I have a question about company houses. Although they may not have always been kept up by their landlords, my understanding is that company houses were affordable accommodations provided by an employer to their employees (and their families) so that they could have a roof over their heads, as well as be close to the work facility. My question primarily has to do with their use.
Were these houses generally always single-family, or one family per unit households? Or, were they ever for short-term accommodations - e.g. like a motel room or bunk house - where a caboose crew might need a place to lay their head for a few hours or the night before heading back home the next day?
If the latter, did each group or person have kitchen privileges, where they could cook their own meals? Was it like a youth hostile where each person brought their own food, as well as their own bedding (i.e. pillows and sheets or sleeping bags) for sleeping on a mattress? If an employee's stay at a company house were generally only short-term - say, for 8 hours or less - would an employer ever provide a full-time cook or "house mother" to look after the facility?
Sorry for all the seemingly inane questions. I plan on having a company house or two across the street from my freight depot on my layout for transient crews and wondered whether this was a reasonable thing or not. Food could easily be provided by the diner down the street. However, I was most curious whether company houses were ever used strictly for partial-day or overnight accommodations rather than long-term stays.
Thanks for the help...
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Yes. The Atlantic Coast Line built 'villages' of houses for their employee's use. A higher ranking employee (station agent, freight agent) got their own house for their family. A section gang foreman or operators might share a duplex house. 4 or 5 single men might share a house. There were houses available for traveling crews. They might pay 50 cents or so for the use of the house. I am sure they had kitchens, but an itinerant crew would probably go to s diner, or pay another employee's wife to cook their meals. Employees were not forced to live there but it was less expensive to use the company housing.
I'd bet some company used every variation conceivable. Appalachian coal mines used any and everything to keep employees in debt so they couldn't quit. "I owe my soul to the company store".
Billy Dee:There were houses available for traveling crews. They might pay 50 cents or so for the use of the house. I am sure they had kitchens, but an itinerant crew would probably go to s diner, or pay another employee's wife to cook their meals.
----------------------------------------
Most railroad house away crews in Railroad YMCAs located near the yard..Here the away crew could shower,eat,watch TV(usually in the lobby) and sleep before their "home" trip..
A side note about TV..We watch TV only if we had extended time on the "next out" call sheet....
As a example my crew was 15th out which meant I had at least 18 hours or more before being called..I slept 10 hours,showered,ate and watch TV and 4 hours before train time I repacked my grip and ate supper and had my thermos bottled filled with coffee and stayed in the lobby awaiting the crew van...
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
As others have already stated, crews at the "away from home terminal" would stay in a railroad bunkhouse or YMCA, if they didn't sleep in their caboose. There might be a 24-hour cafe as part of the complex, or a communal kitchen with the men providing their own supplies. Today it has become quite common for the railroads to arrange accommodation in a nearby hotel instead.
Transient crews, who are assigned to a terminal on a temporary basis, would be responsible for finding their own accommodation. They might find a boarding house, a friend's spare bedroom, or perhaps a cheap hotel. Occasionally there might be a bunkhouse they could use but these were rare at home terminals.
In urban areas the railroad employees in all trades would be expected to use the local housing market, and of course most train crews lived in urban areas. Any major rail terminal created enough economic stimulus that a local town or city would usually develop. Sometimes company houses survived as a legacy from the pioneer days, but usually they would have been sold into private hands or demolished as the upgraded railroad facilities required the land.
Company dwellings were provided mostly in remote areas where there was no alternative. It was quite common for the station agent to have living quarters as part of the station. Set back from the tracks there might also be another small frame house for the local track foreman. His crew was more likely to use a simple bunkhouse during the week. At an isolated crew change point a mechanical foreman and certain other resident staff might also be provided with a similar dwelling.
John
The term "company house" is most often used in connection with a larger employer such as a mine operation or sawmill. Most Appalachian company towns had multiple single-family company houses and then there would also be a "rooming house" for the single men. In the rooming house, a cook would prepare meals at set times. Bedding was part of the room & board fee. The rules varied from company to company in terms of what would be tolerated for the tenant behaviour. Tenants might not get an entire room to themselves, but there may be multiple beds per room.
