Fossils

[mme_hardy]

Oh, the chambermaid came to the door
Says, "Get up, you lazy sinner
We need those sheets for a tablecloth
And it's almost time for dinner!"

-- "No Booze Today!"

That was an song I learned in the 1960s, from a children's album. It was already forgotten in children's culture; I never heard it anywhere else. You can judge how obsolete the song was because it mentioned sending a child to the saloon with a growler to get beer, a custom I doubt revived after Prohibition.

Remembering the song did make me wonder where the boarding-house went. It was a city institution in America throughout the last part of the 19th century and at least until World War II. A boarding house gave you a bedroom, access to common rooms, and two meals a day. Young women going to the city were sent to "respectable" boarding-houses that would keep a watchful eye on their clientele. Jokes said that young men married just to get out of the boarding houses.

Then they went poof. What happened? When and how did single Americans decide that they'd put up with their own cooking in exchange for privacy?

Edit: My father, born 1929, habitually referred to grabbing a serving dish across somebody else -- as opposed to asking for it to be passed -- as "a boarding-house reach", both when he did it and when a child did it.

Comments

[lizbee]

Melbourne still has boarding houses! Most are decrepit hovels that hold too many people, ignore the fire codes and charge exorbitant amounts of rent, but there are a few respectable ones. I used to walk past one every day when I worked at Borders. It catered to mostly international students, particularly young Asian men and women leaving home for the first time.

[alexbayleaf]

I lived in one for a while, in the 1990s, when I was otherwise homeless. It was *very* loosely attached to the university I was at... not actually part of it, but across the road and mostly housed students, often international/country ones. I had a single room, shared bathroom, breakfast provided, and I forget what the dinner situation was but I think there was a basic meal provided (curry and rice, something like that) or you could use a communal kitchen.

I read an article not too long ago about a boarding house in Manhattan, a respectable one for women even, that is thriving in this day and age. I can't find a link offhand though.

Finally, in the town I just moved to, right by the train station there is an honest to god TEMPERANCE HOSTEL that is still in operation, and has been continuously, AFAIK, since the 1880s when it was founded: http://reidsguesthouse.com.au/ They don't advertise it on the site but I believe they also offer some longer-term accommodation.

I still say "boarding house reach", too.

[alexbayleaf]

Oh, and googling for boarding houses in this town, I just found this ad for a house literally one block from here, which I noticed the other day as it is VERY distinctive, which is registered as a 39-person boarding house (though not currently in use as such). A bit of googling tells me it was a guest house called "Wandella" but I can't find much else.