large number of people. Only 16 per cent of the buildings, however, are over three stories high. A similar condition prevails of course in many parts of Chicago, making a sharp contrast with the high brick tenements of New York. It should be pointed out that although the density per block is less under such conditions as prevail in Chicago, the overcrowding within the houses is apt to be greater.

Of the 404 buildings canvassed, only seven have been built since the tenement law of 1902. Only one of these new-law buildings has more than four apartments. This is a brick tenement in block 3, having eight apartments, varying in size from two to five rooms. Another one of those comparatively new buildings is a one-story brick building, having only a cobbler shop and one room in which the cobbler lives alone. Of the other five, one is brick and one partly brick; two are rear frame houses, and one is in the middle of the lot.

An important fact in connection with the housing is the grade of the yards below the street level. Only four buildings in the whole district have the yard on a level with the street, while 248,

The following tables showing the material of the buildings and the number of stories are of interest in this connection:

TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF BRICK AND FRAME HOUSES. LOWER NORTH DISTRICT

TABLE SHOWING NUMBER OF HOUSES OF SPECIFIED NUMBER OF STORIES. LOWER NORTH DISTRICT

In block 3, which has the largest percentage of Italians, was found a much higher percentage of low frame buildings than in any of the other blocks.

or 86 per cent, are at least five feet below the street level. This is due of course to the grading of the streets after the erection of the houses. It leads naturally to a rather large number of basement and cellar apartments, which are likely to be dark and damp, although in many, perhaps most, cases, not actually below the level of the yards. Of the 1,462 apartments visited, 103 were cellar apartments and 117 basement apartments. Occasionally this lowest story is boarded up and unused.

The buildings in this district cover a large percentage of the lots as compared with those dealt with in the articles on the stockyards neighborhood or South Chicago. There was considerably more unused space even in the Polish district of the Northwest Side. Only in the Jewish and Bohemian blocks on the West Side were the lots so crowded. It is especially to be noted that in 25 cases, or 9 per cent, the lot was entirely covered, and in 63 cases, 23 per cent of the entire number, 90 per cent or over of the lot was covered. In some of these lots where nearly all the ground is covered are high brick tenements; more often there are two or even three small frame buildings.

The crowding of the lot means of course lack of light and air. It also means that the families live much on the street, and that even more than in many other neighborhoods the street is the playground of the children. When in the summer of 1911, two little

1 According to the Code a cellar is a story more than half below the level of the street grade, while a basement is a story partly but not more than half below this level.

children were run over in Gault Court within two weeks, the mayor was induced to close the traffic temporarily, and this block was converted into a street zone for children. Although the experiment has not been repeated, it was an interesting attempt to provide a place in which the children might play, and of course an acknowledgment that for these hundreds of small Italians there was no playground but the street.

As is to be expected in a district where so large a percentage of the lot is covered, the density of population is very high. This is especially true of block 1 and of block 3,' in each of which there were over 400 people to the acre. In blocks 2 and 5, there were from 320 to 330 people per acre; in block 4, about 235. Table I, it will be remembered, shows that the percentage of the population who are Italians is very much greater in blocks 1, 2, and 3 than in blocks 4 and 5. The two most densely populated blocks then, are ones where the percentage of Italians is high, and it is among the Italians, rather than among the Scandinavians or Irish, that the overcrowding is greatest. How great this overcrowding is, may be shown by a comparison with the density of some other congested districts in Chicago. When the City Homes Association made its investigation, the net area and the number of people per acre was computed for 54 blocks, part of them located in the Jewish and Italian district in the Ninth and Nineteenth wards, part of them in the most crowded section of the Polish neighborhood in the Sixteenth Ward. Forty of these 54 blocks had a density of less than 300. Among them all only two were found having a density as great as blocks 1 and 3 in this neighborhood; one of these was in the Italian district, one in the Polish.

In order to appreciate the seriousness of the overcrowding, however, it is necessary to take into consideration not only the density per acre, but the type of house in which the people are living. The large percentage of the lot covered, taken together with the shape of the lot prevalent in Chicago, a long, narrow lot, and the fact that so many more of the houses are separate cottages than large tenements, means of course a considerable number of rear houses. The canvass showed in these blocks 289 buildings fronting on the street,

The net area of each block was used in the computation.