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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 1 1 



from sun or rain while the visitor is waiting for 

 the gate to be opened or his call to be answered. 

 Most of the houses (435) have complete or partial 

 sidewalks of cobblestones; 111 houses have no 

 sidewalk of any description; 89 have asphalt; 61 

 have cement; 26 have brick; and 3 houses have 

 sidewalks of glazed tUes. From the above we get 

 the picture of a typical Quhoga house as of 1 

 story, with a 2-slope roof of red tiles, cobblestone 

 sidewalk, whitewashed adobe walls, 1 exterior 

 door, possibly 1 or more windows, and no public 

 utilities. 



There are 5 arrangements of rooms wliich com- 

 prise more than nine-tenths of the houses in 

 Quiroga. Our conclusions are based on data from 

 all of the inliabited houses and several of the others 

 totaling 650 buildings. The distribution of houses 

 by number of rooms was: 224 with 2 rooms, 186 

 with 3 rooms, 74 with 4 rooms, 56 with 1 room, 50 

 with 5 rooms, 23 with 6 rooms, and 37 with 7 up to 

 30 rooms (this includes the municipal building and 

 the hotels). This would indicate that the typical 

 house has 2 or 3 rooms. This conclusion is not 

 quite correct from the American point of view. 

 In the United States we include living room, dining 

 room, bedrooms, and kitchen (although not bath- 

 rooms) among the rooms of a house. In Quiroga 

 there are practically no batlu-ooms or water closets 

 (or closets of any other description) so such rooms 

 do not enter the picture; but, in Quiroga, a kitchen 

 is never considered to be a jiieza or room. Usually 

 the kitchen or coeina is a separate unit in the patio 

 or at the back of the house, and consists of a shed 

 roof (extending out from the back wall of the 

 house or the side wall of the solar) and inclosed on 

 two or three sides by walls of adobe, mud and 

 wattle, matting or thatching, etc. Therefore, if 

 a house is said to consist of two rooms this means 

 that there are two completely roofed and inclosed 

 units plus a kitchen and possibly other structures 

 in the back yard, among wliich may be a granary 

 or troje (in the original Spanish sense of the word). 

 The most common house arrangement is of two 

 rooms (both with a wall on the street if the solar 

 is wide enough, otherwise with one room fronting 

 the street and the other room giving onto the back 

 yard or patio), with an open porch or shed at the 

 back, in one corner of which is the kitchen. A 

 nearly as common pattern merely adds a third 

 room on one or the other side at the back to form 

 an L-shaped house. In another arrangement a 



fourth room is at the back, giving a U-shape to the 

 house, in which case the kitchen leanto is com- 

 monly attached to the wall of one of the side 

 rooms and the yard is effectively divided into an 

 inner nearly inclosed patio which contains the 

 flowers and ornamental shi'ubs and an outer yard 

 which contains the outhouses and fruit trees. The 

 one-room pattern normally has the kitchen occupy- 

 ing all of the back porch or veranda. Finally, 

 there is the arrangement of five or more rooms 

 which completely inclose a patio, in which case 

 usually a zagudn leads directly from the street to 

 the patio. This is the type that most closely 

 approximates the Moorish Spanish house, and in 

 a number of such houses there is a central weU or 

 font in the patio and a formal arrangement of 

 ornamental shrubs and flowering plants in macetas. 

 In approximately 400 of the houses the chief or 

 only flooring material is brick; tamped earth 

 constitutes the floors in about 290 of the houses; 

 about 30 have cement floors; and only 5 have 

 wooden floors. In perhaps 60 of the houses in 

 which brick or cement floors predominate there 

 are 1 or more rooms or parts of rooms with flooring 

 of another material (brick and cement, brick and 

 wood, cement and wood, brick and tile, etc.). 



The function of the rooms depends upon the 

 number of rooms present and on the size of the 

 family. In the occupied houses or homes there is 

 an average of more than 1.5 persons per room. 

 If there is only 1 room it serves as combined 

 living room, storage room, and bedroom. The 

 most common arrangement (in houses with 2 or 

 more rooms) is to use the front or "best" room as 

 a parlor in which to receive people, as the location 

 for the household shrine and any lithochromes and 

 photographs the family may possess, and as a 

 storeroom in which to keep the wooden chests 

 which contain the best clothing and other treas- 

 ured possessions. If there is a sewing machine or 

 radio in the house it is usually kept in this room. 

 In Quiroga in 1945 there were 194 sewing machines 

 (100 pedal and 94 hand), 62 radios, 9 phonographs, 

 and 4 pianos. Also, should guests stay overnight 

 commonly they will be bunked down (on mat, 

 cot, or possibly a wooden bed) in this room. The 

 other room or rooms serve as bedrooms and (in 

 the case of some handicrafts) as workrooms. 

 Should the size of the family require it 1 or more 

 persons may sleep on the back porch or in the 

 kitchen. We did not take a census of household 



