SEVENTY-THREE SQUARE FEET | 2006-05-02
Watching Godfather II again reminded me of a number that always amazes me.
At the turn of the century an ethnic working-class area of New York contained about six hundred people per acre.
There were no elevators, so walkups were all they had to reduce the crowding.
A five-story apartment would have ONE toilet.
What makes this worse is that it never occurred to the residents of these areas to go back to Ireland or Poland or Italy. By the standards they and their ancestors had lived in, this was a terrific IMPROVEMENT.
They urge their kinfolk to come and join them and they did. That's how the ethnic communities developed in the first place.
An acre is exactly one percent less than 44,000 square feet. This means these folks lived in an average of seventy-three square feet apiece, about one and a half times his height in each direction.
Day after day, decade after decade.
Do that to a lab rat and he will go nuts.
They thrived and they multiplied.