Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1877 — Suggestions to House-Builders. [ARTICLE]

Suggestions to House-Builders.

First, let your cellars b« large, well ventilated and lined with stone or cemented above the level of the ground. The breath of life in furnace-heated houses depends literally on the air of the cellar, unless there be a flue for fresh air extending from the furnace out-of-doors (never the case in cheap, showv houses). The air of the whole house is sucked through this narrow and often unclean apartment, the care of which is usually intrusted to ignorant servants. We have spoken in a previous number of the malaria engendered by massing quantities of vegetables in the cellars as is the practice in farm-houses during the winter. The lining of stone or cement not only prevents dampness, but is absolutely necessary in streets through which the sewers pass, as a precaution from rats. Terriers, ferrets, traps or poison are feeble defenses against the legions which swarm in nightly from a neighboring culvert. Next to the cellars comes the kitchen, which should be large, airy and sunny. To take no higher ground, conveniences in this department are a politic investment which pays a full interest of capital, especially to the housekeeper who does not live in a large city. Stationary tubs, closets beneath the dressers for flour, dry groceries, spices, etc., will be likely to tempt into her houiehold a better class of servants, and when she is forced to turn cook and baker herself, will take half the burden from her weary hands. An addition to comfort much neglected by builders is the lighting of stairways, closets, pantries. We have in our mind’s eye a modest little house, in a closely-built neighborhood of dark dwellings, which gives you a sunny, cheerful welcome in every corner; a result produced not only by windows wherever a window is practicable, but by a sky-light of plate glass which sends clown sunshine through three doors of closets, halls and pan tries. A mistake made also, which resolves itself into a question of humanity, is placing the servants’' chambers on the top of the house, be that three or seven stories above the kitchen. Passing along a city street at night one cannot look up at the dim lights burning in these far skyey attics without a groan of compassion tor the wearied wretches dragging themselves to their beds up yonder after the day’s hard labor. —Scribner for July.