Railroads were more likely to have a "bunkhouse" for their crews who were laying over before returning to their home terminal. These were usually pretty basic accomodations without a kitchen, and only basic bedding was provided. There wasn't much privacy. Basic cinder block construction was used in later years, and earlier buildings were frame construction. There would often be some all-night place for "beans" close to the terminal. The bunkhouse was sometimes right in the middle of the yard (example: Wallace Yard on the Illinois Central), and would be close to the dispatcher so that the "caller" wouldn't have to go too far to awaken the crew. In later years, generally after 1950 or so, the railroad was more likely to contract out their lodging to a nearby motel or YMCA. Shuttle service to the hotel was provided by the railroad.
I think that a bunkhouse is generally more realistic than a couple of "houses" for the railroad crews.
Bill
Industrial company housing was once quite common, and often they were self-contained and included hospital, store, school, etc. Typically, families were housed in single-family homes with cooking facilities. Single workers typically stayed in hotel/dormitory-type facilities.
In the early 1950s, I went to nursery school in the former hospital building of the Cowell Cement Plant near Concord, CA. The company town was eventually bull-dozed and the grounds are now occupied by suburban homes. The plant had closed shortly after WWII.
In the mid-1980s, serverall times I visited the company town of a sawmill operation at Dinkey Creek, CA in the Sierra Nevada Mountains northeast of Fresno before it closed down.
Some company housing had a life beyond the industrial plant. Some were sold to individuals for first or secondary (vacation) homes, and some were relocated. During my childhood, several homes nearby were former C&H Sugar company houses that had been relocated. Those houses had been heavily reconstructed/expanded during the decades since they had been moved.
For those that may be interested the RR YMCAs started showing up in the 1880s.Sadly due to recent rules concerning away train crews rest the YMCAs was closed due to the noise from the freight yard.
Today the away crews are housed in a contract hotel that has to be at least 1 mile from the yard.IIRC the railroad still buys one meal.
I have blue prints that show plans for two room bunkhouses that the Santa Fe used in the early 1900s. They owned them. My great-grandfather was an independent contractor and built at least two of them. They were nothing fancy and the only convenience was a wood stove. There is still one standing and it has been built on to many times and is used as a residence.
I also saw his materials list that he had written and he said each building would cost around $300 a piece for each bunkhouse. Nowadays, go and try to build a structure for $300.
Will
Thanks for all the responses, everyone! It's been very educational for me.
Here's a pic of the City Classics company house that I will have on my layout:
My layout is situated in a rural setting in the early 40s. My thought was that I could use one for the freight master's family; the other for a possible crew or boarding house. These would be adjacent to the freight depot and across the tracks from the servicing terminal/small yard.
There are some old Southern Pacific company houses still standing in Benson, Arizona. They were built way back possibly as far as the late 1800's. One and two story wood houses with porches around two sides and a summer kitchen in a separate building for community use. When new they must have been some of the nicest homes in Benson. There's still even a windmill that pumped water and generated electricity in front of one of the houses.
From the looks of the houses, they were most likely for higher ranking railroad officials such as a yardmaster and stationmaster and their famillies in the days when Benson was a steam mecca with a complete roundhouse, turntable, and yard facilities.
Everything but the houses is gone now and trains fly through without even slowing down.
Gloger Hotel, 1215 Kinney Ave. Corpus Christi, Texas. Said to be a former railroadman’s rooming house. Photographed Feb. 2, 1975 as research for model railroad display. Demolished mid-1990s. Next to the Texas Mexican Rwy 2-stall diesel house (still standing thopugh tracks are up.) At far right of main building is a small outbuilding with a shingle roof built atop the body of a Birney streetcar, a style of car operated by CPL in Laredo.
This past autumn, I donated about 1250 photos to the Texas A&M University Corpus Christi library archives, including photos I took over the last 45 years of railroads, local scenes, news events, TV station operations, old houses, buildings, and motion picture production in Corpus Christi and surrounding South Texas towns. The university has just put on line a sample of about 100 of the photos and a searchable finding guide to all 1250.
http://rattler.tamucc.edu/dept/special/Anthony.html
Keep in mind that before women's lib, a boarding house would be one of the few ways that a Single Mom (to use today's term) could earn a living. Even if a railroad had a company-connected YMCA or other boarding facilities, travelling crews often chose to stay in a "private" boarding house. In a railroad town, the women operating these facilities might well cater to railroad workers (perhaps being the widow of a railroad man) and would be able to provide a bag lunch for the railroader's return trip, fill their thermos with coffee or other drink, or in a pinch even wash their clothes. Remember that in many cases an engineer could bid on a regular job between two towns, so would get to know the other city and would often find a place to stay if he needed to regularly lay over in the away city.
