Factory housing Mulhouse style

In the workingman's city (Cité Ouvrières) in Mulhouse three types of housing can be found as the main types of social housing for factory workers. These three also form a continuation in the thinking about social housing. It would go to far as to state that social housing started with the back-to-back, as it was a type often built in inner-city areas from the late medieval period onward. But utilization for housing workers is strongly linked to the industrial revolution and the sudden need to house the workers for the factories and collieries. Before crafts were either practiced at the home or in an artisans workshop. Mechanization of production not only scaled up the production process and the place of production -from a workshop to a factory- but also the amount of materials used and the number of workers involved to produce the end product (the output of which had also been dramatically increased). Mechanization also meant a shift from skilled laborers with a trade towards low skilled workers that only had to master certain parts of the production process. These workers were often recruited from a rural population. This combined with the overcrowding in the densely built up areas (slums) lead to miserable living conditions, which resulted in low life expectancy and the necessity of a steady influx of new workers that had to be trained and managed. Some factory owners quickly realized that a reliable workforce capable of their tasks was important for the longevity of their business. From a philanthropic viewpoint not all men were equals but brethren of one kind. So it came to be that these lovers of humanity set out to improve the living standers of their workmen, thereby ensuring their future business success!     

At first factory workers were housed in existing dwellings, sometimes as lodgers, but more often in rented rooms or houses. Savvy property owners quickly began subdividing existing houses into rentable rooms, added extra rentable rooms in ramshackle lean-to's and built over any existing outdoor space on the back which provided at times accommodation without any windows or direct escape route. The first purpose-built workers houses often were little more than low barracks subdivided into single room accommodation. Some were more akin to the meager dwellings provided for working peasants consisting of little more than a few rooms around a hearth. These were called workers cottages and in continental Europe these were often combined into a short row under a single roof.

None of these barracks are present in Mulhouse. The oldest representative of factory housing are the back-to-back houses built in both the first and second Cité Ouvrières. These houses were cheap to build as they didn't demand a large plot and could be constructed as apartments (one up one down). In actual fact they could be built between roads (although in Mulhouse they have a narrow garden at the front).

Back-to-back houses typically share three walls with the neigbouring houses. They only had windows on one side (the front).

A great improvement on the back-to-back was the pioneering Mulhouse Quadrangle (Carré Mulhousien) with a garden on two sides. These blocks of four dwellings under one roof were situated between narrow lanes thus giving access to the gardens and the houses. The gardens were mainly meant for food production and made the built-up area much more fire safe. 

In the Mulhouse Quadrangle the houses share only two walls with the neigbouring dwellings. These houses have windows on two sides and also garden space around the building.

After 1875 the Mulhouse Quadrangle quickly falls out of favor and rows of terraced houses become the norm. At first these rows of single family dwellings under one roof are as long as the terrain or the road pattern would allow. This is the cheaper way of building such accommodation. It wouldn't be until the ideas of Camillo Sitte and Raymond Unwin combined in the Garden City aesthetic that this practice would change.

 

In terraced rows of houses the dwellings share two walls with the neighbouring dwellings. They have windows on both the front and back and at least a back garden.

Spring burst

Yesterday felt more like summer. After holding back for much to long finally spring is bursting its buds. Soon clouds of petals will be blown across the pavements and the many shades of green will be returning to the city!

Little known grids: La Cité Ouvrières II

The second Cité Ouvrières in Mulhouse was built between 1856 and 1900, west of the first workers city and the discharge channel (c). It has been laid out on a grid plan that was slightly modified between building phases. The wide streets are continued from one building campaign to the next, the variation lies in the passages (the narrow paths between the Mulhouse Quadrangles) and the addition of squares (p) after 1870. The area directly north of the Chausssée de Dornach partly predates the second workers city. Urbanization of this area was started by laying out a grid of streets; only older preexisting roads were left as-is and are recognizable by their varying alignment. The second Cité Ouvrières is integrated with the factories to the north of it and not to the other factory sites. Around it we find Wilhelm - Frey and Company (1), Thorens and Company (2), Dreyfus Manufacturing (3), Vaucher and Company (4), Koechlin - Schwartz (5) and Dreyfus - Lantz (6).

