HOUSES IN GREAT CITIES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 211, 20 April 1877, Page 9

HOUSES IN GREAT CITIES.

fConcluded.J He would propose a very simple model house for the metropolis, such a one as he would if he could build for himself. He would commence the reformation from the basement. The basement saps the health of the occupants of the houso more than any other deteriorating influence. The basement walls and rooms are, however clean, always at fault on the score of dampness. They are surrounded by damp earth ; into them all the rain which falls near the house splutters down. The pipes which convey the water from the roof and closets find at the basement their easiest points of leakage. Kettles, pots, and all vessels containing fluids here boil and cool. Their vapour is given forth and condensed. Clothes are here put to the fire, crockery set up to dry-sinks are deluged and scrubbed All this wet passes by evaporation, with the help of a great fire, to the upper part of the house. At night the condensation ensues. In the morning the dripping walls are re-heated and the process goes on again. A lady he attended in the west of London suffered from neuralgic pains. He put his hand on the balustrade as he descended the stairs and found it covered with moisture. He told his patient that the builder was here wanted more than the doctor. A great authority was of opinion that malaria, fever, and ague were sufficiently accounted for by dampness. No doubt colds, exhaustion, toothache, &c, are either caused or aggravated by living above wet basements with fires in them to draw up the water, so that tho occupant of the house is in a worse position than if he lived in a city raised on piles above a lake. The food in the damp air is rapidly decomposed, its particles carry infection through the house. The basement in good houses is also often made the sleeping place of women and children. Philanthropists sleep ni^ht after night over these catacombs. He had seen a house where 16 servants slept in underground beds, who could never at any season of the year see to dress without artificial light. The Barons of the Middle Ages took the precaution to cut off from all communication with themselves those who passed their lives in their dungeons. Now the I a ement properly should be an arched subway with a free current of air through. It should no longer be a living-place, a cooking-place, a laundry, bottle vault, refuse store, larder, servants' bedroom, drain-trap, and lavatory. It would consist of three arches, each of which through flue open ings would communicate with the air. One of the arches would lead to the staircase at the back of the house to form the servants' entrance. In the basement would be placed the closed bin for receiving, by an outer shaft, all the refuse of the house. In the basement would be a closed tumbling bay in which the soil pipe would discharge. Through the basement the water pipe for supply of the house and the gas pipes would enter, and two at least of the arches might be fitted up ? ith good furnaces or stoves, into which air derived from the upper part of the arch might be drawn and heated, purified, and passed into the upper part of the house. Nicely fitted, the basement rooms might be turned into hot air rooms, like the Roman baths, or to other useful purposes But about the basement part there would always be this provision, that it could never be entered by a direct sha,ft communicating and forming a distinctive connexion with the rooms of the house above. The next change would be in the staircase. This change is not easy in houses, as at present constructed. But in new houses it should never be omitted. In the present construction, the staircase is the shaft of the dwelling through which all the products of respiration, combustion, and other forms of volatile impurity rise from the lower to the upper floors. It holds an open communication with all parts, and while it allows for the diffusion of every volatile impurity and damp, it prevents all possibility of maintaining through the house an equitable and agreeable temperature. It is the great source of draughts and it lessens the size and comfort of every floor. It enforces that all tha water-closets shall be included actually in the living part of every dwelling — one of the most unwholesome and objectionable of all modern arrangements. The staircase should be placed in the rear of the house in a distinct shaft or tower of its own, leading straight from the ground floor to the upper part above the level of the house. At each floor there should be a door, and each flat would be independently lighted, warmed, and ventilated. Through the shaft the ventilating tubes could be carried, a lift, closets, and lavatories would be in the shaft. All that should be out of the house would be in this shaft. In the third floor should be the kitchen and servants' dormitories. From a spare boiler in the kitchen hot water should pass into any floor. The kitchen would have its own sink, opening into the dust shaft. The cock loft above, so called because it is the crown or cap of the house, is now misapplied and misconstructed. Here is a pointed roof, beneath which one is roasted in the summer and frozen to death (there is actual experi■ence of this fate) in winter. Here upon a firm, almost level, asphalted roof, Dr. Richardson would raise a garden covered with brick and glass. Into this the stair-shaft would finally enter, and if any impurities reached this coverud garden with its summer temperature always derived from the kitchen just beneath, the impurities would be eaten by the plants. Here the children and other inmates of the house would play and find relief from the monotonous contemplation of one or two rooms of limited size (Applause.)