The ordinance also attempts to regulate the light and ventilation of the rooms by requiring that each room shall have window space equal to one-tenth of the floor area of the room, and that the windows shall open direct upon a street, alley, yard, or court. These provisions, as so many of the others, do not apply to the oldlaw buildings, and of course were not met in a large percentage of the buildings of this district. The investigators reported 285 rooms as inadequately ventilated; of these 63 had no window at all, 87 had interior windows only; and in the other 135 the outer windows were inadequate for the ventilation of the room. Table X shows the number of persons, 390 in all, sleeping in these poorly ventilated

rooms.

TABLE X

INADEQUATELY VENTILATED ROOMS AND NUMBER OF PERSONS USING. LOWER NORTH DISTRICT

NUMBER OF ROOMS HAVING

PERSONS

57

63

37

16

5

I

..

87

135

285

390

It will be noticed that in four cases three people were sleeping in a windowless room; in one case four people. In another instance where the family of an Italian barber were living in a two-room apartment, four members of the family were sleeping in a room of 646 cubic feet, with the only window opening into the barber shop. In an apartment above a saloon, a few doors south, two adults and three children were sleeping in a bedroom where the only window opened into the parlor, which was also used for sleeping. In another case, eleven Greeks were found living above a stable where several horses were kept. Seven of the men were sleeping in one inadequately ventilated room. The illustration on p. 529 illustrates the manner in which pantries are utilized as bedrooms.

Eighteen hundred and seven rooms were reported as having insufficient light; of these 459 were called "dark" and 1,348 "gloomy." An attempt was made to standardize these terms by using "dark" to apply to rooms where one could read only when close to the window, and "gloomy" when one could read only a few feet away from the window. Only 323 of these rooms failed to comply with the provisions of the code requiring the window space to be equal to 10 per cent of the floor area. It is evident, therefore, that the lack of light is due rather to the outlook of the windows than to their size. This outlook is given in Table XI.

TABLE XI

OUTLOOK OF DARK AND GLOOMY ROOMS. LOWER NORTH DISTRICT

This table shows that 1,072, or 63 per cent of all the poorly lighted rooms, open upon a passageway. As was evident from the table showing the percentage of the lot covered, there is very little space between the buildings. The lots are very narrow, and the houses cover nearly the entire width of the lot, leaving passages frequently no more than eight inches or a foot wide. A window opening upon such a passage is practically useless for purposes of either light or ventilation. In one three-room apartment in this neighborhood, a widow was living with four children, the oldest one tuberculous. The front room was light; from this opened the kitchen, very dark because the only window opened directly upon

the wall of the next house. The third room was long and narrow, the only light and air coming from a window off the small entrance hall. This room was so dark and damp that the family did not use it; all five were living in the parlor and the kitchen.

As was mentioned near the beginning of this article, the conditions found in the block canvassed in the First Ward were markedly different from those in the Lower North district, which we have been discussing. In making comparisons, it is fair to remember that the statistics for the First Ward were based on the canvass of a much smaller neighborhood. Here fifteen premises were canvassed, facing Plymouth Court and backing on the alley between Plymouth Court and State Street. Opposite is the baggage department of the Dearborn Street station, into which come over twothirds of the immigrants arriving in Chicago. Both the street and the sidewalk are very narrow. Near the corner of Polk Street are several buildings not used as dwellings and not included in the canvass; next is a large brick yard, fenced in, but used nevertheless as more or less of a dump; then come the houses canvassed. In this block the nationality of 119 heads of households was found. Of these one was a Negro; the other 118 were Italians. The Negro lived in a house which faced on Taylor Street, and was in the rear of one of the Plymouth Court premises. In the houses facing on Plymouth Court, therefore, the population was entirely Italian. Even block 3 in the Lower North district is less exclusively Italian than this Plymouth Court block. The neighborhood as a whole is, however, a polyglot territory. Just east of Plymouth Court on State Street are many Negroes; to the north are Chinese; at the Jones School, which these Italian children attend, probably more nationalities are represented than in any other school in Chicago.

In the streets of this neighborhood are still standing some of the fine old houses, originally designed for the well-to-do residents of Chicago. These buildings are now used as tenements for large numbers of families. Other buildings were put up as cheap lodginghouses of questionable character, poorly adapted for the use of the families who now live in them. To this group belong the Plymouth Court buildings canvassed. There are also larger and more recently built tenements, some of them covering completely the