New York City Tenement House

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The New York City Tenement House Act of 1867 defined a tenement as any rented or leased dwelling that housed more than three independent families. 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.

A typical tenement building was from five to six stories high, with four apartments on each floor. To maximize the number of renters, builders wasted little space. Early tenements might occupy as much as 90 percent of their lots, leaving little room behind the building for privies and water pumps and little ventilation, light, or privacy inside the 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. These tenement residents often also worked in the building in such occupations as cigar rolling and garment making.

From the beginning, reformers attacked tenement conditions. In New York City, early attempts at reform included fire-prevention measures, the creation of a Department of Survey and Inspection of Buildings in 1862, and the …show more content…
Drawing on a tradition of "model tenements" and new government interest in housing construction, reformers designed public housing projects. Their plans emphasized open space, much as an earlier generation had passed laws to provide more light and fresh air for urban working-class families. The imposed standards, however, often created new problems. Building closures and slum clearance displaced many working-class families, while new high-rise public housing often fell victim to segregation and neglect. Although reformers continued to attack working-class living conditions, social pressures sustained many of the problems of poverty and
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