Tenement
tony cooper
your thing) I think we've done this, but every time I see "tenement"
used by Scottish writers I have to stop and mentally adjust. In the
US, a tenement is an apartment building where you would expect rats,
the smell of urine in the halls, druggies, and other slum conditions.
Not so, evidently, in Scotland.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Steve Hayes
wrote:
I thought it just meant premises one had the right to occupy (as in "tenure")
often, but not necessarily, rented.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Nick
Edinburgh in particular I think. They built these big multi-occupancy
buildings (I'd guess, on no research at all, the first modern "blocks of
flats" or tenements) donkeys' years ago. I'm sure there are some like
that.
I tend to do the same with "block of flats", thinking of estate tower
blocks from the 60s, not the smart new riverside developments.
--
Online waterways route planner: http://canalplan.org.uk
development version: http://canalplan.eu
R H Draney
>
>tony cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> Just finished a Val McDermid book. (Scottish writer, if fiction isn't
>> your thing) I think we've done this, but every time I see "tenement"
>> used by Scottish writers I have to stop and mentally adjust. In the
>> US, a tenement is an apartment building where you would expect rats,
>> the smell of urine in the halls, druggies, and other slum conditions.
>> Not so, evidently, in Scotland.
>
>Edinburgh in particular I think. They built these big multi-occupancy
>buildings (I'd guess, on no research at all, the first modern "blocks of
>flats" or tenements) donkeys' years ago. I'm sure there are some like
>that.
>
>I tend to do the same with "block of flats", thinking of estate tower
>blocks from the 60s, not the smart new riverside developments.
For me the one that shifted was "housing projects"...first time I heard the term
it referred to what were once called "Levittowns", unassuming suburbs full of
modestly-priced single-family homes for WWII veterans and their families setting
up housekeeping for the first time...within five years it meant
poorly-constructed and worse-maintained blocks of low-budget high-rise
apartments in inner-city neighborhoods....r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
the Omrud
Scottish yes, but she lives here in Cheshire.
Tenements are found in a few Scottish cities, particularly Glasgow and
Edinburgh. Many of them went through a period of being rather run down
but when they were built they were good middle-class housing for city
workers, and many are now occupied by young professionals.
Here's an unmodernised one in Glasgow which we have visited:
http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/59/
Billy Connelly grew up in a tenement - he sometimes talks about it in
his stand-up routines.
--
David
Django Cat
Like you say, the word 'tenement' conjures up pictures of razor gangs
and the Gorbals - maybe especially for non-Scots - but all the tenement
flats I've ever stayed in in Edinburgh have been really nice, very
comfortable and in relaxed and classy parts of town.
DC
--
Django Cat
Well... yes and no (see David's reply). The main thing is that unlike
English ones, Scottish cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, but also
Dundee and Aberdeen, were built around four to five storey apartment
blocks, some jerry-built but many very solid and still servicible a
century or so after they went up - I've really enjoyed the times I've
spent staying in tenement flats in Edinburgh. I'd guess the closest US
equivalent would be the New York brownstone; it wouldn't surprise me to
learn that living in one of one of those has undergone a similar
process of gentrification to living in a tenement.
DC
--
Django Cat
>
> tony cooper wrote:
> > Just finished a Val McDermid book. (Scottish writer, if fiction
> > isn't your thing) I think we've done this, but every time I see
> > "tenement" used by Scottish writers I have to stop and mentally
> > adjust. In the US, a tenement is an apartment building where you
> > would expect rats, the smell of urine in the halls, druggies, and
> > other slum conditions. Not so, evidently, in Scotland.
>
> Scottish yes, but she lives here in Cheshire.
I thought Val McD lived somewhere Buxton way, and that area of the Peak
is the setting for her excellent 'A Place of Execution'. I actual had
a good chat with her about ten years ago when she did a writers'
session at Oldham library - I was one of only about six people who
turned up - and I remember her talking about long walks for research.
She could, of course, have moved since.
DC
--
the Omrud
Wlimslow, I think. She says "South Manchester" on her own web site.
--
David
Django Cat
I've just finished rereading 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The
Moon of Gomrath' (aka 'The Goon of Monmouth' in this house). Both a
lot better than Alan Garner's adult book 'Thursbitch' which I read a
few months back and I thought was plain daft. I still find it hard to
think of Cheshire as creepy and supernatural though...
