Improved Housing Association of New Haven records

The Improved Housing Association of New Haven was an organization which attempted to provide model houses for working people. Modeled on similar associations in London, Glasgow, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston and other cities, it was a response to the living conditions found in urban tenement houses at the beginning of the twentieth century -- overcorwding, dampness, darkness, poor ventilation, dirt, garbage, poor sanitary conditions, and disease, especially tuberculosis. It was not a charity but a stock association; as Irving Fisher explained to the New Haven Chamber of Commerce in 1914, "The proposition is to meet the bad landlord on his own ground by providing better tenements than he can offer and educating the public to demand them, proving that good tenements pay and making bad tenements fail to pay."

New Haven's association was incorporated in May 1911, on the recommendation of Lawrence Veiller, secretary of the National Housing Association, who visited the city in July 1910. Early in 1914 the association opened a block of eight two-family "model houses," which it had built, and which it continued to rent and maintain. According to city directories, the organization continued to exist until 1948. Its early officers were John C. Schwab, president; Charles S. De Forest, vice-president; Barnett Berman, secretary; and Frank B. Frisbie, treasurer. George Parmly Day succeeded Frisbie in 1916; and in the same year Schwab died, and the association, unable to find a replacement, functioned without a president. The original directors of the association were Schwab, De Forest, Susan S. Farnam, Irving Fisher, Edwin S. Greeley, George L. Hendrickson, and Emma Winner Rogers. The stockholders included a number of prominent New Haven citizens.