Industrial Housing/The Garden Apartment

by Andrew J. Thomas

Layout 2

CHAPTER II

The Garden Apartment

THE garden apartment was chosen by the Bayonne Housing Corporation as the type of architecture most suited to wage-earners' housing. Its chief advantages are: economy in production and in operating costs, and in the housewife's labor, convenience of living, and beautiful environment of architecture, garden, and playground. These factors give the wage-earner a home of a far higher standard of living than he can obtain in other housing types.

Economy, of course, is the basis of industrial housing, and there are several reasons for the superior economy of the garden apartment. By grouping several families, one above the other, on the land, it conserves land together with the cost of the municipal services and of the public utilities outside the house itself, which, as explained in the previous chapter, have so heavily increased the cost of a wage-earner's home. As an illustration of this truth, the cost of the assessment for street paving between curbs per family housed in the Bayonne group is approximately $39, as compared with $112 if row houses of sixteen-foot frontage each were built, or as compared with $210 for single houses of thirty-foot frontage.

The garden apartment is more economical than other housing types in building construction because it has a lower cost per family housed. This is because the cost of roof, foundations, cellar, and stairway construction, and of the plumbing, heating and electric installations are spread over several families instead of one or two. This fact scarcely needs illustration. And even if the construction of the apartment is heavier than that of small dwellings, its more substantial character gives to it the advantages of lower depreciation and less fire risk. As pointed out in the previous chapter, one of the main causes of slums is the depreciation on the light, jerry construction of the average workingman's home. The Bayonne housing, on the contrary, embodies the soundest standards of construction, and its workmanship is of the best.

Kitchen in a wage-earner's garden apartment

The co-operation of labor

This excellent workmanship is due largely to the co-operation of labor. Bayonne is a difficult city for building construction, since its inaccessiblity from New York City and from other New Jersey centers makes it unattractive to workers in the building trades. In order to induce men to come to Bayonne, it was necessary to pay bonuses to the building craftsmen in certain trades, to cover the cost of their transportation from other cities to Bayonne. As an example, the masons received $14 a day. Notwithstanding these premiums, even higher rates were offered by contractors who were bidding for labor at the height of the building boom. A serious situation developed in the Bayonne housing, which threatened to wreck the project. The architect stepped in, and, at a meeting held at the site of the buildings with several labor leaders present, he made a personal appeal to the workmen to remain at their tasks. He told them how the sponsors of the undertaking were making an experiment to prove that ideal housing could be brought within reach of the workers. Such a demonstration, said Mr. Thomas, meant everything to the welfare of all American labor, and the experiment would fail if the Bayonne Housing Corporation were compelled to pay extravagant wages. The workmen heeded the architect's appeal and, almost without exception, they stuck to their jobs, and gave their best efforts to produce. Labor, therefore, deserves a full share of credit for the success of the undertaking.

Construction and finish

In construction, the exterior of the buildings is masonry walls, built of hollow tile with outside facing of brick. This construction is more economical than solid brick walls, on account of the air spaces in the tile which do away with the necessity of forming air spaces by furring the walls. The walls were dampproofed on the inside and the plastering applied direct to the masonry. As noted previously, non-fireproof stairs are the cause of a shocking loss of life in tenement house fires, but in Bayonne the stairways, as well as the dumbwaiters, are of fire-resisting construction, the first floor is fireproof, and firewalls divide each building in the centre. Otherwise, the construction is timber for floors, roofs and interior walls and partitions. The

Exterior of group—garden apartments

roof is flat; having a covering of several layers of tar and roofing felt, with copper metalwork used for skylights, flashings and ventilators. This construction reduces substantially the hazard to life by fire, as exemplified by the experience of the "Newlaw" tenements in New York City, where, in a quarter of a century's experience in thousands of buildings, scarcely a single life has so far been lost by fire.

