MÜLHAUSEN.

357

Excepting  the  industrial  quarter  known  in  French  phrase  as  the  “Old
‘  Cite,’  ”  which  will  be  more  particularly  described  later,  the  streets  run
irregularly,  and  the  houses  of  which  they  consist  are  irregularly  built,  buildings
of  various  styles,  sizes,  and  heights  alternating  with  picturesque  inconsequence.
The  usual  material  is  brick  faced  with  plaster,  painted  in  different  colours—
slate,  yellow,  brown—though  many  of  the  old  houses  are  of  brick  below  with  a
hieing  of  slates  above.  The  fronts  are,  as  a  rule,  free  from  plastic  ornament  of
any  kind,  and  if  the  flat  surface  has  originally  been  relieved  with  rough  stencil
work  the  colours  soon  wash  and  wear  off,  giving  the  appearance  of  shabbiness
and  neglect.  The  roofs  of  the  houses,  and  often  of  small  factories,  are  of  red  tiles.
Wooden  shutters  for  the  windows  are  common,  and  the  intense  heat  of  summer
explains  at  once  their  use  and  necessity,  though  few  sights  can  be  more
inhospitable  and  desolate  than  a  second-rate  Mülhausen  street  in  August  at
mid-day,  when  every  window  is  screened  behind  heavy,  impenetrable  boards.
High  houses  are  the  exception,  and  denote  the  enterprise  of  the  modern  builder  ;
houses  of  two  or  three  stories  or  two  stories  and  an  attic  are  the  rule.  Hence  it  is
that  in  dwellings  of  the  better  grades  the  working  classes  will  seldom  be
found.  In  industrial  towns,  more  distinctively  German  in  character,  a  certain
stratification  of  different  classes  of  society  is  facilitated  by  the  “  flat  ”  system  ;
middle-class  families  occupying  the  lower  stories,  and  working-class  families
the  cheaper  tenements  above.  The  small  house  system  of  Mülhausen  does  not
fit  in  with  this  distribution  of  society,  and  the  working  population  congregates
together.
Nevertheless,  excepting  still  the  Cité,  it  is  impossible  to  speak  of  typical
working-class  houses  in  a  town  where  almost  every  house  is  a  type  for  itself.
In  one  part  of  the  town  are  found  rows  of  dwellings  a  single  story  high  ;  in
another  houses  of  one,  two  and  three  stories  are  huddled  together  without  plan
or  method  ;  while  leaving  a  main  street  for  a  moment  one  may  suddenly  come
across  a  quaint  old  building  with  wooden  balcony  running  along  several  sides,
and  upper  rooms  approached  by  steps  from  the  outside.  The  least  salubrious
parts  of  the  town  lie  in  the  Nordfeld  district.  Here,  together  with  much  good
property,  the  most  pronounced,  of  the  slums  are  found.  The  dilapidated
appearance  of  much  of  the  poorer  property  of  the  town  is  largely  due  to
its  cheap  construction  ;  it  is  very  unsubstantially  built,  and  soon  falls  into
decay.  The  old  houses  disappear  but  slowly,  however,  for  they  return  a  high
interest  in  proportion  to  their  cost,  and,  as  is  so  often  the  case  in  large  industrial
towns,  prove  an  attractive  investment.  The  cost  of  building  land  in  Mülhausen
varies  from  12  to  30  marks  per  square  metre  (equal  to  10s.  and  26s.  per  square
yard),  according  to  position,  but  in  districts  suitable  for  working-class  dwellings
land  can  as  a  rule  be  obtained  for  the  lower  figure  ;  sites  in  the  immediate
vicinity  of  business  streets  cost  the  higher  price.

It  is  a  good  feature  of  the  housing  arrangements  of  this  town  that
“  back  houses  ”  and  “  side  houses  ”  are  comparatively  rare  ;  hence  there  are  few
circumscribed  courtyards,  and  no  “  light  shafts  ”  of  the  kind  habitual  in  towns
of  larger  population  and  higher  land  values.  As  yet  space  has  not  been  too
frugally  husbanded,  and  seriously  overcrowded  areas  do  not  exist.  Amongst
the  most  spacious  of  the  tenements  are  those  found  in  buildings  which  were
originally  small  bleaching  factories,  in  the  days  when  the  textures  to  be  bleached
were  still  hung  from  the  windows  and  so  exposed  to  the  sun.  More  than  one
such  disused  workshop  has  been  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  a  school.  The
following  figures  indicate  the  division  of  the  population  according  to  inhabited
buildings  and  households,  as  shown  by  the  censuses  of  1900  and  1905  :  —

Total  population  ...
No.  of  households...
No.  of  inhabited  buildings
No.  of  households  (i.e.,  tenements)  per  building
No.  of  persons  per  household  ...
No.  of  persons  per  building

1900.

89,119
20,880
6,467
322
4-27
138

1905.

94,514
22,358
7,091
3-15
423
133