In Darkened Homes

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Two children in a typical alleyway between tenements, 1911.

“The houses are so close in these half-blocks that it is said to have been the practice of one agent to collect rents at the third and fourth stories by reaching out into the apartments on the same floors of the next house. The two half-blocks on the east end of Common Street adjoin each other on the south side of the street… All the houses but three are wooden. This is the greatest concentration of population living in wooden houses in any 3 acres in the state of Massachusetts. The efficiency of workers is constantly being reduced by the impaired vision and permanent injury to their eyesight that is one of the results of their living in darkened houses.”

From The Lawrence Survey.