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I ran across a reference to this in a Medium essay about cohousing experiments (Common, WeLive, etc.) in the Bay Area, NY, etc. It sounded _exactly_ like the kind of thing I like, so when Amazon had it used for $70 and up, and no ebook version, I requested it from my local library system. It turns out you can just go read it over at google books, so if your library doesn’t have it, you don’t have to miss out (and the google books version is a facsimile, so the pictures are in decent shape).
https://books.google.com/books/about/Living_Downtown.html
Since the book dates from the late 1990s, gentrification was definitely in progress at the time of writing, but was nothing at all like what it is currently. Groth is looking at the history of the built city from the perspective of the SRO crisis: property owners of old-skool cheap housing no longer wanted to continue to run their properties. They wanted to tear them down and replace them with much more valuable, more modern buildings. People with young children were still moving out of the cities for suburban schools, but that trend was tapering off as young people who were starting families didn’t want to move out of cities when they had kids and were figuring out ways to make that happen.
Groth uses census and property records to make up for the absence of most of residential hotel history in more standard works on the history of the urban built environment. And he does a really great job of explaining _why_ the reformers and bureaucrats responsible for the standard works on housing in cities rendered residential hotels so completely invisible (even the expensive ones). It’s a fascinating look into how late 19th / early 20th century Republican reformers thought about families and housing — and how relentlessly they ignored anyone who was not within the family structure in either sense. Erasure: it’s a real thing.
More than one commentator has remarked that we are recreating “The Gilded Age” or some other historical time period which overlaps with this books time frame (1880-1930 in the United States, primarily focused on SF). I spent a lot of the time I was reading this book trying to figure out what a “decent” minimum standard would be today. I also buggged all my regular conversational partners for their perspectives. We all landed (the author, my sister, various friends) in roughly the same space: en suite toilet stall, a sink NOT in the same space as the toilet, so it can double up with the mini fridge / microwave. None of us sees anything wrong with people eating most of their meals out of their “home”, nor do we have _any_ problem with the idea of sending the laundry out, etc. To be honest, I spent a chunk of time thinking about palace hotels and wishing they existed _now_ so I could move my family into one (until the money ran out!) and never have to do any housework again — and not have to do any of the management of the people doing the cooking and cleaning, either. A life spend tipping just as one would do on vacation would definitely be a weird life; I don’t see anything morally wrong with it. There, at least, the reformers and I part ways vigorously. OTOH, income inequality. Hard to know what the right thing to do is.
If you read articles about Apodments or NYC or SF experiments with microhousing, or you read about furnished rooms with shared kitchens and lease lengths as short as a month and scratch your head and wonder, what would that be like? That sounds odd! Well, this book will recalibrate your perspective. NOT having this as an option is probably even more odd.
ETA: Late in the book, he describes things like The Baltic Inn in San Diego as new-built rooming houses. It has since been closed, renovated, and re-opened as a hotel more in the style we are accustomed to (for travelers).
#22
Technically, 21 and 22 were read in the other order, but reviewed in this order. Whatever.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Living_Downtown.html
Since the book dates from the late 1990s, gentrification was definitely in progress at the time of writing, but was nothing at all like what it is currently. Groth is looking at the history of the built city from the perspective of the SRO crisis: property owners of old-skool cheap housing no longer wanted to continue to run their properties. They wanted to tear them down and replace them with much more valuable, more modern buildings. People with young children were still moving out of the cities for suburban schools, but that trend was tapering off as young people who were starting families didn’t want to move out of cities when they had kids and were figuring out ways to make that happen.
Groth uses census and property records to make up for the absence of most of residential hotel history in more standard works on the history of the urban built environment. And he does a really great job of explaining _why_ the reformers and bureaucrats responsible for the standard works on housing in cities rendered residential hotels so completely invisible (even the expensive ones). It’s a fascinating look into how late 19th / early 20th century Republican reformers thought about families and housing — and how relentlessly they ignored anyone who was not within the family structure in either sense. Erasure: it’s a real thing.
More than one commentator has remarked that we are recreating “The Gilded Age” or some other historical time period which overlaps with this books time frame (1880-1930 in the United States, primarily focused on SF). I spent a lot of the time I was reading this book trying to figure out what a “decent” minimum standard would be today. I also buggged all my regular conversational partners for their perspectives. We all landed (the author, my sister, various friends) in roughly the same space: en suite toilet stall, a sink NOT in the same space as the toilet, so it can double up with the mini fridge / microwave. None of us sees anything wrong with people eating most of their meals out of their “home”, nor do we have _any_ problem with the idea of sending the laundry out, etc. To be honest, I spent a chunk of time thinking about palace hotels and wishing they existed _now_ so I could move my family into one (until the money ran out!) and never have to do any housework again — and not have to do any of the management of the people doing the cooking and cleaning, either. A life spend tipping just as one would do on vacation would definitely be a weird life; I don’t see anything morally wrong with it. There, at least, the reformers and I part ways vigorously. OTOH, income inequality. Hard to know what the right thing to do is.
If you read articles about Apodments or NYC or SF experiments with microhousing, or you read about furnished rooms with shared kitchens and lease lengths as short as a month and scratch your head and wonder, what would that be like? That sounds odd! Well, this book will recalibrate your perspective. NOT having this as an option is probably even more odd.
ETA: Late in the book, he describes things like The Baltic Inn in San Diego as new-built rooming houses. It has since been closed, renovated, and re-opened as a hotel more in the style we are accustomed to (for travelers).
#22
Technically, 21 and 22 were read in the other order, but reviewed in this order. Whatever.