"Common lodging-house" is a Victorian era term for a form of cheap accommodation in which the inhabitants (who are not members of one family) are all lodged together in the same room or rooms, whether for eating or sleeping. [1] The slang terms dosshouse (British English) and flophouse (North American English) designate roughly the equivalent of common lodging-houses. The nearest modern equivalent is a hostel.
There was no statutory definition of the class of houses in England intended to be included in the expression common lodging-house, but the definition used above was adopted to include those houses which, under the Public Health Act 1875 and other legislation, must be registered and inspected. [1] The provisions of the Public Health Act were that every urban and rural district council must keep registers showing the names and residences of the keepers of all common lodging-houses in their districts, the location of every such house, and the number of lodgers authorized by them. [1]
The scandalous condition of the common lodging houses in London, which were frequently the resort of criminals and prostitutes, prompted the Common Lodging Houses Acts 1851 and 1853. These regulations, however, proved ineffectual, and the requirement that residents vacate the premises between 10 a.m. and late afternoon hit poor and sick residents hard, as they were obliged to walk the streets in the intervening period in all weathers. [2]
Even tighter control was imposed when regulation of common lodging houses was transferred from the police to the London County Council in 1894, [1] resulting in the imposition of higher standards and regular inspection of the premises by council officials. The new regulations required the landlords to limewash the walls and ceilings twice a year, [1] and mixed-sex accommodation (which was frequently a cover for a brothel) was abolished. Proper beds and bedding had also to be provided instead of mattresses on the floor and worse. [3]
Urban reformer Jacob Riis was not only an advocate for improving the condition of people living in cheap lodging houses; he had lived in them as a young man, an experience he described in his slum memoir How the Other Half Lives (1890). Riis states that most lodging house residents were unskilled day laborers whose low wages meant they could not afford other housing. Lodging house residents worked at "menial tasks involved with building industrial plants and street railroads, paving streets, laying pipe and wire for gas and electric systems, and erecting new buildings" and working at "docks, warehouses, and factories". [4] The demand for casual workers fluctuated a great deal from the 1890s to the 1930s; as such, lodging houses provided an inexpensive place for these mobile workers to live. The peak demand for city lodging houses was in the winter, when there was little rural work. To cope with this surge in demand, lodging "house keepers doubled up people in rooms and set more cots out into the hallways." Black workers had difficulties getting housing due to the "color line" restrictions of racial segregation. While most of the lodging house residents were men, some women lived there, often in a separate room. [5]
A wide range of lodging house prices were available, depending on how much privacy and common areas they offered, ranging from private rooms, semi-private cubicles (nicknamed "cribs" or "cages"- a reference to the chicken wire that topped the cubicles- they had seven foot walls around a 5 foot by 7 foot space), and the cheapest "flophouse" style lodgings. [5] Most lodging houses had no dining area or restaurant facilities, unless it was in an old hotel. A difference between rooming houses and cheap lodging houses is that rooming houses charged by the week, whereas lodging houses charged for each day, only rarely making weekly tenure available. In major cities, five story or higher rooming houses were common; in smaller cities, three or four stories was the norm. The fairly expensive, 40 cents-per-night lodging house usually had a mattress, chair and clothes hook. The most expensive lodging houses had a little dresser and a basin for water with taps. [4]
A 1913 San Francisco health inspector's report on a 40-cents per night (the top end of the price range) lodging house described it as: [5]
Three-story frame. Saloon on first floor. Thirty-nine rooms [upstairs]. Skylight in hall does not ventilate. Five inside rooms on each floor have window in unventilated hall. One fire escape; one stairway; large hall; four toilets; four baths; twelve stationary basins. Hot water in bath rooms... Many rooms have double beds.
Not all lodging houses were heated, but if heat was available, it would be from hot stoves placed in the hallways. The residents faced "vermin, general filth, and horrific smells", along with "[l]ice, other bedbugs, and mice". The lowest form of lodging house was the flophouse, which typically did not offer beds, providing instead "mattresses or piles of rags with a blanket", hammocks, or simply floor space (with the expectation that renters had their own bedroll). [5] An even lower variant of the flophouse was "unlicensed dives where a lodger could sleep in a corner of a tenement room for 5 cents, or for 3 cents curl up in a sheltered hallway", an approach sometimes used in after-hours theatres. [5]
These rough conditions caused concern amongst reformers and activists, who got City Hall and police stations opened up as emergency lodging, an approach that served only a small percentage of the underhoused population. Another effort was municipal lodging houses, such as the building opened in New York City in 1896. [5] At municipal lodging houses, residents got an iron cot and two light meals if they agreed to "interrogation, fumigation, a shower, a promise of docile behavior, and often at least two hours a day chopping wood or cleaning alleys". Some philanthropists opened hotels for lodging house purposes, such as the 1897 Mills Hotel built by Darius O. Mills. [4] In 1913, the Golden West Hotel was built in San Diego to provide low cost lodging for working men. The Salvation Army opened its first mission in 1890s, soon rising to 44 locations across the US where low cost beds and food were available. While the Salvation Army and similar mission lodging houses were cleaner and offered free or very low cost meals and lodging (often "in return for a sermon or prayer meeting"), they had strict rules on behaviour. [4]
An apartment, flat, or unit is a self-contained housing unit that occupies part of a building, generally on a single storey. There are many names for these overall buildings. The housing tenure of apartments also varies considerably, from large-scale public housing, to owner occupancy within what is legally a condominium, to tenants renting from a private landlord.
