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Homemakers in Transitions: Women in Salt Lake City Apartments, 1910-1940
Homemakers in Transition: Women in Salt Lake City Apartments, 1910-1940
BY ROGER ROPER
IN 1935 LEONORA CANNON STEWART reached a crossroads in her life. Recently widowed and faced with the economic hardships of the Great Depression, she decided that she could no longer afford to live in the family's large home on Salt Lake City's east bench. The house was impractical for her own needs anyway, now that her children were grown and gone. Still, she hated to leave behind the beautiful family home and the security and status of home ownership. If she had to settle for something smaller and more economical, it could at least be safe, convenient, and comfortable. She found just such a place.
In 1936 Faye Clark moved to Salt Lake City from the farming village of Alpine to work while her fiance served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS church) She joined her sister in the city, working with her at the Lion House Social Center and sharing her nearby accommodations
In the late 1920s, Elna Ivie was also looking for a place to live in Salt Lake City after obtaining her first job as a schoolteacher. Raised in the central Utah town of Salina, she had no close relatives in Salt Lake City with whom she could live, so she made arrangements with friends to share living quarters. The place they found was centrally located to their jobs and was not too expensive.
The housing solution for each of these three women was the same: a downtown apartment Apartment buildings accommodated an ever-increasing number of Utah women in the early twentieth century Between 1910 and 1940 the percentage of apartment households headed by women more than doubled, rising from 15.4 percent to 33.8 percent.1 Apartments were conveniently located near the central business district, were usually equipped with modern interior features, and were affordable. And, unlike houses, they did not require a commitment to permanence. This "impermanent" nature made them ideally suited for people in transitional phases of their lives.2 For women, those phases were usually the young-adult years prior to marriage and the post-family years of widowhood. Each of the apartment-dwelling women described above was in one of those transitional periods. Faye Clark and Elna Ivie were on their way to becoming wives and mothers, while Leonora Stewart was moving beyond the homemaker role
Women filling the traditional and expected roles of wife and mother were homemakers in houses, while women outside the homemaker role increasingly tended to live in apartments, either by choice or necessity The shift of women into and out of apartments usually came as a result of life-course transitions that affected their homemaker role. Life-course transitions can be caused by personal events such as career choices, marriage, parenthood, and widowhood, or by broader social events such as technological advances, economic conditions, legislative action, and changing social attitudes.3
The influence of both levels of life course transition is evident in the lives of the three women discussed above. Both Elna Ivie and Faye Clark moved to Salt Lake City as unmarried women seeking employment The expanding urban job market for women had created wage earning opportunities that were virtually nonexistent for white middle-class women a generation earlier. Both young women left the city and their apartments when they married and assumed the expected roles of wife and mother. Leonora Stewart moved into an apartment when personal factors diminished her homemaker role. Yet the economic hardship she faced as a widow was exacerbated by the depression, which made the financial demands of home ownership more burdensome. Also, her experience as a homemaker, which was focused on interior activities, left her ill-prepared to assume the exterior tasks of home ownership—repairs, maintenance, yard work, and so forth— which her husband had overseen So it was a combination of personal and social factors that pushed her out of the stable role of homemaker
Her transition to the post-homemaker role was eased, however, by other social factors. Urbanization and the concurrent development of apartment buildings offered her the option of living independently in her own residence. A generation earlier, in pre-apartment times, a widow probably would have moved in with one of her children, giving up some of her autonomy in the process. It was only after the turn of the century that multi-story "urban" apartment buildings were constructed in Salt Lake City; Utah women looking for housing before then would have had fewer options.4 Apartments quickly replaced boardinghouses and hotels as the most common and popular form of multi-unit housing They provided some of the advantages of a home—individual kitchen and bath facilities, for example—but none of the disadvantages—mortgage payments, property taxes, repairs, and yard work.
