102 
BREMEN. 
1900 more than half the houses in Bremen (52’5 per cent.) were still one-family 
houses. The largest proportion occurred in the five suburbs last incorporated, 
viz., 65T per cent., while the proportion of one-family houses in the New Town 
was 63 8 per cent. It is noteworthy, too, that a majority of these one-family 
houses were owned by their occupiers. Incidentally the tradition of the town has 
prevented the growth on any large scale of the professional house proprietor 
who lives on the difference between his rents and the interest he pays to the 
mortgage bank for borrowed money. For this reason the “house agent” or 
vice-landlord,” as he is called in Hamburg, is almost unknown in Bremen. 
Perhaps no German town has a greater diversity of dwelling-houses than 
Bremen, and save that the single-family house predominates it is impossible to 
speak of any types of architecture as specially distinctive. (a) The simplest 
and most primitive form of the single-family house is a low building of one 
story, with high pitched roof, allowing of attic rooms, yet without cellar except 
in the more modern representatives of this type. (b and c) Two modifications 
of this dwelling have basement stories, the floors of which are about a yard 
below the level of the street, on which account the ground floor is approached 
by a flight of stone or concrete steps. The basement story often forms a distinct 
dwelling, approached by separate entrance from a front garden or from the 
corridor within. In any case there is again a spacious attic lighted by sky 
lights or by a dormer window. Many of these attics in the earlier houses are 
approached from the corridor by open steps, and even by ladders, and they are 
often unceiled and unplastered. (d) A further modification consists of the 
building out of a portion of the attic, either to the front or back, so that a 
window takes the place of the. skylight, and good rooms can be arranged. 
(e, /, and g) The next form consists of the simple addition of a story, subject to 
which modification types a, b and c are almost exactly repeated. Where these 
two-story houses accommodate two families, which is generally the case in 
buildings inhabitated by working-class households, the upper story is always 
approached from the common corridor, except in the case of an unusual type 
of house (h) which has two street doors side by side, one for each dwelling, 
and here the dwellings are entirely distinct, (i) This type of house is also 
found with three stories. (J) To these types of dwellings, which may be 
regarded as native to Bremen, must be added the large multiple house common 
throughout Germany, in which two families live on each floor, but this is 
here an exotic. 
The great majority of the working classes live in dwellings containing two or 
three rooms, with a kitchen. At the census of 1900 the whole of the dwellings 
in the town were classified as follows :—One room, with or without kitchen, 
3'8 per cent. ; two rooms, with kitchen extra, 26’8 per cent. ; three rooms, with 
kitchen, 26T per cent. ; four rooms, with kitchen, 17’6 per cent. ; five rooms, 
with kitchen, 8'7 per cent. ; six rooms and over, with kitchen, 17 percent. Of 
3,217 married workpeople interrogated on the subject in 1902 227, or 7'0 per 
cent, lived in dwellings consisting of one room, with kitchen ; 1,550, or 48T per 
cent, in dwellings of two rooms, with kitchen ; 985, or 30’6 per ’cent., in 
dwellings of three rooms, with kitchen ; 362, or 112 per cent., in dwellings of 
four rooms, with kitchen ; and 93, or 3"0 per cent, in dwellings of five rooms, 
with kitchen. 
Almost invariably the street door leads into a corridor, which either goes 
through to the back yard, in which case it is only three or four feet wide, or is 
divided in the middle, so that the second half serves as a kitchen, in which 
case the width is greater. Should the house be a single-family house with attic, 
two rooms at most will be found downstairs, and many of the earlier 
houses have only one room below besides the kitchen. If there are two 
rooms one will generally he reserved as the “good room,” or parlour—an 
apartment held in high honour in Bremen working-class homes—and the 
second will serve as a bedroom. In a room upstairs beds will also be found, 
with lumber for which there is no place below. This room, which is reached by 
simple wooden stairs, from the corridor or kitchen, is often open from wall to 
wall ; but where the family is numerous or grown up, it may be roughly divided 
into two sections. While a separate kitchen is regarded as essential to even the 
smallest dwelling, its proportions are as a rule very modest, and 6 feet square is 
a very common size.