752 ANNUAL BEPOBT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 191.3. 



wind in some accordance with the contour lines of the hill. In such 

 quarters, lots of varying shapes and sizes would be possible. 



Near factory quarters, where land values are not yet prohibitive, 

 the Philadelphia type of housing might be promoted by the estab- 

 lishment of lots of 14 or 15 feet in Avidth and perhaps 40 feet deep, 

 to be built up with 4-room or 6-room cottages, two stories in 

 height, with brick dividing walls on the lot line. Houses of this 

 type could be constructed so as to be available even for the families 

 of day laborers, as the experience of Philadelphia has proved. Pref- 

 erably if this type of house is to be used, builders should be provided 

 by some competent authority with standard plans showing types of 

 construction that are cheapest in design and at the same time health- 

 ful and varied in exterior. Multiple cottages of this type can be 

 constructed to rent or to sell. Streets may be narrow without dark- 

 ening rooms, but provision should be made for grass strips and trees 

 on all streets of this character, relieving their monotony of type and 

 improving the air for the semicrowded occupants. 



In the outlying portions of the city's contiguous suburbs, both 

 straight and winding streets iwaj be provided, and in specific quar- 

 ters lots narrow or wide, shallow or deep, may be accepted according 

 to the prospective use of the quarter. In general, however, the 

 narrow lot should be avoided in such suburbs, and the permission to 

 plat deep lots might be granted, or parks or allotment gardens 

 planned in the center of certain blocks if the city guarded the right 

 to push a minor street through the middle of the block in the future. 

 Both one and two familj^^ houses could be constructed more economi- 

 cally and to gi*eater social advantage on lots from 30 to 35 feet in 

 width and 60 to 70 feet in depth than they can now on the 25 by 100 

 feet lot. On the wider lot, as specified, houses can be constructed 

 with square-floor plan, two rooms abreast and two or three rooms 

 deep, reducing somewhat the cost of construction, the cost of heating, 

 and the cost of furnishing such homes. Furthermore, the lot 35 by 

 60 feet in dimensions uses 400 square feet less of land than the lot of 

 25 by 100 feet. On it a house may be built with two rooms of ordi- 

 nary size abreast and may yet leave 5 feet on the side to each lot line. 

 The house may be built two rooms deep and leave a 10-foot lawn 

 in front (insured by municipal provision for a building line) and a 

 25-foot yard in the rear, which may be encroached upon by a third 

 room in th'^. depth of the house or by a piazza, or may be used as a 

 garden. The only serious disadvantage of this lot plan lies in that 

 it provides for an increased street frontage, and thereby a larger cost 

 to the owner for road construction, etc. But if street costs in resi- 

 dence sections are reduced by the means above specified, there will 

 unquestionably be a net gain to saciety from the use of this method 

 of platting. 



