Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1886 — St. Petersburg Lodging Houses. [ARTICLE]

St. Petersburg Lodging Houses.

The habit of living in lodgings is general in St. Petersburg. Some of the richest families are coptent with lodgings, and but few of them need all the apartments which, constitute a St. Petersburg flat. A St. Petersburg lodging /'house frequently contains as many as a thousand rooms, with a population of from 2,000 to 3,000 persons. The finest apartments are on the ground floor; The poorest are reached by ascent of from ten to twelve stories. A snite of six rooms suffices for the wealthiest lodgers who have no palace of their own. Two or three supply all the needs of the well-to-do tradsman and his family; the majority of professional men who are bachelors, nearly all teachers and students, and a large class of officials find themselves amply accommodated by a single apartment. The cost of lodgings, of cburse, upon such elements as situation, number, and furnishing of rooms, hight Of flat, and service. As a rule, it may be said that, taking into consideration the general purchasing power of the money expended house rent is some is somewhat in St. Petersburg than it is in Paris or London. Rent charges in Russia are invariably exacted “in advance,” even . when a lodger suirronnds himself with luggage valuable enough to yield the amount of a whole year’s arrears. Upon personal property of this kind there can be legally no lien. Any forcible detention of property in such cases is treated by the courts as a quasicriminal offense. “ The lodging-house is actually a continuous quadrangular wall, full of apartments. the windows of winch look ofit ’ * '

upon the inclosed space within. Comrades know each other’s windows, while the corridors lead easily from room to room. Reunions are numerous under these circumstances, and no more charming or delicate part is taken in them than by the young girls, whom eager-, ness for knowledge has led to the capital, hundreds of verstb, it inay be. fromj their homes, and who, once in St Petersburg, labor with singular perseverance and a really remarkable trac-j cess to qualify themselves for the posij tions to which they aspire. —Atlantia Monthly.