ABSTRACT

S. E. Gross, the well-known home builder and subdivider, saw much on his recent European trip that escapes the ordinary tourist’s eye. The following remarks by him on real estate methods abroad contain interesting points which cannot be found in any guidebook nor in the note-books of the foreign newspaper correspondents:

“I rst visited the principal cities of Ireland. In none of them did I nd a system such as we have in Chicago for furnishing lots and houses to the industrial classes. Upon inquiry I found that this condition arose not from any lack of desire to acquire property and homes, but from an inherited and otherwise established policy among the large landed proprietors and nobility who own vacant tracts and country seats around the cities not to parcel it out to small owners, the result being that the larger part of the population of the cities is congregated in crowded tenement quarters. In Scotland this condition did not exist to the same extent, and in the City of Glasgow, which contains a vast industrial population, I found considerable attention being paid to extending suburban growth by building and selling houses to the industrial class.