Between 1902, when the first urban apartment building in the city was constructed, and 1931, when construction stopped because of the depression, more than 180 apartment buildings of three or more stories were built in Salt Lake City.5 The emergence of this new building type was spurred by the city's rapid growth; the population grew from 53,351 to 140,267 in the 1900-1930 period, with the biggest increase (39,246) coming between 1900 and 1910. Apartments became the obvious solution to the growing demand for housing. They were concentrated in central-city neighborhoods where high land values, increased congestion, and downtown proximity made them practical for both investors and city dwellers. Writing of the popularity of one- and two-story apartments in 1902, the Salt Lake Tribune noted that "the constant demand of renters for apartments close in has resulted in stimulating the erection of terraces or flats. There is scarcely a doubt that the popularity of this form of residence will continue to increase ."6 Only the depression brought an end to this building phenomenon.
The dramatic rise in the number of women living in apartments between 1910 and 1940 can be attributed to several factors. Perhaps chief among them is the increase in the number of wage-working women during that period. Both in the nation and in Utah, women entered the work force in increasing numbers. In Utah, the percentage of women who worked for wages rose from 11 percent in 1910 to about 18 percent in 1940.7 Most of the new jobs for women were in urban areas, and as cities grew, they attracted increasing numbers of women seeking wage-work.8 Many of the new jobs for women were occupations formerly dominated by men. For example, the numbe r of women office assistants, clerks, stenographers, and saleswomen in Utah increased dramatically during the early decades of the twentieth century. O n the other hand, the numbers of women in more traditional female occupations, such as dressmaker, servant, and laundress, declined.9
Since most of the new jobs were in downtown commercial and office buildings, unprecedented numbers of women began moving into central-city neighborhoods to be near their workplaces The new multi-story apartment buildings near downtown were a logical choice of residence for them. The concentration of wage-working women in apartment buildings is evidenced by the fact that in 1940 at least 60 percent of the women living in Salt Lake City apartments held jobs.10 Most of these, like Faye Clark and Elna Ivie, were young women. Older women also found apartments attractive. Between 1910 and 1940 the percentage of widows in women-occupied apartments ranged from 40 to 50 percent.11 Unlike their younger counterparts, most of the widows in apartments did not hold jobs, so proximity to the workplace was not usually an issue in their selection of housing For them, a more likely attraction of apartments was their proximity to the city center with its shops, churches, and cultural activities.
Another attraction of apartment buildings was cost Even though women were moving into occupations formerly dominated by men, they were paid less for their services,12 so it was important for them to economize on living expenses. An apartment required a smaller financial commitment than a home, but it was probably more expensive than a room at a boardinghouse However, women often lived together to share the costs, so the per-person cost of renting an apartment was quite reasonable. For instance, the apartment that Faye Clark shared with her sister and another woman in the late 1930s cost $30 per month. Her monthly earnings were $47.50 plus two meals per day, so her share of the housing cost—ten dollars—was hardly exorbitant The unit included a large living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small kitchen.13 On the other hand, boardinghouses were probably cheaper, but they lacked the privacy and quality of accommodations found in apartments, especially since many boardinghouses were older homes that had been converted.
Cost was also a factor for widows, and many found apartments to be less expensive than houses. Before the late 1930s Social Security did not exist, and widows were entirely dependent on their own savings and investments and what assistance their children could provide. In order to reduce costs and perhaps to gain companionship, widows also shared their apartments. Leonora Stewart shared her apartment with her unmarried sister, Ann M. Cannon, and with her former maid.14 Elna Ivie and Faye Clark also shared their apartments with friends or relatives. At least four women lived together in Ivie's apartment, and, as mentioned above, three lived in Clark's apartment.
Sharing the cost of an apartment was often important because, even though apartments were economical, they were not housing for the poor Virtually all the urban apartment buildings constructed in Salt Lake City were built for a middle- and upper-class clientele. The Covey Investment Company, which was involved in the construction and management of more than a dozen apartment buildings in the city, targeted those groups. 15 The La France Apartments, where Elna Ivie lived, were built and managed by Covey. Other apartment developers apparently shared Covey's philosophy, because the buildings throughout the city were fairly uniform in quality and the occupant profiles did not vary dramatically. There were no palatial apartments, such as those built in New York City or Chicago for the very rich,16 nor were there subsidized apartments for low-income families; the tenement slums of eastern cities did not exist in Salt Lake City.
