Occupancy

“ The distribution of occupancy in relation to the ultimate enterprises of the different groups of tenants was the subject of conflicting testimony and interpretation, but in our view does not call for particularization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether he has obtained occupancy by force of arms or merely through decease of the original tenant is a moot point, but the first supposition is highly probable, as he is a most belligerent little customer. ”

“ This house belonged to them, and not very long afterwards it was torn down."
"But suppose that the present owner of the lot were to build upon it?" I suggested. "It would be necessary to hold these charming entertainments elsewhere?"
"Not at all," she said, laughing and waving her fan. "The [Pg 17] occupancy of the site by a real house would not interfere. It frequently happens, of course, that a building is put up on ground previously occupied by another dwelling. ”

“ Britton, in 1292) for the acquirement of property by other means than inheritance or mere act of law, including acquirement by escheat, prescription, occupancy, alienation and forfeiture; more generally, purchase in law means acquisition of land by bargain or sale, according to the law of “vendor and purchaser” (see Conveyancing) . A later development of meaning is found in the use of the word for a mechanical contrivance by which power can be excited or applied, a hold or fulcrum. ”

“ Here in the roofless halls we can be taken from entrance to dining-hall, from atrium to sleeping rooms, spying into the minutest detail of shape, size and colour, as though we were seriously intending to rent the house for our own habitation. The last tenant has even left his money-chest in his hall, his pots and pans in the kitchen, and as we inspect his utensils, we wonder if they would suit our own requirements to-day. ”

“ Whether a person is a lodger or an under-tenant is a question of fact. The best practical test is whether the person who let the rooms retained to himself the right of general control over the premises, though he need not himself live on the premises. ”

“ Next there is the highest division of working class houses—Class 3—built perhaps twenty or twenty-five, and sometimes even fewer, to the acre, with a parlour, a little hall or passage, a living room, a scullery behind that, and three bedrooms, with occasionally a bathroom. ”

“ The men, on their part, reap the benefit of occupying, at a small rental, a commodious and convenient dwelling, near to their work, constructed under proper sanitary conditions, kept in a good state of repair, and in every way infinitely superior to the best accommodation which their small means would otherwise enable them to obtain. ”

“ When we go into the cottage of the working man, how forcibly are we struck with the difference between his mode of life and our own. There is his tenement of, at most, one or two rooms. His naked walls; bare brick, stone or mud floor, as it may be: a few wooden, or rush-bottomed chairs; a deal, or old oak table; a simple fireplace, with its oven beside it, or, in many parts of the kingdom, no other fireplace than the hearth; a few pots and pans—and you have his whole abode, goods and chattels. ”

“ In my district I do not think there is one cottage to be found consisting of a day-room, three bed-rooms, scullery, pantry, and convenient receptacles for refuse and for fuel in the occupation of a labourer, but there are many consisting of a day-room and two bed-rooms, constructed with a due regard to ventilation and warmth, pantry, and fuel house, with a small garden and pigsty adjoining, and the labourers occupying such cottages, generally speaking, are far superior to others less advantageously situated. ”

“ H, who has inherited a large family homestead, which she occupies with her sister, provides her three employees each with a separate bedroom, a special dining-room, a sitting-room well furnished, and grants many personal privileges, as the use of the horse and carriage for early church. ”

“ In a large proportion of cases in the metropolis, and in some of the manufacturing districts, one room serves for one family of the labouring classes: it is their bed-room, their kitchen, their washhouse, their sitting room, their dining room; and, when they do not follow any out-door occupation, it is frequently their work room and their shop. In this one room they are born, and live, and sleep, and die amidst, the other inmates. ”

“ These wings are to hold forty or fifty small apartments of two rooms each; one man, one apartment.
"'Divide the property into plots, which may measure anything you like, from forty feet square to an acre. In the first instance I suggest choosing forty unmarried men, human derelicts, but men not more than fifty years old, sound in wind and limb; in other words, men who can work if they want to. I'd give each a plot of land and shelter, with free board for at least a year, furnishing him also with a spade and whatever other horticultural implements the head-gardener considered needful. ”

“ No herding in one common community of forlornness; each small apartment or establishment is perfect in its way, with its own entrance, and its own little kitchen and sleeping room. There are people appointed to look after the comfort of those who are finishing their days there, but nobody to interfere with it. ”

“ I would call upon those who may possess cottage property in large towns to consider the immense power they thus hold in their hands, and the large influence for good they may exercise by the wise use of that power. ”

“ Finding our quarters, besides being too remote from business centers for my husband’s convenience, were rather cramped, as we were limited to two rooms, and without an out-building that could serve for a kitchen, another house-hunt was instituted, and eventually we succeeded in making ourselves very comfortable in comparison with the rough life that had been ours whenever we had previously been on the frontier. ”

“ In the daytime, when the tenants were out at their various avocations, the upper part of the dingy old building was deserted, save by the housekeeper in the attics; while the counting-house abutting on the street was all life and bustle. ”

“ Such a room we consider indispensable to the proper accommodation of a house in the country, as saving a world of up-and-down-stairs' labor to her who is usually charged with the domestic cares and supervision of the family. ”

“ Where rows of cottages, or courts full of small dwellings, have been properly drained, ventilated, repaired, cleaned, arranged, and fitted up, with an enlightened regard to the health, comfort, convenience, moral habits, and independent feelings of the tenant, the plan has always proved a self-supporting, if not a profitable one. ”