DC
--
Django Cat
> > Wlimslow, I think. She says "South Manchester" on her own web site.
>
> I've just finished rereading 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The
> Moon of Gomrath' (aka 'The Goon of Monmouth' in this house).
(Both set round Wilmslow, Alderley Edge and the hills around)
--
Leslie Danks
[...]
> I still find it hard to
> think of Cheshire as creepy and supernatural though...
I was borne in Cheshire. Think again.
<demoniacal laughter>
--
Les (BrE)
Steve Hayes
>I've just finished rereading 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The
>Moon of Gomrath' (aka 'The Goon of Monmouth' in this house). Both a
>lot better than Alan Garner's adult book 'Thursbitch' which I read a
>few months back and I thought was plain daft. I still find it hard to
>think of Cheshire as creepy and supernatural though...
Those are among my favourite books.
I hadn't heard of "Thursbitch", but he was downhill all the way after
"Elidor", which I read about the first time I visited Manchester, and shaped
the way I looked at it.
Don Phillipson
>
> > . . . every time I see "tenement"
> > used by Scottish writers I have to stop and mentally adjust. In the
> > US, a tenement is an apartment building where you would expect rats,
> > the smell of urine in the halls, druggies, and other slum conditions.
> > Not so, evidently, in Scotland.
"Django Cat" <nota...@address.co.uk> wrote in message
news:elcKm.64662$9M4....@newsfe03.ams2...
> Well... yes and no (see David's reply). The main thing is that unlike
> English ones, Scottish cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, but also
> Dundee and Aberdeen, were built around four to five storey apartment
> blocks, some jerry-built but many very solid and still servicible a
> century or so after they went up - I've really enjoyed the times I've
> spent staying in tenement flats in Edinburgh.
Exactly: "tenement" is simply the local name in Scotland
for walk-up apartment blocks, new in Scottish cities in the
19th century, analogous to "projects" for public housing
apartment blocks in the northeast USA approx. 1950 and
even "the buildings" in south London in the 1870s (where
an American businessman named Peabody constructed
several modern blocks for working class tenants, all or
most publicly marked Peabody Building.) Only in a later,
changed, environment did any of these become slums.
The architectural historian might note that such blocks
were a rare novelty in Britain 1850-1900 although normal
in some other cities (e.g. Berlin, Vienna.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Django Cat
oo er
--
Django Cat
> > I've just finished rereading 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and
> > 'The Moon of Gomrath' (aka 'The Goon of Monmouth' in this house).
> > Both a lot better than Alan Garner's adult book 'Thursbitch' which
> > I read a few months back and I thought was plain daft. I still
> > find it hard to think of Cheshire as creepy and supernatural
> > though...
>
> Those are among my favourite books.
>
> I hadn't heard of "Thursbitch", but he was downhill all the way after
> "Elidor", which I read about the first time I visited Manchester, and
> shaped the way I looked at it.
Me too - and I always associate Elidor with weird gothic Gorton
Monastry - http://www.gortonmonastery.co.uk/history.html - a building I
suspect David the O can see from his office window.
DC
--
the Omrud
Not now - we moved away from Gorton more than four years ago. And
today's office window looks onto south Warrington.
--
David
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
wrote:
>Steve Hayes wrote:
I'm surprised by the statement "In the early 1970's the surrounding
terraced housing was demolished and the community re-housed in
neighbouring areas". That terraced housing must have been among the
latest to be demolished in that general area. The part I was familiar
with, a few hundred metres from Gorton Monastery, was demolished and
redeveloped during the 1960s.
--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
James Silverton
Glasgow tenements could vary from the slums of the Gorbals to
respectable 19th century streets with middle class apartments on 3 to 4
stories. One of the "features" was the absence of elevators. The red
sandstone terraces of tenements near the Kelvin river and the Botanic
Gardens have become quite gentrified lately. Edinburgh tenements can be
rather earlier and some in the Old Town date from many centuries ago and
run to 12 or more stories. Without elevators or plumbing, you can see
which were the more desirable apartments.
--
James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland
Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not
Hatunen
<not.jim....@verizon.net> wrote:
> R wrote on 9 Nov 2009 23:53:27 -0800:
>
>> Nick filted:
>>>
>>> tony cooper <tony_co...@earthlink.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> Just finished a Val McDermid book. (Scottish writer, if
>>>> fiction isn't your thing) I think we've done this, but
>>>> every time I see "tenement" used by Scottish writers I have
>>>> to stop and mentally adjust. In the US, a tenement is an
>>>> apartment building where you would expect rats, the smell of
>>>> urine in the halls, druggies, and other slum conditions. Not
>>>> so, evidently, in Scotland.
