The Boardinghouse in Nineteenth-Century America

Illustrations

“Scene in a Fashionable Boarding House.” This lithograph from the s depicts the age and sex composition typical of middle-class boardinghouses. Most of the boarders gathered in the parlor are young men, but one, perhaps a widower, is much older. In keeping with properly run boardinghouses ’ reputations as places for respectable courtship, one of the young men flirts with a young woman—who may or may not be his wife. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society. Humorist Thomas Butler Gunn’s conception of the deficiencies of typical boardinghouse accommodations . A slovenly landlady shows a cramped, sparsely furnished attic room to a prospective boarder. The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses (New York: Mason Brothers, ), . Courtesy of Rare Books and Manuscripts, The Ohio State University Library. “Mrs. Flintskinn,” proprietress of a “mean boarding-house.” A potent symbol of landladies’ incessant and—as popular commentary saw it—unwarranted economizing and the personification of a corrupt marketplace, the angular Mrs. Flintskinn starves her boarders but, Gunn’s text tells us, reserves a roast turkey for herself. Thomas Butler Gunn, The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses (New York: Mason Brothers, ), . Courtesy of Rare Books and Manuscripts , The Ohio State University Library. The proprietor of “the boarding-house where you’re expected to make love to the landlady,” another of Gunn’s types. A stereotypically rotund landlady displays her collection of male boarders ’ hearts on a skewer. This depiction and its accompanying text implicitly acknowledged the real difficulty of defining proper relationships between landladies and male boarders. Thomas Butler Gunn, The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses (New York: Mason Brothers, ), . Courtesy of Rare Books and Manuscripts, The Ohio State University Library. “Bad Manners at the Table” and “Gentility in the Dining Room.” These paired illustrations from a popular etiquette book visually equate bad table manners with boardinghouses and good ones with “homes.” The numbers over the heads of the unruly boarders correspond to various offenses against social propriety—feeding a dog, elbows on the table, picking one’s teeth with finger or fork, and neglecting silverware altogether. The guests at a dinner party in a middle-class home commit no such sins. Thomas E. Hill, Hill’s Manual of Social and Business Forms (Chicago: Hill Standard Book Co., ), –. Courtesy of Special Collections Library, University of Kentucky. “How My Maiden Neighbors Learned My Secrets.” A cartoon published in Harper’s lampooned boardinghouses’ lack of privacy. Harper’s Weekly, January , , . Courtesy of Herman B Wells Library, Indiana University, Bloomington. A typical “cheap” lodging house indiscriminately lumped together homeless men, women, and children, charging them a few cents for a spot on the floor, while the Newsboys’ Lodging House boasts a clean, comfortable, orderly, and moral atmosphere. Intended to celebrate the work of the Children’s Aid Society and encourage donations, these illustrations undoubtedly exaggerated the differences between the two types of establishment but were far from inaccurate. The Crusade for Children: A Review of Child Life in New York during  Years, – (The Children’s Aid Society of the City of New York, ), –. Courtesy of Herman B Wells Library, Indiana University. A frame from Gene Ahern’s long-running syndicated comic strip, Our Boarding House. Major Hoople is a “boarding-house betty” who lives off the earnings of his wife, Martha, rarely lifting a finger to help. His frequent get-rich-quick schemes never bear fruit. Note the misspelling of convention in the second balloon. Our Boarding House, June , . Courtesy of Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries. ...