Most apartments in the city were "efficiency apartments."17 These are well-built, multi-story units designed more for utilitarian rather than aesthetic purposes, though most were attractive as well. The quality of apartments varied, of course, according to address; buildings in more prestigious areas were generally of better quality than those in less desirable neighborhoods. 1 8 Elna Ivie wrote in a letter that her apartment was located in a "disreputable" neighborhood near the railroad and warehouse district, and she commented on the more fashionable accommodations of some of her friends in the Belvedere Apartments and the Newhouse Hotel.19 Overall, however, the actual range in apartment quality was relatively narrow.
Nationally as well as locally, apartment buildings often carried distinguished names meant to convey an urbane or respectable character.20 Particularly popular were British and European names— Blackstone, Broadmoor, Ivanhoe, La France, Lorna Doone, Los Gables, Palace, and Piccadilly, to name a few Salt Lake City examples. Owners' names were also used frequently and were especially effective in conveying an upscale image if the owner was well-known. Examples include the Bransford, Covey, Kearns, McCullough, and Moyle apartments.
Profiles of the women living in Salt Lake City apartments verify the middle- and upper-class character of the buildings. Working-class women (maids, laundresses, etc.) and students rarely occupied apartments; both these groups tended to live in boardinghouses or in less substantial rentals. A significant percentage of women apartment occupants, more than 35 percent, were retired or held no jobs at all; most of these were probably widows. The fact that these unemployed women were not forced to work to support themselves is evidence that they enjoyed a degree of financial security But the largest group of women apartment dwellers throughout the 1910-1940 period held middle-income jobs. More than 50 percent worked as office assistants, retail sales clerks, beauticians, teachers, and so forth. A very small percentage, usually less than 2 percent, had careers that could be classified as "professional"—college professor, lawyer, or physician, for example.21 Apparently, some of the local literati also established themselves in apartments, giving apartment life something of a Bohemian reputation.22
Growing female independence was another possible cause of the increasing proportion of women choosing to live in apartment buildings. Such freedom is difficult to gauge but would have followed the general social trend. With the passage of the female suffrage amendment in 1920 and the broadening of the female job market, unprecedented opportunities were being made available to women in the early twentieth century. Young women perhaps became less content than their mothers had been to remain in the homes of their parents or other relatives and pursue more traditional domestic activities. Apartments offered them a place of their own as they pursued careers prior to marriage. Both Elna Ivie and Faye Clark are evidence of that trend.
The migration of young women to the city and apartment life was a cause of some concern to parents and local religious leaders. Detractors linked apartments to such social ills as sexual promiscuity, female rebelliousness, communism, and juvenile delinquency.23 Suburban real estate developers also took part in the effort to discredit apartment living. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, several anti-apartment articles appeared in the Sunday real estate page of the Salt Lake Tribune, which was generally a promotional sheet for home developers. These articles reported that homeowners were healthier than apartment dwellers, that apartments spawned juvenile delinquents, and that, despite a certain degree of popularity enjoyed by apartments, Americans still preferred "the conveniences and inducements" of a home.24
Parents' concerns for the moral and physical well-being of their daughters living and working in the city could be tempered by the presence of a relative or good friend who could share the apartment with a young woman. Faye Clark's parents were not overly concerned when she moved to Salt Lake City, because she was going to be with her older sister.25 Girls without a protective relative, however, caused their parents considerable anxiety Parental attitudes of the time are perhaps typified by those expressed in Wallace Stegner's novel Recapitulation, which takes place in Salt Lake City during the late 1920s One of the main characters in the book is a young woman who has come from a small southern Utah farming community to work in Salt Lake City. She describes her father's concerns about her urban lifestyle: "My father's always after me to marry some nice boy and settle down and quit living in apartments. H e thinks it's dangerous, or immoral, or something." She had lived for a time in the Hotel Temple Square, which was owned by the Mormon church, but she found its curfews and regulations too confining. According to her boyfriend, "That place was full of snoops."26
