News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1884-03-27
CHEAP BEDS AND BOARD.
Chances MT the Lower-Prfced Restaurants
and Lodging Houses of a City.

Look into the biggest clearinghouse
in the Bowery, says New York letter:
It is on a corner below Grand street. The
rooms are let for twenty-five cents a
night You enter at the end of the build.
ing on the side street and at the head OF
the stairs come to little window at
which the quarter dollars of the Gus
toners are exchanged for the keys OF
the rooms. The keys which have num-
bered bits of brass attached to them,
serve as tickets of admission at the door
further along. The lodging-house con-
sists of two floors, each as big as the IN
terror of an extra large Broadway store.
It presents to the eye of the visitor
number of narrow passage ways Leading
between partitions only seven feet high.
The ceilings are seven or eight feet above
these partitions. Seven feet apart along
these passage ways are doors opening into
the little box-like rooms. The walls and
doors are white and clean. There Is a
faint smell of carbolic acid in the air.
Each tiny bedroom is furnished with one
chair, cot, three clothes hooks, bowl,
pitcher and three-legged iron wash
stand. The pillow and sheet on each
bed are white, the blue counterpane
looks neat, and the walls are white and
clean. The floor is bare. Here and
there are to be seen rooms wherein cheap
chromos are pinned upon the board
walls. Their presence show that the
room is hired by the week. but if you
look for trunk or satchel belonging to
the tenant you are apt to be disappointed
nine times in ten.
On the first floor of this and all the
other big lodging houses large space in
front of the rows of bedrooms is fitted
up as lounging and reading room.
These are the rooms passengers on the
elevated railroads notice all along the
main avenues down town, where are al
ways to be seen many young men with
their feet up and their chairs tilted back,
smoking, reading or looking out upon
the street. Each room has big table,
and the newspapers, pens, ink and
checkerboards on these tables show how
the dodgers may spend that spare time
which most of them possess in abund-
ance.
In some of the ten-cent houses the
beds are not separated by partitions.
They are arranged in rows in big rooms,
just as hospital cots are. Each ledger
hangs his clothes ON the chair by his
bedside. A Waterman stands guard over
the pockets and property of the sleepers.
The biggest five-cent clearinghouse in
New York is the old colored grammar
school building in Thompson street. 1t
is an exaggerated ships Storage, or
rather three steerages one above another.
The walls of the former class rooms have
been removed, and each spacious floor is
now an immense room filled with double
hunks built close together. The hunks
are heavy wooden frames, and look like
one kitchen table set on top of another.
They are two feet apart. There are
eighty or ninety of these frames on the
first floor, the only one the reporter
visited. No women are admitted to these
places. The floor had been scrubbed and
the walls were clean. Each ledger gets
a bed to himself under cover in heated
room. The place suggested a catacomb,
but the price was only five cents.