THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY VOLUME XVII JULY, 1911 NUMBER I CHICAGO HOUSING CONDITIONS, IV: THE WEST SIDE REVISITED SOPHONISBA P. BRECKINRIDGE AND EDITH ABBOTT The report on Tenement House Conditions in Chicago which was published by the City Homes Association in 1901 was based on a house-to-house canvass made in three of the most densely populated neighborhoods of the "West Side," which is itself the most densely populated section of the city-a wide tenement and lodging-house district lying between the two branches of the River, lying also between wide stretches of railroad tracks, and inclosed by a dense semicircular belt-line of manufacturing and commercial plants. Three districts were selected for an intensive study by a committee of the City Homes Association. The first of these was a large territory of forty blocks lying between Halsted Street and the River, in the Italian and Jewish quarter near Hull House, and in the Ninth and Nineteenth wards; the second, a group of eight blocks in the Bohemian district toward the South Branch of the River in the Tenth Ward; and the third, a group of ten blocks in the Sixteenth Ward in the Polish region toward the North Branch. In undertaking a new inquiry into tenementhouse conditions in Chicago nearly a decade after the City Homes Committee made its report, it seemed important to revisit the districts which were investigated in 1901 in order to ascertain how far conditions might have changed since that time. A careful house-to-house canvass was therefore made again in a single selected block in each of the first two districts, and in each of the ten blocks in the Polish district in the Sixteenth Ward. The recent publication of the population statistics1 for Chicago by the federal Census Bureau are also of value in connection with the question of crowding in these West Side wards. These statistics showed that in the city as a whole the average population per acre was 19.7. The Ninth and Tenth wards, which include. In the following wards the average number of people per acre was under 40: Twenty-eighth (West Side), Thirteenth (West Side), Twelfth (West Side), Fourth (South Side), Fifth (South Side), Twenty-fifth (North Side,) Seventh (South Side), Thirty-fourth (West Side), First (South Side), Twenty-sixth (North Side). Twenty-ninth (South Side), Thirty-fifth (West Side), Thirty-second (South Side), Thirty-first (South Side), Twenty-seventh (West-Jefferson), Thirty-third (South Chicago), Eighth (South Chicago). the "Ghetto" and the poor district about the lumber yards and canals, have a density of 70 and 80.8 per acre; the Nineteenth Ward, the crowded immigrant section in which Hull House is situated, has 90.7 people per acre; the Seventeenth Ward, a similarly poor and crowded tenement-house district, has a density of 97.4; and the Sixteenth Ward, a Polish neighborhood, has a population averaging 81.5 per acre. In the foregoing table which 'See the Chicago daily papers for April 26, 1911. was prepared from the recently published Census statistics and which shows the relative density of population in all of the wards having 40 or more people per acre, it appears that the six most densely populated wards which have more than 70 people per acre are all on the West Side. It should be made clear that the area of the wards from which the statistics for average population per acre were computed was in every case the gross area, including the streets and alleys. If the net area were taken, the true density would be found to be much greater. In 1901 the net area was computed for the 44 blocks in the district east of Hull House (Ninth and Nineteenth wards) and the ten blocks in the Sixteenth Ward, and it was found that one block contained 457 people to the acre, another 412, seven others, between 300 and 400. Table II shows the density in 1901 of these 54 blocks computed on the basis of the net area of the blocks in acres. TABLE II* DENSITY OF 54 BLOCKS IN THE NINTH, NINETEENTH, AND SIXTEENTH WARDS IN 1901 *Table II is compiled from the first table on p. 55 of Tenement House Conditions (City Homes Report). These figures show a striking contrast to those in the preceding table. According to Table I the average density of the Nineteenth Ward is only 97.36, but Table II shows that in the group of 24 blocks canvassed in the same ward all had more than 150 people per acre and eleven had more than 250 people. The average density of the Sixteenth Ward was 81.52, but here again all of the 10 blocks canvassed show more than 200 people per acre and 8 of the 10 blocks had more than 300 per acre. The average density of the Ninth Ward was only 70 people per acre, but only 4 in the group of 20 blocks canvassed had fewer than 150 people per acre and 8 had 250 or more. In the Jewish and Italian district, which is the largest of the three, there have been some obvious changes in the decade which has elapsed since the City Homes investigators went over the territory. Factories and business houses have been moving across Canal Street and into the heart of the district from the more obviously commercial streets, like Twelfth, Fourteenth, Halsted, and Jefferson. In a sense the whole territory between Halsted and the River, one might even say between Center Avenue and the River, from the South to the North Branch, is awaiting the business invasion. Needed repairs on old houses, the proper building of new houses, improvements of every kind. are postponed because of the current belief that this whole territory is in the near future to be taken over for commercial and industrial uses. In the meantime, while landlords and dealers wait, poor people continue to live in insanitary houses, tuberculosis. breeds there, children grow up in dark, ill-ventilated rooms, without proper space for play. It is true, to be sure, that although few improvements have taken place in the houses themselves, there have been some improvements in the district as a whole. The Juvenile Court and Detention Home have taken the place of some of the old houses on Ewing Street, and farther down on the same street other houses have been moved to make room for the rebuilt Dante School with its new playground. At the other end of the district, in the Ninth Ward, the Maxwell Street Settlement has been established, and a little farther south in the same ward the Washburne School, the Henry Booth House, and one of the new West Parks have made an oasis which in some measure redeems one small portion of this waste of dilapidated houses. Unfortunately, the clearing of areas for these improvements has not meant the destruction of the old frame. houses which occupied them. These were in most instances sold at a very low rate and the enterprising neighborhood landlords, who bought them, moved their old houses to the rear and |