Apartment houses

Photograph of a camptender’s house under construction in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Memorial Park.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Creation Date

1969-05

Photograph of camptender’s house under construction in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Creation Date

1969-05

A crowd of people, many with belongings in tow, wait for the rope to drop so they can dash for available apartments. In the background, apartment buildings are being constructed, all indicating that they will be finished in a very short period of time, to meet the rising demand for housing. Caption: The rush for apartments is getting very Oklahoma.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This magnificent and detailed center-spread Puck cartoon by Albert Levering comes down through history as almost a complete checklist of the day’s prominent social classes, ethnic groups, professions, “types,” and representatives of life during the Roosevelt economy. Upwardly mobile people, new home construction progressing at a fevered pace, citizens and businesspeople alike depicted as extreme stereotypes — all are represented in the cartoon, from domestic servants to thieving plumbers and rental agents.

The domestic servant evolves from country housewife to an employed domestic through seven scenes beginning with the barefooted housewife receiving “the summons to the land of the free.” In scene two she is greeted by relatives who presumably coach her in the fine art of choosing her employers, which she does in scene three “with haughty discrimination.” In scenes four and five she fills her leisure time with social activities, such as attending church and enjoying social gatherings at home. The central figure, scene six, shows her as an over-sized and defiant “Kitchen Tyrant” with four well-dressed women, on their knees, pleading with her. The final scene shows her downfall, “a ready and delightful solution of the whole problem; – one that we are all coming to.” It shows a tall skyscraper, “Family Apartment House” offering “more comforts than at home – no more wrangling with servants – meals, laundry work, valets, chambermaids, and all domestic service provided by the management.” In the background is a row of low, brownstone-like walk-ups, “This row of dwellings to let cheap. No reasonable offer refused.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

A frequent theme of cartoons in the 1880s and ’90s was the “servant problem.” It was mostly related to maids and kitchen help, and mostly affected middle-class families. This was still a time when people of modest means strove to have domestic help as a basic part of their households. The “Problem” had several aspects: the difficulty in finding competent, or any, servants; the problems inherent in hiring recent immigrants, especially regarding language and social skills; retention of servants and their frequent demands for independence. Cartoonists hit upon the anomaly of servants ruling the households they were paid to serve.