The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1884-09-20
IN THE aBlo FLAT"
a Tenement House with Over Eight
Hundred People In II.

NV. ii. Donneiiy in Texas S,ftingsl
We will go up Mott street TO that tail
brick building labeled on the front, in
letters five feet high, THE BIG FLAT.
1t is detached, is seven stories high, has
seven windows on each floor in front and
thirty two on each floor at the sides, and
runs right through to Elizabeth street.
1t is said to be ireproof and it appears
to be so. Two broad flights of stone
stairs with iron balusters, one on the
Mott street and one on the Elizabeth
street end, lead from floor to floor At
the top of each fight is long, dark
corridor off which sixteen doors open
on one side and thirty two windows on
the other
Each Of the doors lead into a suit of
three rooms, with windows opening on
the court yard, and each suit, except the
end ones, which cost $13, is rented for
50 to so month, payable i'll advance
There are at present, the ianitor informs
us, between 800 and 900 peo-
pie living in the house. Most of
them are Bohemian Jews, but there are
some Russians, Italians, Chinese and
Irish also. 'sWe have very few Irish"
says the janitor, ssfor We don't want the
lowest of them, and the better class
wouldn't come here" The tenants are
chiefly tailors who work at home, and
street peddlers.
"Thc Big Flat, continued the janitor,
was originally built for colored people,
and was afterwards turned into 10 lg
ings for working girls. Now it belongs
to the New York Steam Heating
company. What are my duties' Well,
to collect rents, to see that the tenants
keep their rooms clean-Jews are mostly
| dirty-to have the water-tank on the
roof, which is filled by steam pump in
the cellar, kept always full; and to exc
cute general repairs. There is no gas
in any of the rooms except mine, and the
tenants burn kerosene They bring their
own cooking stoves with them. No, there
is no elevator; if man lives on the top
floor, he must walk up and down to his
room"
''The Big Flat?" says the sergeant at
the desk in the Elizabeth street station;
1.-THE most troublesome house in the
precinct! Not so much the tenants, you
know, who are hard working people, but
thieves and pickpockats, when they com
init robbery, make use of the passage
from Mott to Elizabeth, to escape the
officer chasing them. We get good
many complaints of all sorts from the
tenants, too, but they don't amount to
much. Go and see some of the Italian
tenements in Mulberry street The
Italians are saving people, and are
rapidly buying up all the Mulberry street
| houses.
Up long flights of dirty stairs we toll,
until at length we reach an open door,
A woman, apparently about SO, but in
reality not more than half that age,
stanis in the entrance with fortnight
old baby in her arms. She is unkempt,
unwashed, and altogether unattractive.
Is this sample of the bright Italian
beauties of which we have read and
dreamed so much, with their darkly-
flashing eyes and raven locks, and clear,
pale olive skins to which the red blood
rushes on occasion? Alas! it is even so.
Italia's maids are women at IS,
mothers a year later, grandmothers al
80, and decrepit hags in year OF
two more. Here in New York the
descendants of the Masters of the World
live like rabbits in a burroW. They
sleep anywhere and anyhow-on the
floor or sitting on box with their backs
against the wall. You will find lively,
or fourteen domiciled in Dom that
would fairly accommodate two persons
Disease is common among them, ant
their dense ignorance of the commones
things makes the evil worse. They ea
anything they can get, whether they buy
it from the butchers otfal, or pick it on
of the ash barrel or the gutter. They
will not spend money on fuel and pori
is cheap, so they eat it raw, and tri
chinosis is rife They can live, like tn
Chinese, where men of other nationali
ties would starve, and so they are say
ing money and becoming householdcrs
, and are forming permanent Italian
colony in Mulberry street and its neigh
borhood, as they have already done il
the vicinity of Snow Hill and Holborr
Valley, London.