Two hours of pushin' broom
buys an eight-by-twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road

(Roger Miller)

I while back, I talked to a guy who said he was semi-homeless in the late 50s in Minneapolis. He said they got cheap rooms for almost nothing. These rooms were cages in the old buildings near the bars. Just a place for those down on their luck to get some sleep.

He also said the a big cause of homelessness today is that the gov't outlawed these flophouses. Once that happened, you couldn't afford a place to stay.

After reading Orwell's "Down and Out in London and Paris," I'm fascinated by these marginal digs.

I had the same question, Anonymous Tipster. My guess is that the room is a cubicle with a bed, as opposed to a bunk in a big room. If so, that's a pretty good upgrade for a nickel!

I suspect that the 15 cent bed got you space in a dormitory room, 20 cents got you some form of private room. I was once in a disused flophouse "Hotel"- rooms barely big enough to contain a bed, many windowless.

Just the name of the place is so inviting.

Are critters extra, or do they come with the upgrade?

What the sign and the custom probably means is that for 20 cents you get a room with a bed, a sink if you're lucky, and an inside lock on the door. A 4-by-8-foot room, if that.

For 15 cents you get a bed in a common area. When you take your shoes off, if you do, you lift the head end of the bed and pin them underneath the bedposts. That way, unless you're a very sound sleeper, you still have a chance of having shoes in the morning.

Hitchhiking in the South in the late 1950s & early '60s I stayed at places like this. It was more like a dollar for a bed then.

So I guess a room with a bed would be 35 cents? I bet they could do quite a business if they combined the two into a package.