Industrial Housing/Introduction

by Andrew J. Thomas

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INTRODUCTION

AT the close of the nineteenth century, the little city of Bayonne, New Jersey, still retained its early character of a residential center. Located on a low, narrow peninsula which extends along the west side of upper New York Harbor it was rather sparsely covered with little individual wood houses, set in the familiar pattern of rectangular streets, laid out in a multitude of long narrow blocks, as nearly alike as possible—the traditional American town. Slowly growing, it was taking its place as a suburb of New York City. For the most part, industry had left it undisturbed. Self-contained and homogeneous, Bayonne had few serious problems.

How industry transforms a city

But the twentieth century brought a profound change. The Aladdins of industry noticed Bayonne's position on the shore line of the Port of New York, remarked the main line of the Central Railroad of New Jersey running along its water-front, and they saw the big "Hook," a huge tract of low waste land which juts into the harbor opposite Staten Island, along the ship channel into Newark Bay. This combination of transportation routes and undeveloped land meant opportunity. The Aladdins rubbed their magic lamps and behold!—a new Bayonne arose. A collection of huge industrial plants, built by corporations of national and international scope was placed on the Bayonne peninsula, with wharves, avenues, business buildings, schools, churches, institutions and recreational facilities, together with the transportation lines required to serve all this complicated machinery. And lastly, the army of workers arrived, who were to make the machinery go.

In the quick transformation, the Hook section went to the oil companies—the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, and the Gulf Oil, the Vacuum Oil and the Tidewater Oil Companies, whose tankers could come and go from the wharves at their refineries to all the ports of the world. Manufacturing plants like the International Nickel Company, the American Radiator Company and the Pacific Borax Company, occupied locations near the railroad tracks. Somewhere near these refineries and factories the workers found housing of the sort offered by the local real estate market.

Bayonne was changed by the genii of industry from one end to the other in its physical aspect, and in its social structure it was changed from top to bottom. Formerly a quiet, residential suburb, it suddenly became busy, heterogeneous, industrial. A familiar story, this coming of industry into an old-fashioned city—so familiar, indeed, that its consequences are not heeded. But it is a process of revolution, and cannot avoid leaving scars.

Industry creates problems in housing

New times bring new problems and housing is one of these. In the picture of industrial expansion, as it exists in the minds of most people, housing does not figure prominently. The need of the wage-earner for a home is assumed to care for itself in the market furnished by the local real estate interests. Although all the resources of finance and of technical skill, driven by a relentless impulse for progress, are marshalled to secure the utmost efficiency of manufacturing plants, of railroads, shipping and other transport, as well as of many types of buildings like banks, warehouses and schools, how much science is used to keep the housing of the people abreast of the times?

The increasing complexity of the times and the steady rise in prices now bear very heavily on housing, and, in cities where industrial expansion takes place, breakdowns in housing production are occurring. It is not so much that new houses for the wage-earners are not built, but that such houses as are built are too expensive and of a low standard. Bayonne furnished one of these examples of housing breakdown.

Such was the local situation in 1917, and a new event arrived to precipitate the crisis. This was the entrance of the United States into the World War.

When war was declared, the business leaders in Bayonne knew that the local housing market could not well take care of the renewed influx of workers which would result from the big contracts for war material which were expected at the Bayonne plants. A small group of men, acting at the instance of the Bayonne Chamber of Commerce, undertook to deal with the situation in an effective way. This was the special Housing Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, headed by Mr. C. J. Hicks, Executive Assistant to the Chairman and to the President of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

Mr. Hicks took a deep interest in the matter from the first. His first care was to survey the housing situation of the Bayonne workers and then to formulate a program of principles, upon which remedial action should be based. This he did, and the most striking thing about his ideas is, that, notwithstanding the critical nature of the local situation and the war emergency confronting him, he made no concession to expediency, but, instead, set the standards to be embodied in the local housing high above the ordinary. He recognized the essential of low cost, but he also insisted that the highest architectural ideal be attained. Specifically, he urged housing of an "open" plan, having all rooms flooded with daylight, and provided with complete sanitary equipment, set in garden surroundings, with sufficient recreation space. The Committee agreed that the restricted amount of land available in Bayonne made necessary the apartment type rather than detached homes or housing of the row type.

The Bayonne Housing Corporation organized

Mr. Hicks and his associates became deeply interested in the problem because they felt that it was a universal one, and they know that the situation in Bayonne existed to a greater or less extent in countless cities and industrial districts throughout the United States. Any experience, therefore, which would be gained in Bayonne was sure to be valuable elsewhere. The Housing Committee determined to proceed along as broad lines as possible and to reach, if they could, the heart of the problem of industrial housing. Their first practical step was to organize the Bayonne Housing Corporation for the purpose of building houses.

The war ended a few months later, and peace brought new economic disturbances. The post-war readjustments blocked the housing program of Mr. Hicks' committee but, notwithstanding every discouragement, after a long effort, financial backing of about $1,000,000 was secured and the first group of houses was completed in the winter of 1924-25.

These first garden apartments of the Bayonne Housing Corporation were built as a demonstration of an ideal method of producing wage-earners' housing. In essentials, the ideal is this: a home of five or six rooms and bath and "modern" conveniences, set in a beautiful environment of architecture and gardens; this home to be produced and operated on sound business principles and to be rented to yield a moderate return on the capital invested, and at a figure which the average thrifty wage-earner could reasonably afford to pay. It will be seen that there is no philanthropy in this ideal, but that it has both an economic and social basis.