Local women's organizations took it upon themselves to help look after young women who came to Salt Lake City to work. In 1908 the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) established in the old Gordon Academy (306 E. 300 South) a 30-bed residence that offered safe haven, reasonable rent, low-cost meals, and companionship to young women new to the city.27 In the 1930s, the Methodist church converted its Davis Deaconess Home (347 S 400 East) to a residence hall in order to provide a "Christian home atmosphere" for girls who came to the city to work or go to school.28 Mormon church officials also felt strongly that supervision was needed to protect young women from worldly attractions of the city. In December 1913 the church's Relief Society opened a "home for Women and Girls" in downtown Salt Lake City for girls "who insist on coming to this city to get big wages." It was noted that these girls were "too often allowed to drift about with no secure quarters" and without the "security, friendship and association with our people." The home also served women who came to the city to work in the temple and attend conferences.29 In 1920 a new and larger facility was established in Brigham Young's Beehive House. The women students and wage-workers who lived there were unde r strict supervision. Like the young woman in Stegner's novel, some undoubtedly found such restrictions overly confining Others, like Faye Clark, felt that the rules were reasonable Faye lived and worked at the Beehive House for several months in between periods of sharing her sister's nearby apartment.30
The concerns of Mormon church officials about the well-being of young women did not lead them to oppose apartments altogether. Mormon contractors were actively involved in the development of apartments, and the church itself sponsored the construction of the Belvedere Apartment Hotel downtown. Several church general authorities and church leaders themselves lived in apartments, apparently preferring the convenience of apartment living when their family and other circumstances allowed for it.31
The shift of women into the job market and apartment buildings apparently was not a major concern to Mormon church officials. There were very few articles written or sermons given on those topics during the 1910-1940 period. Instead, leaders focused their advice on advocating the traditional role of women as homemakers, mothers, and nurturers. Their position was flexible, however. They recognized that circumstances sometimes required a woman to work for wages, but they discouraged women from entering the work force when there was no real need.32
The Relief Society Bulletin (later the Relief Society Magazine) was the Mormon church's most active voice in reaffirming women's roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers, though this voice was rarely strident. However, the very choice of subject matter in this women's publication reveals an expectation of what women's roles should be. There were numerous articles about home production and the temporal and spiritual benefits that women gained from gardening; these articles were based on the assumption that women lived in homes and had access to garden plots. Women who might prefer the refinements and culture of urban life were advised, "Associate with plants and flowers, with babies and home folks if you would be truly cultured."33
Plants, babies, and home folks, however, were not central to the lives of apartment-dwelling women Their world revolved more around careers, entertainment, shopping, and socializing In the physical sense, and probably in the psychological sense as well, these women dwelt outside the homemaker realm, at least temporarily. It was undoubtedly exhilarating for the young rural women who came to work and live in Salt Lake City to have access to urban entertainments and activities. Elna Ivie, the young schoolteacher from Salina, indulged in urban pleasures on occasion. When her friend from Salina came to visit one weekend, they did "nothing but eat and see shows." On numerous other occasions she and her friends went out to eat and visited at each other's apartments.34
Even without the lure of urban distractions, apartment-dwelling women were able to ignore certain homemaking duties simply because the apartment lifestyle was less demanding. "Light housekeeping" was one of the advertised attractions of apartments; this benefit was achieved in part by compact, efficient floor plans. More important, though, was the introduction of new technologies such as central heat and gas and electric appliances. The economies of scale inherent in apartments made the introduction of these modern amenities more feasible than they would be for a single-family house. One boiler could provide heat and hot water for all of the apartments, and gas and electric hook-ups for an entire building required only one incoming line, the same required by a single-family house Technological advances, however, were not the only reason women enjoyed reduced household chores in apartments. With no vegetable garden to tend, no eggs to gather, and no cows to milk, home production of food was hardly possible. Besides, the small kitchenettes in most apartments were not well-suited for canning fruits and vegetables, and there was little room for food storage. The women could even ignore meal preparation by going to restaurants to eat. That was an indulgence Faye Clark and her sister permitted themselves; they often enjoyed Sunday dinner at a small cafe on Main Street that offered a complete dinner for twenty-five cents.35 There was nothing like that in their hometown of Alpine, where a nice Sunday dinner meant considerable work for the women of the family
Cleaning and maintenance burdens were also eased in apartments. Most apartment buildings had their own managers or janitors who lived on the premises, usually in a basement apartment near the boiler, electrical equipment, and plumbing. The managers were responsible for making repairs and for cleaning public areas such as entrances, hallways, and grounds A few apartments even offered a direct, in-house telephone link with the janitor to make requests for repairs easy and effective.36