>>>
>>> Edinburgh in particular I think. They built these big
>>> multi-occupancy buildings (I'd guess, on no research at all,
>>> the first modern "blocks of flats" or tenements) donkeys'
>>> years ago. I'm sure there are some like that.
>>>
>>> I tend to do the same with "block of flats", thinking of
>>> estate tower blocks from the 60s, not the smart new riverside
>>> developments.
>
>> For me the one that shifted was "housing projects"...first
>> time I heard the term it referred to what were once called
>> "Levittowns", unassuming suburbs full of modestly-priced
>> single-family homes for WWII veterans and their families
>> setting up housekeeping for the first time ...within five years
>> it meant poorly-constructed and worse-maintained blocks of
>> low-budget high-rise apartments in inner-city
>> neighborhoods....r
I believe the term "housing project" in the sense you give is
from truncation of the phrase "public housing project", a
development built by the government and operated by them which
rents to low-income people. Frequently just called "the projects"
as in the claim "I grew up in the projects".
--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@cox.net) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
Don Aitken
Like almost everybody in this thread, you understate the age of the
tenement concept in Scotland. Edinburgh had some in the 16th century;
there was a major boom in tenement buidling in the 1670s, some of them
by very eminent architects. It was England, not Scotland, which found
them a novelty in the 19th century.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the From: address is not read.
To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com"
Eric Walker
The list of definitions here--
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Atenement
--will show the diversity of meanings for the term. The one that covers
Tony's (and my) memories of the word is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement#History_of_US_tenements
The one that explains the distinctively Scottish sense is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement#Scotland
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, Owlcroft House
http://owlcroft.com/english/
Mark Brader
> I believe the term "housing project" in the sense you give is
> from truncation of the phrase "public housing project", a
> development built by the government and operated by them which
> rents to low-income people.
= UK "council house"?
--
Mark Brader | "If the standard says that [things] depend on the
Toronto | phase of the moon, the programmer should be prepared
m...@vex.net | to look out the window as necessary." -- Chris Torek
the Omrud
> Dave Hatunen:
>> I believe the term "housing project" in the sense you give is
>> from truncation of the phrase "public housing project", a
>> development built by the government and operated by them which
>> rents to low-income people.
>
> = UK "council house"?
Yes, in intention and purpose, but they don't look the same. A council
house is, er, a house, usually semi-detached or terraced. The housing
projects are more normally blocks of low-rise and high-rise flats, often
clustered and away from other housing. "council flat" would come
closer, but not if it is of the type found in south Manchester, which
are just one floor of a two-storey semi-detached house (purpose built in
that way).
--
David
Peter Duncanson (BrE)
In the middle of this google maps satellite view is a tower block of
council flats in Manchester that was built in the 1960s. I haven't seen
it for multi-years so don't know its current usage.
http://tinyurl.com/yazp3vs
There seem to be more trees and grass than when I used to work in a
building just to the right of those council flats.
the Omrud
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:32:13 GMT, the Omrud
> <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Mark Brader wrote:
>>> Dave Hatunen:
>>>> I believe the term "housing project" in the sense you give is
>>>> from truncation of the phrase "public housing project", a
>>>> development built by the government and operated by them which
>>>> rents to low-income people.
>>> = UK "council house"?
>> Yes, in intention and purpose, but they don't look the same. A council
>> house is, er, a house, usually semi-detached or terraced. The housing
>> projects are more normally blocks of low-rise and high-rise flats, often
>> clustered and away from other housing. "council flat" would come
>> closer, but not if it is of the type found in south Manchester, which
>> are just one floor of a two-storey semi-detached house (purpose built in
>> that way).
>
> In the middle of this google maps satellite view is a tower block of
> council flats in Manchester that was built in the 1960s. I haven't seen
> it for multi-years so don't know its current usage.
> http://tinyurl.com/yazp3vs
It is still council flats.
> There seem to be more trees and grass than when I used to work in a
> building just to the right of those council flats.
That may be an artefact of the aerial view - I wouldn't think there was
that much grass even now, viewed from the ground.