“ Masons, bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, etc., might be set to work in building decent and pleasant dwellings—in the style of the blocks of flats, not of the barracks called model dwellings—for the housing of the municipal industrial army. ”

“ Except that I live in one, with apartment houses I have nothing to do—my concern is with lodgings.
There is only one philosophical observation to be made upon apartment houses. And that is this: How can all these people afford to live in them? When you go to look at apartments you are shown a place that you don't like particularly. ”

“ When the landlord exercises a certain degree of influence over the cottages of his tenants, or the improvements of the neighbouring village, so as to induce such a tone of feeling in the new erections as he may think suitable to their situation. ”

“ The accommodation is too limited for the population of 2000, [1] which is masculine mainly, and is liable to frequent temporary additions, and beds are occupied continuously, though by different occupants, throughout the greater part of the twenty-four hours. ”

“ The drift in tenement building, as in everything else, is toward concentration, and helps smooth the way. Four families on the floor, twenty in the house, is the rule of to-day. As the crowds increase, the need of guiding this drift into safe channels becomes more urgent. ”

“ Every set of apartments is accessible to its occupants at any hour of the day or night, with the same facility as if it opened out of a well-lighted street, since all the halls of the Familistère are lighted during the whole night. ”

“ In the middle stands the principal building, appropriated to the sole use of the master, and consisting of two apartments; in one of which he fits in the day with his family, the other is left apart for the reception of his friends. ”

“ Into no single room has the sun looked for a thousand years, and air has been but grudgingly admitted, and never allowed to circulate. The houses run up five, six, even seven storeys, and are tenanted by many families. ”

“ No room or rooms, apartment or apartments, in any tenement or dwelling-house, shall be used for the manufacture of coats, vests, trousers, knee-pants, overalls, cloaks, furs, fur-trimmings, fur-garments, shirts, purses, feathers, artificial flowers, or cigars, excepting by the immediate members of the family living therein. ”

“ The prosperous people lived in a vast series of sumptuous hotels in the upper storeys and halls of the city fabric; the industrial population dwelt beneath in the tremendous ground-floor and basement, so to speak, of the place. ”

“ The apartments should provide a large cubic space for air; because plenty of air is essential to the health and comfort of the inmates. The apartments should therefore be as large and lofty as possible. ”

“ The true office of the house is not only to be useful, but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive. In most of our modern building and furnishing the people are relegated to the background as insignificant figures. ”

“ For capitalists and farmers of the revenue, somewhat comfort­able and showy apartments must be constructed, secure against robbery; for advocates and public speakers, handsomer and more roomy, to accommodate meetings; for men of rank who, from holding offices and magistracies, have social obligations to their fellow-citizens, lofty entrance courts in regal style, and most spacious atriums and peristyles, with plantations and walks of some extent in them, appropriate to their dignity. ”

“ In this section “residential occupier”, in relation to any premises, means a person occupying the premises as a residence, whether under a contract or by virtue of any enactment or rule of law giving him the right to remain in occupation or restricting the right of any other person to recover possession of the premises. ”

“ No establishment being considered complete without a multiplicity of these, they might be seen constantly darting about on errands from the house to the kitchen and the cabins, upstairs and downstairs, being, indeed, omnipresent and indispensable. ”

“ Every man, however, can apply in his apartments the precautionary methods which we have suggested to the owner of a house, and thus the tenant will have this advantage over the owner, that the apartment, which is less spacious than the house, is more easily guarded. ”

“ Model dwellings are therefore most appreciated by working men when placed near the scene of their daily labour. The arrangements most preferred are those which bring the fewest families or persons in contact with one another on a flat or landing. ”

“ Most habitations retain a cast or shell of their previous tenant that, fitting tightly or loosely, is still able to adjust itself to the newcomer; in most occupied apartments there is still a shadowy suggestion of the owner's individuality; there was nothing here that fitted Bly—nor was there either, strange to say, any evidence of the past proprietor in this inhospitality of sensation. ”

“ Simply that hired houses, such as most of us live in, shall all be furnished houses, and that the landlord shall own every stick in them, and every appliance down to the last spoon and ultimate towel. ”

“ The want of house-room naturally prevents any influx from other parts of the country, and the consequence is, that for about eight months in the year, every available woman and child is pressed into service. ”

“ Generally, also, on fixed days, the chief rooms, such as are highly decorated or contain pictures—the State Apartments—are open also; and all that wealth has procured, as far as the eye is concerned, is as much the property of the humblest artisan as it is of the lord of the soil. ”

“ Renting office space in a building exclusively set aside for an unrestricted variety of office work spontaneously satisfies the common understanding of what is local business and makes the employees of such a building engaged in local business. ”

“ We find the whole place, hall, corridors and offices, crowded with busy people, some soliciting, others solicited, all hurrying hither and thither. With the exception of some few buildings of several storeys grouped round the palace and in the main street--the post-office, the clubs, the banks, the hotels and the large shops--all the houses are little one-storey cottages surrounded by gardens. ”

“ If a coach could glide under an archway, and go out by another door, after leaving its fair occupants on the threshold of an elegant staircase, how many of them would bring the landlord fine, rich, solid old fellows for customers! ”

“ It was formerly the custom generally, and it is so still in the country-houses of the great, to have a footman constantly stationed in each of the rooms of the numerous suite of apartments, and one or two lads outside, their business being to do the office now performed by bells. ”

“ We shall have got some way towards putting things right when we have secured a sufficiency of cottage accommodation for the labourer, when we have diminished his hours of work, and given the parish power to take up land for labourers' holdings. ”