ing in the city," and to these in turn all the students, the tourists, and the great number of old and shipwrecked persons who seem naturally to gravitate thither. Opportunities for work, and for amusement, excitement, and variety, the attractive force of the unknown, the hypnotic influence of the color and movement and energy of the crowd, all help to draw men and women to the cities.

Primarily, nevertheless, the reasons for the existence of the lodger or roomer are economic. The world's work has to be done and people flock to the cities to do it. To the lodging-house increasing numbers of the middle class gravitate in those years of struggle which in ever lengthening array must elapse between the time they leave the home of their fathers and reach the home of their own. It is the lodging-house (or rooming-house if it is so called in your city) which shelters these young people while they gain an education or a "footing" and earn their own living. Certain causes thus produce in the city a multitude of homeless persons who must have some place to eat and sleep.

The demand thus created affords a means of livelihood to a second class of persons, chiefly women, who could be economically productive in scarcely any other way than by keeping lodgers. The lodging-house keeper, or, as she is familiarly known, the "landlady," constitutes a class of her own. Her economic and social status are considered at length in chapter VIII.

The third element in the lodging-house question is a real-estate problem. Large population migrations from one urban district to another take place in the history of every city. The expansion of business districts, changes in lines of transportation, improvements in suburbs, and, more potent and least explicable of all, changes in the fashionableness of various districts, may depopulate a fine residence section, and leave there a vast area of old dwellings which become forthwith white elephants on the hands of their owners. Still too good to be "made down" into tenements, the invariable fate of these houses is to be turned over to the tender mercies of the lodging- or boarding-house keeper.

The combination of the problem of these three classes, the lodger, the landlady, and the owner, forms the groundwork of the economic, social, and moral conditions with which the following chapters will have to deal.

CHAPTER II

THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH END LODGING-HOUSE SECTION

THE existence of a compact lodging-house district demands historical explanation. Why does it happen to be here rather than elsewhere? How long has it been here? What were the forces that placed it here? The explanation is found in those typical intraurban migrations, mention of which has just been made in the preceding chapter.1

Previous to about 1790 the North End of Boston had been the most desirable residential section, but at that time the West End, Beacon Hill, and part of Washington Street were occupied by equally well-to-do families. Soon after this time, however, the American families began to desert the North End and to turn toward the Fort Hill and Pearl Street district. With the passing of the North End as a residential district, there were for a considerable period in the early part of the nineteenth century two residential sections, namely, that of Fort Hill, and that of Beacon Hill and the West End.

Before 1850, however, signs of momentous change were already apparent. Two forces seem to have been active, rendering new population movements inevitable. The business of the city was rapidly expanding, and the situation of the Fort Hill district was such that it must soon be demanded for business purposes. Nothing so quickly "kills" a locality for residential purposes as the resistless encroachment of trade and commerce upon its borders. The phenomenon may be observed in any large city to-day, and it is invariably accompanied by real estate and social changes that make it worthy of far more study than we can here give it. In the second place Beacon Hill and the West End had become so completely built-up and so compactly populated that a swarming of the young couples

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1 It is not necessary here to enter upon a detailed account of the earlier history of the South End. This may be found to some extent in Shurtleff's Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, and in a condensed form in The City Wilderness.

2 F. A. Bushée, Growth of the Population of Boston, in the Publications of the American Statistical Association, June, 1899, p. 246.

to some other part of the city was necessary. The young people who were growing up, marrying, and establishing homes of their own, had to cut themselves away from the old residence district, however much they may have disliked to leave. The Back Bay marshes were not then filled-in and indeed there was as yet scarcely any thought of such a measure. Otherwise it is safe to say that the movement would have been a gradual overflow of families from the Hill down onto the flats to the west of the Public Garden. Nor was there any communication to speak of with the suburbs. In fact it is almost an anachronism to speak of suburbs during this period. There were surrounding towns, more or less distant, but as a rule people who had permanent business in the city lived in the city.