In the interior, the finish is substantial and attractive. The floors are double thickness, the top or finished flooring being of oak throughout the apartments, except in the bathrooms and

of the Bayonne Housing Corporation

shower-bathrooms, where it is tile. The walls and ceilings are generally three-coat gypsum plaster on wood lath. Exceptions to this rule are the bathrooms and shower-bathrooms, where a special lath is used; and the stairways and entrance halls and vestibules, where the walls are faced with a golden tapestry brick which, with the green-and-purple split-face slate floors and hand-surfaced oak entrance doors, makes an attractive entrance and at the same time reduces upkeep at points where upkeep is heaviest. The trim in stairhalls and around the dumbwaiters is kalamein, and elsewhere in the apartments it is wood. Both trim and walls are heavily painted. The stairs are steel, with wearing surfaces of heavy slate.

Mechanical equipment

The mechanical equipment of the housing is most substantial and durable. The plumbing lines are wrought iron, using brass piping at the fixtures, which latter are of a very durable character. Hot water is supplied to the apartments from a coal heater and storage tank located in the cellar of each building. Each bathroom is completely equipped with lavatory, built-in tub and toilet having a flushometer valve; and each kitchen has a sink with drainboard and swinging spout, a pair of washtrays, a dresser, a pot and broom closet, and a two-chambered refrigerator. The heating is a single-pipe steam system, the heat generated by a boiler in each building. The principal rooms are heated by radiators, with heating risers used elsewhere. The hardware and lighting fixtures are simple and substantial. In all respects the interior is cheerful, homelike and in good taste.

One most progressive feature is the provision which has been made for drying laundry on the roofs of the buildings. Racks for hanging clothes and platforms are provided, and the dumbwaiters are carried up to the roofs. In the Bayonne housing the rear of the apartments will not be disfigured with draped lines of laundry in the usual fashion.

The advance in planning

But, however striking may be the economy of the Bayonne housing, and the progress made in living standards, the biggest advantage of all is the plan. As compared with other types of apartment houses, particularly the kind usually produced by the speculative builder, these garden apartments show a saving in floor space per family housed of a fifth to a quarter at least. A study of the plan of the typical H-shaped building in the Bayonne housing reveals an almost entire absence of nonrent paying space in the form of corridors and halls. But, even more important is the elimination of waste volume in the rooms themselves. There is scarcely any variation in the sizes of the rooms of each type—living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, baths. The sizes have been fixed for the type as being ample for good living conditions and no increase over these sizes has been allowed, since that would have meant increased cost and higher rentals. Such relentless "boiling out" of wasted volume is imperative in housing design. A long, tedious process it is, and its great value can be demonstrated only by a thorough statistical analysis comparing the Bayonne plan with that used by the average speculator. It should be understood that every cubic foot of volume cut out of a building means a saving of 30 cents or more in construction cost, as well as an additional saving thereafter of 2½ to 3 cents each year in carrying charges and in upkeep.

Comparison with one-family and row housing types

A discussion of the type of housing chosen for Bayonne should include a comparison of its economy with that of the other types of very small houses. This comparison is desirable because there is a school of housing experts in the United States and England which is fixed in its opposition to the apartment, preferring the single-family and row housing types or their variations. Recently, however, this school has begun to turn away from the single-family house as a result of the discovery that it is too expensive in land and in municipal utilities. The report of the New York State Commission of Housing and Regional Planning for 1925 is explicit on this point. It cites the experience of the United States Housing Corporation (p. 57) to the effect that the average cost of a lot of 4,200 sq. ft. in housing built for 21,000 wage-earners' families during the World War just about equalled the cost of a room in the house itself. The New York report refers to the little houses which are now being built on unpaved streets in the outskirts of New York cities, and adds, (p. 60): "It is doubtful if these areas, as free standing single-family neighborhoods, can ever be served with modern utilities unless they are subsidized in part from the general taxes paid by the more intensively used sections." In other words, the single-family house, because of its higher cost in land and public utilities and also because of its greater construction cost, is becoming uneconomic for the average wage-earner in most localities.

The single-family house having proved impracticable, the opponents of the apartment house are now pinning their faith on the row house, generally of the Philadelphia type. They assert that the row house is more economical of land and public

A Bedroom

improvements than the one-family house; that it has the advantage of a small garden space, and, finally, they further advocate it because it retains the principle of home-ownership.

