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Housing
Contents
Apartment Houses > Before
the Tenement Housing Options in the 1860s > Tenements
> Public Housing > Housing
Abandonment > Gentrification
> Homelessness > Immigrant
Housing today > Housekeeping
in the Tenements > Rent, Wages and
the Cost of Living
Tenements
The word "tenement" (from the Latin
root tenere, "to hold") has had different meanings at
different times, but today we use it to refer to housing built specifically
for multiple, working-class families from the mid-nineteenth century
until the Multiple Dwelling Law of 1929. Early tenements, such as
97 Orchard Street (built in 1863), represented some of the worst
housing ever built in this country.
While both tenements and apartment buildings refer to multiple family
dwellings, the origins of the word tenement and its association
with overcrowding, poverty, and working-class life date to the early
19th century when large-scale residential tenancy began to develop
in New York City. Apartments, on the other hand, did not become
fashionable residences for the middle and upper classes until the
1870s. However, the term apartment does have French origins in making
a class distinction between multiple-family dwellings for working-class/poor
and for the middle/upper classes.
New York's first wave of tenement construction came in the 1850s
as landlords realized that sizable profits could be made from building
cheap housing for the poor. The high cost of Manhattan real estate
encouraged landowners to house as many low-wage renters as possible
on a single building lot. Until 1867, there were no federal, state,
city laws requiring developers to provide their tenants with amenities
like running water, gas, or adequate light and ventilation, so early
tenements rarely possessed them. Unfortunately, New York had a severe
shortage of cheap housing and the immigrants who flooded New York
in successive waves beginning in the late 1840s had few alternatives
to tenements.
Why was there such a shortage of cheap housing? Manhattan landowners
wanted to increase the value of their land and the best way to do
this was to construct valuable buildings on the land. Consequently,
landowners discouraged the construction of cheap buildings on their
property. While upper class neighborhoods were constructed on the
northern edge of the city and new commercial buildings rose downtown
near the port, the city's lower classes huddled into the old housing
stock left behind by their wealthier neighbors. Only with the massive
immigration beginning in the late 1840s was a substantial amount
of new housing constructed for the working class.
Considerable debate surrounds the construction of the first purpose-built
tenement in New York City. Some sources cite a tenement on Cherry
Street built in 1838, while others point to an earlier example,
dating from the 1820s-a seven-story tenement at 65 Mott Street.
By mid-century, however, New York had begun to be transformed into
a burgeoning industrial metropolis attracting hundreds of thousands
of working-class immigrants and migrants. For the first time in
the city's history, the provision of working-class housing became
a profitable proposition. The construction of 97 Orchard Street
was part of a mid-century boom in which landlords and speculators
put up thousands of such houses. By 1865 a total of 15,309 tenements
existed in New York.
Why were there so few amenities? Builders sought to maximize their
rents, so the tenements constructed in the mid-nineteenth century
sometimes occupied as much as 90 percent of their lots and were
five or six stories tall. When a number of such tenements were built
next to each other, only the rooms facing the street and rear yard
had satisfactory light and ventilation (usually one room in each
apartment). The small rear yards where the privies were located,
however, quickly became unsanitary pits of human waste.
Another way for builders to cut costs was not to install plumbing
and/or gas. While most middle- and upper-class row houses at the
time had these amenities, tenements generally did not. Ninety-seven
Orchard Street remained without gas and running water long after
gas and water pipes were laid in the neighborhood.
How could developers get away with building such deplorable housing?
Until 1867 there were no laws regulating what a developer could
build, except some municipal restrictions on the materials used.
Vast numbers of tenements were built in the mid-nineteenth century
demonstrating their profitability in the absence of government regulation.
By 1864, approximately 500,000 of New York's 800,000 residents (more
than 62 percent) lived in 15,500 city tenements. New York State's
Tenement House Act of 1867 was the country's first comprehensive
housing reform law. (See Appendix D for the requirements of various
tenement reforms.) Among the more significant things the law required
were fire escapes and at least one outhouse for every twenty inhabitants,
connected to the city sewers if possible. Unfortunately, there were
few provisions made for enforcement of the new law and so it had
little effect.
The Tenement House Act of 1879, which followed the 1867 law, outlawed
the construction of buildings like 97 Orchard Street that had interior
rooms without windows. All rooms now had to open onto the street,
the rear yard, or an air shaft. This led to the development of the
"dumb-bell" tenement plan (see Appendix D for some common
tenement plans), so called because the air shafts on the side of
each building made the building's "footprint" look like
a dumbbell. There are fewer dumbbell tenements on the Lower East
Side than in some other parts of the city because so many tenements
like 97 Orchard Street had already been built in the neighborhood
by 1879.
The Tenement House Act of 1901 outlawed dumbbell tenements. Known
as the "new law," it set minimum size requirements for
the spaces (such as courtyards) onto which windows opened and mandated
that one bathroom be installed inside the building for every two
families. This finally brought plumbing into working-class housing.
Most importantly, the 1901 law set up the Tenement House Department
to inspect these buildings and enforce the new regulations. While
enforcement was still difficult due to the small size of the department,
it was a step in the right direction. Tenements built after 1901
are called "new law" tenements while those built between
1879 and 1901 are called "old law." Since 97 Orchard Street
was built before any housing reforms, it is known as a "pre-old
law" tenement.
The 1901 Tenement House Act not only set new standards for what
constituted acceptable housing, but also created the Tenement House
Department as a mechanism for insuring the implementation of the
law. Prior to the 1901 law, housing legislation was enforced by
the Board of Health and the Department for Survey and Inspection
of Buildings. An inspector with the Tenement House Department named
Charles Bretzfelder surveyed 97 Orchard Street on July 10, 1902.
He reported the presence of interior windows in each apartment,
but also noted some problems, the worst of which was a lack of flush
toilets and a continued reliance on school sinks in the rear yard.
All alterations required by the 1901 Tenement House Act were to
be made within one year. However, most landlords did not undertake
the changes required for toilet facilities and in 1903 the Tenement
House Department brought legal action against Kate Moeschen, owner
of a tenement at 332 East 39th Street, for failure to comply with
the requirements of the 1901 Act. After a succession of appeals,
in 1906 the United States Supreme Court upheld the 1901 Act.
Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca,
1989); James Ford, Slums and Housing (Cambridge 1936); Richard
Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City (New York 1990);
Andrew Dolkart, "97 Orchard Street: The Tenement Museum and
Tenement House Reform, " unpublished article, 2001
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