Living in Brooklyn
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LIVING IN BROOKLYN.
As a general thing, houses and apartments for residence are easier to be obtained in Brooklyn this season than they have been for a great many years. Rents are singularly low, in certain parts of the city, especially in East Brooklyn. In some cases the prices have declined from 60 to 100 per cent.
One reason of this is, that building speculations, up to about a year and a half ago, were enormously overdone here. Large tracts of ground were bought on credit, and rows of houses built in the same manner—the debts to be paid by raising as much money as possible on mortgage, and then, beyond that, depending upon the sale of the houses. It is wonderful how much of this sort of thing was formerly carried on among us. It has had the effect to cover several sections of the city with very handsome rows of unoccupied houses.
Perhaps the principal reason after all, of the unprecedented growth of Brooklyn in population is to be found in the fact that here men of moderate means may find houses at a moderate rent, whereas in New York there is no medium between a palatial mansion and a dilapidated hovel.
The most valuable class in any community is the middle class—the men of moderate means, living say at the rate of a thousand dollars a year or thereabouts. These men cannot afford to consume their salaries in paying house rent as they would inevitably be forced to do in New York if they wished to live in a respectable neighborhood, and they are consequently forced to cross the river where they can find moderate sized tenements at moderate prices, and combined with this, can enjoy the benefits of fresh air for themselves and families. We are constantly receiving such accessions and the more the better.
Property-owners will, we think find their account in erecting just such a class of buildings. There is a popular demand for them and nothing else will suit the people. There is a very general dislike among them to living with another family, or, indeed, any approach to the tenement house system, and what they demand is small, neat, convenient, and cheap houses which will come comfortably within the scope of their means, while ensuring to them the advantages of a good and respectable neighborhood. Let the hint be taken, and the voice of the people be heard, as it will be and must be in the end. The judicious medium, gentlemen, is what is wanted.
In the matter of marketing, and food-stuffs generally, our citizens are about on an average with New York. Beef here ranges from 10 to 18 cents a pound, and you can get 4 pounds of good bread for twelve cents. The city is copiously supplied with little meat-shops, and as to the groceries, every body knows all about them.
We have no large markets of generally convenient access—and perhaps they are not needed. It has been suggested that the public convenience would be greatly served, if there could be inaugurated and carried out, by our Long Island farmers, the custom prevalent in Philadelphia and most western cities, where the farmer, or sometimes his wife or daughter, drives into the city with a huge wagon full of “good things,” which, being backed up against the curbstone, or some convenient space or nook, the owner or owneress proceeds to sell out the good things aforesaid, without any interference between consumer and producer.