--
David
Robin Bignall
<roger+a...@nospam.firedrake.org> wrote:
>the Omrud wrote:
>
>>Yes, in intention and purpose, but they don't look the same. A council
>>house is, er, a house, usually semi-detached or terraced.
>
>I think that perhaps "council estate" would be closer to "public housing
>project" - an area dedicated to state-owned housing, rather than the
>more piecemeal situation we also see in the UK where council houses are
>mixed with owner-occupied and privately-rented accommodation.
>
They are now, but before they started the process of allowing tenants
to buy council houses, whole, huge estates were all council property.
The one I grew up on was built in the late 1920s, and it was a
complete town in itself, with two cinemas, a public library, dozens of
pubs and shops and about 20,000 houses, all identical, built in blocks
of four. At its approximate centre was a school complex, designed for
all of the children on the estate, and turned into a secondary-modern
by the 1944 Butler Education Act. You could step out of my front
door, near one edge of the estate, walk towards and then past the
school, and an hour later still find yourself walking along streets
depressingly identical to your own.
>The usual association with a council estate is that it's not somewhere
>you go unless you have to (because you live there or you're visiting
>someone there, and both are to be avoided if possible). I believe that a
>public housing project would often be considered similarly.
Ten years or so ago, when one was coming into London on the M40 (or it
might have been the M4, I forget) one could see on one's left,
somewhere near Hammersmith, two or three council tower blocks standing
out from the low buildings around them like sore thumbs.
--
Robin
(BrE)
Herts, England
Nick
> would come closer, but not if it is of the type found in south
> Manchester, which are just one floor of a two-storey semi-detached
> house (purpose built in that way).
Isn't that a "maisonette"?
--
Online waterways route planner: http://canalplan.org.uk
development version: http://canalplan.eu
Steve Hayes
wrote:
>the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> writes:
>
>> would come closer, but not if it is of the type found in south
>> Manchester, which are just one floor of a two-storey semi-detached
>> house (purpose built in that way).
>
>Isn't that a "maisonette"?
It is in my dialect.
But then what in BrE are called "town houses" I would call "duplex flats". I'm
also not sure what the distinction is between a "town house" and a "terrace
house", except that the former appear to be newer.
the Omrud
> the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> writes:
>
>> would come closer, but not if it is of the type found in south
>> Manchester, which are just one floor of a two-storey semi-detached
>> house (purpose built in that way).
>
> Isn't that a "maisonette"?
It's one instance of a maisonette. But I also use the word for a
two-storey flat within a block, such as those built in Hulme and Moss
Side in the 60s.
--
David
Don Aitken
If it was rather more than ten years, and it was the M40, and there
were three identical system-built blocks, and Westbourne Park is "near
Hammersmith" that might have been the notorious Elgin Estate. It
played a large part in the "homes for votes" scandal; Westminster used
it for the tenants they thought the least acceptable, or most
undeserving. Eventually they were forced to admit that the absestos
levels made the blocks unfit for habitation, and they were demolished.
I used to live just round the corner.
Nick
> On Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:27:50 +0000, Nick <3-no...@temporary-address.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
>>the Omrud <usenet...@gEXPUNGEmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> would come closer, but not if it is of the type found in south
>>> Manchester, which are just one floor of a two-storey semi-detached
>>> house (purpose built in that way).
>>
>>Isn't that a "maisonette"?
>
> It is in my dialect.
>
> But then what in BrE are called "town houses" I would call "duplex flats". I'm
> also not sure what the distinction is between a "town house" and a "terrace
> house", except that the former appear to be newer.
In modern BrE a town house is indeed in a terrace. My feeling is that
the places I've known described like that had little accommodation on
the ground floor - with perhaps a garage or something there. Of course,
then you start straying into mews houses.
WikiP seems pretty good on this: "Nowadays British property developers
and estate agents often call new terraced houses townhouses, probably
because the aristocratic pedigree of terraced housing is widely
forgotten, and for many people the main mental association of terraced
housing is with working class terraced housing, especially in poor
districts in the north of England. "Townhouse" still has more exclusive
connotations."
the Omrud
I would say that a town house must be tall and thin - hence probably on
three or more floors.
--
David
Robin Bignall
wrote:
Those are the ones. I had lost track of time as usual and hadn't
realised that the last time I drove from London to Oxford on the M40
was in 1994.