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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 skylights
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.
