Skid Row

Skid row refers to an urban district inhabited predominantly by poor, single, adult males, rather than families. It also has been associated with alcoholism, especially during the 1950s, although some studies have brought that analysis into question.

The original Skid Row was in Seattle; the term referred to a street owned by Henry Yesler, a local lumberman. Yesler used this byway to get logs to his mill at the bottom, and it was originally referred to as “Skid Road.”

Lining this thoroughfare were all the businesses that catered to a male clientele, lumberjacks who had spent considerable time in the woods and had returned to an urban center. These shops included such establishments as hotels, restaurants, bookstores, saloons, and brothels. By the turn of the 20th century, however, neighborhoods like this had appeared in every major city, including the Main Stem in Chicago, the Bowery in New York, Third Street in San Francisco, Scollay Square in Boston, Main Street in Los Angeles, and Pratt Street in Baltimore.

This development stemmed from a changing economic structure. Industrialization had created a transient workforce of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers, men who worked outside, taming the frontier and building cities. The best study of skid row residents in Chicago, for example, found that 21 percent were skilled workmen, 11 percent were partly skilled, 11 percent had trained for clerical work, and 6 percent were professionals. They referred to themselves as “hoboes.”

These men lived a seasonal schedule, working from spring through fall, saving up a nest egg, then hunkering down in some urban center through the winter. The fact that Chicago had the largest such neighborhood at this time—some estimates quote the main Stem's population at well over 100,000—indicates that they chose a place that provided community and support services, rather than warmth and convenience offered in southern and southwestern cities.

In addition, skid row attracted other groups. Tramps were individuals seized by wanderlust, who loved to travel but were not interested in steady work. They too needed a winter layaway and gravitated to the accommodations in these districts. In addition, there were many former hoboes and tramps who could no longer travel, as well as poor individuals who [Page 723]needed cheap lodging, all of whom turned to the skid row facilities.

Skid row provided a number of services for this unique clientele, including inexpensive restaurants and cheap housing. The latter, in the form of single room occupancy hotels (SROs), became one of the hallmarks of skid row life.

At first, SROs appeared in a variety of forms. At the top of the scale were workingmens hotels, inhabited by skilled workers and even elderly and middleclass men. The rooms, though small, were clean and afforded a reasonable residential situation for these individuals.

Far more common were the cage hotels. In these establishments, owners took large open spaces and ran boards or corrugated iron sheets down the length, then subdivided this into small rooms, often 6 feet by 9 feet. Since the walls often did not meet the floor or ceiling, this open space was sealed off with chicken wire, hence the name cage hotels.

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