The use of maids to assist with interior household chores was rare Occupants of some of the more prestigious apartments, such as the Bransford (later known as the Eagle Gate), no doubt employed maids, but this was very much the exception in Salt Lake City's middleclass apartments.37 In part, maids were expendable because technical advances made many household chores easier. A number of buildings had built-in vacuum systems to aid the tenants in cleaning. Many apartments also provided regular cleaning and repainting services. Covey Investment Company, one of the major developers and owners of apartments in the city, sent crews around annually to wash walls and refurbish the wood floors.38 The La France Apartments, where Ivie lived, were owned by the Covey Investment Company. In the spring of 1929 she noted in a letter that "the cleaners are beginning to clean the apartment. . . ,"39 She no doubt enjoyed being relieved of the spring cleaning duties that faced most homemakers
Another household chore de-emphasized in apartments was clothes washing. Many of the apartments did not have laundry facilities for the tenants to use, the idea apparentLy being that tenants could patronize commercial laundries The Keith Annex Apartments (122 E South Temple), where Faye Clark lived, was one such building However, many apartments, especially those built after World War I, did provide laundry facilities in the basement for those who wished to do their own wash. And these were usually state-of-the art facilities. The Hillcrest Apartments, for example, had steam-heated closets for drying clothes, a system so effective that it was used for several decades
Other household chores rendered obsolete in apartments were the hauling of cooking and heating fuel and the starting and maintaining of fires. All the apartments constructed in Salt Lake City after the turn of the century had gas or electric stoves in the kitchens and central heating plants maintained by the manager. Many also had modern refrigerators. New homes of the period also boasted those conveniences, but most older homes did not. In these homes, heating and cooking needs required the attentions of a homemaker.
Women of course enjoyed the "light housekeeping" that apartments offered. For many, it was their first exposure to the new devices that made household duties easier. The effect of this experience on young women was especially profound. As they left apartment life and moved into their homemaker roles in homes, they wanted those same conveniences.40 Thus, apartments not only alleviated many household chores for their tenants but also accelerated the widespread acceptance and demand for many of the labor-saving devices. Whether this modern equipment actually reduced the burden of household duties is debatable. Some historians contend that new standards for cleanliness and efficiency accompanied the new technology, so homemakers—with no servants to assist them—were kept just as busy as before.41
Though this study focuses on single women and widows in apartments, a significant number of married women lived in apartments as well. Young couples were specifically targeted as tenants by apartment owners. In fact, they were the only potential tenants specifically mentioned in newspaper advertisements and real estate articles.42 Most of those married couples were newlyweds with few, if any, children.43 Like the single women and the widows, they were also in a transitional phase of their lives—no longer single but not yet settled into careers and the responsibilities of family life. Children were not allowed in some of the apartment buildings, so couples often moved to houses when children came. One such couple was Collins T. and Ida Mae Cannon. Immediately after their marriage, they moved into the Hills Apartments in the Avenues district, but they remained there only nine months, until the birth of their first child. They then moved in with Collins's grandmother.44 Similarly, in 1942 Leonora Stewart had to move from the Hillcrest Apartments when her daughter and young grandchild moved in with her while her son-in-law was at war. After the war, Mrs Stewart moved back into an apartment.45
There was a prevailing opinion that apartments were not a desirable setting for homemakers carrying out child-rearing and household duties At times various religious leaders and other social commentators expressed this view. In 1931 a nationally syndicated newpaper article condemning apartment-style urban life appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune:
Similar concerns were voiced periodically in Mormon church publications. A 1937 article in the Improvement Era magazine made the following observations:
Clearly, apartments and the urban life they fostered were viewed as unsuitable for the homemaker; for many in Salt Lake City and throughout Utah traditional homes seemed to be the only viable option. Certainly, experimental housing arrangements, such as the kitchen-less houses and feminist apartment hotels promoted by New York domestic revolutionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,48 were not part of Salt Lake City's experience As early as 1902, Gilman was advocating that "The domestic period is long outgrown" and that "A man, woman, and child all should demand something more than 'home life.'"49 None of the local newspaper articles of the period discussed apartments in the socialist-feminist terms that Gilman and other likeminded reformers used. Apartments in Salt Lake City were simply a new and profitable option for real estate investment They were privately funded, with no government subsidy and no social agenda they were attempting to fulfill.