From almost the beginning of the century, circumstances had so developed that the South End was perforce destined, a's time went on, to become the Mecca of well-to-do families in search of a desirable, fashionable locality in which to "build" and establish homes. Beacon Hill and the West End continued to hold their old families down to the modern period characterized by the buildingup of the Back Bay, but they poured forth their surplus population into the South End. The South End speedily claimed the population of the old Fort Hill district also. Thus it came to pass that the South End became the great well-to-do residential section of the city. Several influences determined this location. In the first place the fact that the land in the South End was made from good solid material brought by rail from the upland country of Needham and other towns, and not from slime and mud pumped from the bottom of the Charles River (the present method), seems to have been an attraction. But a far stronger influence was the street railway As pointed out in "The City Wilderness," "the development of the street tailway at the opportune moment determined the location of the new residential section of the period from 1855 to 1870 in the South End. The Metropolitan Railroad procured its charter in 4% 4. and opened its line from Scollay Square to the South End

All bout a small portion of the South End is built upon made land. The fillingfe of the mardu a of the South and Back Bays within the present limits of the South Food was fu pugnty from about 1800, and was not completed until the end of the Als-yowbih building operations had been rushed forward during the '50's. Fark of quare fabule our tracing, even in outline, this earlier development of the auth foot full of interval an it in,

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and Roxbury late in 1856. For the next fifteen years the South End was the growing and popular quarter of the city; street after street was built up with rows of swell-front brick houses, which are still the dominant feature of the architecture of the district." In the third place it is well to point out, also, that with the exception of South Boston, the South End was the only new part of the city open to occupancy. East Boston, Cambridge, and Charlestown were miles away across water and mud marshes, the Back Bay was an artificial lake, and South Boston itself, which otherwise might have been a beautiful residence district, was cut off by the waters of the South Bay and Fort Point Channel. Continuous growth could take place only along the line of the Neck and the filling to either side of it. The street railway undoubtedly facilitated the expansion of the district, but it seems probable that the South End would have been chosen anyhow. And once the tide of fashion had set in that direction, nothing could stop it. Fashion decreed its favor to the South End, and that settled the matter.

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Every effort was made to make the district attractive. The houses were extremely well built for that period, and no expense seems to have been spared to make them elegant, and in many instances even luxurious. Provision was made for parks, and some of the prettiest places in Boston to-day are the little parks and "squares" of the South End lodging-house district. Especially may be mentioned West Chester Park, Worcester Square, and Union Park. For almost a quarter of a century liveried coachmen and white-capped nursemaids airing their charges were a common sight on Tremont Street and other thoroughfares, while the cross-streets were gay with the voices of children."

The South End, then, was once a city of private homes; now

1 The City Wilderness, p. 30.

2 The Building Department of the City of Boston was not organized until 1873. Previous to that there were no restrictions on building, other than those contained in the deeds to the land. There is therefore no record of building operations in the city until 1873, and as most of the South End, with the exception of Columbus Avenue, was built before that date, we are thrown back upon the "oldest inhabitant" for information.

3 We cannot agree with the writer in The City Wilderness when he says, "The history of the South End is almost devoid of dramatic incident or picturesqueness.". Page 31.

it is a wilderness of factories, tenements, and lodging-houses. Fully five sixths of the old residences are now rooming-houses. Built in the fifties and early sixties they served their proper function for an allotted time, and then a transformation came which was almost startling in its suddenness. Fashion, which had dealt kindly with this section of the city, changed. For some time the South End struggled to keep up appearances, to retain its gentility, but the forces of city growth were too strong for it. Style changes in real estate as in dress, and, comparatively, just as quickly and erratically. It is said that the first faint whisperings of impending change were heard soon after the Civil War. But the storm did not break over the real-estate situation in the South End till Reconstruction days were past, and the crisis of '73 had begun to work out its effects.

The immediate occasion for the change seems to have been the real estate situation on Columbus Avenue. This street was put through as far as Northampton Street about 1870, and was immediately built up with a somewhat cheaper style of houses than those on the older streets. Most of these new houses were built on mortgages, and after the panic of '73 had broken over the city most of them were in the possession of the banks. The banks sold them for what they would bring, and the result was an acute drop in the value of Columbus Avenue real estate, and in the character of the immediate locality. The shock thus felt on Columbus Avenue with such sudden force gradually had the effect of disturbing the equilibrium in the rest of the South End. It soon became evident that the palmy days of the district were over. Men's eyes were turned towards a new Mecca. The Back Bay flats were being filled-in, and for various reasons they looked attractive. A few families, leaders in residential fashion, as it were, broke the ice, sold or rented their South End homesteads, and erected new mansions on Beacon, Marlborough, Newbury, and Boylston streets and Commonwealth Avenue. The movement gained strength, slowly at first, and then, as the contagion of change struck deeper, with an almost appalling rush. As one person put it, "The people got out of the South End like rats." It is not possible to assign any definite date for the exodus. All we can say is that it began in the seventies, gained momentum during the early eighties, and was practically finished before 1890. By 1885 the South End had become dominantly a lodging-house section.