Tenement housing is a topic that we have studied this semester that has made quite an impact on me. Tenement housing was the first style of an apartment building that was built in the United States. In the early 1800s in New York City, these buildings were built in response to urbanization in America. With the influx of people coming into the cities, green spaces were disappearing as buildings were being built closer together and taller than ever. To put things into perspective, at the beginning of the 19th century the urbanized population was about 30,000. By the end of the 19th century, that number had ballooned to 30,000,000. Tenement housing was built out of necessity. What defined tenement housing wasn’t that it was an answer to a growing need.

 

What defined tenement housing was the conditions of these apartments. Imagine a studio apartment or a 1 bedroom apartment. These apartments were built on lots that were 25ft by 100ft. Noted New York architect Ernest Flagg (SAAM, 2013) noted that “The greatest evil that ever befell New York City was the division of the blocks into lots of 25 x 100 feet ...for from this division has arisen the New York system of tenement houses, the worst curse whichever afflicted any great community.”

 

Now imagine you living there along with your spouse and 2 children, and your parents, and your spouses’ parents and maybe your siblings and your partner's siblings. This is how people lived in the 19th century. The apartments were so poorly ventilated that in the summer in became unbearable to sleep inside. Tenants would drag their mattresses and sleep on the roof or on the sidewalk next to the garbage.

 

To add to the horrible conditions most people lived in rooms with no windows. Although by the 1930’s most major cities had electricity, if you were living in tenement housing you probably couldn’t afford electricity. What that meant was that 24 hours a day, the only light would be from candles or the cigarette you are smoking. If you were lucky you would have a “water closet” attached to your apartment to be able to use the toilet. But according to an article in 6sqft.com “by 1937 an estimated 165,000 families were still without access to private indoor toilets.”

 

You lived in cramped spaces and the conditions were deplorable. You lived in homes with no light, poor ventilation and more than likely had to use an outhouse for your bathroom needs. According to History.com, it was found that there was a 1 in 10 infant mortality rate in tenement housing during this time period. To make matters worse, if you lived in New York you had to deal with streets that were full of trash and the fact that there was horse manure all on the streets. We have come a long way in the last 200 years. But remnants of this type of housing is still going on in poorer areas in almost every city in America. Fortunately, The Tenement Reform Law of 1987 was passed, which enacted minimum requirements for light and air.

 

This was the first step in making these places livable. This topic has impacted me on a personal level is because I grew up in modern-day tenement housing. Before gentrification took ahold of my community my neighborhood was full of low-income apartment complexes, drug dealers and gangs. I grew up in Chicago in an area of the city called Humboldt Park. I grew up in a 5 story apartment complex that had 10 apartments on each floor. The only difference was that we had running water, windows for sunlight, a bedroom of our own and indoor plumbing. We didn’t have a lot of money so the apartment complex we lived in wasn’t exactly the best maintained. We had a landlord that was never around. Any issue that needed to be fixed my father became the de facto handyman on our floor.

 

I lived in the “Ghetto” for the first few years of my life, When you are young you don’t realize the conditions that you live in and unless you have a traumatic experience in your life you tend to see things in bright light. In hindsight though, as a nation, we need to do better. We can not punish the less fortunate and have them live like animals just because they can not afford to house. Housing needs to be affordable and safe and sanitary.

​

Works Cited

• Various(2013) Tenement Life, Smithsonian American Art Museum, PDF, www.americanexperience.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Tenement-Life_.pdf

• Etherington, Cait(2016) Life in New York City before indoor toilets, 6sqft, www.6sqft.com/Life-in-new-york-city-before-indoor-toilets/

• History.com Editors (2019) Tenements, History.com, www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements