Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

their cumulative carnings are devoted to the acquirement of new lands and buildings, it will not take as many years as the Peabody Donation Fund has been in existence to number a "round hundred buildings, housing no less than 60,000 souls and covering, if grouped together, some fifty average New York City squares.'

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

It is a pleasant surprise to one walking across New York in the tenement district to come suddenly upon the group of Phipps houses. They are of brick with terra-cotta trimmings, each six stories (and basement) in height, with a 60-foot frontage. On the main floor of the central building is the office, where a woman superintendent reigns over nearly 2,000 subjects. This feature is considered a great stroke of policy by the managers. In an official statement they claim that the percentage of loss from bad debts during the past year was only .07. This good showing is ascribed to the employment of women to act as collectors as well as general overseers.

In each building there are 427 rooms, arranged in apartments which rent as follows:

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

MR. HENRY PHIPPS

Who invested $1,000,000 in the model teneinents

In return for these low rents the tenant is provided with light, sunny, airy rooms, a gas range, steam heat, hot water, shower or tub baths, toilet, good plumbing, laundries, a rest house on the roof, clean halls and stairs, and courteous attention. Telephone messages are delivered free of charge until half-past nine at night. Instead of being in the hands of janitors, as in the average tenement house, each building has its corps of engineers, carpenters, plumbers, porters, and scrubwomen, and when anything is needed the superintendent looks after the matter. In the apartments the kitchen and living-room are combined. The convenient plumbing arrangements and the gas range make it possible to cook in these rooms and still keep them clean and attractive. Instead of the foul, ill-lighted hall of the average tenement, with garbage pails on the landing and gloomy air-shafts, the Phipps tenants have a view of a large, open, entrance court which affords light and ventilation and gratifies their æsthetic senses as well. The courts from which all the apartments can be reached are designed as summer social centres, which will be an improvement on the street corners. They are now furnished with seats, and a fountain is to be added.

The front portion of the roof is given up to a garden where there are shrubs and vines, a pergola, seats, and two permanent pavilions

[graphic]
[graphic][subsumed]
[graphic]

A PLAYGROUND ON THE ROOF WHICH ATTRACTS THE CHILDREN AWAY FROM THE STREETS

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

"Gas stoves and good plumbing make it possible to cook in these rooms and still keep them clean and attractive"

An excellent feature of the Phipps tenement, which was an afterthought, is a small restroom on the first floor of one of the houses. At nine o'clock every morning a service is held in this miniature chapel by a resident, nonsectarian clergyman. The door is always open and anyone may enter the quiet room for a few moments' meditation. Since it has become known in the neighborhood that there is a clergyman in the building, his services are in great demand and he is called upon at all hours of the day and night by

but the teachers are employed and paid by
the New York Kindergarten Association.
There is an average attendance of fifty chil-
dren, who are required to pay one cent a day
in order to encourage them to be self-respect-
ing and independent of charity. This small
amount pays for perishable material. A board-
of-health physician visits the kindergarten
daily to keep the neighborhood in a healthy
condition. The kindergarten's effect does not
end with its hours. Mothers' meetings are
held regularly by the teachers, who explain the

[ocr errors]

aim of the teaching and show how the babies should be cared for at home.

The Phipps model tenement houses shelter nearly 2,000 persons at a low rent in clean, well-ventilated, fire-proof buildings which are earning 4 per cent. on their cost. The erection of these buildings is business, not charity, and this fact makes them all the more effective in pointing a way toward the betterment of tene

ment conditions. And they are appreciated. One small boy got at the gist of the matter when he pointed with some pride at the Phipps tenements and said:

"I live over in one of those houses where they has baths."

The houses are full, and there is a long waiting-list of families who also wish to live "where they has baths."

HUNTING INDIANS WITH A CAMERA

THE ADVENTURES OF MR. EDWARD S. CURTIS, WHO IS DEVOTING A LARGE PART OF A WORKING LIFETIME TO MAKING PERMANENT RECORDS OF OUR VANISHING RED-MEN

B

[ocr errors]

BY

EDMOND S. MEANY

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Photographs copyrighted, 1904-07, by E. S. Curtis

ECAUSE of the singular combination of qualities with which he has been blest," wrote President Roosevelt of the photographer of Indians, Mr. Edward S. Curtis, "and because of his extraordinary success in making and using his opportunities, he has been able to do what no other man has ever done. He has lived on intimate terms with many different tribes of the mountains and the plains. He knows them as they hunt, as they travel, as they go about their various avocations on the march and in the camp. He knows their medicine-men and sorcerers, their chiefs and warriors, their young men and maidens. He has not only seen their vigorous outward existence, but has caught glimpses, such as few white men ever catch, of that strange spiritual and mental life of theirs."

Catching glimpses of the inner life of the Indian is an uncertain and often a dangerous occupation. Sudden caprice or unfounded suspicion may spoil the work of months.

The story of Mr. Curtis's visit to the Sioux of the Wounded Knee will give a little idea of the difficulties. Two years ago Mr. Curtis-or, as the Sioux call him, "Ba-zahola Wash-ti" - made a long trip into the Bad Lands of South Dakota. His guide and leader was Chief Red Hawk. Mr. Curtis promised to return and give a feast to the chief and twenty

of his followers on the banks of the Wounded Knee. Through the good fellowship growing out of the feast, Mr. Curtis hoped to secure photographs and records of many of the

[graphic]

MR. CURTIS IN CAMP

« AnteriorContinuar »