MAGDEBURG.
321
in a house selected at random in the Kamelstrasse offer a fair example. The
house in question has a street frontage of 80 feet, and extending backwards
about 110 feet, forms a hollow rectangle enclosing a court measuring 60 feet by
30. The greater part of this court (which is reached from the street through
either of two archways penetrating the front part of the house, and is paved
with some material resembling asphalt) is occupied by a low outhouse. This
structure, which was formerly a mortuary, contains 16 closets for the use of the
64 families (including 100 children) living in the house, and being in the centre
of the court, is commanded on all four sides by the windows of the surrounding
tenements. Of the 40 rooms on each of the five floors of the house only six
have windows admitting light direct from the (narrow) street, and of the
remaining 34 rooms on any given floor 17 are windowless back rooms, while
the remaining 17 are lighted through windows looking into the court. The
typical tenements here under consideration, i.e., those consisting of a living
room, a bedroom, and a separate kitchen, are to be found only in the front part,
or Vorderhaus, of this large building, those on the other three sides of the
rectangular block being all two-roomed tenements, the occupiers of which share
with one or two other families the use of a small dark space on each stair landing
fitted up with a cooking stove and called a kitchen.
Measurements taken in two of the three-roomed tenements gave the following
results :—
Tenement (a) : (1) Living room with two windows looking into the street,
16 by 12 feet ; (2) bedroom with single window looking into the court,
16 by 5 feet ; (3) kitchen with single window looking into the court, 11 by 5 feet.
Tenement (b) : (1) Living room with two windows looking into the street,
16 by 13 feet ; (2) bedroom with single window looking into the court, 16 by
6 feet ; kitchen with window looking into the court, 12 by 7 feet.
The height from floor to ceiling is in all cases 8J feet. Taps, from which the
water supply is drawn, are fitted on the various stair landings. Each tenant
has a separate compartment in the cellarage and the right to use the loft space
directly under the rafters for the drying of laundry. The rent is 168 marks per
year, or about 3s. 2d. per week.
A two-roomed tenement, with use of cooking stove on stair landing, costs
160 marks per year or about 2s. 10d. per week, in this house.
In the Kleine Klostergasse, another typical street in the old town largely
inhabited by working-class families, three-roomed tenements in court houses
could be had for 120 marks per year, or about 2s. 4d. per week. In these the
living rooms measured 13 by 8^ feet, the kitchens 8J by feet, and the bedrooms
8J by 6J feet, the height from floor to ceiling being uniformly 8J feet.
Passing from the old town to the outlying suburban district one may note in
the construction of the tenement houses the same signs of a desire on the part
of the builder to provide houseroom for as large a number of people as possible
on any given building plot. For instance, in the district of Sudenburg on the
extreme south-western margin of the town various blocks of tenements in the
St. Michaelstrasse were visited. Here, as in the old town, the tenement houses
were found to be built in the form of a hollow rectangle enclosing a court. In
one important respect, however, they differed from the houses in the old town,
viz., in the fact that there were no windowless rooms, an advantage secured by
limiting the depth of the back and side wings of the house to the thickness of
a single room. It is in these parts of the building more especially that the
working-class tenements are situated. Each of the three rooms of which the
tenement consists is lighted from the court, the kitchen and the bedroom each by
one window, and the living room (which separates the kitchen from the bedroom)
by two. As regards the size of the rooms there is practically no
difference between our tenement and another. The living room with its two.
windows is generally the largest, measuring 14 by 10 feet, while the kitchen
and bedroom^each measures 11 by 10 feet. The height from floor to ceiling is
uniformly 9 feet. The closets are on the stair-landing, each family having one for
its own exclusive use. (It should be added that all closets in Magdeburg, whether
in the old houses or the new, are provided with flushing tanks, the cesspool
system having for some years been entirely superseded by a trunk system of
drainage). The rents of the tenements just described are 159 marks per
2 s
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