neighborhood, and most workers simply walked to their nearby workplaces with lunch pail in hand. Cars were not common and those who had them stored them in stables. Stables for horses and cars were located in various parts of the area. Streets—unlike now—were generally free of parked vehicles, allowing hucksters and other vendors space to easily proceed down the narrow side streets with their horse and wagon on a daily basis. European immigrants arrived in large numbers and lost no time in scrimping and working long hours to earn sufficient money to purchase modest row homes, such as those along Chatham Street. Usually, the only heat in such homes was provided by a coal-fired range in a tiny kitchen. Some comfort could be had in the fact that these homes contained tiny rooms, generally two downstairs and two upstairs, and were easy to keep warm from the heat of the kitchen range. Such homes were generally twelve feet wide, and the entire length of the house was about twenty four feet. Cellars consisted of plain dirt floors. The fact that the homes were row homes, which were joined together by common walls, helped them retain heat during cold winter spells. Only the fronts and backs of each home presented themselves to the coldness of winter. Why the cellars along Chatham Street, for example, contained dirt floors is not entirely clear, unless it was because the cellars were used simply for wood or coal storage or because cement was not a widely used product at the time. A ton of coal sold at the time for about four or five dollars and would be sufficient for the entire winter. However, most people bought coal by the bucket from a street peddler who came by daily in his horse-drawn carriage. The outsides of these homes consisted of wooden steps and brick sidewalks. Since this type of housing was of economic construction, the bricks in the sidewalk were laid in a crosshatch pattern in sand. When bricks were used in construction of the walls of the house, the mortar mix was made from lime and sand. Chatham Street homes were constructed in the late 19th century. Later, row homes in Port Richmond were generally sixteen feet wide and contained a cemented cellar, a coal-fired heater, and an upstairs bath for a total of for a total of five or six rooms. Such newer