Boarding house

A boarding house is a house (frequently a family home) in which lodgers rent one or more rooms on a nightly basis and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months, or years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. It normally provides "room and board," with some meals as well as accommodation.

Lodgers legally obtain a licence, not exclusive possession, to use their rooms and so the landlord retains the right of access.

Formerly boarders would typically share washing, breakfast, and dining facilities; in recent years, it has become common for each room to have its own washing and toilet facilities. Such boarding houses were often found in English seaside towns (for tourists) and college towns (for students). It was common for there to be one or two elderly long-term residents. "The phrase "boardinghouse reach" [referring to a diner reaching far across a dining table] comes from an important variant of hotel life. In boardinghouses, tenants rent rooms and the proprietor provides family-style breakfasts and evening dinners in a common dining room. Traditionally, the food was put on the table, and everyone scrambled for the best dishes. Those with a long, fast reach ate best."

Boarders can often arrange to stay bed-and-breakfast (bed and breakfast only), half-board (bed, breakfast and dinner only), or full-board (bed, breakfast, lunch, and dinner). Especially for families on holiday with children, boarding (particularly on a full-board basis) was an inexpensive alternative and much cheaper than staying in all but the cheapest hotels.

Boarding houses were common in most US cities throughout the 19th century and until the 1950s. In Boston, in the 1830s, when landlords and their boarders were added up, between one third and one half of the city's entire population lived in a boarding house. Boarding houses ran from large purpose-built buildings down to "genteel ladies," who rented a room or two as a way of earning a little extra money. Large houses were converted to boarding houses, as wealthy families moved to more fashionable neighborhoods. The boarders in the 19th century ran the gamut as well, from well-off businessmen to poor laborers, and from single people to families. In the 19th century, between a third to half of urban dwellers rented a room to boarders or were boarders themselves. In New York in 1869, the cost of living in a boarding house ranged from $2.50 to $40 a week. Some boarding houses attracted people with particular occupations or preferences, such as vegetarian meals.

The boarding house reinforced some social changes: it made it feasible for people to move to a large city and away from their families. The distance from relatives brought social anxieties and complaints that the residents of boarding houses were not respectable. Boarding out gave people the opportunity to meet other residents and so they promoted some social mixing. That had advantages, such as learning new ideas and new people's stories, and also disadvantages, such as occasionally meeting disreputable or dangerous people. Most boarders were men, but women found that they had limited options: a co-ed boarding house might mean meeting objectionable men, but an all-female boarding house might be or at least be suspected of being a brothel.

Boarding houses attracted criticism: in 1916, Walter Krumwilde, a Protestant minister, saw the rooming house or boardinghouse system [as] "spreading its web like a spider, stretching out its arms like an octopus to catch the unwary soul." Attempts to reduce boarding house availability had a gendered impact, as boarding houses were typically operated or managed by women "matrons," and closing boarding houses reduced that opportunity for women to make a living from operating such houses.

Later, groups such as the Young Women's Christian Association provided heavily-supervised boarding houses for young women. Boarding houses were viewed as "brick-and-mortar chastity belts" for young unmarried women, which protected them from the vices in the city. The Jeanne d'Arc Residence in Chelsea, Manhattan, which was operated by an order of nuns, aimed to provide a dwelling space for young French seamstresses and nannies. Married women who boarded with their families in boarding houses were accused of being too lazy to do all of the washing, cooking, and cleaning necessary to keep house or to raise children properly. While there is an association between boarding houses and women renters, men also rented, notably the poet-authors Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe.