Rooming house

“ A family of eight persons using three rooms in a house of this kind might let off the lower front room to an aunt or a mother at a rent of 2s. 6d. a week, live in the kitchen, and sleep in the two upstairs rooms. The advantage of such a way of living is its privacy. The single lodger, even if not a relative, is less disturbing than would be another family sharing another house. When the lodger is a relative, a further advantage is that a child is often taken into its grandmother’s or aunt’s room at night, and the terrible overcrowding is relieved just to that extent. ”

“ Is there a large chamber in the house unoccupied? one that would do for an invalid."
"The only large spare rooms in the house are the two given to you," replied Miss Diana. "They are the best, as you know, and have been kept vacant for visitors. The dressing-room may be used as a sitting-room."
"I don't want it as a sitting-room, or a dressing-room either," replied the Squire. "I prefer to dress in my bedroom, and there are sufficient sitting-rooms downstairs for me. Let this bed of Rupert's be carried down to that room at once." ”

“ What's the use o' havin' furnished rooms that you never use? Yes, it does look pretty empty, but after livin' in a jungle of old mahogany these many years, you don't know what a blessed relief it is to have a few empty spots about the house. Every [Pg 113] house ought to have one or two empty rooms, Maria, jest for folks to rest their eyes on.
"Yes, I did keep one piece o' the family furniture, but it wasn't mahogany. It was that little plain rockin'-chair with the oak-split bottom; there it sets in the corner. ”

“ A living-room may be a simple place used for all the purposes of living, or it may be merely an official clearing-house for family moods, one of a dozen other living apartments. The living-room in the modern bungalow, for instance, is often dining-room, library, hall, music-room, filling all the needs of the family, while in a large country or city house there may be the central family room, and ever so many little rooms that grow out of the overflow needs—the writing-room, the tea room that is also sun and breakfast room, the music-room and the library. ”

“ Comfort and space, security from heat and cold, the very object of a house, are quite secondary matters, and in most cases seem to have escaped attention. There has, however, been of late much care for family morality, and so the moderate-sized bedroom is divided by two thin partitions, and becomes three closets, or there is an attic made of slate and plaster in the roof. The sitting room is but a cupboard, and the place is altogether fitter for a kennel than a home. ”

“ My house as I have already mentioned, was one room in a tenement. It opened directly upon the street. In one corner was a bed. Opposite the door was a stove for cooking and warming the house. A table and two chairs besides my little sewing-chair completed the furnishing of the apartment. The floor was bare, except where I had put down an old coverlet for a rug before the bed. Here in this crowded place I cooked, ate, slept, worked, and received company and offers!
"Just as an example of the way in which some of my suitors broached the subject I will describe a scene. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its rooms are large, spacious, and elegantly furnished; suited rather for gentlemen and their families, who choose a temporary residence in town, than for transient travellers and single men, who more frequently resort to the "Mansion-house." ”

“ Every bed-room should have a closet, and, indeed, an abundance of closets is necessary, it being hardly possible to have too many of them. One for coats, in the front hall, one for linen, one for stores, and a good-sized pantry for the kitchen, are dear to the heart of a housekeeper.
No house should be without a bath-room, large and conveniently located. Care must be taken that the plumbing apparatus is not exposed to the cold, or the pipes will freeze in winter. ”

“ The ends were screened off by wooden partitions, the kitchen at one side, the private apartments at the other. The Hall was used as a dining-room and sitting-room, and the household would sleep there, both tables and beds being movable. Later, the tendency arose to have separate apartments for different purposes, and the number of rooms in a house multiplied. In modern planning strict privacy is essential, and each room must be accessible from the halls and stairways. As soon as a room becomes a mere passage to another, it loses its chief value. ”

“ The house is very quiet now because it has become too large for the remaining occupants. A whole suite of simply furnished rooms on the ground floor stands entirely empty, and is awakened to life only when the married children come to visit. ”

“ We cannot stay to note the architecture minutely. The private dwellings are usually about twenty-five feet long by fifteen in breadth, the interior forming one room, but with a sort of elevated divan at the end, sometimes screened with beautiful “tapa” curtains, and serving as the dormitory.
The ground-plan of the house is that of an oblong square,—or, to speak more properly, a parallelogram. The walls are constructed of timber,—being straight posts of cocoa-palm, tree-fern, bamboo, or breadfruit,—the spaces between closely warped or otherwise filled in with reeds of cane or calamus. ”

“ They have no place for the beds to stand, no room for the doors to swing, no room for a piano, no room for a generous sofa, no room for the book-cases, no room for easy stairs, no room for fireplaces, no room for convenient attendance at the dining-table, no room for wholesome cooking, no room for sick people, no room for fresh air, no room for sunlight, no room for an unexpected guest. They have plenty of rooms, apartments, cells—but no real, generous, comfortable house room. ”

“ In many of the modern houses the number of rooms on the first floor has been decreased and their size increased. Oftentimes there is a [Pg 37] reception-hall, a small library, and a dining-room only, as belonging to the living part of the house on the first floor. An arrangement of this kind belongs more particularly to a house which is occupied during only a part of the year; say as summer cottages in the North, and winter houses in the South. Modern ways of living make a larger number of rooms less desirable. ”

