A Model Tenement in "The City of Homes": George Eastman and the Challenge of Housing Reform in Rochester, New York

Abstract

A Model Tenement in "The City of Homes"George Eastman and the Challenge of Housing Reform in Rochester, New York Nancy J. Rosenbloom (bio) Two contrasting headlines tell the story of Rochester, which was popularly known as "the city of homes," in the first decade of the twentieth century. Rochester's business elite especially liked the tagline that originated at the chamber of commerce: "Rochester Made Means Quality."1 But the pictures that accompanied an article aptly called "The Submerged Tenth" that appeared in local community reform magazine The Common-Good of Civic and Social Rochester evoked a tale of a different city.2 Like a blast of frigid air across the shores of Lake Ontario, the story forced Rochester leaders to confront a common problem of the era: How could their beloved city maintain its image, attract industry and manufacturing, and sustain and satisfy a rising working class if poverty threatened progress? As the third-largest city in New York, Rochester had a legacy of reform, and the memory of Frederick Douglass and the recent death of Susan B. Anthony rallied community celebration. Rochester had produced a new roster of reform-minded activists for the twentieth century, including Walter Rauschenbusch, Charles Mulford Robinson, and Lillian Wald, each of whom would reach national prominence by focusing their attention on improving specifically urban problems. In this context housing emerged as a key issue. As city leaders, community activists, and individual citizens addressed the problem of housing, many believed they could maintain a standard of quality and lift up the so-called submerged. As in other places, there were many approaches undertaken in Rochester. If [End Page 89] the advocacy of the poor by the city's public health officer George Goler represented one point on the spectrum of progressivism, the city council's inclination to protect the political establishment and serve municipal needs created another. This essay explores how George Eastman, Rochester's premier businessman and in subsequent decades the city's most influential benefactor, began to address the problem of housing at a dynamic moment in the city's growth. To that end, Eastman experimented with the possibility of building what he called a "model tenement." While Eastman failed to convince others that his model tenement offered a viable solution, arguably his efforts demonstrate just how fluid the possibilities for the urban landscape were during this period of growth in the decade before World War I. In its own imperfect way, the model tenement was part of a larger discussion about the best ways to build quality housing, albeit in multifamily buildings, for upwardly mobile workers in neighborhoods more downtown than uptown. The inclination to consider European models might have resulted in more compact urban designs with a balance between cost efficiencies, modern engineering, aesthetic consideration, and community that sustained the personal relationships between friends and neighbors. The model tenement championed by Eastman in 1911 and 1912 elicited strong opposition, most notably from Dr. Goler but also from the reformers writing for The Common-Good. City councilmen who controlled practical aspects of multifamily dwellings such as fire ordinances also objected.3 There are three important themes that this study illuminates. First, by asking what Eastman hoped to accomplish with his plan and why opposition rallied against it, this essay explores the nature of civic reform in the Progressive Era. Second, it presents a critical perspective on how Eastman, a businessman par excellence, engaged in the debate on housing reform, an issue of local, state, national, and international significance. Lastly, it broadens the understanding of the range of possible choices that citizens in midsized cities considered as they balanced competing interests. At the beginning and in the end, all agreed that for a city to grow and prosper the availability of adequate and affordable housing demanded community resources—whether from private or public investment—in water, sewage, road paving, or other public services. Exactly what shape affordable housing would take or where it might be located resulted from debates within the community and included the failure to adopt the "model tenement." ________ While many feared that poverty necessarily accompanied progress, Rochester boosters sought to create an alternative picture of their hometown...