The de-emphasis on household chores, child-rearing, and other homemaking activities in apartments is consistent with the increasing "unhomelike" nature of apartments The basic "walk-up" plan of most apartment buildings constructed in Salt Lake City between 1902 and World War I resembled homes of the period, with front porches, rear service porches, and the orientation of each apartment to the front of the building. Most were built in a "stacked duplex" arrangement, with pairs of apartments on each floor having only one common wall In some instances, several basic walk-ups were attached to one another to form a long row of apartments or were combined in a U-shape to create a central courtyard.
After World War I, the most common apartment building plan was the "double-loaded corridor." These are long rectangular buildings oriented with the narrow end to the street and extending deep into the lot—a good use of the underused backyards of Salt Lake City's large square blocks Under this arrangement, rows of apartments face a central interior hallway rather than the street, eliminating the familiar front and back porches common both to houses and the earlier walk-up apartments. This shift away from a homelike appearance occurred at the same time that increasing numbers of non-homemaker women were moving into apartments. Clearly, the concepts of "home" and "homemaking" were giving way to the new arrangements and lifestyles that apartments offered
The emergence of apartment buildings in Salt Lake City during the early twentieth century reflects, certainly, the general urbanization of the city, but it also represents a significant development in domestic arrangements for women. For the first time, large numbers of women who were not homemakers were able to maintain private residences without the assistance or support of a male wage-earner. Homes demanded the traditional arrangement of a wage-earner and a homemaker to sustain them; apartments did not. But apartments were a non-traditional type of housing that accommodated non-traditional lifestyles. When a woman was in the traditional homemaker phase of her life, her residence, too, was usually traditional—a home. When she was outside that phase, she often chose the non-traditional apartment as her dwelling because it fit her non-homemaker needs.
Such was the case with Leonora Cannon Stewart, Elna Ivie and Faye Clark, who, along with thousands of other women, lived in apartments during transitional phases of their lives. Those phases were sometimes very temporary, especially for young women. Faye Clark lived in Salt Lake City only eighteen months before returning to Alpine and marrying Merlin Whitby in the spring of 1938. They raised five children and continue to live in Alpine Elna Ivie worked as a teacher for about five years, two of which she spent in an apartment. She married Harold Wood in 1929 and moved to his farm in Lewiston, where she raised four children and lived until her death in 1972. Widows, however, tended to remain in apartments for longer periods, often living out their lives there Leonora Stewart spent most of her twenty-six years of widowhood in apartments The post-homemaker phase was usually a final stage of life with virtually no transitional events to change its direction. Women who never married were also long-term apartment residents.
Apartment buildings represent transition in a variety of ways. Their physical presence documents the urban transformation of the city during the early twentieth century. Apartments were built in neighborhoods that were shifting from single-family homes to denser, increasingly commercial use. Architecturally, they are a blend of residential use and commercial form (multi-story, flat-roofed buildings set close to the street) Their floor plans and modern accoutrements document a shift away from older modes of homemaking and traditional concepts of home And finally, their occupants tended to be people in transitional phases of their lives.
The experiences of women, in particular, demonstrate the transitional nature of apartments. Women's principal role as homemakers was so closely tied to homes that their time in apartments stands out as a distinct period of transition into and out of that role. Women's occupancy of apartments also reflects the expanding opportunities for women to achieve independence during the early twentieth century. Though Salt Lake apartments were neither intended nor perceived as feminist housing, they provided non-traditional or non-homemaker women unprecedented residential independence.