The row house, however, has distinct disadvantages as compared with the garden apartment. As noted above, it is much less economical of land than the Bayonne type, which covers 36% of the site area. The row house contains more non-rent paying space. The result is, that the garden apartment gives to the wage-earner a five-room apartment at about the same cost as a four-room row house. This difference between four and five rooms is not 25%, it should be pointed out, but means 50% or 100% difference in bedrooms. The real measure of the standard of living in a home is the number of bedrooms. What gives to the American wage-earner's five and six-room home so striking a superiority over the three and four-room standard of the European worker is the greater number of bedrooms.

The bearing on housing policy of the excessive cost of the row house, as compared with the garden apartment, is not clearly enough appreciated. Under present conditions, when even the garden apartment is beyond the means of the lowerpaid workers, the insistence of many housing experts that the row house is the only solution for wage-earner's housing, seems somewhat arbitrary.

As to the merits of the individual garden of the row house, one may question whether it is not over-rated. The fact is, that many families have neither the desire nor the energy to adopt gardening as a side-issue, and in consequence the garden of the row house often degenerates into the well-known "back yard"—a waste of expensive land, unkempt and obnoxious. The garden can be used only a few months in the year; and, in any case it is no substitute for the second or third bedroom whose cost it equals.

However, the greatest defect of the row house is that it is an inferior type of architecture. This is on account of its deficiencies in daylight and ventilation in the rooms, and because of its monotonous, depressing appearance. As the report of the Committee on Community Planning of the American Institute of Architects for 1925 observes, the row house of the Philadelphia type "was planned to fit the requirements of (the excessively narrow) lots rather than to serve the uses of tenants." The real value of the row house in allowing home-ownership can be offset in the apartment by co-operative ownership. The possibilities of co-operative ownership in industrial housing are big indeed; both on the social and the financial sides, co-operative ownership may well prove to be the next important advance in housing technique. At Bayonne, however, it was not thought desirable to carry the first experiment so far, and the apartments are rented to the wage-earners.

Economy of operation

Coming now to the matter of operating cost, it is evident that the garden apartment is economical in operation. Since its production cost is lower, it has the benefit of lower carrying charges. The upkeep also is lower, as explained in previous pages.

The economy of the garden apartment may be best summarized by stating that it effects a saving of about a fifth to a third over its nearest competitor which is the speculative builder's apartment houses with rooms of the same size. And, as compared with the individual or row house in which the tenant provides his own heat and hot water, the Bayonne apartments are much more economical.

A new type of management

As to the vital factor of management, this Bayonne group of garden apartments enjoys greater efficiency and economy in its operation by a small force of janitors, firemen and cleaners, under the supervision of an executive who is experienced in real-estate management, than would be the case if it were split into 149 small unit houses with 149 heating plants and 149 hotwater heaters, all maintained by 149 families.

It may be well to point out here that the garden apartment in industrial housing requires an entirely different type of management from the ordinary tenement house property. Just as the garden apartment itself is superior to the old type of tenement as a motor car is superior to an ox-team, so is its management a new conception. Proper management of the garden apartment is based on business principles in which the good-will of the tenants is paramount. One often hears the complaint that tenants in tenements are incapable of good-will, but, if we be honest, can we say that the usual tenement is a fit object of good-will? And is the typical tenement management, vainly struggling with the problem of upkeep in a property which has depreciated beyond the point where decent maintenance is possible, and, at the same time exacting higher rents—is management such as this likely to arouse charitable feelings? Under enlightened administration, nearly all the usual difficulties of managing tenement property disappear or become unimportant. The long experience of the City and Suburban Homes Company of New York City, and the results obtained in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's garden tenements, as well as in the Bayonne housing, are conclusive on this point. They prove that a big majority of the tenants respond to their environment, and create thus a powerful public opinion in favor of order. The few backward individuals soon come to obey public opinion, backed by the tactful reminder of the management that rents are much higher elsewhere. In the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's housing the 12,000-name waiting list is significant in this connection.

Furthermore, the design of the garden apartment is an effective aid to good management. With its open plan, a stream of daylight is turned on every window, fire-escape and entrance, searching out the slightest infraction of the rules, or any slovenly housekeeping, holding them up to the public gaze and to the eye of the manager. There are no dark recesses in the buildings where filth can collect through the carelessness of either management or tenants. By good planning the untidy back yard and clothes lines for laundry are removed. In industrial housing high standards of architecture are essential to good management. And good management is essential to economy.

