The primary question is not “What can the tenant afford?” it is “What can Minneapolis afford ?” If we are to develop in Minneapolis the highest type of civilization, if industry is to thrive permanently, if art and music are to serve their highest purposes, we must first recognize as an essential prerequisite to the realization of these high ideals, the providing of a home life for every family, rich or poor, that shall insure to them their inalienable rights to sanitation, safety, ventilation, privacy, sunlight, space and beauty.
-The Housing Problem in Minneapolis, A preliminary investigation made for the Committee on Housing
Minneapolis Civic & Commerce Association
1915
Hogging the whole lot. Only ten-foot space in front and corner to rear unbuilt upon. Illustrates the necessity of regulating dwellings.
A group of modern apartments. Many rooms in the corner building are inadequately lighted and ventilated.
How dark rooms are often made. Rooms lighted by windows in lot line wall become dark rooms when adjoining property is developed. Process complete on one side.
Three hundred and thirty feet of ashes and filth the sole play- ground for the children of the 40 families in the row.
In the first “third” of this building are 6 apartments of 5 rooms. Each apartment contributes 3 to the total of 18 dark rooms in the building.
Three-decker tenement privy and no yard.
Minneapolis brown stone fronts. In these buildings are 89 in- habited basement rooms; 50 dark rooms, 22 in basement apartments; 25 rooms with no windows of any sort; 30 damp sub-basements, 6 having unsanitary toilet facilities in them. Once considered the fashionable place to live.
Unwholesome type of apartment below street level, permitted under present ordinance.
A modern apartment house.
Housing over Northeast. A row of once uniformly constructed but now uniformly dilapidated laboring men’s houses, illustrating tendency of row housing to degenerate. Toilets are outside vaults, water is procured from wells often three or four houses distant.
The ” Brick Block” The section of the structure which appears to the left of the center alone contains 31 dark rooms.
Frozen slop hatches and returning hillocks of kitchen waste.
Filthy vault closets, garbage, manure and water supply that freezes in winter.
Overflowing vault.
Ten rooms depend entirely upon this lot line court, three feet, eight inches wide, for light and air. Present ordinance permits such court to be only four feet wide for a four-story building.
Two toilets and a urinal compartment tucked away under the stairs used by 14 families.
Drying the family wash in a one-room light housekeeping apartment.
New apartment house covering entire lot. Our ordinances permit some tenements and apartment houses to cover entire lot area depriving tenants of all yard space whatsoever.
Brick pavement for a playground and a crowded tenement for a home.
The rear tenement. Four-family tenement crowded onto the yard of the one in front. Excess lot occupation, lack of conveniences, and faulty sanitation.
Stable on tenement lot. Dilapidated structure stables five horses is foul smelling and unsanitary.
Frozen water supply, hydrant upon which 17 families in ten houses depend on for water.
Horse stables and chicken houses beneath tenement house windows, unsanitary condition of yard aggravated by lack of drainage.
Entrance to dark room basement partially underground apartment constructed during winter of 1912 basement used as Slavic lodging house bedrooms occupied night and day shifts.
Sure source of windowless rooms. New building on ad- joining lot can cut off all direct light from nine rooms.
Flats with dark room basements. Two buildings contain 46 dark rooms, 23 in basement apartments. In further building were old-fashioned long hopper closets, situated in basement and each used by three families.
Neglected vault, a source of yard pollution. Should be emptied and filled with clean earth.
Combination toilet and bedroom entirely dark located in basement. Flashlight photograph. Bed blurred through nearness to camera.
Untidy yards, unsanitary vaults.
Rotten enclosed plumbing as revealed by flashlight.
Built up Alley. Homes on one side stables on the other.
Building has 23 apartments, each with dark toilet ventilating into living room. Sixteen apartments have from one to four dark rooms. Six garbage chutes, smeared their entire length with filth, add another unwholesome feature to the environment.
Dilapidation, the result of long years of neglect, is a conspicuous characteristic of the houses to be had at the laborer’s rental. Some of the features which abound are rickety outside stairs, unroofed, covered with snow and ice in winter, up which, often, all of the water must be carried at considerable risk to the bearer.
Minneapolis boasted backyards used for a row of alley houses. Standard of entire neighborhood lowered from moral and financial viewpoint.
Basement apartments said to flood during severe rains.
New apartments below level of sidewalk, but not below level of lot, permitted by present ordinance.
A cistern, the only water supply for three families, pump is broken.
Windowless wall. Apartments lighted only by windows in front and rear. Buildings contain 25 dark rooms.
A tenement in the Slavic section. Ten dark bedrooms illustrate evils of alcove.
Windowless bedroom. Type of dark room made legal by latest amendment to building ordinance.
Bathroom and kitchenette located in the same compartment is a “feature” of this apartment house. The bathroom ventilates over a dwarf partition and out through the kitchenette.
Children of the “Brick Block”
A rear view of North Washington, note narrow space between houses., overflowing vaults accumulation of garbage, lack of drainage and general dilapidation.
Process of making rear housing. The little house will soon be hidden from the street.
The lot that makes Minneapolis Famous. No city in the country has the asset that Minneapolis does in its spacious yards and gardens.
An instance where the back yards have been built upon. Just what threatens every backyard in Minneapolis unless something to prevent is done quickly.
Shallow lot development. Street to street tenement with absolutely no yard.
Little Italy, picturesque dilapidation on North Washington.
Syrian children needing better training for citizenship than ia furnished by the crowded tenement.
