These 11 small streets of terraced houses are laid out like potato beds running between the old ramparts of Østre Anlæg park and Sortedam Lake. After some of the lakes were dammed up in the 1700s, potatoes were grown here to feed the city’s growing population. At the beginning of the 1800s the city’s population lived behind the ramparts. Building here was intense. Cellars and lofts were exploited; tenements became higher and came closer together, with more side buildings and back yard extensions. There was no sewerage or drinking water, the streets were overrun with rats and stank of garbage and human excrement. Mortality rates among the poor and disadvantaged were very high. Immediately after the cholera epidemic in 1853 the Medical Association’s Homes (now know as Brumleby) initiated by doctor Emil Hornemann were established outside the city ramparts in the area known as Øster Fælled. As building homes outside the ramparts was now permitted, the houses were originally conceived as a quick and necessary problem-solver rather than a long-term attempt to establish cheap and healthy housing for working people. The Workers Housing Association successfully combined a savings association and a housing association. A total of 1776 dwellings were built in ten of the city’s quarters. All the houses were built with the aim of being freehold properties. The owner would be the landlord and preferably give priority to association members as tenants. In this way, the homeowner ensured financial support for the purchase of the property and, later, financial support in their old age. All 480 houses in the “potato rows” were built between 1873-1889.