The American Architect
Wednesday, January 22, 1919
Number 2248
Building for Health
A House Should Fit Its Owner Like His Skin
By Woods Hutchinson, A. M., M. D.
H
OUSES are built for everything except for the comfort of those who live in them. Or
ginally they were tombs for the dead and most houses more than one hundred years old are much betler adapted for this class of tenant than they are for the living. No wonder so many old houses are haunted and that to move into one of them is a sure sign of a death in the family within a year.
Next, the house was a fortress, or an appendage to a fort, and a painful majority of houses over fifty years old show unmistakable traces of this origin, in darkness, smelliness, stupidity of plan, and utter lack of ventilation. An Englishman’s house is still his castle in a number of most uncomfortable and inconvenient senses, cold, dark, damp, drafty. The worst fault that a house can possibly have from a health point of view is that it is old.
In recent times the majority of places in which people have to live—it would be an undeserved compliment to call them homes or even houses—are built to return a good income on the investment, the next largest moiety to form a monument for the architect, and the third most important fraction to prove publicly and inescapably that the owner “has the price.” Building for the health and comfort of the occupant, or for the pleasure and welfare of the community has only just begun, and most of the best and most convenient sites are already occupied by rack-rented barracks, or misfits, or calamities in brick or stone.
For the sake of health there should therefore be passed a law fixing a term of life for houses used for dwellings and this term should be in the neighborhood of fifty years. The Almighty in His wisdom has fixed the term of human life at three score years and ten, w hich is often a great mercy for the rest of the community, and we should imitate Him by fixing a life-time for houses one-third shorter than this, because we cannot yet build as well as He.
Every house still used for human habitation and dwelling should be automatically burnt or pulled
down when it has stood for fifty years, unless it can be clearly shown to be thoroughly sanitary, up to date and fit for human habitation according to modern standards, or can be readily altered to make it so. Exceptions of course could be made for building of historical interest, birthplaces of famous men, specimens of periods of architecture, etc., but these should be turned into public museums and no longer lived in.
This would involve no real injustice to the owners of the property, because most rented houses are let so as to return about ten per cent on the original investment to cover repairs, dilapidation, etc., consequently the house pays for itself every ten years, or four or five times over in the fifty years. The greatest obstacle we have to fight, five times as serious as any other, in attempts at, and schemes for housing reform, is the old house, utterly incapable of being made sanitary and decent for human habitation, and yet too tough and strong to allow us to get it condemned on the ground of being unsafe to live in.
Our heathenish and outrageous old building laws in most states and cities permit the condemnation of a house only on the grounds that its walls are liable to collapse, or its floors to give way or its roof to fall in, even though it be a perfect breeding ground for bugs and hot-house of disease and death. If we had power to pull down these wretched old baby stiflers and consumption breeders, the owners of the property would have no difficulty in borrowing money enough on the land to erect in their place modern sanitary model tenements or apartment houses.
But these would return them only five or six per cent on the investment, while the existing old rookeries and barracks pay anywhere from ten to thirty per cent on the original cost. So that as long as our brutal and antiquated laws protect them they will go on callously coining money out of the blood and sufferings of the poor, and turning over one or two per cent of it to the support of the church and
Copyright, 1919, The Architectural & Building Press (Inc.)
Wednesday, January 22, 1919
Number 2248
Building for Health
A House Should Fit Its Owner Like His Skin
By Woods Hutchinson, A. M., M. D.
H
OUSES are built for everything except for the comfort of those who live in them. Or
ginally they were tombs for the dead and most houses more than one hundred years old are much betler adapted for this class of tenant than they are for the living. No wonder so many old houses are haunted and that to move into one of them is a sure sign of a death in the family within a year.
Next, the house was a fortress, or an appendage to a fort, and a painful majority of houses over fifty years old show unmistakable traces of this origin, in darkness, smelliness, stupidity of plan, and utter lack of ventilation. An Englishman’s house is still his castle in a number of most uncomfortable and inconvenient senses, cold, dark, damp, drafty. The worst fault that a house can possibly have from a health point of view is that it is old.
In recent times the majority of places in which people have to live—it would be an undeserved compliment to call them homes or even houses—are built to return a good income on the investment, the next largest moiety to form a monument for the architect, and the third most important fraction to prove publicly and inescapably that the owner “has the price.” Building for the health and comfort of the occupant, or for the pleasure and welfare of the community has only just begun, and most of the best and most convenient sites are already occupied by rack-rented barracks, or misfits, or calamities in brick or stone.
For the sake of health there should therefore be passed a law fixing a term of life for houses used for dwellings and this term should be in the neighborhood of fifty years. The Almighty in His wisdom has fixed the term of human life at three score years and ten, w hich is often a great mercy for the rest of the community, and we should imitate Him by fixing a life-time for houses one-third shorter than this, because we cannot yet build as well as He.
Every house still used for human habitation and dwelling should be automatically burnt or pulled
down when it has stood for fifty years, unless it can be clearly shown to be thoroughly sanitary, up to date and fit for human habitation according to modern standards, or can be readily altered to make it so. Exceptions of course could be made for building of historical interest, birthplaces of famous men, specimens of periods of architecture, etc., but these should be turned into public museums and no longer lived in.
This would involve no real injustice to the owners of the property, because most rented houses are let so as to return about ten per cent on the original investment to cover repairs, dilapidation, etc., consequently the house pays for itself every ten years, or four or five times over in the fifty years. The greatest obstacle we have to fight, five times as serious as any other, in attempts at, and schemes for housing reform, is the old house, utterly incapable of being made sanitary and decent for human habitation, and yet too tough and strong to allow us to get it condemned on the ground of being unsafe to live in.
Our heathenish and outrageous old building laws in most states and cities permit the condemnation of a house only on the grounds that its walls are liable to collapse, or its floors to give way or its roof to fall in, even though it be a perfect breeding ground for bugs and hot-house of disease and death. If we had power to pull down these wretched old baby stiflers and consumption breeders, the owners of the property would have no difficulty in borrowing money enough on the land to erect in their place modern sanitary model tenements or apartment houses.
But these would return them only five or six per cent on the investment, while the existing old rookeries and barracks pay anywhere from ten to thirty per cent on the original cost. So that as long as our brutal and antiquated laws protect them they will go on callously coining money out of the blood and sufferings of the poor, and turning over one or two per cent of it to the support of the church and
Copyright, 1919, The Architectural & Building Press (Inc.)