32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The campaign for tenement-house reform, lately rewarded by 

 splendid results, has been a step in the right direction. Its bearing on 

 the building laws is one of the most important benefits. The provi- 

 sions calling for greater court area and other features calculated to 

 relieve crowding and to assist natural ventilation should be made even 

 more sweeping and extended to all classes of buildings. 



To improve the housing, for rich and poor, and to make a city more 

 healthful generally, we must aim to relieve this excessive crowding. 

 A good beginning has been made by the fight for small parks. More 

 of these breathing spots are needed, sorely needed. Healthy play- 

 room for the children of those unbroken rows of flats is hard to ob- 

 tain, but it must be secured, if only to break up the monotony of 

 brick and stone and relieve it with some wholesome vegetation, 

 cooling, purifying bits of nature. Even if limited to a single block, 

 small parks could be utilized for schools, as is done frequently in 

 smaller towns. This would be really the ideal way of securing their 

 full benefit, the children profiting in the day, adults in the evening, 

 and the neighborhood all the time. The plan of locating public build- 

 ings and schools on open squares or parks may be luxury in country 

 towns, but it is a necessity in large cities from a sanitary point of view. 

 This idea, once recognized and rooted, might be the wedge for a new 

 method of securing sites, of making the school the excuse, or rather 

 the necessity, for another small park. It should at once be adopted in 

 outlying districts where space is less expensive. The finest sites set 

 apart for public institutions have never been found too good and always 

 will prove the best investment of public funds from every point of view. 

 It can not but influence the private owner to plan and build with a 

 broader purpose than the immediate commercial gain, which has 

 demoralized the arts and crafts, the architecture of the day, and will 

 be a testimony to future generations of the materialism of our age. 



To bring daylight into the dwellings of the ignorant masses is to 

 educate them and to banish dirt, filth and disease. More light inci- 

 dentally brings more air and purer air. But there is need for sanitary 

 reform also in the dwellings of the rich. It should begin with more 

 sensible building plans, a return to simplicity in design and construc- 

 tion with a view to inducing salubrity as the first principle of hygiene. 

 It is not so much the quantity of air that is to be considered, but rather 

 the quality. Let us have not only more air, but purer air, as from the 

 open country or the sea. Sanitation of the air is a lesson taught by 

 nature. Civilization must apply it for humanity, for the wholesome 

 enjoyment of life to all. 