The instrument created to undertake the enterprise, the Bayonne Housing Corporation, represents national interests among its stockholders who include representatives of corporations having industrial plants in Bayonne, and a few individuals. These corporations are the Standard Oil of New Jersey, Tidewater Oil Company, Vacuum Oil Company, Pacific Borax Company, Babcock & Wilcox Company, The International Nickel Company, Bayonne Supply Co.; and among the individuals are Messrs. John D. Rockefeller, Sr., John D. Rockefeller, Jr., E. S. Harkness, W. M. Cosgrove, of the American Radiator Company and J. E. Johnson, with Mr. George E. Keenen of Bayonne as President of the Housing Corporation. One of the most interested backers of this enterprise was the late J. H. Mahrken, a public-spirited citizen of Bayonne.

Housing based on business principles

From the first the sponsors of the Bayonne Housing Corporation decided that a more rigid application of business methods in housing was needed in order to bring the ideal home which they had in mind within reach of the wage-earner. They knew that houses were being built everywhere in great numbers, especially in smaller centres, but too much of this housing was of inferior types, and was too expensive in both production and operation costs. The expensive character of this new construction served to set an exorbitant level of rent and sale prices, to which the prices of older houses must inevitably rise in the course of a few years. In fact, such a situation had already developed in the metropolitan area of New York City. There, in a number of instances people were paying for the privilege of living in antiquated, depreciated, insanitary, inflammable, dark,

Breaking ground for the Bayonne wage-earners' homes. The Mayor of Bayonne and the officers and directors of the Bayonne Housing Corporation start the work

cheerless "cold water flats," as much as they would pay for the new apartments of the Bayonne Housing Corporation. When the rise in prices of old construction to the level of prices of new construction was finally complete, the wage—earner—even the high-paid one—would find that he could not afford a suitable home. He would accordingly be obliged to accept a reduction in his standard of living.

It was felt that capital, no less than labor, would deplore any reduction in the standard of living of the workers in industry, and the individuals interested in the Bayonne experiment were ready to lend a hand in placing the production of wage-earners' houses on a sounder business basis.

That the particular section of the real estate market which produces wage-earners' housing is careless of the social interest, and that it operates inefficiently, with heavy economic waste in many industrial centres of the country—this is a truth well known to housing experts. The fact is that housing suffers from a somewhat obsolete and primitive business system in which small-scale methods of operation, heavy overhead, inefficient production, and excessive speculation are the chief causes of failure. From an economic viewpoint, the great need in wage-earners' housing is efficient large-scale production.

The American worker enjoys his present high standard of living because modern business methods have been introduced into the manufacture of his food, his clothes, his household goods, his education, his recreation, even of his luxuries, and there is every reason why the same efficiency should apply in housing, which, next to food, is the largest item in the wage-earner's budget.

The social responsibility

But the cornerstone of housing policy is the social and civic responsibility. The home is more than an ordinary article of trade, to be bought and sold like a cake of soap or a box of cigars; on the contrary, it is a personal thing, in fact the most fundamental institution of civilization. The sponsors of the Bayonne undertaking felt that the most fundamental defect in wage-earners' housing was, that it was produced with too little regard for the social and civic welfare, which, after all, should be the basis of housing policy, and they sought to cooperate with officials, with other public-spirited organizations and citizens, and with labor in setting the standards of housing as high as possible.

The charter of the Bayonne Housing Corporation guarantees the social policy in housing. The Company is in the nature of a public enterprise having the support of the Bayonne Chamber of Commerce, and it solicits the active co-operation of labor, officials, and of public-spirited organizations and citizens in bettering housing standards in their city. It may be termed a capitalist enterprise only to the extent that a large-scale housing corporation involves important business responsibilities which necessarily must be assumed by capital interests. Because of its civic character, the Bayonne Housing Corporation may be said to be an unofficial public service corporation, without possessing the usual franchise privileges or being subject to regulation of its acts by the State in the same way that a public utility is controlled.

This conception of a public-spirited housing corporation which represents all civic interests marks an important advance

Children's playground in New York's "East Side"

on the old idea of "company housing," which, though often inspired by good motives, nevertheless had certain fundamental defects. The chief fault of company housing was, that it superposed the landlord-tenant strife on the capital-labor antagonism, and thus created a combination which has been responsible for some of the most unsavory episodes in American industrial history.

The first group of homes

The principles on which the Bayonne Housing Corporation operates are successfully illustrated in this first group of houses, designed by Andrew J. Thomas, architect, of New York City. In these garden apartments the wage-earner enjoys a home of a much higher standard than the local real estate market offers, and he pays a rental of from two dollars or three to four dollars a room a month less. Specifically, this means the standard home mentioned, a home of four, five or six rooms—including a bathroom and other modern conveniences, steam heat and hot water supplied by the landlord—in a house which is well planned, soundly constructed, good architecturally, and set in the midst of gardens. This achievement brings within the reach of the higher-paid wage-earner an ideal home of the American standard of living. By thus demonstrating that the better-paid wage-earner can be ideally housed, the ultimate goal in housing, namely, the lower-paid ranks of the population—is brought nearer realization.

The methods which produced this success are treated at length in the following chapters, which explain the economics of industrial housing, the architecture of the garden apartment, and the history of the Bayonne Housing Corporation.