air, and clean kitchen, parlours, and bedrooms. ”

“ The habitations of this city of harmony are formed or fashioned of various substances, each dweller building his mansion to suit himself; hence we observe the tiny, white vine-embowered cottage, with its surrounding flower garden, side by side with the stately mansion, environed with smooth walks and velvety lawns. ”

“ The comfortable old house in the village street, all the rooms with blazing fires, and the kitchen with the flagged, uneven floor, hot and simmering with good things cooking, and the snow outside, and the horses stamping in the cold, frosty air, and the guests coming in laughing and talking. ”

“ You pass some of the most elegant of the houses, and notice that they are two stories high, and that the family apartments are on the upper stories, so that you miss the furtive views of the families at meals and of the ladies reclining in the broad-tiled window sills that you have in the older one-story sections of the city. ”

“ It was a painted house, but the paint had worn off; it had a garden, but the garden was choked with weeds; its two rooms were once handsomely furnished, but the furniture was now common and old. It was once a fashionable street; but fashion had fled before the victorious eagles of trade. The tenants of that house were once happy and prosperous. What are they now?
The occupant of the back room was a man, and the occupants of the front room a woman and her children. ”

“ Each dwelling, with its spacious rooms and luxurious accommodations, was occupied by a single family, sometimes of not more than two or three persons. Here plate glass, silver mounted doors, and rich traceries in bronze and iron, gave brilliant evidence of wealth; while many small gardens thrown together, rich with shrubbery and vines in their season of verdure, threw a fresh glow of nature around the rich man's dwelling. ”

“ For example, in the vicinity of our large towns and cities will be seen spacious mansions inhabited by professed followers of Jesus Christ, each surrounded by ornamented grounds. Not far from them will be seen small tenement-houses, abounding with children, each house having about as many square yards of land as the large houses have square acres. In the small tenements, the boys rise early and go forth with the father to work from eight to ten hours, with little opportunity for amusement or for reading or study. ”

“ The house is splendid, and yet homely; there is none of the burden of magnificence either in the mansion or the grounds, while ostentation seems as far removed from the lofty and munificently furnished apartments as from those which ornament a simple cottage dwelling. ”

“ Hidden homes these may be, poor homes they almost all are—homes bounded by the four walls of one squalid room, homes cramped in the garrets of tenement-houses or saddened by the dreary respectability of furnished lodgings, but none the less precious in the sight of the angels, and an example in the sight of men. ”

“ Every residence section has its shabby houses, monuments to departed aspirations, falling into slow decay in the midst of weedy yards, sometimes uninhabited and sometimes sheltering one or two members of the family who apparently have been left, like the ancient furniture, to be forgotten. ”

“ The house, with its exits and entrances, its properties of furniture and necessities, its dressing-tables, its warming-pans, and its tiny silver eye-bath still standing between the hair-brushes—the house demands its population. ”

“ The first object that interested us was a gentleman's house upon a green plain or holm, almost close to the Clyde, sheltered by tall trees, a quiet modest mansion, and, though white-washed, being an old building, and no other house near it, or in connexion with it, and standing upon the level field, which belonged to it, its own domain, the whole scene together brought to our minds an image of the retiredness and sober elegance of a nunnery ”

“ The huge modern apartment house, the huge modern tenement house, are part first of the urban movement and second of that movement away from housekeeping which has been sketched in the Introduction.
The home has been praised as the nucleus of society, its center, its heart. ”

“ Imagine a lonely country-house, a quiet 151 and well-ordered family seated at their evening meal, after dark, of a somewhat gloomy day, the apartment imperfectly lighted by the glowing fire, and according to such conveniences for the purpose as old times ordinarily afforded ”

“ The house so drearily out of repair, the occasional bow-window, the stuccoed house, the newly-fronted house, the corner house with nothing but angular rooms, the house with the blinds always down, the house with the hatchment always up, the house where the collector has called for one quarter of an Idea, and found nobody at home—who has not dined with these? ”

“ Presently, the man who had bought the house came to him and said, ‘Look thyself out a lodging, for I have need of my house.’ So he bethought himself and considering that he had nothing requiring a house, except his wife, who had borne him a son and daughter,—for he had not a servant left,—hired a room in one of the mean lodging houses and there took up his abode, after having lived in honour and luxury, with many servants and much wealth, and came to lack of one day’s bread. ”

“ Right above you stands a rude stone dwelling, stern and square of outline, and in no way suited or in keeping with the graceful trees and shrubs whose rich verdure shadow its rough walls. Towards this you press onward and upward, until the natural platform on which the dwelling is placed be gained; when the view of and from this spot will well reward you for a ride through a secluded forest country, the freshness and wildness of which have already pleased you, especially if you are, as I happily was on most of my visits here, accompanied by companions at once fair and intelligent. ”

“ Here may often be found the family of a petty tradesman, with its trumpery furniture, burrowing among the relics of antiquated finery, in great, rambling, time-stained apartments, with fretted ceilings, gilded cornices, and enormous marble fireplaces. The lanes and courts also contain many smaller houses, not on so grand a scale, but, like your small ancient gentry, sturdily maintaining their claims to equal antiquity. ”

“ Nowadays the humblest dwelling which boasts two rooms to sit in possesses a dining-room and drawing-room, but at that period drawing-rooms were for grand houses only, and the parlor was the name of the family dwelling-place. ”

“ Love of land and of privacy in homes is made manifest in the residences, many of which are built in the middle of fields and orchards or large city blocks, and in the loving care with which these home grounds are planted. ”

“ A dwelling with a beautiful view has a great charm, but it draws the thoughts always outward to the external. Still, when I pass a quiet old homestead, hidden away in its own flowery old garden from the eyes of the world, it attracts me far more than the far-flung grandeur of many a stately English mansion. ”

“ Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity over-head, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. ”

“ Crowded in the tenements where the bedrooms are small and often dark, where the living room is also a kitchen, a laundry, and often a garment-making shop, are the growing children whose bodies cry out for exercise and play. ”

“ A building that presents the outward appearance of a substantial two-or three-storied dwelling-house with many rooms, shrinks into a dismal and draughty collection of stables, courtyards, and dungeon-like living-rooms, when one gets inside. ”

“ What though fortune has thrown me where the most magnificent abode is but a cottage? the humblest cottage, if it be but the home of virtue, may be more beautiful than all temples; no place is narrow which can contain the crowd of glorious virtues; no exile severe into which you may go with such a reliance. ”

“ The dwelling houses proper consist of a tightly inclosed story, having a few small windows, and covered with an overhanging roof, the high gables of which permit the garret-space to be left open for the free circulation of the outer air. Another class of houses, which are evidently pavilions of luxury and indicate wealth, are built on larger posts than the others, and have no inclosure whatever. ”