Tenements were first built to house the waves of immigrants that arrived in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, and they represented the primary form of urban working-class housing until the New Deal.
When did tenement housing start?
New houses were not often built for the poor, and the affluent mostly built single-family homes for themselves. Tenements built specifically for housing the poor originated at some time between 1820 and 1850, and even the new buildings were considered overcrowded and inadequate.
When did tenements end?
In 1936, New York City introduced its first public housing project, and the era of the tenement building officially ended.
How many people lived in tenements 1900?
2.3 million people
By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City’s population) were living in tenement housing.
What were tenements like in the 1800s?
Tenement buildings were constructed with cheap materials, had little or no indoor plumbing and lacked proper ventilation. These cramped and often unsafe quarters left many vulnerable to rapidly spreading illnesses and disasters like fires.
Do tenements still exist?
Tenement housing dates back to the 19th century but still exists in the 21st century, often in the form of low-income housing complexes.
Did apartments exist in the 1800s?
They were something in between—not the stand-alone homes and townhouses that were, in the 19th century, becoming the province of the urban rich and at the same time not a couple of rooms for large families, with a shared bathroom in the hallways. Apartments were for the middle class, the creative class.
Does NYC still have tenements?
Other growing neighborhoods, including Chinatown and Little Italy, as well as newly defined areas like NoLIta and Two Bridges, have also encroached. Small rowhouses for middle-class residents built in the 1830s, she said, were followed by tenements that still exist.
Why is it called tenement?
In the United States, the term tenement initially meant a large building with multiple small spaces to rent. As cities grew in the nineteenth century, there was increasing separation between rich and poor.
How many people would live in a tenement?
With a large extended family and regular boarders to help pay the rent, which could otherwise eat up over half of a family’s income, a tenement apartment might house as many as from ten to twelve people at a time.
How many rooms did a tenement have?
Four to six stories in height, tenements contained four separate apartments on each floor, measuring 300 to 400 square feet. Apartments contained just three rooms; a windowless bedroom, a kitchen and a front room with windows.
Why was tenement living so difficult?
Cramped, poorly lit, under ventilated, and usually without indoor plumbing, the tenements were hotbeds of vermin and disease, and were frequently swept by cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis.
Why did tenements have windows inside?
These windows have an appropriate name: tuberculosis windows. They were mandated by a 19th century city law requiring that tenements have cross ventilation to help reduce the spread of diseases like tuberculosis—the deadly “white plague” not uncommon in poor neighborhoods.
How many people lived in a tenement apartment?
In one New York tenement, up to 18 people lived in each apartment. Each apartment had a wood-burning stove and a concrete bathtub in the kitchen, which, when covered with planks, served as a dining table. Before 1901, residents used rear-yard outhouses. Afterward, two common toilets were installed on each floor.
Did tenement buildings have windows?
Only tenements built after that date had to meet its requirements: that all rooms have access to air. Since inner rooms had no way of facing the street or back yard, the law effectively required windows opening on air shafts.
Why are tenement ceilings so high?
They were built for wealth merchants and other business types who wanted high ceilings because it looked impressive.
Did tenement houses have running water?
Some tenements had a single water line with a tap in the hall on each floor. Most, however, had both the water source and toilets in the shallow backyard. In some cases the toilets were placed between a front building and a rear tenement erected at the back of the lot.
What is a tenement room 1912?
The tenements were single-family buildings that had been cheaply converted to tiny multi-family units, intended to house the maximum number of people possible — mostly immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, who were flooding into the country at that time.
Did NYC tenements have bathrooms?
Many buildings and homes did not have indoor plumbing of any kind until the mid to late 19th century. Residents used outhouses and chamber pots as toilets, with tenement homes often forcing 25 or 30 people to share one latrine.
What did a house look like in 1880?
By the 1880s most working-class people lived in houses with two rooms downstairs and two or even three bedrooms. Most had a small garden. At the end of the 19th century, some houses for skilled workers were built with the latest luxury – an indoor toilet.
What were rooms called in the 1800s?
They included such rooms as billiard-rooms, boudoirs, breakfast or luncheon-rooms, conservatories, dining-rooms, drawing-rooms, gentlemen’s odd-rooms, gentlemen or business-rooms, libraries, parlor dining-rooms, morning-rooms, saloons, sitting-rooms, smoking-rooms, and studies.