A boarding house is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms on a nightly basis, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months, and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "room and board," that is, some meals as well as accommodation.
A bedroom or bedchamber is a room situated within a residential or accommodation unit characterised by its usage for sleeping and sexual activity. A typical western bedroom contains as bedroom furniture one or two beds, a clothes closet, and bedside table and dressing table, both of which usually contain drawers. Except in bungalows, ranch style homes, ground floor apartments, or one-storey motels, bedrooms are usually on one of the floors of a dwelling that is above ground level. Beds range from a crib for an infant; a single or twin bed for a toddler, child, teenager or single adult; to bigger sizes like a full, double, queen, king or California king). Beds and bedrooms are often devised to create barriers to insects and vermin, especially mosquitoes, and to dampen or contain light or noise to aid sleep and privacy.
A flophouse or doss-house is a place that offers very low-cost lodging, providing space to sleep and minimal amenities.
An ice hotel is a temporary hotel made up of snow and sculpted blocks of ice. Ice hotels, dependent on sub-freezing temperatures, are constructed from ice and snow and typically have to be rebuilt every year. Ice hotels exist in several countries, and they have varying construction styles, services and amenities, the latter of which may include ice bars, restaurants, chapels, saunas and hot tubs.
Single room occupancy is a form of housing that is typically aimed at residents with low or minimal incomes, or single adults who like a minimalist lifestyle, who rent small, furnished single rooms with a bed, chair, and sometimes a small desk. SRO units are rented out as permanent residence and/or primary residence to individuals, within a multi-tenant building where tenants share a kitchen, toilets or bathrooms. SRO units range from 7 to 13 square metres. In some instances, contemporary units may have a small refrigerator, microwave, or sink.
Mills House No. 1 or the Mills Hotel at 160 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City was built as a hotel for poor men. It was funded by banker Darius Ogden Mills and designed by Ernest Flagg and opened in 1897. The building is now The Atrium.
The Boston University housing system is the 2nd-largest of any private university in the United States, with 76% of the undergraduate population living on campus. On-campus housing at BU is an unusually diverse melange, ranging from individual 19th-century brownstone town houses and apartment buildings acquired by the school to large-scale high-rises built in the 60s and 2000s.
A rooming house, also called a "multi-tenant house", is a "dwelling with multiple rooms rented out individually", in which the tenants share kitchen and often bathroom facilities. Rooming houses are often used as housing for low-income people, as rooming houses are the least expensive housing for single adults. Rooming houses are usually owned and operated by private landlords. Rooming houses are better described as a "living arrangement" rather than a specially "built form" of housing; rooming houses involve people who are not related living together, often in an existing house, and sharing a kitchen, bathroom, and a living room or dining room. Rooming houses in this way are similar to group homes and other roommate situations. While there are purpose-built rooming houses, these are rare.
An apartment hotel or aparthotel is a serviced apartment complex that uses a hotel-style booking system. It is similar to renting an apartment, but with no fixed contracts and occupants can "check out" whenever they wish, subject to the applicable minimum length of stay imposed by the company.
The Jane is a boutique hotel at 505–507 West Street, on the northeastern corner with Jane Street, in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was constructed in 1908 by the American Seaman's Friend Society (ASFS) as a sailors' boarding house called the American Seamen's Friend Society Sailors' Home and Institute. The Jane was designed by William A. Boring in the Georgian style and is a New York City designated landmark.
The McCormick Road Dormitories are one of two main areas of first-year living dormitories at the University of Virginia, the other being the Alderman Road Dormitories. Ten houses make up the residence area located on McCormick Road. The dormitory area was constructed in 1950 and holds nearly 1300 students. Although older and lacking in modern amenities compared to "New Dorms," Old Dorms are closer to Central Grounds and contain larger rooms.
The Gulf Hotel fire claimed 55 lives in the early-morning hours of September 7, 1943 in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. The fire remains the worst loss of life in a fire in the city's history.
The Bowery House is an historic hotel on the Bowery in Manhattan, New York City, that mimics its former incarnation as a flophouse.
The Arcadia Hotel fire occurred on December 3, 1913 in a flophouse on the corner of Washington and Laconia Streets in Boston's South End. The fire killed 28 persons, making it the deadliest in Boston at that time, passing the Great Boston Fire of 1872.
Benburb Street is a street in Dublin, Ireland.
Bride Road is a street in the medieval area of Dublin, Ireland.
Lodgers in Bayard Street Tenement, Five Cents a Spot is a black and white photograph taken by Danish American photographer Jacob Riis, in 1889. It was included in his photographic book How the Other Half Lives, published in 1890.
