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 follow 
ing 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 bed 
rooms 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 bed 
room) 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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