At their home base, it wasn't unusual pre-WW2 for a family to rent out a room to a boarder, so a single railroader might end up boarding with a local family, perhaps even the family of a co-worker. Sometimes these people could stay for many years. My cousins down in Iowa had a boarder who lived with them for something like 30 years and in effect became 'one of the family'.
Keep in mind too a company house didn't have to be run down or shabby. On the Mesabi Iron Range, some of the first houses built with electricity and indoor plumbing were built in company towns to rent to miners. Back then the city would often set up a town and things like alcohol, gambling and prostitution would be banned. A school would be set up and a company Dr. would be available, so for a worker of c.1911 it often wasn't too bad a deal. (Of course, a mile or two off of company property, a rival town would be built filled with saloons and independent businesses.) During the Great Depression, many mining companies allowed their workers to live in there homes rent free, as long as they maintained the houses in good shape. Some companies offered company land to unemployed miners to use for large gardens to help feed their families.
Company house; company town. There were good and bad and certainly today many people have a negative understanding of the company town and working conditions. However, we also have to relate this to the overall world working conditions at the time. A hundred years ago, people would be excited to get that good job for the company, with clean house with electricity and indoor plumbing. I grew up in a mill town. There were the negatives of the company having a lot of control over the town. Yet there were also a lot of positives. Those mill towns were some of the closest knit communities there could be. Everyone was like family. In the cotton mill towns, a strong baseball culture grew up on the 20s with each town/mill having it's own team. These teams were almost like the major league with the strong followings they had and yes, mill owners would give a good player a "job" just to play ball. A lot of men grew from these mill leagues into the majors.
One of the more recent (relatively speaking) company towns to open was Hoyt Lakes, MN, which was constructed in the late fifties when Erie Mining Co. opened their taconite plant in a relatively remote area of northeastern Minnesota. They built fairly standard one and two story houses like you would find in any suburb of the day. A worker and his family could drive around until they saw a house they wanted, then go the company housing office and sign up to buy it and move in the same day. There were some larger houses reserved for company officials, supervisors etc. but they all were pretty nice.
Military base housing is another example of "company" housing - and it's still in use today.
Base housing is sought after by some, and gotten out of whenever they can by others. It's really a matter of personal preference in areas where there are sufficient housing stocks outside the base. As was mentioned in a prior post, living in base housing creates a very strong sense of community. The on-base kids grow up with the freedoms and safety and intermingling and trust we tend to remember in the suburbs of the '50s and '60s. It's not at all like we have today in the suburbs. The primary drawback of base housing is living in a "fishbowl" - everybody knows your business - which is why some do anything to avoid base housing.
just my experiences
Fred W
My mother grew up in a "company" house in Western Pa. The houses were mostly duplex, two story wooden structures. No centeral heating (coal stoves) and no hot water and no indoor facilities.
Twelve children and two adults were raised in the house. The Coal mine company owened the houses until much later. The houses were subsequently sold to indivituals.. This type housing was pretty much standard during the early 1900's and foward.
As humble as those houses were they were a significiant departure from conditionst the immigrants left in Europe.
two examples come to mind when you mentioned compamy houses. a couple miles from where i live now there is a community called Williamson Ill. most of the old times referred to it a number 2 camp. it was a little village of 4 room houses for emplyees of the local coal mine. i wasn't around at the time it was built but some of the seniors have told me that a lot of the lumber came from the 1904 world's fair in st louis. it was a community of identical 4 room houses and if you look hard enough, you can still see the orignal 4 room box that many of them were at the start. the later additions of extra rooms, enclosed porches etc. have given each house it's own appearance today.
the other company houses that impressed me are at the pullman historical site, south of Chicago. these were mostly substantial brick homes built for George M. Pullman's workers utopia dream. it is a well preseved site with many of the orignal buildings restored including the Florence Hotel. try to visit it during the day time, if you must go after dark, walk sideways so you can take the bullet in the shoulder.
grizlump