In the urban pattern we can distinctly make out the different stages in which this second Cité Ouvrières was built. The first part were six rows of back-to-back houses within the older grid (1). The Rue Lavoisier was extended and forms the backbone of the first phase of Mulhouse Quadrangles (2). The area left of this road is shortened to align with the factory enclosure behind it; it therefore has no central alley like the part on the right. A school (s) was built where  the two main axis meet. Along the wall of the Dreyfus factory a new wide street was constructed (Rue Julie, now called Rue Jean Jaurés) of which new streets and passages run westward forming the second phase of Mulhouse Quadrangles (3). Two alleys cut the streets at right angles. The second one seems to have been intended as the outermost street as it matches the width of the older part on the other side of the Rue Julie. Yet the quadrangles on the right where mirrored along this line and the Rue des Oiseaux became the edge of the Cité Ouvrières. Before 1870 the area west of the Thorens factory had been built up with row houses (4). In 1879 the church l'eglise St Joseph (e) was finished. By this time the expansion of the Cité Ouvrières had started north of the Passage du Rossignol (5), quickly extending further west. The existing pattern is carried through in this extension, but a large square with a school (s) is added. The square was conceived by extending the Rue des Abeilles to meet the extended rows of Mulhouse Quadrangles. South of this square three urban blocks (6) were laid out by only extending the roads and not the passages next to it. The rows of Mulhouse Quadrangles were extended even further (7) beyond the line of the Rue des Abeilles. In the south the Rue Julie was extended along the Thorens factory site and terraced houses were built along the streets (8). The last phase of the Cité Ouvrières has no more Mulhouse Quadrangles and has two large squares and long streets lined with terraced houses. On one of the squares the large Thérèse school (s) was built. The streets in this part (9) are a continuation of the adjoining grid, but they longer conform to the grid layout. They are testament to the changing ideas on urban living and housing factory workers around 1890.

 

Little known grids: La Cité Ouvrières

During the nineteenth century surveys conducted by sociologists, economists and physicians showed the difficult living conditions of the working classes. The issue of housing has particular interest. Some conservatives like dr. Louis René Villermé only note the problem and feel there can be no solution to the squalor and deprivation. The philanthropists on the other hand feel the need for urgent action to relieve their "brothers of the lower classes" of their misery.

In 1845 a housing survey is carried out for assessing the housing needs for the factory workers in Mulhouse, the most important manufacturing center of the Alsace. The results are rejected by the mainly conservative industrialists united in the Société Industrielle de Mulhouse (the Mulhouse Industrial Society). Many surveys and initiatives follow in the next few years. All are unsuccessful. That is until in 1851 the architect Emile Muller is commissioned to design the new working class city (La Cité Ouvrières literrally: workers city).

The workers city is built on agricultural land to the northwest of the old city. This area was prone to flooding as two rivers -the Doller and the Ill- squeeze through the narrow valley where Mulhouse* is located. To relieve the flooding a relief channel is cut in 1846 that links both rivers. On the sides of this canal several large textile factories (spinning, weaving and textile printing) are erected. These factories pollute the air with their smoking chimneys. The area no longer floods but is still prone to water welling up from the ground after heavy rainfall. All in all not an ideal location to build new housing.

The Cité Ouvrières is built on an orthogonal plan witch long parallel streets at a right angle to the neigbouring canal and intersecting lanes of only 2.5 meters wide that run parallel to it. Initially a large central square was planned for various facilities, including shops, bathhouses and laundry houses. The design was however scaled down and now we find a large square park in its stead with a playground.

Two types of plots are defined for the houses, one elongated, the other square, depending on the type of home to be built there. Each house has a ground floor, a first floor, a cellar and an attic. One can distinguish three main types of housing in this first Cité Ouvrières. The most numerous are the houses in groups of four under one roof: the so-called Carré Mulhousien (the Mulhouse Quadrangle). Each house shares two common walls with its neigbours and has two facades overlooking a private garden. Another common type of housing, is the back-to-back, with only one facade with windows and three shared walls. These houses where the most economical to build and are also commonly found in Brittish mining areas in the Middlands, Scotland and Wales. Finally the more costly third type consists of large closed blocks around a courtyard or garden.

The first Cité Ouvrières in Mulhouse is built on a strict grid plan next to the DMC textile print factory of Dollfus et Mantz (f) that is situated on the quay of the Canal décharge d'Ill (c). Central is the square Place de Strasbourg (p). There was also a second square called Place des Vosges (v). On the north side we see the Mulhouse Quadrangles (1) and back-to-back housing (2). The southern half is taken up by apartments in closed urban blocks (3).

The second new town or workers city is built between 1856 and 1870, west of the discharge channel. On an area of 55 hectares, 660 units are erected. Between 1870 and 1900 another 383 dwellings are constructed. The houses in this seccond Cité Ouvrières are of only two types. The most common are still the Mulhouse Quadrangles. After 1880 the focus shifts towards townhouses built in terraces or in closed blocks around a courtyard or garden. The houses in the second workers city are of a smaller size than in the first city: 46 m² to 50 m², comprising a small kitchen and a living room on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs.

The city of Mulhouse is still growing at the time it becomes German (Reichsland) between 1871 and 1918. However, until 1876, no new houses are built as businesses closed and many workers emigrate to France and Switzerland. Then, on fifteen hectares of the last sixty hectares that the city owns near the canal, a total of 383 homes are built until the work is completed in 1897. From about 1887 the new houses built increase in size, both in square footage but also in height. The new dwellings range from 72 m²  to 139 m² and stand 11m tall instead of the 9 meters of the earlier houses. These larger units are more expensive to build (and therefore rent) and accessible only to skilled workers.

By 1900 the original uniformity of design is broken by extensions and lean-to's built on the sides of the Mulhouse Quadrangles. In many cases the houses are built to one another and now take the shape of back-to-back terraced housing with only a small front garden remaining. The spacious apartments in the closed blocks are sometimes split in smaller units. Although by 1900 some 24% of homes in the workers city are occupied by lower middle class households, the area to this day preserved its working class character. As a model of (social) workers housing the Mulhouse Quadrangle was taken up by many other industrialist, mainly in Belgium and Germany.

* The name Mulhouse is an appropriated form of the Germanic mull - hausen meaning "at the mill cottages" or "the hamlet near the mill". The city is best characterized as a river crossing settlement and from the name it is clear there once was a watermill on the river Ill.

Model housing: Carré Mulhousien

During the second half of the nineteenth century the city of Mulhouse quickly expanded due to the rapid industrialization of the Alsace region. Already an important manufacturing center in the previous centuries, this industrialization mainly focused around Mulhouse. In response to the growing demographic pressures and sanitary problems as a result of this rapid urban expansion on June 10 1853 the Société Mulhousienne des Cités Ouvrières (SOMCO - the Mulhouse Society for Workers Cities) was founded. This initiative by the industrialist Jean Dollfus fits neatly with the philanthropic and paternalistic logic at the time. The SOMCO was responsible for providing housing for the workers of four factories, two of which were mills, the other two engaged in fabric printing. 

This resulted in the erection of the so-called Working class city of Mulhouse (Cité Ouvrières) a new neigbourhood especially built for factory workers on the northwestern outskirts of the city. The model of choice for housing these workers became known as the Carré Mulhousien and consists of four adjoined houses with a garden to the side and front, between narrow streets. These back-to-back houses were arranged in long rows in a strict repetitive pattern. That way construction was easy and the area could be expanded according to demand. The blocks (also known in German as Kreuzhäuser) were designed by the architect Emile Muller an quickly became popular in Belgium (Wallonia), the Netherlands (Oostelijke Mijnstreek) and most importantly Prussia (Ruhrgebiet) as an attractive way of housing miners and millworkers.

The Cité Ouvrières is still a very visible component of the urban fabric of Mulhouse. Sadly architects building in this area have to stamp their own mark on it with new buildings that are very far removed from the original pioneering type.

In the Mulhouse arrangement there was also a strong social component to this model of workers housing (making it basically model housing!). SOMCO introduced a system of delayed home ownership by leasing the homes with the prospect of becoming the owner of the house after fifteen years in exchange for a monthly payment (of 250 francs). The aim of the society was to sell the homes at cost price rates after these fifteen years. Those workers that didn't have the means to acquire home ownership remained tenants and were not moved out of their accommodation. 

The Mulhouse Model was proceeded by other schemes of model housing with a social reform agenda in England, Belgium, France and Germany (mainly in Prussia). From 1770 special laborers cottages were built in England. In Germany they arise somewhat later (around 1800). These cottages remained incidental additions of housing on the edge of existing settlements. New Lanark was a pioneering British (Scottish) example of a custom-built settlement for housing workers. It was built in 1786 for the workers of a cotton mill and housed 2,500 people. The first purpose-built workers settlement on the continent can - of coarse - be found in Belgium at Le Grand Hornu (1825). In Paris after the 1948 revolution plans are made for new housing estates, of which Cité Napoleon is the first. It was started in 1850 and consisted of little more than barracks for housing the workmen.