Rentals in the Bayonne housing

As a result of the economy of design, the rentals in the Bayonne Housing Corporation's apartments are $10.25 a room a month on the first, second and third floors, $9.75 a room a month for apartments on the fourth floor, and $9.00 a room on the fifth floor. These rentals include the bathrooms, and also, as explained above, steam heat, hot water and janitor service, worth at least $2 or $3 a room a month more.

This schedule of charges brings a modern four, five or six-room home within the means of the better paid wage-earner's family. The most that a wage-earner should be expected to pay in rent is from one-fifth to a quarter of his income, and before

A living room in a garden apartment home

the war the proportion was usually much lower than that, rarely more than 15%, and often even lower.

Architectural merits—the plan

But the greatest merit of the garden apartment is, that it offers the wage-earner an ideal home. Economy and efficiency, essential as they are in industrial housing, will not alone suffice unless the housing is humanly attractive and personal, for these are the qualities which create the ideal home. Some understanding of the architecture of the garden apartment is therefore desirable.

The plan is the basis of architecture, and never was this truth more evident than in the case of the garden apartment. The most striking characteristic of its plan is openness—openness which allows a maximum of daylight in the buildings, circulation of air and garden space. Specifically, the openness of the Bayonne plan is indicated by the fact that the buildings cover only 36% of the area of the site, whereas the older types of tenement usually cover 70% or 80% or even more. In Bayonne nearly two-thirds of the plot is devoted to lawns and gardens. As a result there is ample space for fore-lawns along the streets, and, for its most important feature, a huge centre garden which extends the whole length of the block. The openness has the additional merit of allowing the buildings to be isolated, in contrast to the usual practice of not separating them.

Such openness of plan requires large-scale design, in which the city block, taken as a whole, is the proper unit. At Bayonne the experiment took in only about one-half of a long city block, a plot fronting on three streets, East 11th and East 12th Streets and Avenue "E." This size proved sufficient to demonstrate the efficiency of large-scale planning, not only in respect to ideal architecture, but also as regards economy of production cost, which, as pointed out in previous pages, necessitates large-scale operation.

The houses provide homes for 149 families, generally in four, five and six-room apartments. Each apartment has a fully equipped bathroom, and the six-room apartments have, in addition, a shower-bathroom, as will be explained later.

Five buildings were planned, of which four are on a unit plan, and are typical of the architectural ideal. These typical unit buildings house 26 families each. The fifth building, fronting

A dining room

principally on Avenue "E" and located at the end of the group, has an irregular plan, due to the fact that Avenue "E" cuts the two side streets at an angle.

It should be noted here that such openness of plan is not merely an artistic fancy as might be thought, but has instead a sound basis in economy. The big saving of the garden apartment in cubic volume of building, as compared with older types, has been explained above. The point of this saving in its relation to openness is, so to speak, that it serves to put the excess space outside the building where its cost, being only land cost, is comparatively little. A further illustration of the economy of open planning, leads into an extremely complicated discussion of the technique of architectural planning, dealing with the relationship of land value to the percentage of site area covered by building. It may be stated, however, that when the building covers too high a percentage of area, it inevitably becomes more complicated and more wasteful of space; and that, in attempting to crowd too many rooms into an apartment plan on a given site, a point is reached where each additional room makes the cost of the building higher than the income from that room will pay for. In other words, the theory held in real estate circles that every possible room must be crowded into a plan is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Not only has the practice caused huge waste of building volume, but it results in an even worse error, namely, that of creating a large percentage of undesirable rooms—rooms badly located, dark and poorly ventilated, which hurt the rental value of the building.

