Something I forgot to add about The Jungle yesterday. One of the things the family does shortly after they arrive in Chicago is buy a house in the slums near the meat-packing plants. They are somewhat ripped off, at least in the sense that they don't understand the contract, and that they think the house is new, but really it is a few years old. It turns out the house had been sold several times before to families who eventually defaulted on the payments and then lost the house.

Anyway, it is described as a four room wood frame row house. I think when I read the book originally I imagined a brownstone of some sort, since I was not really familiar with cities or the architecture of the time, and thought of the urban areas that were familiar to me, and the type of buildings found there. But now that I live in a house that was built in about 1904 (which is almost the same time as the book's setting), I know the kind of house the folks in The Jungle purchased.

My house's original occupants were factory workers at a plant down the hill, and including the attic, my house was four rooms at the time of its construction (now the basement has been converted to living space and it is five rooms). It is a temple house, which is a variant of a bungalow. There are also little structures known as shotguns, and other bungalow relatives, all part of the Craftsman design. So I'm thinking the characters in the book lived in a house something like mine (at least until they failed to make the payments). Amazing to think of the changes in real estate over time. At the turn of the 20th Century, uneducated factory workers lived in my house. At the turn of the 21st, it is inhabited by highly educated professionals. So much for the revolution of the proletariat. Think I should rise up?