NOTES
Roger Roper is the preservation section coordinator for the Utah State Historical Society
1 In compiling data, the author drew random samples from apartment building occupant lists in the 1910 manuscript census for Salt Lake City and from the 1925 and 1940 city directories Two different sources were used because at the time of research later censuses were not yet available to the public (the 1920 manuscript census has since been made public), and it was not until 1924 that lists of apartment building occupants were provided in the city directories Statistics generated from an analysis of these data are hereafter referred to as "Statistics."
2 One indicator of the transitory nature of apartments is the "persistence rates" of apartment dwellers in comparison with those of suburban homeowners Subdivisions, especially those located south and east of the city core, were rapidly expanding during the early decades of the twentieth century. A related study by the author of all apartment dwellers (not just women) offers the following statistical insights from 1925: 37 percent of apartment occupants had lived in their apartments for one year or less, compared with 8 percent of suburban homeowners; the average length of apartment residency was 5.4 years versus 15.7 years for homeowners; and 32 percent of apartment residents were "new arrivals" to the city (in other words, they were listed in the city directory for the first time), versus 25 percent of homeowners.
3 Tamara K Haraven, "Cycles, Courses and Cohorts: Reflections on Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to the Historical Study of Family Development, "Journal of Social History 12:1 (Fall 1978): 100-102.
4 Urban apartments are defined here as multi-family residential buildings of three or more stories, with six or more self-contained units, and with shared, rather than individual, exterior entrances. Variations of two basic apartment building plans persisted in Salt Lake City from their inception in 1902 until 1931: the "walk-up" type, built primarily before World War I, and the double-loaded-corridor type, built after that war Other types of multi-family housing were also being built, including duplexes, rowhouses (often referred to as "terraces"), and various two-story apartments These were usually more house-like in scale and were often built as secondary structures behind other buildings or on secondary, mid-block streets Urban apartments, however, were always (with one exception) built along major streets and were of masonry, as opposed to frame, construction.
5 The number of urban apartment buildings constructed in Salt Lake City during that period was calculated from data in Salt Lake City building permits, Sanborn fire insurance maps, Polk directories, and field observations by the author.
6 Salt Lake Tribune, July 27, 1902.
7 Miriam B. Murphy, "Women in the Utah Work Force," Utah Historical Quarterly 50:2 (Spring 1982), 158.
8 Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1986).
9 Murphy, 'Women in the Work Force," 147.
10 "Statistics."
11 Exact percentages of widows are impossible to calculate from the data in the city directories In both the 1925 and 1940 directories, some 35 percent of the apartment women were listed as widows, 20 percent were listed simply as "Mrs.," and approximately 45 percent had no marital designation. The latter two categories could possibly contain additional widows, since directories were not a census-type accounting Women in the "Mrs." category are especially likely to have been widows or divorcees; otherwise, they probably would not have been listed as the principal occupants of their apartments.
12 Murphy, "Women in the Work Force,". 144 One example of the disparity in the salaries of men and women was the teaching profession See Jessie Embry, "Separate and Unequal: Schoolmarms of Utah, 1900-1950," in John R Sillito, ed., From Cottage to Market: The Professionalization of Women's Sphere (Salt Lake City: Utah Women's History Association, 1983), 65-66, 71.
13 Faye Clark Whitby, interview by author, May 16, 1988, Alpine, Utah.
14 Nora Stewart Snow, interview by author, April 21, 1988, Salt Lake City, Utah Mrs Snow is the daughter of Leonora Cannon Stewart.
16 Kent Covey, interview by author, April 6, 1988, Salt Lake City Mr Covey was involved with the management of apartments owned by the Covey Investment Company until the company sold them in 1985 He is the grandson of Almon A Covey, one of the three Covey brothers who founded the company.
16 The Bransford (later Eagle Gate) apartment building, constructed in 1902 at the corner of Main and South Temple streets, was clearly the most prestigious in Salt Lake City, though it was not comparable with elaborate apartments in major eastern cities The Bransford was also the first apartment building in the city.
