long play-yard between the buildings in
Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth streets. It is too narrow to have anything
in it but asphalt. But the rest makes up for it in part.

All together, the company has redeemed its promise of real model
tenements; and it has had no trouble with its tenants. The few and
simple rules are readily understood as being for the general good, and
so obeyed. It is the old story, told years and years ago by Mr. Alfred
T. White when he had built his Riverside tenements in Brooklyn. The
tenants "do not have to come up" to the landlord's standard. They are
more than abreast of him in his utmost endeavor, if he will only use
common sense in the management of his property. They do that in the City
and Suburban Homes Company's buildings. They give their tenants
shower-baths and a friend for a rent-collector, their children playrooms
and Christmas parties, and the whole neighborhood feels the stimulus of
the new and humane plan. In all Battle Row there has not been a scrap,
let alone an old-time shindy, since the "accommodation flats" came upon
the scene. That is what they call them. It is an everyday observation
that the Row has "come up" since some of the old houses have been
remodelled. The new that are being built aim visibly toward the higher
standard.

The company's rents average a dollar a week per room, and are a trifle
higher than those of the old tenements round about; but they have so
much more in the way of comfort that the money is eagerly paid; nor is
the difference so great that the "picking of tenants" amounts to more
than the putting of a premium on steadiness, sobriety, and cleanliness,
which in itself is a service to render. One experience of the management
which caused some astonishment, but upon reflection was accepted as an
encouraging sign, was the refusal of the tenants to use the common
wash-tubs in the laundry. They are little used to this day. The women
will use the drying racks, but they object to rubbing elbows with their
neighbors while they wash their clothes. It is, after all, a sign that
the tenement that smothers individuality left them this useful handle,
and if the experience squashed the hopes of some who dreamed of
municipal wash-houses on the Glasgow plan, there is nothing to grieve
over. Every peg of personal pride rescued from the tenement is worth a
thousand theories for hanging the hope of improvement on.

With $2,300,000 invested by this time, the company has