This plan arrangement brings back daylight and circulation of air into city life. Every apartment has cheerful, sunny rooms, with two or three exposures; the rooms are never more than two deep, the apartments extending through the building, giving thus to all rooms, cross-ventilation; and a large number of the bedrooms are corner rooms. Living rooms and dining rooms are separate from the bedrooms, and the kitchen is also isolated; nevertheless, the plan ensures ease of operation for the housewife. This arrangement, together with the provision of the entrance foyer, of separate stairways serving only three apartments on a floor, is conducive to privacy. The wall spaces, and the door and window openings in the rooms allow convenient placing of furniture. The excellence of the kitchen and bathroom equipment has been noted above. The

Bedroom with extra bathroom in a six-room apartment

apartments consist generally of four, five and six rooms each, with bathroom and with bathroom and shower-bathroom in the six-room apartment.

One innovation is the bedroom with extra bath in the sixroom apartments. It is located near the entrance, and forms a separate apartment within the apartment, so to speak. This accommodation was planned for those numerous families who share their home with relatives or parents, or with grown sons or daughters, who require a little separation and privacy, or who reduce their living expenses by taking one or two "roomers" who are not members of the family. These cases are frequent, and unless they are properly arranged for in the planning they are apt to cause crowding and personal friction. In the cellar of each building is a room for baby carriages.

The garden environment

All these practical needs and the human and social essentials in housing are made dramatic by architecture and gardening. After all, the finest feature of the garden apartment is its bigscale environment of beauty. What a contrast to the slum does the Bayonne setting present! Its influence in the lives of those who dwell in it, particularly on children, can not be exaggerated.

But the finest part is the great interior garden. It is 335' long, including playground, and it varies in width from 52' to 104'. From every apartment there is an outlook over green lawns, planted with trees, shrubs and flowers—the life of growing things in the heart of the industrial city. The rear apartments jut out into this great garden, and what a different outlook does the housewife enjoy, as contrasted with the view from the rear of a typical city tenement over dark, foul backyards and courts, over dilapidated fences and cheerless pavements clogged with rubbish—a scene whose sole decoration is the public display of private laundry! In the Bayonne plan there are no courts. The "courts" are really only shallow alcoves in the garden, 6$' wide.

On the street front, the Bayonne buildings are set back from the sidewalk and are elevated on a terrace a few feet high, which is faced with a low retaining wall of brick. This provision, incidentally, is a practical necessity, due to the need of raising the buildings high enough to allow a proper fall for drainage into the street sewers. On the terrace level are the fore-lawns, planted, and traversed with flagstone paths which lead to the

Rear view of a garden apartment

entrances. Each building is stepped up in the centre, thus giving variety to the mass. What a change is this from the unbroken street wall of nearly all city housing, monotonous and forbidding as a prison!

The playground

Another novelty at Bayonne is the provision for the playspirit of children. At one end of the great garden, and walled off from it, is a small playground for the little children. It is equipped with sand piles, small swings and a carrousel, and has a little comfort station attached. On the stucco wall facing the playground, are painted decorations of Humpty-Dumpty and other characters in child-lore, while the rear wall is an architectural feature, consisting of a fountain set in a niche framed with arch and columns, which forms a center of interest at the end of the main axis of the garden. This playground takes the child out of the streets, where our enlightened twentieth century sends him to play under the wheels of the motor cars. The Bayonne plan allows him to enjoy himself in safety, guided by a trained attendant, under the eyes of the mothers. (Incidentally, the services of a play teacher costs only a few cents a family a week—less than the price of a single ticket to the moving pictures—during the seasonable part of the year.)

What a fine setting does the Bayonne Housing Corporation furnish for the child to grow up in. Cheerfulness, space, sunlight, fresh air, a garden with growing things and flowers—and best of all, a playground!—at once an inspiration and an outlet for youthful energies! In Bayonne the young wage-earner can grow up knowing that in this world there are actually such things as birds and lawns and trees and flowers.

Will an architect be believed when he asserts that the bringing of beauty into city tenements is by far the greatest advance in the new housing standards at Bayonne? Is there any greater economy in housing than the social value of a beautiful environment? And it should be remembered that in the present day in the crowded districts of New York City people are beginning to pay as high for the privilege of living in the antiquated, depreciated, dark, insanitary, "cold-water" tenements as they would for a real home in the Bayonne garden apartments. The Bayonne garden apartments give to the wage-earner a home worthy of modern ideals.

Playground for the small children located at one end of the great garden