The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1897-11-24
WHAT HOMES SHOULD Be
Sanitary Expert Wingate Tells
How Dwellings Should
Be Constructed.

Charles 3. Wingate, sanitary expert,
delivered the second lecture in the winter
course of the ST. Johns Institute in the
lecture room Of st Johns P. e. Church,
Summit avenue, last night. He talked on
Homes as they are, and as they ought
TO be- His lecture was intensely inter-
esting and wholly practical. and his large
audience dispersed with the feeling tina
they had acquired knowledge which will
be useful to them no matter what their
calling or station in life. Mr.. Wright said
in part
Il had the misfortune to live in a model
house one time, and that is one of those
I am going to tell you about. Now this is
the way a man builds a house. First he
digs a hole in the ground. Then he show
els into it one end of a wooden or brick
or stone box, which he seals at the top.
Then he keeps on putting these boxes clos
er and closer together, making them more
and more like a brick standing on end;
and the women who live in them are fool
ism enough to add to the unsanitary con-
curtains and other dust and disease har-
bingers. No wonder we see white faces
on every hand. No wonder there is a drug
gist on every corner and q doctor in every
block. What we need is a society for i'm
proving the condition of the rich.
The man who builds the house does not
exclude the dampness and foul atmos-
phere which permeates the city soil from
rising through the cellar into and through
the house. This could be easily done.
ifoor Of the cellar, cover this with Port
land cement, and then with asphalt. run
ming these up the side walls. You then
are actually built over old water courses
and are not in any way protected from
the resulting dampness. / have ex-
fourth street ferry, New York. In that
LEGALITY the annual average Of deaths in a
block is five. Seven is extreme. But
there are five houses near the ferry in
which there were thirty-five deaths in a
year-as many as in seven whole blocks.
| investigated and found that these houses
We're built on an old water course.
was talking to my good friend. Mr..
Hewitt about it, and he said he didn't
pelieve that was the trouble. He said
ne and Peter Cooper lived over an old
water course for years, and that he was
perfectly healthy. | couldn't help won
dering just how much OF his dyspepsia
might be due to the ~unsanitary location of
his house. | am . Of quoting a news
paper woman of this city, to the effect
that houses ugh not to nave wet feet
NOV about draughts. We do not take
~draughts. But we often imagine there
is a draught when there is none. Do
not turn off the cold air supply from
your furnace. Tie placing of alternating
strips ID the air box will often remedy
the direet current of cold air which blows
right through the furnace without be-
coming. sufficiently heated. If you will
raise the end of the air box, TOO, you
will not get 1t so full of dust and street
~sweepings, which are drawn up into your
rooms.
Now, about the model house where l
lived. In the first place, there were orr
namentai g~ateways admitting to the
courts from which you enter The houses.
But the entrance to the houses was a
cast-iron door, and the only way OF COM
municating will those inside was to kick
that door. Also, these black. cell-like
SO that when you looked out of your
window it was like q reminder of Sing
Sing. There was a place in the rear
coal hole was in front. l know of a lead
ing architect who thought 1t would be
nice to put bureau drawers in the closets.
He did it, but instead of leaving room
for them to open sideways he made them
fill all the space, and he carried them
up 50 high that a woman. ~eouldnsl reach
skirt. anyway. This same architect put
window seats in the bedrooms. The
seats were too high for a child to get
onto. and were too narrow for a child
to sit upon it if it once got there.
within pistol shot of this place is a
house that I could point you to where
there is a two-inch growth of white fun
gus on the cellar walls. In Newport |
examined a house where two fine bath
rooms had been put IN at q cost of 81, 0oo
apiece. found a hole six inches in di-
aineter which the plumber had forgotten
TO close. A hole which would have filled
the house with deadly sewer gas.
Some people argue that sewer gas
cannot be very harmful, because, as
they claim, plumbers do not feel the
effects of 1t. But they do feel the eff
fects. Up at the Gould house at Irving
ton the pipes were found to be corroded
and new ones were put in. Now, there
was a house standing on a hill in the
midst Of acres of open ground, with open
drains carrying the drainage to the river,
any yet all the men working over the
pipes had headaches"