Page:Architectural Record 1920-08 Vol 48 Iss 2.djvu/43

 Garden Aparlmenls in Cilies

By John ‘Taylor Boyd, Jr.

Part II (Conclusion)

HE preceding article outlined the

development of the garden apart-

ment in New York City. Since this subject of city housing is a com- plicated one indeed, only certain essen- tials of it could be touched on. These the factors of design, finance, man- agement, and the legal aspects of sanita- tion and public welfare in their relation- ship one to another, together with some possibilities of their influence on the future. The actual character of the garden apartment itself, particularly its design and its various types, was left to be considered in this paper.

As to the types of garden apartments, it is well to remember that city housing deals with a multitude of conditions. In order to appreciate these better, and with- out attempting any scientific classifica- tion, one may describe three classes, bas- ing distinctions on the scale of rentals. First, and forming the largest class, are the apartments for the wage earners, the class which is lowest in the scale of ren- tals; second, and not so extensive, is the housing for the economic class, just above the wage earners, chiefly the salaried workers; and, third, are the more spa- cious and luxurious apartments of wealthier citizens.

Of these three classes, the housing for the wage earners is by far the most im- portant, for tworeasons. As noted above, it forms the bulk of a city’s housing, and it is the most difficult to provide at ren- tals that can be paid out of wage scales. In fact, this relation of rental cost to wage scales is really the crux of the housing difficulty of the day. Ina sense, the “housing problem” is not properly a housing problem at all, but concerns rather the economic life of the nation. It involves the establishing of wage scales that will allow wage earners to maintain

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reasonable standards of living which are necessary to good citizenship. Proper shelter is only a part of this reasonable standard of living.

Wage scales vary, of course, among wage earners, and at the top are the higher paid mechanics in factories, the skilled hand workers, and the clerical workers. The lower-paid workers, chief- ly the unskilled, are really in a different economic situation and might even be said to form a fourth class in housing. They are obviously the most difficult class of all to house, and, in most American cities, masses of them still dwell in old, deteriorated buildings, whieh are rented to them at a figure that comes within their slender means. Until the wages of this class of workers can be raised to a point that will allow most of them to afford better housing, slums will con- tinue to flourish. This condition may be stated in another way, by saying that there are many industries which are able to earn profits only by paying such low wages that their employees are forced to live in outworn buildings, or in buildings built for other purposes than housing, and which, in the process of growth of cities, have been abandoned to become slums. In reality £ part of the capital of such industries is “invisible capital,” belong- ing to undesirable landlords in the form of slums. This relationship of slums to certain industries in a city should always be kept in mind in planning any compre- hensive schemes for city housing.

Another difficult factor in providing proper housing for wage earners is that building ordinances and standards of liv- ing decree that this low-rent housing shall be, in many essentials, of the same high class construction as the apartments for wealthier classes. In most cities first- fire-resisting construction is re-

those

class