17 The apartments in Salt Lake City best fit the description of "efficiency apartments" as defined by Joh n Hancock in his article "The Apartment House in Urban America," in Anthony D King, ed., Building and Society: Essays on the SocialDevelopment of the Built Environment (London and Boston: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1980), 160, 171-76.
18 The prestigious South Temple and Avenues areas tended to have the most expensive and fashionable apartments such as the Bransford, Covey, and Caithness.
19 Elna Ivie letter to Harold Wood, October 1, 1928, in possession of Steven Wood, a grandson The Newhouse Hotel was at 400 S Main The Belvedere is at 29 S State.
20 Elizabeth Hawes, New York, New York: How the Apartment House Transformed the Life of the City (1869-1930) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 180. See also Elizabeth Collins Cromley, Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990), 143.
21 "Statistics."
22 Snow interview Though Mrs Snow did not provide specific names of artists and writers, her distinct impression was that at least some of the apartments in the city were homes and gathering places for them This was true nationally as well.
23 Gwendolyn Wright, Building a Dream: A Social History ofHousing in America (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 151.
24 Salt Lake Tribune, September 9, 1928, April 6, 1930, October 5, 1930.
25 Whitby interview.
26 Wallace Stegner, Recapitulation (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1979), 172, 183.
27 "History of the Salt Lake City YWCA, 1906-1981," included in the YWCA Diamond Jubilee/1980 Annual Report. Copy available at Utah State Historical Society (USHS) archives, Salt Lake City.
28 TheFirst Century of the Methodist Church in Utah (Salt Lake City: United Methodist Church, 1970), 63. See also the National Register of Historic Places nomination form for the Davis Deaconess Home, USHS preservation office.
29 Relief Society Bulletin 1:2 (February 1914): 16-17.
30 Whitby interview.
31 A few examples include apostle David O McKay (Miller Apartments, 48 W North Temple, 1925-39), Quorum of the Seventies president Antoine R Ivins (Hillcrest Apartments, 87 A Street, 1937-41), apostle Charles A. Callis (Belvedere Apartments, 29 S. State, 1934-c. 1946), and church official Bryant S Hinckley (Belvedere Apartments, 1938-41) Some LDS church leaders, including Reed Smoot and Charles W Nibley, chose to maintain rooms in the church-owned Hotel Utah.
32 Marjorie Draper Condor, "Constants and Changes: Role Prescriptions for Mormon Women as Seen through Selected Mormon Periodicals, 1883-1984" (MA thesis, University of Utah, 1985), 59-60, 70.
33 Relief Society Bulletin 1:1 (January 1914): 10.
34 Ivie correspondence, May 23, 1929, January 20, 1929.
35 Whitby interview.
36 References to in-house telephones in apartments are found in numerous newspaper articles in the Salt Lake Tribune. See, for example, May 22, 1910, December 20, 1908, July 27, 1930.
37 Only one building, the Prescott Apartments at 569 E 200 South (demolished) is known to have had clearly designated servants' quarters. Those were located in a clerestory-like top floor. See Salt Lake Tribune, April 11, 1909 The practice of housing maids on the upper floors—which were less desirable spaces when a building lacked an elevator—and janitors in the basement was typical of apartments in New York City and other parts of the country See Cromley, Alone Together, 118.
38 Covey interview.
39 Ivie correspondence, March 23, 1929.
40 Cromley, Alone Together, 199 See also Hawes, New York, 185-86.
41 See Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Workfor Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983); also Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982).
42 Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 1908, March 21, 1909.
43 "Statistics."
44 Laurie Cannon Smith, life sketch of Ida Mae Burton Cannon (typescript, 1978), 6 Copy in USHS archives.
45 Snow interview.
46 Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1931, magazine section.
47 George A Baker, "Houses or Homes," Improvement Era, May 1937, 284.
48 For a thorough discussion of Gilman's ideas and influence see Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), 183-205, 229-65.
49 Quoted from a Cosmopolitan article in Hawes, New York, 175-76.
