CHAPTER IX.

PROVINCIAL MUNICIPAL DWELLINGS.

Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Birmingham, and Hornsey.

LIVERPOOL.

The abnormally high death-rates of this city, and especially its terrible records in infant mortality, have at last stimulated men and women of all classes and opinions to make determined efforts for effecting the much-needed improvement in the homes of the people. An energetic housing association has been steadily at work rousing and forming public opinion. The Housing Committee of the City Council during the last three or four years has grappled more boldly with the duty of supplying new dwellings, and, what is equally important, a very capable and sympathetic staff of permanent officials have left no stone unturned in the endeavour to meet the requirements of the poor and the public. The whole of the dwellings are under the control of the manager, who is attached to the City Surveyor's staff, the rents being collected by two superintendents, at salaries of £130 and £90 per annum, with uniform, gas and coal. The salaries are apportioned pro rata against the rentals of the various dwellings. The accompanying plans and particulars are mainly derived from information kindly supplied by Mr. F. B. Turton, Deputy Surveyor.

This city began its housing operations by erecting block dwellings, but during recent years has abandoned that type of building in favour of three storey tenement houses. The earliest blocks were S. Martin's Cottages (six) erected in 1869, and consisting of four outer blocks five storeys high, and two inner blocks three storeys high, with 328 rooms in 131 tenements. Each tenement has a separate scullery and w.c. The Victoria Square Dwellings, erected in 1885, consist of 5 five-storey blocks, containing 607 rooms in 271 tenements and 12 shops. The buildings are cheerful looking, and front an open space. They are in good repair, but there is only one w.c. and scullery to two tenements.

Juvenal Street Dwellings, erected in 1890, consist of 4 four-storey blocks and one three-storey block, containing altogether 157 rooms in IOI tenements and one shop. Living rooms average 154 square feet, bedrooms 132 sqare feet.

At Fontenoy Street block dwellings have been erected, somewhat like the Glasgow style, at a cost of £63 per room, or 7d. per foot cube. The staircase walls are of glazed brickwork.

All the rooms in the block dwellings are 9 feet high.

The Arley Street cottage flats, here shewn, were erected in 1897. They are built in three blocks, each two storeys high, and consist of 83 rooms in 34 tenements. Each floor forms a separate flat, with a separate entrance direct from the street. Blocks A and B are alike, and all the rooms are kept under one roof. The ground floor flat contains living room, bedroom and scullery; and the first floor flat, living room, two bedrooms and scullery, the latter in each case taking a piece out of the back room, making it an awkward shape. Block C has the scullery placed at the rear outside the main roof, so that the rooms are simply square boxes on each floor. A certain amount of passage room is wasted in each dwelling. The rooms are 8 feet 6 inches in height. The floors are of ordinary wood joists and boards, not fireproof. The cost for building was £61 5s. per room, and 4'81d. per foot cube.

Cheap Tenements for Very Poor.

The special features of Liverpool housing, however, are the cheap dwellings in tenement houses, specially provided for the very poor. They have each a separate w.c. (costing about 12 per w.c.), and nearly all have a separate scullery, while there is generally an ash bin to every two tenements. There are yard walls at the rear, acting as boundaries of the ground floor dwellings, and as supports for the first floor yards and staircases. All the later dwellings have concrete floors on iron joists. The wails of the rooms are not plastered.

Gildart's Gardens.-The late City Engineer, Mr. Boulnois, recently tried to solve the problem of houses at a unit of about 1/- per room per week for the poorer class of labourers, with two rooms, as a rule, allowed for each family. He had to make the dwellings comfortable and healthy for the poor labourers, and unattractive for artizans. There was to be no architectural adornment. Plain substantial buildings were designed. There were no superfluous corners or cupboards in the rooms. The construction was strong, but not expensive. Sound brick walls, strong boards in pitch, and floors which were proof against damp were used. The stones required were manufactured out of the clinkers at the refuse destructor works. No plaster was used. Inside walls are faced brick, colour-washed. Cement filling between joists, to which floor boards are nailed. The Council built themselves. The building surveyor engaged the foreman and the workmen. cost was about £54 per room. All rooms are about 8 feet high.

The

The dwellings are of three types. They are all very uninviting in appearance. Type F houses, of which 21 houses have been built, are arranged in blocks three storeys in height, each house containing a tenement of two rooms on every one of the three floors. The ground floor tenements are entered directly from the street, and the upper tenements from a common balcony running along the rear of the house at the level of the first floor. There is an open yard on the ground level to be used only by the occupants of the ground storey dwelling, and there is a small yard at the level of the first floor, in the rear of the building, common to the occupants of the first and second storeys. The frontage of each house is 15 feet, and the depth 21 feet. The house is not quite the height of the width of the street which it faces, and at the rear there is a narrow roadway, at an angle of 45 degrees, from which rises the height of the building. This type of house is for the very poorest classes. Type H is similar, but has the entrance direct from the street staircase.

Living rooms, 110 to 165 sq. ft; bedrooms, 72 to 117 sq. ft.

SECOND FLOOR PLAN

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

GROUND PLAN