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

[nineveh_uk]

In addition to the elements of having social freedom and it being 'respectable' to live on your own (especially for younger women) I think there must be a large element in it of practicalities of living alone without that being a full-iime job. If the house doesn't have a housekeeper, it needs services, whether that's services or a gas-ring and indoor plumbing.

ETA: I always liked the house-keeping of young women living semi- on their own, semi-boarding in things like the Anne books. How they did it, but also the freedom that it represented.

[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.

[staranise]

I would love if respectable boarding-houses were still a thing.

[sophia_helix]

My dad, b. 1954, makes the same reference. But his mother was born in Brooklyn in 1923, so maybe that's it.

[sara]

Is there not a growler culture down there? We have them up here though you can't send children.

[meara]

I have also heard "boarding house reach" used, possibly by my parents? Not sure where I got that one. And in a way they are coming back--if you google "apodments" (which autocorrect wants to be "app dementia"??) in Seattle, some of them have shared kitchen/living areas. ( others are just tiny studios). I think also, there weren't so many kids in college, living in dorms?

[redstarrobot]

I love the idea of boarding houses; the independence of being able to afford being on your own, and not having a second full-time job of cooking and cleaning at home. But I suspect that they relied on how undervalued the labor of women and immigrants was to make the cooking and cleaning and laundry affordable, and eventually it just became cheaper to put a coin-op laundry in the basement and cookers in the units.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

"...When and how did single Americans decide that they'd put up with their own cooking in exchange for privacy?..."

It was 1947, and it involved something that happened in New Mexico.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

And did they gave way to the SRO type of hotels? It's an interesting question.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting question! This Boston Globe article says they were dwindling even in the 1930s.

[pameladean]

My dad used the term "boarding-house reach" as well, and we still use it in my house today.

P.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Zoning laws forced them out of many neighborhoods (often prohibiting guests "not related by blood or marriage"), as they were considered lower-class.

This had the side effect of banning same-sex couples. Some LFBT couples therefore had one person adopt the other.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

My parents' house had been used as a boarding house before they bought it in 1966, something I hadn't thought about in a long, long time. It made for a very odd collection of nick-knacks being left behind when we moved in.

I knew the term boarding house reach, although I'm not sure if I heard it from my parents. My main exposure to boarding houses was in movies. The one that comes to mind is The Day the Earth Stood Still, which is centered in one.

When and how did single Americans decide that they'd put up with their own cooking in exchange for privacy?

One thing that also seemed to be happening post-war was the rise of people sharing houses or apartments with others as roommates. To a certain extent, that's the same situation as a boarding house only without the live-in landlord/housekeeper.