Six-Foot Wide House Here Declared World’s Narrowest

Camden Courier-Post – Unknown Date, 1928

Two-Story Brick Dwelling at 754 Federal Street Takes Palm Long Accorded 10-Foot Residence in Amsterdam

London may boast of its House of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, Paris may point with justifiable pride to the Louvre; Washington may have its White House and Philadelphia the Betsy Ross House, but residents of Camden believe that all of the houses in all the cities of the earth, this city, alone, can claim the narrowest house.

At 754 Federal street is a two-story brick house exactly six feet wide; that is four feet less than the famous “narrowest house” in Amsterdam, Holland.

More than 50 years ago the Federal street house was built, on a narrow strip of land 77 feet deep, formerly occupied by a green-house. Perhaps the lack of width may have been purposeful, or it was so constructed because of the limitations of lot-area. Tenants must have found barely room enough to turn around.

In Amsterdam there is no little feeling of pride in the three and a half story, brick house that is barely 10 feet wide. For 30 years it was occupied as a residence by a bachelor fisherman from Volendam.

The “narrowest house” in this city which Camden offers as its entry in the pursuit of honors for having the narrowest house in the universe is not only something of a mathematical problem for those who would enter it to turn around, but it is also unique for the fact that in the half-hundred years of its existence it has had but three known tenants. The first to make his bed in the home was the owner, of whom little is known.

Some few months after the first occupant of the house with the “little front” moved to other parts an oyster man rented the place, bringing in a couple of “two-by-fours” and setting up a bar over which he sold countless oysters during the five years he remained.

Louis B. Cox, a printer who now conducts his business in an adjoining property, occupied the premises for a quarter of a century. When Mr. Cox moved into the house, he erected there an early type of steam press. When Cox vacated the property, it remained unoccupied about 16 years and at present it is the headquarters of the Penecostal mission. The lower floor is the mission, and the upper floor is the home of the superintendent, William H. Pedrick.

The property is owned by Mary E. McLaughlin, Philadelphia.