1983]

RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION ORDINANCES

295

"alley districts" because they illustrated conditions prevailing in inte-
rior alleys and minor streets. These districts were occupied largely by
Negroes along with a few native white families and Germans. In real-
ity, the housing stock in the tenement and alley districts was not mutu-
ally exclusive — tenement districts included houses on interior streets,
and alley districts included some tenements.

One of the districts studied, Biddle Alley, was the same neighbor-
hood to which middle-class blacks had escaped in the 1880's. By 1903
it had fallen on hard times. The area investigated by the Society was
bounded by Biddle and Preston Streets and Druid Hill and Penn-
sylvania Avenues. Two hundred and fifteen overcrowded houses, con-
taining 270 apartments (seventeen percent of which were one room),
.were crammed into the alleys and minor streets within the block. Typi-
cally, the houses were two or three stories high and two rooms deep
with a basement kitchen and living room. The most common problem
was the "dirty, dark, damp and dilapidated" basements.33 The investi-
gation did not determine the number of residents in Biddle Alley; the
Society felt that tabulating the information concerning the number of
people living in alley houses was a "waste of time" because of the un-
trustworthiness of the tenants.34

The Biddle Alley neighborhood was literally and figuratively at
the bottom of what was becoming the black section of Baltimore. In
1903 the section with a majority Negro population was described as
"bounded on the south by Biddle Street, on the west by Argyle Avenue,
on the east by Druid Hill Avenue, and on the north by North Avenue.
This region extends about a quarter of a mile from east to west and a
mile north and south."35 It consisted of the 17th Ward to the south and
a portion of the 14th Ward to the north.



      The Negro district was highly stratified, both economically and so-
cially. The lower portion of the district, found in the 17th Ward, which
embraced the Biddle Alley neighborhood, was a filthy slum. Animal
excrement and garbage lay in the streets. Privy faults and cesspools
overflowed into the alleys and oozed into the basement, kitchen, and
living areas.36 Cholera and typhoid were a constant threat, and the
district was the tuberculosis center for the city: According to one
health department official, "there is not a house on Biddle Alley, in
which there has not been at least one case of tuberculosis."37 Biddle

33. Id. at 45.

34. Id. at 43.

35. A Social Problem, supra note 6, at 498.

36. W. Paul, supra note 4, at 393-94.

37. J. KEMP, supra note 30, at 19.