“ After a house has been paid for, it not only should be improved from year to year and kept [Pg 61] in good repair, but, as the family grows, new rooms should be added. The house should not only be made comfortable, but should be made convenient. As soon as possible there should be a sitting room, where books and papers can be found, a room in which the whole family may read and study during the winter nights. ”

“ On the top floor the staircase ends in an unventilated cul-de-sac formed by four bedrooms, a dark 'box-room,' and a water-closet which is wedged in between two bedrooms.
This house has, if one may say so, been over-plumbered. There are five closets, five sinks, and a bath-waste (eleven trapped waste-pipes) for a maximum of twelve people. The closet on the second floor, and the one in the basement between the servants' hall and kitchen, should be abolished, and the fixed bath on the second floor should be removed. A bath-room wants light and air, and should always be against an outside wall. ”

“ The consistent use of wide clapboarding is indeed a pleasing feature, and there is a touch of genuine originality in the roof treatment around the front dormer. The roominess of the wide veranda is a harmonizing part of the generous proportions of the whole.
A luxurious living room greets you as you enter from the vestibule. The dining room, just to the rear and on a corner gladdens you with its brightness. Your attention is also called to the plentiful light provided throughout—six windows in the living room, three in the dining room and three in the kitchen. ”

“ We see from continual allusions that an ordinary house, even among men of wealth, had usually only one chamber, which served as his sleeping-room, and as the special apartment of the female portion of the 125 household—the lady and her maids, while the hall was employed indiscriminately for cooking, eating and drinking, receiving visitors, and a variety of other purposes, and at night it was used as a common sleeping-room. ”

“ These disadvantages could not but make the Association quite early decide that the one thing above all others needed was a new building with suites of rooms, where families could have the comforts and privacy of homes, which with a large kitchen, bakery, dining rooms, parlors, etc., would make a "unitary dwelling"; approximating to an apartment house of more modern days in many of its details, and improving on it as regards unitary cooking, dining and social conveniences. ”

“ Every normal woman, no matter what sort of bungalow, palace, ranch-house, cave, cottage, or tenement she may be living in, has in her mind's eye a picture of the sort of apartment she'd live in if she could afford it. I've had mine mapped out from the wall-paper in the front hall to the laundry-tubs in the basement, and it doesn't even bear a family resemblance to this.”
“I'm sorry,” stammered T. A. Buck. ”

“ Then the Little Woman strayed into another new house, and was captivated by a series of rooms that ran merrily around a little extension in a manner that allowed the sun to shine into every window.
We had become connoisseurs by this time. We could tell almost the exact shape and price of an apartment from its outside appearance. After one glance inside we could carry the plan mentally for months and reproduce it minutely on paper at will. We had [Pg 80] learned, too, that it is only by living in many houses in rotation that you can know the varied charms of apartment life. ”

“ A house should be planned and constructed for the use of the household, with incidental accommodation for our immediate friends or guests—which can always be done without sacrifice to the comfort or convenience of the regular inmates. In this remark, a stinted and parsimonious spirit is not suggested. A liberal appropriation of rooms in every department; a spare chamber or two, or an additional room on the ground floor, 26 looking to a possible increase of family, and the indulgence of an easy hospitality, should always govern the resident of the country in erecting his dwelling. ”

“ There are evidences that in this old house, with its long passages, and little supplementary stairs leading to the bedrooms, economy has been studied, and yet all that can be done to adapt the place to its purpose has been effected. The sense of fresh air and cleanliness is the {91} first noticeable characteristic. There are no slovenly corners; in sitting-rooms, corridors, or dormitories, whether the latter be little rooms with only two or three beds, or either of the large apartments, with their wide bay-windows looking forth upon the sea. ”

“ The furniture it contains is for use and comfort. It is never out of order, because it is subject to no formal rules. At the left of the hall is the real family home, more secluded and more significant of your own taste and feeling. Instead of many separate apartments for general family use, here are drawing-room, sitting-room, library and parlor, all in one. This is the domestic sanctuary, the essential family home into which outsiders come only by special invitation. ”

“ Lodgings of the ordinary kind in Europe generally consist of the apartments on one floor. The house, we will suppose, consists of three stories above the basement, and each floor contains a parlor, bedroom, and dressing-room, with a small antechamber. (This arrangement of rooms varies, of course, and a larger family occupies two floors.) These three suites of apartments are neatly furnished; bed-clothes, table-linen, and plate, if required, are found by the proprietor, and in the basement story usually lives a man and his wife, who attend to the service of the lodgers ”

“ But aren't forty rooms with all the closets and storerooms, and stairways and halls, and bays and oriels and dungeons going to make a large house for one family? Can't we work the same idea on a smaller scale? ”

“ The rooms must of course have inlaid floors, be newly laid, if possible, and require no repairs. But a little hotel or a separate part of a house in a court-yard looking into a garden would be most desirable. There must be tranquillity, quietness, no blacksmith in the neighbourhood. ”

“ The usual objections taken to a lodging-house are to the effect that the furniture is dingy, the cooking execrable, the servant a slattern, and the landlady either a crocodile or a tigress. Now my indictment against my Wretchedville apartments simply amounts to this: that everything was too new. ”

“ Many a family which now occupies a whole house uptown would be content to rent a floor, suitably fitted up after the manner of the houses of Paris and other European cities. Such an arrangement would spare the women of the family the endless and often painful toil of going up and downstairs, from the kitchen to the top of a three-storied house, three or four times a day. ”