The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-06-09
Eleven Years in Boarding Houses.

-Four years ago he changed positions.
going to another firm and getting a
slight increase of wages. That enabled
him to move into a boarding house
where he paid IS a week For a time
he felt that the new place was lux
UIious. When he compared it with the
So specimen of boarding house he felt
tnierably comfortable, but the memory
Of the home and his mothers house,
keeping made it seem poor.
What the young man suffered no one
can appreciate unless he has been rear
ed in home and been forced to board
During the eleven years of existence
in boarding houses he met with every
form of discomfort from insects to gar
rulous landladies; from soggy bread to
lukewarm coffee; from damp rooms to
climbing four flights of stairs; from
piano-playing females to the boarding
house belle.
Jackson's youthful dreams of win
ming wealth were disappearing He
still dreamed occasionally, however,
and the fact that he had not entirely
lost hope was evinced by the fact that
he used to walk out Broad street on
fine Sunday afternoons, keeping a
sharp outlook on the sidewalk and
imagining that he found a pocketbook
with 81, 900, 900 i'm it,
hall bedroom, at such times as the
lamp did not smoke, or the heat fail.
or the man in the room across the
areaway did not play a cornet, he
would sit and dream beautiful dream.
In that dream he acquired great wealth
and, firstly, was enabled to sleep un-
til a. M; and, secondly, could take his
time to breakfast; and. thirdly, that
his one great benefaction would be to
build boarding house in which the
boarders would be comfortable
Now Jackson really had no serious
idea either that he ever would find the
pocketbook or build the boarding
house, because he had no idea that he
would get rich. That idea had been
kicked out of him early, and his SER
ious ambition was to draw S25 a week
as department manager or something
of that sort, when he was notified of
the death of his mothers brother, John
Crawford, at Pittsburg.
He never had known his uncle, and
had, indeed, heard little about him.
his nearest relative in the world was
dead. He did not know that Crawford
was rich. He went to his mothers old
home at Trenton, n. j., to attend his
uncle's funeral-and there discovered
not only that the uncle was rich, but
unmarried and that the will gave him
everything.
Inherits Fortune from Uncle.
That was nearly a year ago. Jackson
quit work, took a trip to Europe, spent
nearly all his first years income on
travel and pleasure, doing all the lit
tie things he had wanted to do but
could not afford to do-and then re-
turned to Philadelphia. The dream
had come true i'm part-and he was de-
termined to build a model boarding
house and see that Ii was conducted
on model lines.
He purchased a site within ten blocks
of the heart of the retail shopping dis
trict, and then hunted up an architect
and gave an order that left that indi-
vidual puzzled and worried and with a
problem on his hands such as never be-
fore an architect faced.
The order was to build house, three
stories high, with a basement, kitchen,
with two elevators, and fire escapes to
every window, every roc IN to have out
side light excepting one. every room
to have a bathroom attached, and rum
ming hot and cold water in each room.
Each room was to have hot water heat,
which could be regulated by the occu-
pant of that room. All walls and
floors were to be deadened with felt
and cement, everything was to be fire
proof and each room was to have an
individual fireplace
Plans Of Boarders' Paradise.
Among other stipulations were these:
Each door 10 open at the corner of the